Member-only story
WOLF TALE
Atonement
As you sow…
He had a nose to scare children. It was half large punctured pear, red and pockmarked. He was bald but for a grayish sprinkling along the sides and back of his head: almost, but not quite, monkish. He had the brow of a sperm whale. He could often be heard mumbling to himself. He was not underweight. He was considered strange.
But he did have the kindest eyes — doglike, wet.
He lived three flights up in the elevator-less building on the corner of Madison and Hoover. It was a five-story apartment house owned by ghosts and managed by an equally invisible and unreachable proxy. Who, in turn, worked through other heartless proxies when rents were due or overdue or so overdue that evictions took place.
His building was a friendless one. Of the twenty tenants, only two were close. Only five knew each other by name. All in all, his building housed a collection of strangers who had only two things in common: the payee on their rent checks, and they all considered him strange.
His fingers were clean, pink sausages. His lips were near blue but quite full. Most of the time, he smelled of soap.
He puffed after the first flight of stairs, he had to stop and collect his breath on the second landing, and he was all but spent by the time he reached his…
