She had taken him, on trial. After a week, she had come to feel Duff was indispensable. Now, he was like a son — except, of course, where Eleanor was concerned. He was too shy, too self-effacing to be like a brother to Eleanor, which somewhat interfered with his status as “son.” Mrs. Yates sighed. Eleanor didn’t give him much encouragement. Much?
Not any. Which wasn’t surprising in a girl elected Miss Freshman in her first year, the Belle of the Junior Prom, and who now, as a senior, was Queen-elect of the Orange Bowl festivities.
Upstairs in the bathroom, Duff Bogan had gone to work with equipment of his own devising — a “gun” for spraying insecticides and a second “gun” for dusting. First he dampened all porcelain, metal and tile surfaces with a water spray. Then he dusted with a scouring powder. Thereafter, a damp cloth in each hand, he polished furiously — which caused the din Mrs. Yates had heard. In fifteen minutes the bathroom glittered.
Perspiring in the damp warmth of the day, he called down the stairway, “What about Harry’s room?”
“That, too,” she responded. “He never locks it.”
So Duff entered the quarters of the other boarder, Harry Ellings. A light dust mopping only was needed there. For Harry, who had been with the Yateses ever since the father’s death, made his own bed and kept his own premises picked up. It wasn’t, Duff thought, much of a home for a fifty-year-old bachelor like Harry. A living-sitting room in somebody else’s house — a day bed and a desk, a shelf of books, bridge lamps, old chair, a worn rug, a radio, a few photographs, a calendar hung on the knob of the closet door. That was Harry’s residence.
He had a job as a mechanic with a trucking concern; before that he’d been a letter carrier. He had quit during his early years with the Yateses because of varicose veins, and had gone to school to learn his present trade.
Church on Sundays, a Friday bridge game, his Wednesday evenings practicing casting, a lot of porch sitting and radio listening, occasional fishing trips, few visitors, little mail — that summed up all Duff knew of the other boarder.
Maybe, from Harry’s viewpoint, it was a good life, whole and satisfying. The thought depressed Duff. He finished dusting, helped himself to one of Harry’s cigarettes and stared out at the sunshine, wondering, as young men do, what he would do when his degree had been awarded and the uncertain world said wordlessly, “Okay, Bogan; beat me if you can!”
He picked up the mop and noticed then, behind the calendar that hung from the knob, a lock on the closet door, a lock newer than the hardware of the Yates house, which he constantly repaired and replaced.