The Heavenly Table(29)

But how to go about it? He knew nobody in Columbus except a distant aunt, and the only thing he remembered about that overly pious woman was that she owned a vast collection of hair shirts and was allergic to sunlight. Too, he wanted to get the matter over with as quickly as possible, and hated the thought of wasting time on wining and dining and drawn-out seductions. Of course, there had to be prostitutes about; according to some of his school chums, such women were everywhere, even in the dreariest sectors of the Corn Belt. Drawing the window blinds, he lay down on the bed and entertained images of a sophisticated, dark-eyed Italian courtesan tapping shyly on his door. Their one night of passion would be so intense that later, unable to bear the thought of living without him, she would weigh herself down with stones and throw herself off a bridge into one of the muddy, carp-infested rivers that flowed through the Buckeye State in the same ponderous way sap seeps from a tapped maple. Then things got fuzzy, and after a time, he passed out again.

In the end, after being holed up in the hotel room for over a week, he offered a slatternly, red-haired Irish chambermaid fifty dollars to sleep with him. Although she readily agreed to the exchange—after all, it was probably more money than she earned in a month—to his surprise, the little hussy had the audacity to insist on certain conditions. Studying him with eyes that resembled cold, green marbles, she said, “First off, ain’t nothin’ happens till the ol’ mouse is warmed up good and proper.”

“Excuse me?” Bovard said, a puzzled look on his unshaven face. “The mouse?”

“Me privates,” she said, rolling her eyes at his ignorance. “I love a man’s tongue on my puss, but my old man, he’s too old-fashioned for it. Says it always make him feel like a hog eatin’ from a trough.”

“Good God!”

“And I’d need a nice lunch before we get down to the bizness.”

Completely rattled, Bovard reached for a bottle on the nightstand and took a long drink.

“And cake and ice cream for dessert,” she went on. “I crave the sweets even more than a good screw.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Bovard said in a faint voice, more to himself than to the maid.

“And another thing, too,” she said, waving a finger in the air. “The fifty don’t count for anything extra.”

“Extra?”

“Yeah,” she said. “If’n, say, you force me to swaller your wad, or you get the notion to poke me in the bunghole. Each of them filthy acts is another fiver.”

The maid said all of this without the slightest embarrassment, and the full extent of Bovard’s reversal of fortune struck him just then like a knife in the pit of his queasy stomach. To think that a fortnight ago he was engaged to one of the most beautiful and sought-after young women in Philadelphia, and now here he was, about to surrender his virtue to a gutter-minded domestic with a bubbly rash on her neck and a smear of what appeared to be egg yolk on her pointy, somewhat bristly chin. But he was growing afraid that he would lose the nerve to kill himself if he kept putting it off. She would have to do. He picked up the phone and ordered the lunch.

When the desk clerk, a beer-bellied, liver-spotted sad sack, knocked at the door, the maid rushed to the closet and hid. Just pushing the cart into the room, loaded with enough food to feed a family of six, seemed to leave the poor bastard exhausted, and an uncomfortable minute or two went by while he leaned one hand against the wall and panted. Finally, after recovering from his labors and making sure everything was to Bovard’s satisfaction, he started out, but then turned and asked in a wheezy, apologetic voice, “Beg your pardon, sir, but you haven’t seen Myrtle around, have you?”

“Myrtle?”

“Yes, sir, the maid who takes care of this floor.”

“No,” Bovard said hurriedly, “I haven’t seen anyone.”

“I was just wondering, sir. She’s left her things right outside your door.”

“Her things?”

“Yes, sir, her mop and linens and such.” The man glanced at the closet, then started to step out into the hall. “That’s all right, sir,” he mumbled, as he closed the door. “She was having tummy troubles this morning, so she’s probably gone off to the terlet.”

As he listened to the maid chomp and chew and slurp—he’d turned away toward the window when she dipped a fat, green pickle into the gravy boat and then licked it clean—Bovard wondered, with more than a little trepidation, what he had gotten himself into. After consuming half a chicken and a mound of mashed potatoes and a relish tray and four buttered rolls, she heaped a pint of chocolate ice cream on top of a three-layer coconut cake and did her best to finish it off, too. For several minutes, she sat looking a bit nauseated, but then grabbed the brandy bottle Bovard was nursing. She took a long swig and belched forth a thunderous, full-throated yawp, such as an enraged donkey might make. He shuddered, thinking again of his former fiancée. In all the years he had known her, not once had Elizabeth ever emitted such a gross sound in his presence. Why, he doubted very much if she had ever passed a whiff of gas outside the privacy of her water closet. He was just about to tell the maid that he’d changed his mind when she stood and quickly shucked off her uniform and undergarments, all of which were stained and tattered beyond description. Then, with a long, lazy sigh, she laid back on the bed and parted her stubby, purple-mottled legs. She looked over at him and patted the place beside her, smiling with teeth that reminded him of kernels of decayed Indian corn. It was too late to back out now without hurting her feelings, he told himself, and he was too much of a gentleman to do that, even to such a vile and loathsome creature. He got up from the chair by the window and staggered toward her.