The Lonely Hearts Hotel(104)

It was a little bit stubborn. It didn’t want to play. It just wanted to be left to its own devices in the corner of the room. Pierrot made it feel as though it too was capable of great things. It was as if he were getting a shy girl to dance. And then Pierrot and the piano understood each other and a delightful cascade of notes poured out of it.

The children couldn’t believe their luck. They began to jiggle their bodies around in their seats, which made them look like sauce pots rattling on the stove. Some got up and danced in place.

It had been so long since he had performed for children. He had forgotten how wonderful they were to entertain. Who forgot about their problems the way children did?

You couldn’t really achieve happiness as an adult. It was something that belonged to children. It was a fool’s errand to try to experience it as a grown-up. Once you were old, all you could do was make others happy, and that gave you a deep sense of fulfillment. He had always liked delighting others, and it had been his job since he was a boy. It was how he and Rose had first started out doing their tricks.

He felt as though he had remembered his purpose in life. Ever since the meeting they had had with Jimmy Bonaventura, he had been feeling sort of empty.

? ? ?

PIERROT FINISHED HIS TUNE and stood up to take a deep bow. The children applauded. As he straightened back up, he put his palm out as if he had felt a raindrop and was looking to confirm his conjecture.

“Did you feel that?” he asked a boy with an eye patch sitting in the front row.

“We’re inside,” the boy answered. “The rain can’t get us here.”

Pierrot went to the back of the stage and retrieved his suitcase. He put it on the ground, unlatched it and raised the lid. He reached into the suitcase with both arms, burying his head and neck inside it. A girl with an oxygen mask over her face inhaled great lungfuls of air, anticipating what Pierrot would find. He then withdrew from the suitcase, holding in his hands, for all to see, an umbrella. It was an umbrella that Rose, in her infinite wisdom, had had constructed. She had come up with the design for it in her notebook when they were first together and broke in the Valentine Hotel. They hadn’t ended up using it in the production, not because of any faults exhibited by the umbrella—it was splendid—but because of the cost. Rose had said the umbrellas cost too much to fabricate. But Pierrot had wondered if it wasn’t because the black umbrella had made her too nostalgic and sad. As it did himself.

Pierrot opened the umbrella and it immediately turned inside out as if it had been caught by the wind. He whipped to one side as though a strong gust had seized it. It spun him around on his toes, almost as though he were performing a ballet. The umbrella kept twirling him around the room like a mad top. He was fighting against the wind beautifully. And then the wind let up, Pierrot settled down and the umbrella popped back to its true shape. He put out his hand to feel whether it was still raining. And then he closed the umbrella.

A little girl applauded by clapping her prosthetic hands together.

The nurse told Pierrot he had to leave, as it was time for the younger children to take their naps. The children begged him not to stop. Not to leave them. They started to come after him in the hall. And as he was leaving he noticed that the corridor behind was filled with children. It was as though they were coming for him.

“Don’t go. Don’t go!” the children yelled.

They would murder him by loving him so much. A nurse opened a door to the fire exit, and Pierrot zipped down it and stumbled out onto the street.

? ? ?

PIERROT REMEMBERED all the children in the orphanage. The ones he had left behind. He had been so in love with Rose that he had rarely thought about the other children they had grown up with. He had thought about them so little in the intervening years that he still pictured them as being little, as if they were in a state of limbo, unable to grow up. They would be tucked into the same beds in their early-century pajamas until the end of time. They were still waiting for him to perform his tiny feats for them. It broke his heart.

He and Rose had used their gifts to rescue themselves and no one else.

? ? ?

AS HE HEADED BACK to the Honeymoon Hotel, Pierrot began to feel conflicted once again. How had this happened? He had been so caught up in the frenzy of the planning during the past few months that he hadn’t had time to really reflect on what they were actually creating. This was not a clown show—it was no Snowflake Icicle Extravaganza—it was a criminal operation from start to finish. And he had been the most complicit of them all in it. If he hadn’t stolen the apple, none of this would have been possible.

The only people who had any actual grasp on morality were the under-eight demographic. They hadn’t created all sorts of loopholes in their understanding of it. Children are born with eyes as large as those of adults. Children keep theirs wide open. And children know, without a doubt, that there is a difference between right and wrong.

He had been a thief. He had been unkind and irresponsible to Poppy, tossing her aside. He was now a large-scale drug importer. He wanted to be good. He made a resolution as he walked. They would stay in the United States as performers with no criminal ties. It had been the original plan. He hurried back to the hotel to tell Rose his decision.

It had been so long since he had made an important one without her.





62


    NAPOLEON, MON AMOUR