The Tenants Read online

  The Tenants

  William Tenn

  The building does not have thirteenth floor: fourteenth immediately follows twelfth. But three very strange-looking gentlemen want to rent it nevertheless.

  The Tenants

  by William Tenn

  When Miss Kerstenberg, his secretary, informed Sydney Blake over the interoffice communicator that two gentlemen had just entered and expressed a desire to rent space in the building, Blake’s “Well, show them in, Esther, show them right in,” was bland enough to have loosened the cap on a jar of Vaseline. It had been only two days since Wellington Jimm Sons, Inc., Real Estate, had appointed him resident agent in the McGowan Building, and the prospect of unloading an office or two in Old Unrentable this early in his assignment was mightily pleasing.

  Once, however, he had seen the tenants-to-be, he felt much less certain. About practically everything.

  They were exactly alike in every respect but one: size. The first was tall, very, very tall—close to seven feet, Blake estimated as he rose to welcome them. The man was bent in two places: forward at the hips and backward at the shoulders, giving the impression of being hinged instead of jointed. Behind him rolled a tiny button of a man, a midget’s midget, but except for that the tall man’s twin. They both wore starched, white shirts and black hats, black coats, black ties, black suits, black socks, and shoes of such incredible blackness as almost to drown the light waves that blundered into them.

  They took seats and smiled at Blake—in unison.

  “Uh, Miss Kerstenberg,” he said to his secretary, who still stood in the doorway.

  “Yes, Mr. Blake?” she asked briskly.

  “Uh, nothing, Miss Kerstenberg. Nothing at all.” Regretfully, he watched her shut the door and heard her swivel chair squeak as she went back to work in the outer office. It was distinctly unfortunate that, not being telepathic, she had been unable to receive his urgent thought message to stay and lend some useful moral support.

  Oh, well. You couldn’t expect Dun Bradstreet’s best to be renting offices in the McGowan. He sat down and offered them cigarettes from his brand-new humidor. They declined.

  “We would like,” the tall man said in a voice composed of many heavy breaths, “to rent a floor in your building.”

  “The thirteenth floor,” said the tiny man in exactly the same voice.

  Sydney Blake lit a cigarette and drew on it carefully. A whole floor! You certainly couldn’t judge by appearances.

  “I’m sorry,” he told them. “You can’t have the thirteenth floor. But—”

  “Why not?” the tall man breathed. He looked angry.

  “Chiefly because there isn’t any thirteenth floor. Many buildings don’t have one. Since tenants consider them unlucky, we call the floor above the twelfth the fourteenth. If you gentlemen will look at our directory, you will see that there are no offices listed beginning with the number 13. However, if you’re interested in that much space, I believe we can accommodate you on the sixth—”

  “It seems to me,” the tall man said very mournfully, “that if someone wants to rent a particular floor, the least a renting agent can do is let him have it.”

  “The very least,” the tiny man agreed. “Especially since no complicated mathematical questions are being asked in the first place.”

  Blake held on to his temper with difficulty and let out a friendly chuckle instead. “I would be very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to you—if we had one. But I can’t very well rent something to you that doesn’t exist, now can I?” He held his hands out, palms up, and gave them another we-are-three-intelligent-gentlemen-who-are-quite-close-in-spirit chuckle. “The twelfth and fourteenth floors both have very little unoccupied space, I am happy to say. But I’m certain that another part of the McGowan Building will do you very nicely.” Abruptly he remembered that protocol had almost been violated. “My name,” he told them, touching the desk plate lightly with a manicured forefinger, “is Sydney Blake. And who, might I—”

  “Tohu and Bohu,” the tall man said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tohu, I said, and Bohu. I’m Tohu.” He pointed at his minuscule twin. “He’s Bohu. Or, as a matter of occasional fact, vice versa.”

  Sydney Blake considered that until some ash broke off his cigarette and splattered grayly on his well-pressed pants. Foreigners. He should have known from their olive skins and slight, unfamiliar accents. Not that it made any difference in the McGowan. Or in any building managed by Wellington Jimm Sons, Inc., Real Estate. But he couldn’t help wondering where in the world people had such names and such disparate sizes.

  “Very well, Mr. Tohu. And—er, Mr. Bohu. Now, the problem as I see it—”

  “There really isn’t any problem,” the tall man told him, slowly, emphatically, reasonably, “except for the fuss you keep kicking up, young man. You have a building with floors from one to twenty-four. We want to rent the thirteenth, which is apparently vacant. Now if you were as businesslike as you should be and rented this floor to us without further argument—”

  “Or logical hairsplitting,” the tiny man inserted.

  “—why then, we could be happy, your employers would be happy, and you should be happy. It’s really a very simple transaction and one which a man in your position should be able to manage with ease.”

  “How the hell can I—” Blake began yelling before he remembered Professor Scoggins in Advanced Realty Seminar II (“Remember, gentlemen, a lost temper means a lost tenant. If the retailer’s customer is always right, the realtor’s client is never wrong. Somehow, somewhere, you must find a cure for their little commercial illnesses, no matter how imaginary. The realtor must take his professional place beside the doctor, the dentist, and the pharmacist and make his motto, like theirs, unselfish service, always available, forever dependable.”) Blake bent his head to get a renewed grip on professional responsibility before going on.

  “Look here,” he said at last, with a smile he desperately hoped was winning. “I’ll put it is the terms that you just did. You, for reasons best known to yourselves, want to rent a thirteenth floor. This building, for reasons best known to its architect—who, I am certain, was a foolish, eccentric man whom none of us would respect at all—this building has no thirteenth floor. Therefore, I can’t rent it to you. Now, superficially, I’ll admit, this might seem like a difficulty, it might seem as if you can’t get exactly what you want here in the McGowan Building. But what happens if we examine the situation carefully? First of all, we find that there are several other truly magnificent floors—”

  He broke off as he realized he was alone. His visitors had risen in the same incredibly rapid movement and gone out the door.

  “Most unfortunate,” he heard the tall man say as they walked through the outer office. “The location would have been perfect. So far from the center of things.”

  “Not to mention,” the tiny man added, “the building’s appearance. So very unpresentable. Too bad.”

  He raced after them, catching up in the corridor that opened into the lobby. Two things brought him to a dead stop. One was the strong feeling that it was beneath a newly appointed resident agent’s dignity to haul prospective customers back into an office which they had just quit so abruptly. After all, this was no cut-rate clothing shop—it was the McGowan Building.

  The other was the sudden realization that the tall man was alone. There was no sign of the tiny man. Except—possibly—for the substantial bulge in the right-hand pocket of the tall man’s overcoat…

  “A pair of cranks,” he told himself as he swung around and walked back to the office. “Not legitimate clients at all.”

  He insisted on Miss Kerstenberg’s listening to the entire story, despite Professor Scoggins’s ste
rn injunctions against overfraternization with the minor clerical help. She cluck-clucked and tsk-tsked and stared earnestly at him through her thick glasses.

  “Cranks, wouldn’t you say, Miss Kerstenberg?” he asked her when he’d finished. “Hardly legitimate clients, eh?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Blake,” she replied, inflexibly unpresumptuous. She rolled a sheet of letterhead stationery into her typewriter. “Do you want the Hopkinson mailing to go out this afternoon?”

  “What? Oh, I guess so. I mean, of course. By all means this afternoon, Miss Kerstenberg. And I want to see it for a double-check before you mail it.”

  He strode into his own office and huddled behind the desk. The whole business had upset him very much. His first big rental possibility. And that little man—Bohu was his name?—and that bulging pocket—

  Not until quite late in the afternoon was he able to concentrate on his work. And that was when he got the phone call.

  “Blake?” the voice crackled. “This is Gladstone Jimm.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jimm.” Blake sat up stiffly in his swivel chair. Gladstone was the oldest of the Sons.

  “Blake, what’s is this about your refusing to rent space?”

  “My what? I beg your pardon, Mr. Jimm, but I—”

  “Blake, two gentlemen just walked into the home office. Their names are Tooley and Booley. They tell me they tried unsuccessfully to rent the thirteenth floor of the McGowan Building from you. They tell me that you admitted the space was vacant, but that you consistently refused to let them have it. What’s this all about, Blake? Why do you think the firm appointed you resident agent, Blake, to turn away prospective tenants? I might as well let you know that none of us up here in the home office like this one little bit, Blake.”

  “I’d have been very happy to rent the thirteenth floor to them,” Blake wailed. “Only trouble, sir, you see, there’s—”

  “What trouble are you referring to, Blake? Spit it out, man, spit it out.”

  “There is no thirteenth floor, Mr. Jimm.”

  “What?”

  “The McGowan Building is one of those buildings that has no thirteenth floor.” Laboriously, carefully, he went through the whole thing again. He even drew an outline picture of the building on his desk pad as he spoke.

  “Hum,” said Gladstone Jimm when he’d finished. “Well, I’ll say this, Blake. The explanation, at least, is in your favor.” And he hung up.

  Blake found himself quivering. “Cranks,” he muttered fiercely. “Definitely cranks. Definitely not legitimate tenants.”

  When he arrived at his office door early next morning, he found Mr. Tohu and Mr. Bohu waiting for him. The tall man held out a key.

  “Under the terms of our lease, Mr. Blake, a key to our main office must be in the possession of the resident agent for the building. We just had our locksmith make up this copy. I trust it is satisfactory?”

  Sydney Blake leaned against the wall, waiting for his bones to reacquire marrow. “Lease?” he whispered. “Did the home office give you a lease?”

  “Yes,” said the tall man. “Without much trouble, we were able to achieve a what-do-you-call-it.”

  “A meeting of minds,” the tiny man supplied from the region of his companion’s knees. “A feast of reason. A flow of soul. There are no sticklers for numerical subtleties in your home office, young man.”

  “May I see the lease?” Blake managed to get out.

  The tall man reached into his right-hand overcoat pocket and brought up a familiar-looking folded piece of paper.

  It was the regulation lease. For the thirteenth floor in the McGowan Building. But there was one small difference.

  Gladstone Jimm had inserted a rider:…the landlord is renting a floor that both the tenant and landlord know does not exist, but the title to which has an intrinsic value to the tenant; which value is equal to the rent he will pay…

  Blake sighed with relief. “That’s different. Why didn’t you tell me that all you wanted was the title to the floor? I was under the impression that you intended to occupy the premises.”

  “We do intend to occupy the premises.” The tall man pocketed the lease. “We’ve paid a month’s rent in advance for them.”

  “And,” added the tiny man, “a month’s security.”

  “And,” finished the tall man, “an extra month’s rent as fee to the agent. We most certainly do intend to occupy the premises.”

  “But how—” Blake giggled a little hysterically “—are you going to occupy premises that aren’t even—”

  “Good morning, young man,” they said in unison and moved toward the elevators.

  He watched them enter one.

  “Thirteen, please,” they told the elevator operator. The elevator door closed. Miss Kerstenberg walked past him and into the office, chirping a dutiful “Good morning, Mr. Blake.” Blake barely nodded at her. He kept his eyes on the elevator door. After a while it opened again, and the fat little operator lounged out and began a conversation with the starter.

  Blake couldn’t help himself. He ran to the elevator. He stared inside. It was empty.

  “Listen,” he said, grabbing the fat little operator by one sleeve of his dingy uniform. “Those two men you just took up, what floor did they get off at?”

  “The one they wanted. Thirteen. Why?”

  “There isn’t any thirteenth floor. No thirteenth floor at all!”

  The fat little elevator operator shrugged. “Look, Mr. Blake, I do my job. Someone says ‘thirteenth floor,’ I take ’em to the thirteenth floor. Someone says ‘twenty-first floor,’ I take ’em—”

  Blake walked into the elevator. “Take me there,” he ordered.

  “The twenty-first floor? Sure.”

  “No, you—you—” Blake realized that the starter and the elevator operator were grinning at each other sympathetically. “Not the twenty-first floor,” he went on more calmly, “the thirteenth. Take me to the thirteenth floor.”

  The operator worked his switch and the door moaned itself shut. They went up. All of the McGowan Building elevators were very slow, and Blake had no trouble reading the floor numbers through the little window in the elevator door.

  …ten…eleven…twelve…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen…

  They stopped. The elevator operator scratched his head with his visored cap. Blake glared at him triumphantly. They went down.

  …fifteen…fourteen…twelve…eleven…ten…nine…

  “Well?” Blake asked him.

  The man shrugged. “It don’t seem to be there now.”

  “Now? Now? It’s never been there. So where did you take those men?”

  “Oh, them, I told you: the thirteenth floor.”

  “But I just proved to you there is no thirteenth floor!”

  “So what? You got the college education, Mr. Blake, not me. I just do my job. If you don’t like it, all I can say is I just do my job. Someone gets in the elevator and says ‘thirteenth floor,’ I take—”

  “I know! You take them to the thirteenth floor. But there is no thirteenth floor, you idiot! I can show you the blueprints of the building, the original blueprints, and I dare you, I defy you to show me a thirteenth floor. If you can show me a thirteenth floor…”

  His voice trailed off as he realized they were back in the lobby and had attracted a small crowd.

  “Look, Mr. Blake,” the elevator man suggested. “If you’re not satisfied, how’s about I call up the delegate from the union and you and him have a talk? How’s about that, huh?”

  Blake threw up his arms helplessly and stamped back to his office. Behind him he heard the starter ask the elevator operator, “What was he getting in such an uproar about, Barney?”

  “Aa-aah, that guy,” the operator said. “He was blaming me for the blueprints of the building. If you ask me, he’s got too much college education. What have I got to do with the blueprints?”

  “I don’t know,” the starter sighed. “I sure as hell don’t know.” />
  “I’ll ask you another question,” the operator went on, with a little more certainty, now that he saw his oratorical way, so to speak. “What have the building blueprints got to do with me?”

  Blake closed the office door and leaned against it. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

  “Miss Kerstenberg,” he said at last in a strangled voice. “What do you think? Those cranks that were here yesterday—those two crazy old men—the home office went and rented the thirteenth floor to them!”

  She looked up from her typewriter. “It did?”

  “And believe it or not, they just went upstairs and took possession of their offices.”

  She smiled at him, a rapid woman-smile. “How nice” she said. And went back to her typing.

  The morning after that, what Blake saw in the lobby sent him scurrying to the telephone. He dialed the home office. “Mr. Gladstone Jimm,” he demanded breathlessly.

  “Listen, Mr. Jimm. This is Sydney Blake at the McGowan. Mr. Jimm, this is getting serious! They’re moving in furniture today. Office furniture. And I just saw some men go upstairs to install telephones. Mr. Jimm, they’re really moving in!”

  Gladstone Jimm was instantly alert. He gave the matter his full attention. “Who’s moving in, my boy? Tanzen Realty Corporation? Or is it the Blair Brothers again? I was saying only last week: things have been far too quiet in the real estate field; I’ve felt in my bones that last year’s Code of Fair Practices wouldn’t be standing up much longer. Try to raid our properties, will they?” He snorted long and belligerently. “Well, the old firm has a few tricks up its sleeve yet. First, make certain that all important papers—tenant lists, rent receipts, don’t overlook anything, son—are in the safe. We’ll have three attorneys and a court order down there in half an hour. Meanwhile, you keep—”

  “You don’t understand, sir. It’s those new tenants. The ones you rented the thirteenth floor to.”

  Gladstone Jimm ground to a full stop and considered the matter. Ah. He understood. He began to beat swords into ploughshares.