The fat girl belched again, letting out the air with a puff of smoke. “Jim, am I walking all right?”
“Good enough.”
“She knew I was a little—you know. Tippy.”
“Tipsy.”
“I didn’t laugh or do anything crazy, but she must have smelled it on me. I think I cried a little.”
“She’d expect you to.”
“Uh huh. Do we want to catch up with them?”
“No. Let’s just keep them in sight.”
“Then we ought to slow down a little. This thing’s heavy anyhow.”
“Sure.”
“I was all messed up, see? I’d spent the whole damn evening, and all I had was three bucks to show for it. I didn’t have anywhere to stay.”
“Yeah.”
“And I remembered—you know? Once in my life I had come over everybody. You remember when they came in and I was sitting there all slicked down with Johnson & Johnson’s? They just about went bananas. You remember, Jim?”
“Sure I remember.”
“One time eight of them tried to pick me up and they couldn’t do it. Then that captain, that smart fucker, said to put me in the rug. And the rug tore.”
The fat girl began to giggle, and for a time it seemed she might never stop. Her chins jiggled as if each knew some joke of its own, and her belly, to which she pressed the flight bag and a hand like a plump, pink starfish, jerked up and down uncontrollably.
“They finally got me out—did you see it? They handcuffed my hands and feet so they could stick their arms through without them slipping out. It hurt like hell. How many were there?
“Carrying you? Six.”
“And that captain threw the rug over me. It was a good thing he did. The benches in those paddywagons are metal, and I put the rug down and sat on it.”
“They must have brought your clothes,” Stubb said.
“Uh huh. Except my boots, because I lost them last night.”
“You didn’t have them when you got back to Free’s.”
“I don’t remember seeing you, Jim. I don’t even remember going home.” Her merriment faded.
“I heard you on the steps. I went out to see if you had cigarettes.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah, you gave me one.”
“How was I?”
“Okay. Pretty tight, sure, but okay except for not having shoes.” Stubb tried to shrug. “Hey, how about changing sides with this thing? My arm’s giving out.”
They set down the witch’s suitcase, walked solemnly around it, and picked it up again. Barnes turned to look back at them, waved, and hurried on.
“This morning I wore those open-toed pink straw things I had. They got soaked. I put them in the closet.”
“You should have got them a minute ago.”
“To hell with them. They were coming apart.”
The Consort
It had been the function of the Hotel Consort to end poverty, and it did it very well. A cynic might have said that was the only thing it did well. An old Italian neighborhood had been demolished. The shops that had sold salami and crucifixes were gone. The cleaners who had offered invisible reweaving had disappeared. An ugly Walgreen drugstore had gathered its narrow aisles like skirts, wrapped itself in the perfume of its fine smells, and hastened off to oblivion. The funeral parlor, once almost smothered in carnations to the honor of a numbers baron, had withered in death. The people who had so often been janitors, nurses, and cops were gone too. No one could say where.
Certainly they were not at the Consort. Its guests were businessmen, almost to the last. Its maids were black when they were not Puerto Rican, its assistant managers collegebred hoteliers who had skimmed Melville and Mark Twain in the course of learning to bully cooks and pad bills, its manager a computer no guest ever saw. Poverty was ended, having vanished from sight.
The many elegant chambers of the Consort are almost too well known for description, since they are found in all major and many minor cities. There is the Gourmand Room, with false European furniture and plastic walnut paneling. The Gourmand Room is open for lunch and dinner. There is Top o’ the Consort, featuring live entertainment, potted plants, and a view that changes every hour. The Top o’ the Consort is open for dinner. There is the Quaint, on a floor not reached by most elevators; the Quaint is open for breakfast and lunch. There are the
