The Matter With Morris by David Bergen Page B

and that even Mervine, a lowly worker, was more secure. Morris calculated that if he lived to the age of eighty, which seemed interminable, and made not a cent more in his life, which would not happen because he had royalty cheques due from his columns, he could allow himself $11,482.76 per year, or thirty-one dollars a day to live on. Not at all possible, but this didn’t worry him. If the birds of the air are cared for, why should he, Morris Schutt, be worried? He stored his money in the large safe that he had bought at Staples for two hundred and fifty dollars (shaving eight days off his life), and in order to move the safe up to his condominium, he rented a pickup (two days) and purchased a dolly (three days) at Home Depot. It took him an hour to roll the safe off the back of the pickup and up to his condominium. He squeezed it through the door and placed it in the living room next to his bookshelf, forming a tidy dialectic of learning and lucre. He kept one key for the safe in his freezer, another he hid in his sock drawer, and the third key he slipped into his wallet. The combination for the safe was the year of his birth, 1956. Finally, because it was both mythical and symbolic, he took fifteen thousand dollars and laid it under his futon.
    He sat in one of his leather chairs and drank Scotch and felt the burden of the riches in the room. He imagined that he could hear the money moving, but it was the sound of his own breathing. He had dressed in his dark suit and slipped on a tie, and he had eaten lightly, a sandwich of pumpernickel with two slices of Swiss cheese, butter, mayonnaise, and lettuce. He ate standing up, looking out the front window towards the street below. It had been raining. The lights of passing cars. Wipers moved. A woman crossed the street, holding an umbrella, and then the wind took the umbrella and folded it upwards and the woman stopped, harried, and tried to bend the umbrella back into shape but failed. By the time she had reached the shelter of a nearby building, her hair was wet and her light blue jacket had turned dark from the rain. Morris wanted to help her. He wanted to climb down the stairs with a towel in his hand and offer it to the woman. He thought this thought and then let it go. The woman was wearing boots and her legs appeared to be bare in that space between skirt and boot, and he thought of Leah at that moment, who had removed her shoes and padded about the hotel room as if they had known each other a very long time. And so easily she had fallen asleep. When she woke she sat up and said that she was sorry, it was unprofessional to sleep. He said that he didn’t like the word “professional,” it was crass, and then he gave her three hundred dollars as a tip, money that she tried to refuse but eventually took and folded into her purse. He said that he had been thinking, and if it was okay, sometime soon he would like to take her for coffee, or they might go out for a meal, but only as friends.
    “Can I use the word ‘friend’?” he asked.
    “Of course you can, Mr. Schutt. We ‘re friends.” And she had written her cell number on a piece of paper and handed it to him. The paper was still in his wallet. It held her small handwriting with her number, her name, and an x and o. A kiss and a hug. Something sweetly innocent there.
    More innocent than Ursula, whose letter he had just received the day before. She had agreed that they should meet on the last Saturday of October, and then she had asked him if he was depressed. Something in the letter, in his words, had made her think that he might be feeling low. She said that she wanted to eat Chinese when they met. She said, “I’ll try to be more fun. I want to face you.” Then, as he had, she signed off with the word “love.” Morris wondered if Cal would be protective and jealous if he knew of these letters. Not that there was anything to be jealous of. Morris was aware that he felt little emotion, that his thoughts were