The Lonely Hearts Hotel(29)

“Oh, how lovely! Tell me more, please don’t stop.”

“They were all dressed up as white mice. They had cloth ears stuck up on their heads and long tails stuck to the asses of their leotards. It was called the Opera of the Souris en Pantoufles. So I really don’t know why I was still shocked when they tiptoed out dressed like rodents. But there you go.

“But one girl on pointe didn’t have a shirt on. They all looked so stoned that it’s hard to say whether that was an artistic choice or whether she forgot to put her clothes on before coming out onstage. I really thought she was a boy because she was so flat-chested, but plenty of other people in the audience figured out pretty quickly that she was a girl, given the general amount of hooting and hollering. In any case, the police busted the show because she was only fourteen.”

“What’s it like to be able to watch the most stupendous acts from all over the world every night?”

“You can get used to anything, I suppose.”

“Will you take me one night?”

“Are you out of your mind? This conversation is over. Scurry back to your nursery. I’m putting ideas into your head, I can see that.”

“But I need to see this wonderful world. I used to be a performer too, when I was little. Perhaps you saw one of our famous Christmas performances. At City Hall? The Journey of the Star of David, perhaps?”

“No. I run the Roxy downtown. All the spectacles that are worth seeing are up on that stage. Did you perform at the Roxy? No? I didn’t think so.”

“Everyone used to fall in love with me.”

“Trust me, I’m not in love with you.”

“You’re not my type either.”

“You probably need new chores or something. Go away now. And this will be the last time I speak to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I will never speak to you again. I will communicate only in ways that transcend words.”

He wanted to protest again, but he knew that it was useless, so he let her leave. It was best to get her away from him as soon as possible. Before she walked away, she moved the tip of her toe on the floor, like a piece of chalk writing words. He wondered what she spelled.

? ? ?

ROSE HEARD FROM the other governesses that McMahon was a heroin dealer. It was actually quite amazing what the other governesses knew. The girls were so positive about McMahon’s other profession. Their employers talked about it. And they had seen the police come to McMahon’s door in the past to question him. He also ran brothels.

“I heard that whenever a new girl comes to the city, Mr. McMahon is always the first to sleep with her. He makes sure that she is addicted to heroin. Then she is too crazy to ever leave. You should see all the girls who work in his whorehouses downtown. They are all addicted to drugs.”

“My cousin wanted to do something else, but Mr. McMahon wouldn’t let her. All the money she made sleeping with men she had to pay to Mr. McMahon for her room and board. She doesn’t have a penny to her name. She wants to jump out a window.”

“They are like slaves. They don’t even know they are alive anymore. There was this girl and she spent the whole day with her eyes closed.”

“Why? Why would she do such a thing?”

“Well, in the first place, she was really stoned, and when you are stoned, it can be really difficult to open your eyes. And I think that she was a really good person. She liked to see only goodness in everybody and everything. And then she knew that there was nothing but ugliness in the world she found herself in, so she just kept her eyes closed the whole day. She didn’t even take a peek to see what the men she was having sex with looked like.”

Rose was fascinated by these tales about McMahon, but even more she preferred the dirty sexual stories. Those ones made her think of Pierrot. They were her favorite types of fairy tales. She loved that women shared these types of things. Whenever one of the governesses had a story to tell, all the other governesses quieted down to listen to her. The pinecones lay on the grass around them, like cigar butts the gods had discarded.

She liked knowing she wasn’t the only woman in the world fascinated by these things. She closed her eyes and pictured the scenarios as though they were short little movies in which the man pursued the woman all around the room.

Sister Elo?se had taken all the girls aside when they were little. She had warned them that they were all the children of women who had not been able to resist temptation. It was in their blood. They had inherited this weak trait from their mothers. They should understand it as a weakness. Like people who had inherited weak lungs from their parents had to be wary about climbing stairs. Had to be wary about going out on wet, cold days.

When they experienced those feelings, when they felt lust, they should understand immediately that this was a disease.

? ? ?

ROSE TIED A BLINDFOLD over her eyes. She spent the whole day like that. McMahon saw her in the yard with the blindfold on. She was taking the garbage out to the curb. For a moment he watched her with alarm, as it looked as if she might walk into the street and get run over by a car. He began to open the window, to call out to her.

She started moving around the garden with her arms out in front of her. This was disturbing because there were no landmarks near her. In her head, she might be wandering on the North Pole. She might be in the middle of the desert. She might be about to walk the plank of a pirate ship. Wherever it was, it was miles and miles away from him. And then, maybe more disturbingly, his children appeared. They were wandering from the porch of the house into the yard with their hands out in front of them. They had black blindfolds tied around their eyes too. They had all departed from him. They were all in the land of make-believe.