The Lonely Hearts Hotel(33)
His wife was so beautiful. His wife looked like sunshine bursting through the window. There wasn’t a single person in the world who wouldn’t think his wife was incredibly beautiful. When McMahon first met her, they went out all the time. When she walked into casinos, everyone started winning. When she walked into a room, everyone felt better about themselves. They found themselves to be funnier or wittier and more charming. So everybody always wanted her around.
But she would never have set eyes on him or given him the time of day if he hadn’t become filthy rich. His money had indeed bought him love. Given what he had seen of the world, the exchange of love for money seemed to be one of the commodities that never wavered—it was as dependable an investment as electricity. But she always reminded him implicitly that he was a criminal.
The girl had looked at him with such desire.
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SHE TOLD HIM THAT for a dollar she would act like a kitten. He gave it to her. She put a little bowl of milk on the floor, and she got down on her hands and knees and lapped it up. Then she stood up and walked away. He didn’t know what to make of what he had just seen. He was frightened. It made him feel guilty, as though his life had been a crime and he was suddenly feeling remorse for it.
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THERE WERE MEN WHO LIKED all sorts of odd and depraved perversions. He owned brothels, after all. The things they liked were so ridiculous, it made him think of them as children. He would never engage in that nonsense.
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ROSE WALKED UP TO HIM and held up her wrists for McMahon to see. There was a black ribbon tying them together. “How in the world did this happen?” she asked.
He had no idea how he was supposed to answer that.
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ROSE STARTED SINGING “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” as she walked by with an imaginary birthday cake. Each time she blew out an imaginary candle, McMahon felt as though his heart were a flame she had blown out. He was dead. He died nineteen times. That was how many imaginary candles there were on the imaginary cake.
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HE COULDN’T FIGURE OUT whether she had genuine designs on his destruction or whether she was just a pervert.
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SHE WAS STANDING WITH A BANANA. She slowly lowered the banana so that she was holding it at her hips. As though it were a penis.
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SHE PUT DOWN the laundry basket. She leaned up against the wall and began kissing it. She kissed it tenderly and a little bit hesitantly, as if she and the wall were touching each other for the first time. As if they were experimenting with kissing before getting into something deeper.
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SHE WAS LEANING AGAINST the back door, outside the house. She had a jacket on. Her hair was all messed up from the wind. She had the mop standing upside down next to her.
“Oh, I don’t know if he’s that handsome. I think there are better-looking men at the nightclub. You find every man good-looking.”
The mop was leaning a little in toward her, her confidante.
“Really? You would. Oh, I don’t know myself. I don’t know if I’d let him touch me.”
For a second it seemed to him as though the mop were shaking, holding in its laughter too. Were they laughing at him because they thought that he was a fool or because they actually liked him? When any woman agreed to reciprocate your affections, weren’t they all thinking a mixture of both things?
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HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT it would be like to make love to such a girl. He wondered about making love to her the same way he had wondered about lovemaking when he was a virgin. How could she be more experienced than he was? Maybe the priests had lined up to make love to her. He had heard that this was quite common. But how would that make her so brash?
He wanted to make love in her peculiar way. He wanted her to whisper the rules to this strange new type of lovemaking into his ear. He would follow the rules. He would abide by every one of them. He would get down on his knees and worship her if it was one of the rules. He really hoped that it was.
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MCMAHON’S LONGING TO BE with Rose made no sense to him. He wanted it to go away, as if it were the flu or some oddly unbearable pain. The only way to get rid of it would be to make love to her.
She was standing in the hallway with an apple on her head like William Tell—desperate. Inviting anyone to have their way with her. He couldn’t resist her. He took the apple and stuck it in her mouth so that she wouldn’t be able to cry out when he entered her.
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MCMAHON TOOK HER in the nursery. The pile of bricks toppled over. There was a giant dollhouse. All the little dolls seemed to be staring out the windows at Rose. They were gathered in the rooms, watching Rose the same way the orphans used to look out at the snow falling, the strange wonders of the outside world that did not belong to them. There was a row of tin soldiers on the windowsill. They weren’t on her side. Even though they were only three inches tall, they were men. There was a hobbyhorse standing in the corner. It was handmade out of orange yarn and had purple buttons for eyes.
Rose was so slender compared to McMahon. It wasn’t just a matter of size. It had to do with years. The older you got, the thicker you became. She had only been alive for nineteen years.
She liked that he was enormous. She felt as though she were scaling him like he was a mountain. He picked her up and carried her around the room as if she only weighed ten pounds. The Sisters would never pick her up and carry her just for fun. Just because they couldn’t resist. Just because they wanted to get her head up close to theirs. They never picked her up at all.