The Lonely Hearts Hotel(111)

She couldn’t be alone in her room anymore. She threw on her coat and wandered out of the room and down to the small bar next to the lobby. Everybody else was already down at the bar, drinking to the end of a successful run and the abrupt ending of their show. The bartender lined up a row of shot glasses. He poured the brandy in right up to the lip of a glass. She swallowed it. And it burned. It lit up her heart as if it were a candlewick. She just needed to let the candle burn down through the night.

She threw off her coat. She was only wearing a black satin slip, as she hadn’t bothered to get dressed. She drank longer than anybody else. For a couple of seconds, the booze lifted her up. It made her feel as though everything was as it should be in the world—that everything was fine.

She stood up. She held her glass up in the air. It wavered back and forth. Little drops of alcohol dripped onto her, like splashes of holy water.

“This is to Pierrot! My husband!”

“Hear, hear!” everyone yelled.

Someone put some music on the jukebox. She wandered into the middle of the floor to dance. A gangster, taking pity on her, or overcome by desire, or just being plain stupid, moved to the middle of the floor to put his arms around her and dance too. She clung to him. They moved wonderfully together. Every man danced so well when he danced with Rose.

Then her expression changed. Her face seized up as if she were going to be sick. She shoved the man so hard that he fell to the ground. Then she just danced by herself, her arms out around no one. It was so upsetting that a lot of the men left. They went to their own rooms and sat on the ends of their beds and stared at the walls, not understanding what the point of anything was. She was hoping the imaginary bear would comfort her, but tonight she just felt as though she had her arms wrapped around emptiness.

Rose hunched over as if she had been kicked in the stomach and let out a yell. She didn’t think she could stand it. She slipped for a second as though her shoe heel had broken. There were about seven or eight men around her to catch her.

Her arms were up in the air. She looked at the cheap wedding ring on her finger. She would always wear it. It was like a small snowflake that had landed on a mitten—and it was so beautiful. It was always just about to melt. If anyone were to try to touch it, or to breathe on it, or speak too close to it, it would turn into a bead of water and would deny that it had ever been the most beautiful thing on earth. She had loved Pierrot.

She propped herself on a stool like a rag doll. She straightened her back. She felt a desire to go down the street to the Romeo Hotel. She found herself thinking about Jimmy. His hair was dark, dark brown, like chocolate. It was the color of chocolate syrup on sundaes. She knew that Jimmy was picturing himself down on his knees, kissing her pussy, right at that second.

She wanted to feel desired. She wanted to feel sexy. She wanted to break the spell that Pierrot had over her. Oh, however fucking irrational it was, she wanted to feel that he didn’t matter and that any man could replace him. She went back up to her room and, with meticulous care, got dressed for the first time in a week, and she headed off down the street to the Romeo Hotel.

She entered through the large doors, she strutted across the lobby and she went up the stairs. The man with the scars in his cheeks let her go. She opened the door to Jimmy’s room. He was sitting on the window frame smoking a cigarette when she walked in. She closed the door behind her and Jimmy chucked his cigarette out the window.

She took off her white fur hat. She took off her gloves and her scarf, and she tucked them into her hat. She placed the hat on the little nightstand by the door. She unbuttoned her black coat and let it drop off her shoulders. She pulled her dress off over her head. She stood there in her thin lace lingerie. It looked like frost had formed on her body.

He didn’t know what to say for a moment. Because he was doubting what he was seeing, it took a short moment for his reason to catch up with the situation.

When he came toward her quickly and violently, she put her skinny arms out with desperation and they hugged each other so hard that their hearts beat against each other. He tossed her onto the bed. And she felt as if she weighed as much as a bagful of feathers. As if she weighed no more than her slip. As if she weighed no more than a single snowflake coming down from the great, great blackness.

They curled up in each other’s arms afterward. She felt so unlike herself that she didn’t even really feel like a person anymore. She felt like a skinny white cat stretching out its graceful limbs.

One of Jimmy’s men went up later to see what was going on and what was holding Jimmy up. He looked in and was surprised to see him in his room with a girl. And under all the nakedness was Rose herself.

He had never seen either of them look so peaceful. It was the first time they had ever slept so deeply. That’s the way you got to sleep before you were born.

? ? ?

WHY HAD SHE DONE IT? She wasn’t sure. It was to end her body’s pining for Pierrot, perhaps. It was to remind her that it was only sex but that, as a woman, she could give herself away to love so easily.

The sex had been good. There was nothing like having sex for the first time with a man who has been pining for you. He tore you open like a present and found wonderful things inside. Something wonderful inside that he had to stand back and admire.

Meaningless sex meant you could make love, put your clothes back on, get up and walk down the street and leave it behind you on the bed. Like discarded nightclothes. There was something freeing about it, the feeling of having power over sex. Of having it and then not being a slave to its drives. Or having it and not feeling ashamed of it. Or having it because you find yourself between a rock and a hard place.