The Lonely Hearts Hotel(37)
“Sister Elo?se was right about me.” Rose spoke to the sky. “I thought that it was nothing at all to go around waltzing and cavorting with a make-believe bear every night. But she knew what I should have known, which is that there is no such thing as make-believe. I probably was invoking the devil. It wasn’t a bear I was dancing with but the devil. I’m cursed.”
But she was so lovely! She was plagued with remorse. And racked with guilt. She believed she was a sinner. He remembered the wonderful days when he was able to feel all those things. Rose would make him feel them again. He would be a brute for her. He would never let another man have her, especially not an orphan. He reached his hand out and gently took hers. She got up off the ground.
She trudged along beside McMahon. The ribbon in her hair was beating around wildly in the wind, like a black stallion not wanting to be broken.
21
SKETCH OF MAN WITH MONKEY
After the heroin had lost its effect, Pierrot felt how close to the ground the thin mattress actually was. He opened his eyes and the world seemed more mundane and miserable than it ever had. He looked at Poppy, sleeping with her mouth wide open and her skirt up over her panties, and found her too sad to bear. He got up and quickly stepped between the mattresses, then out onto the street alone. As he walked his legs felt inadequate. They got him places so slowly. As though he were walking through water. How awkward this ordinary life was. Everything he took for granted was incrementally harder.
He got himself a room at the very cheap Cupid Hotel, whose bricks were painted pink.
Pierrot went to see the owner of the Savoy movie theater, as Poppy had suggested. The Savoy was one of the less popular theaters in town. There were always lightbulbs that had blown out on the marquee. It wasn’t even where a theater should be. Theaters usually existed in a row with others that were just like it. This one was squeezed between a dental clinic and a ceramic-tile store.
The prices of movies and popcorn were written in white letters on a black frame on one side of the door. The other side had the poster of the movie being shown. The plot involved an incredibly handsome man who tries to rape a woman on a train for two hours, and to both her and the audience’s delight, finally succeeds.
The inside wasn’t as garish as the other theaters downtown either. The lobby had white walls with molding at the ceiling but little else. In the theater, there was a black curtain with sparse gold tassels at the bottom that pulled open smoothly to the sides and always seemed to get stuck at exactly the same spot. But the seats were black and soft, and there was an orchestra pit that still had a lonely, beat-up piano in it.
The owner was sitting in a tiny office at the back. He was a very short man with white hair who breathed through his mouth. The man laughed and laughed when Pierrot told him the Redhead from Heaven had sent him. He said he did need an extra usher and cleaner, since his last one had contracted tuberculosis. Pierrot could play the piano during intermission while the audience got snacks. He said his dearly departed wife used to play the piano during the silent-film era and that’s why he couldn’t bring himself to scrap it. But Pierrot wouldn’t be paid more than the other ushers.
Pierrot changed into a red uniform and porkpie hat. He hurried up and down the aisles during the newsreels. A Betty Boop cartoon came on—the adorable buxom Betty was having herself a funeral. Pierrot stopped for a second to look up at it and laugh but quickly got back down on his hands and knees with his small broom to sweep up spilled pink popcorn. During intermission, Pierrot plopped down on the piano bench. He desperately needed to play a tune. He hadn’t since Irving’s death, and he had to find some way to articulate his grief.
The moment Pierrot put his fingers down, notes leaped out. What a happy piano! It looked beaten up, but it had a young soul. It loved to be played. It laughed easily under Pierrot’s fingertips. It begged him for more. Like a girl who encourages you during sex with pretty gurgles and gasps. He forgot his predicament for that instant and lost himself in the tune. He played his tune for Rose, the one that had made her dance in the cafeteria. Perhaps she would be in the theater one day with her husband and children and the tune would remind her how she had loved him once, and why.
When he was done and it was time for the movie to come back on, surprisingly the audience clapped. The owner was leaning over the balcony railing with a cigar in his mouth and tears in his eyes. The ticket girl, wearing a golden sailor hat, had come out of the booth.
As he began to play a tune during the next intermission, he felt the wings move. They wanted to break free of his skin once again. They were frustrated now. Especially since they had already felt unfettered freedom—so they were so anxious to be in that state once again. They were so aware, and indignant about their restrictions.
Pierrot tried to ignore them but they would not leave him be. They kept trying to spread themselves out. They never stopped pushing. They were pushing against each other like two children in a school yard or in the backseat of a car, ever frustrated at the other for infringing on their space.
? ? ?
HE SPENT HIS ENTIRE PAY on heroin. His body immediately relaxed, as though he were naked and lying in a bathtub.
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BECAUSE HE SPENT HIS PAY on heroin, he was always short on rent. The landlady was on his back for rent every night when he left. He would often try elaborate ruses to get into his hotel room without the landlady catching sight of him. They had changed the lock on the front door. He would crawl up the back fire escape and into his back window.