The Lonely Hearts Hotel(52)
Antoine thought it was worth a laugh at least. They went down to Little Burgundy to see some acts in jazz clubs. Rose dressed in a white fur coat with dark swirls of brown, like a chocolate sundae.
They went to a small club that had a balcony that was being rented out as a storage space, and which was stacked with used furniture. There was a scared, skinny singer wearing an ugly dress, who didn’t know what to do with her hair. She warbled so much when she sang that it sounded absurd. Her voice was shaky, like a fawn standing on brand-new legs. Rose thought they should give her a chance.
“When she gets a little bit of confidence, she’ll be wonderful. When she stops singing as though she’s standing in the rain, it will be something.”
Antoine didn’t see it, but he hired her and she turned out to be a favorite at the club. She even wrapped a silver turban around her crazy hair and it became her signature look. She joined a touring American jazz troupe and ended up making cameos in the biographies of several famous men.
Rose told Antoine about a magician who performed at children’s parties. They met him while he was buying doves at the Atwater Market. His hands were all scarred from having been burned in an act gone wrong years before. He said he performed for young children because they couldn’t write reviews. He was down on his luck. He used to make a silver dollar float in the air. The other night he had used a copper penny, which just somehow wasn’t the same and depressed everyone in the room.
At the Roxy the magician had a dove fly out of a wallet. He couldn’t afford an assistant, so he had Rose stand on a small chair as if she were a ferocious lion, and then she disappeared. Rose was really good at coaxing paranoid geniuses out of exile. She had her ear to the ground about new acts too.
There was a teenage boy who was able to do all sorts of tricks on his couch. They sat on the coffee table eating cucumber sandwiches with weak tea that his mother served them as they watched the boy. It was as though the couch were a trampoline—he bounded up off it and did a backflip on one of the armrests.
“He’s been doing that since he was little. It’s annoyed me for years, but I haven’t been able to make him stop. Beating doesn’t work on children anymore. If he’s able to make some money from it, all those years of aggravation would be worth it.”
He leaped off one armrest, did two flips and landed on the other armrest.
Since she seemed to have remarkable intuition, Antoine had Rose oversee the audition for showgirls for a club that was opening in Montreal North. She saw at least two hundred girls that weekend.
Antoine had trouble looking at the chorus line. All the showgirls looked the same. They were so perfectly in sync that, when they performed, it gave the impression that it was just one girl in a hall of mirrors. They came out onstage with their arms around one another like linked paper dolls. He couldn’t believe it. A chorus was giving him a sense of the sublime. And it was made up of working-class girls from Pointe-Saint-Charles!
Antoine suffered a heart attack and died, not because of the chorus line but because of all the smoked meat he had eaten in his life. Rose decided to ask McMahon if she could replace him.
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SHE KNOCKED at his office door, then said her name and opened it. She bowed her head and walked in. She stood there in her white fur hat, cheeks shiny from her excited march over. He stood up when he saw her, thinking she had a knack for appearing out of the blue when he wanted to see her the most. He could never get bored of her face.
“Wait,” she said, putting her hand out in front of her to stop him in his tracks. “I wanted to ask you something important. Antoine passed away and you know I enjoyed his company a great deal, so it might seem a little inappropriate to bring this up so soon . . . but I was wondering if I could replace him.”
McMahon didn’t answer. He seemed to not quite understand her request.
“Take his place as the entertainment booker, I mean. I’ve been all over the city with him. A lot of the most popular acts were ones I discovered. I have a knack for it, and I know I can do it.”
She looked at him sheepishly. She still didn’t get an answer. He frowned. He looked as though he were about to say something in anger.
“Oh, and here—I have something for the children.”
She reached into her bag and handed him a small light box she’d bought. It cast shadow puppets on the wall. McMahon took it from her, looking pleased that she remembered he was a family man. She had no actual place anywhere in his life. He put it on a shelf above the hook his coat was hanging from.
“I’ll talk it over with everyone else and get back to you,” he said.
She turned to leave the office, not quite sure who this “everyone else” was. Before she left, she felt his hand on her shoulder. He closed the door before she could leave. They made love against the door with their clothes on.
? ? ?
WHEN HE GOT BACK HOME to Westmount, the children loved the strange lantern. They lay happily in their living room, watching the horses run together joyfully all over the walls. They were bright orange and lit up, like warhorses on fire in battle. McMahon and his wife sat on the couch together, watching too. He was pleased with Rose because his children were pleased with him. His wife was happy too because she saw the gift as a reconciliation. He felt satiated. He had a family and a mistress, and everyone was perfectly happy.
If you ever experience such a feeling, you should probably realize that God will take notice. Something will be taken away.