“Yuh,” I said.
She shook her head in disgust. “Like most men,” she said, “never had a real woman.”
I let that pass. Discussing it in the lobby of the Charles Hotel didn’t seem like a way to bring clarity to the argument.
“Buy me a drink in the Quiet Bar,” she said. “Then if I frighten you, you can yell for the house dick.”
“Okay,” I said, “but you’ve got to promise to talk with me.”
We started up the wide staircase to the second level of the Charles.
“Talk to you?” She stopped one step ahead of me and turned and looked back.
“With,” I said.
She shook her head in open amazement, and continued up the stairs, talking over her shoulder. “What are you?” she asked. “Queer? You some kinda faggot?”
“You’re going to have to talk with me,” I said, “about yourself, your past, your fans, your lovers.”
“You get your rocks off talking?” she said. Her voice was loud. “You are a fucking queer.”
I took a quick two steps and caught her from behind and lifted her, holding her by her upper arms, up the last stair and steered her around the stairwell into an alcove near and to the left of the entrance to the bar. Her feet were still clear of the ground. She started to twist loose, but with her feet in the air she didn’t have much purchase.
“I’m tired of you,” I said. “I was tired of you halfway through lunch the first time I met you. But you need some help, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else but me. So I’m hanging in there, and I haven’t hit you yet. But I will soon if it keeps going the way it’s going.”
I gave her a little shake.
“You understand that?” I said.
Her breath was coming in little gasps. I shook her again.
“You understand?”
Still making her gasping sound, she nodded her head.
“Now,” I said, “I’m going to ask you about things, and you’re going to answer me and we’re not going to play all this seductive teenager grab-ass that we’ve been playing. Right?”
She nodded again.
I set her down and let go of her upper arms. She leaned forward against the wall for a moment, and then turned slowly, leaning on the wall as she did, and rubbed her upper arms with her hands. Her breathing was still a series of half-stifled gasps and two bright streaks of crimson color smudged along her cheekbones.
“Limp… dick… mother… fucker,” she gasped, and then fell forward and began to sob against my chest. The sobbing wasn’t loud but it was wracking. Her whole body shook with it. Her arms hung straight down and still against her sides. I put my arms around her and patted her back gently while she cried. Two couples got off the elevator and came around the corner and studiously didn’t look at us. The men wore dark suits and red ties. The women wore frilly dresses with padded shoulders. Both men and women had too much hair. In from the suburbs. I had on a leather jacket and jeans and my Adidas Countries-white leather with the green stripes. An oldie but goodie. One of the women glanced back as they headed into the bar. Probably admiring the rakish cant to my watch cap.
Jill stopped sobbing after a while. But she kept her face pressed against my chest.
“Ready for that drink?” I said.
“I can’t go in there,” she said. Her voice was muffled. “I look awful.”
“You could look twice as bad,” I said, “and still look wonderful.”
She leaned away from me and raised her face. It was red and her eyes were puffy and some of her make-up was tear-washed. I revised my opinion, but kept it to myself.
“You mean it?” she said.
“Absolutely,” I said.
She fumbled some Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
“Show must go on,” I said.
“Give me five minutes,” she said, “in the ladies’ room.”
“Okay.”
We walked to the ladies’ room.
“I’ll be right outside the door. You need me, you holler.”
“And you’ll come in and catch all the Cambridge ladies making peepee?”
“Cambridge ladies don’t do that,” I said.
She smiled at me softly, with her head down, moving only her eyes to look up at me. It was a wan smile, I think. Then she went into the ladies’ room and I leaned on the wall outside. For more than five minutes. One of the suburban ladies who’d admired my watch cap admired it again as she went past me into the ladies’ room, and admired it at even greater length when she came out a few minutes later.
“This a technique for picking up girls?” she said.
