The Hotel New Hampshire

They’re more foreign than the Viennese ever dreamed of being!” my father would cry. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he’d yell into the phone. “Jesus God, Frank,” Father would say, “order us a proper Frühstück, would you? These people don’t understand me.”

“This is New York, Pop,” Franny said.

“They don’t speak German or English in New York, Dad,” Frank explained.

“What the hell do they speak?” Father asked. “I order croissant and coffee and I get tea and toast!”

“Nobody knows what they speak here,” said Lilly, looking out the window.

Lilly’s publisher put us up at the Stanhope on Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue; Lilly had asked to be near the Metropolitan Museum and I had asked to be near Central Park—I wanted to run. And so I ran around and around the Reservoir, four times around, twice a day—that last lap luxurious with pain, my head lolling, the tall buildings of New York appearing to topple over me.

Lilly looked out the windows of our suite on the fourteenth floor. She liked watching the people flood in and out of the museum. “I think I’d like to live here,” she said softly. “It’s like watching a castle change kings,” Lilly whispered. “And you can see the leaves change in the park, too,” Lilly noted. “And whenever you visit me,” Lilly said to me, “you can run around the Reservoir and reassure me that it’s still there. I don’t ever want to see it up close,” Lilly said weirdly, “but it’s comforting to have you report to me on the health of the water, the number of other runners in the park, the amount of horse shit on the bridle path. A writer has to know these things,” Lilly said.

“Well, Lilly,” Frank said, “I think you’ll be able to afford a permanent suite here, but you could get an apartment, instead, you know. You don’t have to live at the Stanhope, Lilly,” Frank said. “It might be more practical to get your own apartment.”

“No,” Lilly said. “If I can afford it, I want to live here. Surely this family can understand why I might like to live in a hotel,” Lilly said.

Franny shivered. She didn’t want to live in a hotel, she had told me. But Franny would stay with Lilly for a while—after the publisher stopped paying the tab and Lilly maintained her corner suite on the fourteenth floor, Franny would keep Lilly company for a while. “Just so you have a chaperon, Lilly,” Franny teased her. But I knew it was Franny who needed the chaperon.

“And you know who I need a chaperon from,” Franny told me.

Frank and Father would be my chaperons; Father and I would move in with Frank. He found a palatial apartment on Central Park South. I could still run there, I could run through the entirety of Central Park, investigate the Reservoir for Lilly, arrive dripping with sweat and panting at the Stanhope, to report on the health of the water, and so forth, and to show myself to Franny—to get a glimpse of her.

These would not be permanent residences for Franny, Father, or me, but Frank and Lilly would become the kind of New Yorkers who affix themselves to certain parts of Central Park and never leave. Lilly would live at the Stanhope for the rest of her life, writing away, trying to grow up to the stature of the fourteenth floor; though small, she was ambitious. And Frank, the agent, would wheel and deal from his apartment, with its six telephones, at 222 Central Park South. They were both terribly industrious—Lilly and Frank—and I once asked Franny what she thought the difference between them was.

“About twenty blocks and the Central Park Zoo,” Franny said. That was the distance between them exactly, but Franny implied it was the difference between Lilly and Frank, too: a whole zoo and more than twenty blocks.

“And what’s the difference between us, Franny?” I asked her, shortly after we’d arrived in New York.

“One difference between us is that I’ll get over you, somehow,” Franny told me. “That’s just how I am: I get over things. And I’ll get over you, too. But you won’t get over me,” Franny warned me. “I know you, my brother, my love,” she told me. “And you won’t get over me—at least, not without my help.”

She was right, of course; Franny was always right—and always one step ahead of me. When Franny would finally sleep with me, she would engineer it. She would know exactly why she was doing it, too—as a fulfillment of the promise she had made to mother us children now that Mother was gone; as the only way to take care of us; as the only way to save us. “You and me need saving, kid,” Franny said. “But especially you need it. You think we’re in love, and maybe I think so, too. It’s time to show you that I’m not so special. It’s time to prick the bubble before it bursts,” Franny told me.

She chose the moment in the same way she chose not to sleep with Junior Jones—“to save it,” as she would say. Franny always had her plans and her reasons.

“Holy cow, man,” Junior Jones told me on the phone. “Tell your sister to come see a poor wreck of a man in Cleveland. My knees are shot, but the rest of me works fine.”

“I’m not a cheerleader anymore,” Franny told him. “Get your ass to New York, if you want to see me.”

“Man!” Junior Jones howled to me. “Tell her I can’t walk. I’m wearing two casts at a time! There’s too much of me to haul around on crutches. And tell her I know what a shit-ass town New York is, man,” said Junior Jones. “If I come to that town on crutches, some dudes will try to mug me!”

“Tell him that when he gets over his damn football phase, maybe he’ll have time for me,” Franny said.

“Oh, man,” said Junior Jones. “What does Franny want?”

“I want you,” Franny whispered to me, over the phone—when she had made up her mind about it. I was at 222 Central Park South, trying to answer all of Frank’s phones. Father complained about the phones—they interfered with the radio he listened to all day—and Frank refused to get a secretary, much less a legitimate office.

“I don’t need an office,” Frank said. “I just need a mailing address and a few phones.”

“At least try an answering service, Frank,” I suggested, which he would grudgingly accept—one day. But that was after Father and I moved out.

In our first New York days, I was Frank’s answering service.

“I want you terribly much,” Franny whispered to me, on the phone.

Franny was alone at the Stanhope. “Lilly’s out having a literary lunch,” Franny said. Maybe that would be one way Lilly would grow, I thought: having lots of literary lunches. “Frank’s wheeling and dealing,” Franny said. “He’s at lunch with her. They’ll be tied up for hours. And you know where I am, kid?” Franny asked me. “I’m in bed,” she said. “I’m naked,” she added, “and I’m fourteen fucking floors high—I’m high on you,” Franny whispered to me. “I want you,” Franny said. “Get your ass over here. Kid, it’s now or never,” Franny said. “We won’t know if we can live without it until we try it.” Then she hung up. One of Frank’s other phones was ringing. I let it ring. Franny must have known I was dressed for running; I was ready to run out the door.

“I’m going to take a run,” I told Father. “A long one.” One I might never come back from! I thought.

“I won’t answer a single phone call,” Father said grouchily. He was having trouble, at the time, making up his mind what to do. He would sit in Frank’s splendid apartment with the Louisville Slugger and the dressmaker’s dummy and he’d think and think all day.

“Anything?” he kept asking Frank. “I can absolutely—in all sincerity—do anything I want to do?” Father would ask Frank, about fifty times a week.

“Anything, Pop,” Frank told him. “I’ll set it up.”

Frank had already set up a three-book contract for Lilly. He had negotiated an initial first printing of Trying to Grow—100,000 copies. He had optioned the film rights to Warner Brothers and had made a separate deal with Columbia Pictures for an original screenplay of the events leading up to the bomb that went off in front of the second Hotel New Hampshire—and the famous Opera bomb that didn’t go off. Lilly was already working on the screenplay. And Frank had put through a contract for a television series to be based on life at the first Hotel New Hampshire (which Lilly was also authoring)—the series was to be based on Trying to Grow, and was not to be released until after” the motion picture; the movie would be called Trying to Grow, the TV series would be called “The First Hotel New Hampshire” (this, Frank pointed out, left room for future deals).

But who, I wondered, would ever dare to make a TV series out of the second Hotel New Hampshire? Who would want to? Franny wondered.