Before I could knock, somebody behind the second-floor door asked whether Eddie had sent me. I stood with six handwritten notices in my hand and understood that putting a meeting on paper would not make it different from a demand. The old man inside had heard my shoes often enough when I was carrying somebody else's wishes upstairs. Now I wanted him downstairs Thursday evening, and he had no reason to believe the invitation meant he could refuse. I stepped away from his door.
“Mrs. Dorn agreed to hear everybody,” I said. “You can come or stay.” The latch lifted. He opened the door the width of his shoulder and looked past me. His name was Mr. Hale, though I had lived under the same roof for months without using it. He read the notice without taking it. “And when we say something your friends dislike?” I told him I could not promise what Eddie would do. He started closing the door. I put the paper on the floor, not my foot in the opening.
At the next room a woman with soap whitening her wrists asked who would mind her children. Across the landing, a machinist wanted to know whether Dorn meant to raise the rent. I had answers to neither question. I wrote them on the back of my spare notice and said they ought to ask her themselves. The machinist looked at my pencil. “Don't put down my name.” I crossed nothing out because I had written none. That seemed to matter more than my explanation.
Downstairs, Hale's iron bed stood crooked in the passage where the movers had left it. The mattress leaned against the wall, and everybody entering had to turn sideways. Hale came down behind me carrying a pillow under his arm. He had been sleeping in his chair rather than ask me for help. I caught the bedstead before he tried dragging it. He tightened both hands on the rail. “I haven't said I'm coming.” I told him the bed was going upstairs either way.
We could not make the first turn with the frame upright. I fetched a blanket to protect the banister, then waited while Hale decided which end he could manage. Twice we stopped with the weight pressing my fingers against cold iron. Curtis appeared below us, hat pushed back, and asked whether I had taken up hotel service. I wanted to answer him sharply. Instead I asked him to move out of the turn. He stayed where he was until Hale said, “You're blocking my bed.”
Curtis shifted. That small movement let us get the frame level and through Hale's doorway. Inside, I found the marks its feet had left in the floor and lowered it there. Hale spread the mattress himself. I started to straighten the blanket, then stopped when he reached for it. He paid rent for that room; he did not need me arranging it. At his threshold he took the notice from my hand. “Thursday,” he said, reading the hour again. He gave me no promise.
In my kitchen I rewrote the notices on wrapping paper, pressing hard enough to break the pencil point. The first version had said only that tenants were requested downstairs. That sounded like every summons I had ever helped deliver. I changed it to say Dorn would hear questions about occupancy and disturbances. Beneath the hour I wrote that I had requested the gathering and would be there to answer for my own conduct. Then I signed Daniel Mercer, giving Eddie something he could point at.
Ruth found me fastening one copy beside the common-room door. She read it while I held the lower corner flat. “Am I expected to stand with you?” she asked. I pulled the tack from between my lips. “You're expected nowhere on my account.” She studied my face, not the paper. I said she could attend, speak, remain silent, or stay upstairs. I would not call any of those choices a favor to me. She took a spare notice, folded it, and went back to her room.
I carried the remaining copies along the upper hall. By the time I returned, the notice downstairs hung in two strips. No one stood near it. I gathered the torn paper without asking the children on the steps what they had seen. The machinist opened his door and held out a hand. He wanted a copy inside his room. Hale called down for another to give the woman with the children. I went back for more paper. Somebody had torn down my invitation; the tenants were asking me to replace it.