still crying, and drew up her knees. After a while she got up and put on a robe and fried herself an egg. She didn’t seem to be able to get enough salt on it, and in the middle of breakfast she suddenly took the plate and slammed it on the floor of the kitchen.
“Oh, God damn it, what’s eating him? How can I know how to give him a party if I don’t know what’s the matter?”
After a while she got dressed and went out to have her hair washed and set. First she went around to the barber shop and saw Mickey, and he handed her sixteen dollars. The horse had paid off at seven to one.
With the wheels clicking past under him, Stan felt a little better. The Palisades had fingers of snow pointing up their slopes, and the river was rough with broken ice, where gulls sailed and settled. He read, sketchily, in Ouspensky’s
A girl was having trouble getting her valise down from the rack and Stan leaped up to help her. Getting off at Pough-keepsie. His hand touched hers on the valise handle and he felt blood rising over his face. The kid was luscious; his eyes followed her as she walked primly down the car, carrying the bag before her. He crossed the train and watched her, out on the platform.
When he got to Albany he took a cab to the hotel, stopping off to buy a fifth of Scotch undercover from a saloon.
The room was good-sized and cleaner than most.
“You ain’t been through lately, Mr. Charles. Territory been changed?”
Stan nodded, throwing his hat on the bed and getting out of his overcoat. “Bring some club soda. And plenty of ice.”
The boy took a five and winked. “Like some company? We got swell gals in town-new since you was here last. I know a little blonde that’s got everything. And I mean everything.”
Stan lay down on the other bed and lit a cigarette, folding his hands behind his head. “Brunette.”
“You’re the boss.”
He smoked when the boy had gone. In the ceiling cracks he could make out the profile of an old man. Then there was a tap on the door-the soda and ice. The boy scraped the collodion seal from the Scotch bottle.
Quiet again. In the empty, impersonal wilderness of the hotel Stan listened to noises coming up from the street. The whir of the elevator, stopping at his floor; footsteps soft in the corridor. He swung off the bed.
The girl was short and dark. She had on a tan polo coat and no hat, but there was an artificial gardenia pinned in her hair over one ear.
She came in, her nose and cheeks rosy from the cold, and said, “Howdy, sport! Annie sent me. Say-how’d ya know I drink Scotch?”
“I read minds.”
“Gee, you musta.” She poured two fingers’ into a glass and offered it to Stan, who shook his head.
“On the wagon. But don’t let that stop you.”
“Okay, sport. Here’s lead in your pencil.” When she finished it she poured herself another and then said, “You better give me the fin now before I forget it.”
Stan handed her a ten-dollar bill and she said, “Gee, thanks. Say, would you happen to have two fives?”
Silence. She broke it. “Lookit-radio in every room! That’s something new for this dump. Say, let’s listen to Charlie McCarthy. D’you mind?”
Stan was looking at her spindly legs. As she hung the polo coat carefully in the closet he saw that her breasts were tiny. She was wearing a Sloppy Joe sweater and a skirt. They used to look like whores. Now they look like college girls. They all want to look like college girls. Why don’t they go to college, then? They wouldn’t be any different from the others. You’d never notice them. Christ, what a crazy way to run a world.
She was having a good time listening to the radio gags, and the whisky had warmed her. Taking off her shoes, she curled her feet under her. Then motioning Stan to throw her a cigarette, she stripped off her stockings and warmed her feet with her hands, giving him a flash at the same time.
When the program was over she turned the radio down a little and stood up, stretching. She drew off her sweater carefully, so as not to disturb the gardenia, and spread it over the chair back. She was thin, with sharp shoulder blades; her collar bones stood out starkly. When she dropped her skirt it was a little better but not too good. On one thigh, evenly spaced, were four bruises, the size of a big man’s fingers.
She stood smoking, wearing nothing but the imitation gardenia and Stan let his eyes go back to the old man’s face in the ceiling.
Tear-ass out of town, ride for hours, hotel, buy liquor, and for this. He sighed, stood up and slipped off his jacket and vest.
The girl was humming a tune to herself and now she did a soft-shoe dance step, her hands held up by her face, and spun around, then sang the chorus of the song that was coming over the loudspeaker. Her voice was husky and pleasant with power under control.
“You sing, too?” Stan asked dryly.
“Oh, sure. I only party to fill in. I sing with a band sometimes. I’m studying the voice.” She threw back her head and vocalized five notes. “Ah… ah… AH… ah… ah.”
The Great Stanton stopped with his shirt half off, staring. Then he seized the girl and threw her on the bed.
“Hey, look out, honey, not so fast! Hey, for Christ’s sake, be careful!”
He twisted his hand in her hair. The girl’s white, waxy face stared up at him, fearful and stretched tight. “Take it easy, honey. Don’t. Listen, Ed McLaren, the house dick, is a pal of mine. Now go easy- Ed’ll beat the hell out of any guy that did that.”
The radio kept on. “… bringing you the music of Phil Requete and his Swingstars direct from the Zodiac Room of the Hotel Teneriffe. And now our charming vocalist, Jessyca Fortune, steps up to the mike with an old-fashioned look in her eye, as she sings-and swings-that lovely old number of the ever popular Bobbie Burns, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.’ ”
Ice in the river, piled against the piers of boat clubs, a dark channel in the middle. And always the click of the rail joints underneath. North south east west-cold spring heat fall-love lust tire leave-wed fight leave hate-sleep wake eat sleep-child boy man corpse-touch kiss tongue breast-strip grip press jet-wash dress pay leave-north south east west…
Stan felt the prickle crawl up over his scalp again. The old house was waiting for him and the fat ones with pince-nez and false teeth; this woman doc probably was one of them, for all the music of voice and cool, slow speech. What could she do for him? What could anybody do for him? For anybody? They were all trapped, all running down the alley toward the light.
The nameplate said, “Dr. Lilith Ritter, Consulting Psychologist. Walk In.”
The waiting room was small, decorated in pale gray and rose. Beyond the casement window snow was falling softly in huge flakes. On the window sill was a cactus in a rose-colored dish, a cactus with long white hair like an old man. The sight of it ran along Stan’s nerves like a thousand ants. He put down his coat and hat and then quickly looked behind a picture of sea shells drawn in pastel. No dictaphone. What was he afraid of? But that would have been a beautiful place to plant a bug if you wanted to work the waiting room gab angle when the doc’s secretary came in.
Did she have a secretary? If he could make the dame he might get a line on this woman doc or whatever she was, find out how much overboard she was on occult stuff. He might swap developmental lessons for whatever she gave her patients-some kind of advice. Or did she interpret dreams or something? He lit a cigarette and it burned his finger as he knocked the ashes off. In reaching down to pick it up he knocked down an ashtray. He got on his hands and knees to pick up the butts and that was where he was when the cool voice said, “Come in.”
Stan looked up. This dame wasn’t fat, she wasn’t tall, she wasn’t old. Her pale hair was straight and she wore it drawn into a smooth roll on the nape of her neck. It glinted like green gold. A slight woman, no age except young, with enormous gray eyes that slanted a little.
Stan picked up the ashtray and put it on the edge of a table. It fell off again but he didn’t notice. He was staring at the woman who stood holding the door open into another room. He weaved to his feet, lurching as he
