The Hotel New Hampshire

that one would do; almost any song like that would suffice.

There was just this snatch of a song, the Christmas decorations, the winter weather, my painful private parts—and my great feeling of relief, that I was free to live my life now—and the car that was moving too fast tore by me. When I started across Seventh Avenue, when it looked safe to cross, I looked up and saw the couple coming toward me. They were walking on Central Park South in the direction of the Plaza—they were headed west to east—and it was inevitable, I would later think, that we should have met in the middle of Seventh Avenue on the very night of Franny’s and my own release. They were a slightly drunk couple, I think—or at least the young woman was, and the way she leaned on the man made him weave a little, too. The woman was younger than the man; in 1964, at least, we would have called her a girl. She was laughing, hanging on her older boyfriend’s arm; he looked about my age—actually he was a little older. He would have been in his late twenties on this night in 1964. The girl’s laughter was as sharp and as splintering of the frigid night air as the sound of very thin icicles breaking away from the eaves of a house encased in winter. I was in a really good mood, of course, and although there was something too educated and insufficiently visceral in the girl’s cold, tingling laughter—and although my balls ached and my cock stung—I looked up at this handsome couple and smiled.

We had no trouble recognizing each other—the man and I. I could never forget the quality of the quarterback in his face, though I had not seen him since that Halloween night on the footpath the football players always used —and everyone else would have been well advised to let them use it, to let them have it for themselves. Some days when I was lifting weights, I could still hear him say, “Hey, kid. Your sister’s got the nicest ass at this school. Is she banging anybody?”

“Yes, she’s banging me,” I could have told him that night on Seventh Avenue. But I didn’t say anything to him. I just stopped and stood in front of him, until I was sure he knew who I was. He hadn’t changed; he looked almost exactly as he’d always looked, to me. And although I thought I had changed—I knew the weight lifting had at least changed my body—I think that Franny’s constant correspondence with him must have kept our family close to Chipper Dove’s memory (if not close to his heart).

Chipper Dove stopped in the middle of Seventh Avenue, too. After a second or two he said, softly, “Well, look who’s here.”

Everything is a fairy tale.

I looked at Chipper Dove’s girl friend and said, “Watch out he doesn’t rape you.”

Chipper Dove’s girl friend laughed—that high-strung, overstrenuous laugh like breaking ice, that laugh of little icicles shattering. Dove laughed a little bit with her. The three of us stayed in the middle of Seventh Avenue; a taxi heading downtown and turning off Central Park South almost killed us, but only the girl friend flinched—Chipper Dove and I didn’t move.

“Hey, we’re in the middle of the street, you know,” the girl said. She was a lot younger than he was, I noticed. She skipped to the east side of Seventh Avenue and waited for us, but we didn’t move.

“I’ve enjoyed hearing from Franny,” Dove said.

“Why haven’t you written her back?” I asked him.

“Hey!” his girl friend screamed at us, and another taxi, turning downtown, blew its horn at us and dodged around us.

“Is Franny in New York, too?” Chipper Dove asked me.

In a fairy tale, you often don’t know what the people want. Everything had changed. I knew I didn’t know if Franny wanted to see Chipper Dove or not. I knew I never knew what was in the letters she’d written him.

“Yes, she’s in the city,” I said cautiously. New York is a big place, I was thinking; this felt safe.

“Well, tell her I’d like to see her,” he said, and he started to move around me. “Can’t keep this girl waiting,” he whispered to me, conspiratorially; he actually winked at me. I caught him under the armpits and just picked him up; for a quarterback, he didn’t weigh much. He didn’t struggle, but he looked genuinely surprised at how easily I had lifted him. I wasn’t sure what to do with him; I thought a minute—or it must have seemed like a minute to Chipper Dove—and then I put him back down. I simply placed him back in front of me in the middle of Seventh Avenue.

“Hey, you crazy guys!” his girl friend called; two cabs, appearing to be in a race with each other, passed on either side of us—the drivers kept their hands on their horns for a long way, heading downtown.

“Tell me why you would like to see Franny,” I told Chipper Dove.

“You’ve been doing a little work with the weights, I guess,” Dove said.

“A little,” I admitted. “Why do you want to see my sister?” I asked him.

“Well, to apologize—among other things,” he mumbled, but I could never believe him ; he had that ice-blue smile in his ice-blue eyes. He seemed only slightly intimidated by my muscles; he had an arrogance larger than most people’s hearts and minds.

“You could have answered just one of her letters,” I told him. “You could have apologized in writing, anytime.”

“Well,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, like a quarterback settling himself, getting ready to receive the ball. “Well, it’s all so hard to say,” he said, and I almost killed him on the spot; I could take almost anything from him but sincerity—hearing him sound genuine was almost too much to bear. I felt a need to hug him—to hug him harder than I had hugged Arbeiter—but fortunately for both of us, he changed his tone. He was getting impatient with me.

“Look,” he said. “By the statute of limitations in this country, I’m clear—short of murder. Rape is short of murder, in case you don’t know.”

“Just short,” I said. Another cab almost killed us.

“Chipper!” his girl friend was screaming. “Shall I get the police?”

“Look,” Dove said. “Just tell Franny I’d be happy to see her—that’s all. Apparently,” he said, with the ice- blue in his eyes slipping into his voice, “apparently she’d like to see me. I mean, she’s written me enough.” He was almost complaining about it, I thought—as if my sister’s letters had been tedious for him!

“If you want to see her, you can tell her yourself,” I told him. “Just leave a message for her—leave the whole thing up to her : if she wants to see you. Leave a message at the Stanhope,” I said.

“The Stanhope?” he said. “She’s just passing through?”

“No, she lives there,” I said. “We’re a hotel family,” I told him. “Remember?”

“Oh yes,” he laughed, and I could see him thinking that the Stanhope was a big step up from the Hotel New Hampshire—from either Hotel New Hampshire, though he’d only known the first one. “Well,” he said, “so Franny lives at the Stanhope.”

“We own the Stanhope, now,” I told him. I have no idea why I lied, but I simply had to do something to him. He looked a little stunned, and that was at least a mildly pleasing moment; a green sports car came so close to him that his scarf was flapped by the sudden passing wind. His girl friend ventured out in Seventh Avenue again; she cautiously approached us.

“Chipper, please,” she said softly.

“Is that the only hotel you own?” Dove asked me, trying to be cool about it.

“We own half of Vienna,” I told him. “The controlling half. The Stanhope is just the first of many—in New York,” I told him. “We’re going to take over New York.”

“And tomorrow, the world?” he asked, that ice-blue lilt in his voice.

“Ask Franny all about it,” I said. “I’ll tell her she can expect to hear from you.” I had to walk away from him so I wouldn’t hurt him, but I heard his girl friend ask him, “Who’s Franny?”

“My sister!” I called. “Your friend raped her! He and two other guys gang-banged her!” I shouted. Neither Chipper Dove nor his girl friend laughed this time, and I left them in the middle of Seventh Avenue. If I’d heard the squeal of tires and brakes, and the thud of bodies making contact with metal, or with the pavement, I wouldn’t have turned around. It was only when I recognized the pain in my private parts as actually belonging to me that I realized I had walked too far. I’d walked past 222 Central Park South—I was wandering around Columbus Circle— and I had to turn around and head east. When I saw Seventh Avenue again, I saw that Chipper Dove and his girl