The Lonely Hearts Hotel(28)
A police officer pulled them over. He couldn’t quite believe there were so many girls in the car. He had no idea how they could have fit in there.
The police officer watched the girls as they scrambled out. They all seemed to be in a state of disarray. As though they had been crammed in at funny angles. As if they were clothes that had been packed in a trunk and now they were straightening themselves back out. The officer couldn’t make out their entire bodies. It was like they were a box of doll parts that had gotten all mixed up. There was a shoe with a buckle. There was a bum in pink underwear, flashed for a brief second. There was a knee like a peeled apple waiting to be bitten into. There was a skinny arm, with fingers that were all stretched out toward heaven. There were a bunch of bouncing yellow curls.
Pierrot thought they looked like a beautiful, exquisite beast with a hundred limbs that could take you into its myriad arms and make love to you. Pierrot sighed. What in the world would it take to make him happy now?
16
ROSE SMOKES CIGARS
Before she turned eighteen, Rose rarely saw McMahon. He was always at work. He had some sort of massive club downtown that did really well. He never let his wife or his kids come to the restaurant because he kept those parts of his life separate.
Everything she knew about him she learned from the other governesses at the park. She shooed the children away to hear more. “Leave me alone, children. I just want to talk to people my age. I will tell you a story about a seagull that swallowed an umbrella and then spent the rest of its life as a swan.”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh! Tell it to us now!” the children cried.
“No, I need half an hour alone.”
But the children remained within earshot, so the governesses really couldn’t go into any sort of scandalous detail.
“C’est un propriétaire de bo?te de nuit. He runs the Roxy downtown.”
“That big nightclub! I would just love to see the acts they put on there. I can’t wait to be old enough to go down and see all the shows. I think that I could be onstage.”
“Pour vrai! Do you have any talent?”
“Lots. I was a famous performer when I was a little girl. I went from living room to living room.”
“Can you sing?”
“No, I can’t carry a tune. I mean, I know how to make a tune sound funny.”
“Can you tap-dance?”
“No, not really. I’ve never taken a lesson. Do you think it’s possible to tap-dance without ever having had a lesson?”
“Noooo!” they all said at once.
“I’ll show you something that I can do, though.”
She jumped up off the bench and leaped a few feet from them. She found a spot on the grass. She then did a handstand. Hazel, acting as her intrepid assistant, put a large ball on her feet, which she began to spin.
Some people looked at the ball spinning at quite an extraordinary speed. But many others chose to look at her underwear, or her skirt, which was now up over her head.
She stood back upright. Her face was beet red.
“I know a lot of other tricks that I can show you. Maybe not today, because we have to go, but next time.”
They did not know what on earth to make of this girl. They knew that what she was doing was truly magical, and they felt they could watch her do it for hours and hours and hours. But they also felt she would never make a single penny off it.
She certainly seemed crazy. But she simultaneously made them think that there was nothing in the world wrong with being a crazy girl. And that maybe the world needed a couple more crazy girls.
The other children in the park also loved when Rose showed up. She always made them all laugh. They would gather around if she was talking to her friend the bear, who after all these years was still after her, still seeking her affections.
The peacocks in the park were all white, and they walked with their wedding dresses trailing behind them.
? ? ?
SOMETIMES AFTER HER PERFORMANCES with the imaginary bear, she would find herself feeling quite blue. Because the bear was the only one she kept in touch with from the orphanage. She sometimes thought she would run into Pierrot, but she never did. The other governesses all understood that Rose was the type of girl to easily fall into temptation. They knew this from overhearing her strange conversations with the bear. The invisible bear seemed to be getting more and more aggressive.
Rose brought the children home. They shared a bowl of chocolate-chip ice cream. The chunks of chocolate looked like flotsam from a ship that had just sunk.
? ? ?
SHE BUMPED INTO MCMAHON one night after she had put the children to bed and she was walking down the hall with an atlas on her head. It had been one of her punishments at the orphanage, which she had managed to transform into a fully fledged trick.
“You’re still the governess.”
“Yes.”
“Congratulations. But why the fuck do you have a book on your head?”
“What are you talking about? What book?”
“For the love of God, are you one of those lobotomized kids from the orphanage?”
McMahon was like this great ship that went back and forth to the different worlds. He had in his brain all those marvelous theatrics.
“Tell me about what you saw tonight.”
“There was a Parisian troupe. It was a disaster. The whole troupe had clearly lost its mind somewhere on the road. You would actually be surprised how often that happens. After seven years on the road, they should all be committed.”