The Lonely Hearts Hotel(59)

“Poppy!” Pierrot yelled. “What is happening?”

He twirled around to look at the pimp.

“You are a criminal, sir! How dare you! Get out of here!”

“You get out of here! You don’t deserve your lady. You just make money off her. And you take off to Europe whenever you fucking please.”

“I don’t even know where Europe is!” Pierrot exclaimed.

“Anyway, I have more respect for her than you’ll ever have.”

“You’ve got her tied to a chair!” Pierrot attempted to push past the pimp, to untie Poppy.

The pimp reached into his back pocket and pulled out a knife. “I’m going to have to kill you now, buddy. I wasn’t going to touch you, but you touched me first.”

Poppy started to squirm about wildly in her chair, hoping to escape, trying to save Pierrot. It had all gone wrong. Pierrot didn’t have a chance, and he was about to be cut into pieces. The underwear fell from her mouth.

“Run, Pierrot!” Poppy yelled.

There was nowhere exactly for Pierrot to run. The pimp was blocking the door, and the hotel room was too tiny for Pierrot to do anything other than run in circles. The pimp jutted his knife out and Pierrot had no choice but to go out the window.

? ? ?

HE CLIMBED UP the iron fire escape attached to the side of the building like a vine. Why he decided to go up instead of down might be regarded as either a metaphysical or theological question but is, in any case, unanswerable. Up he did go, with the pimp following close behind.

The pimp had the knife in his hand. He held it out in a stabbing gesture toward Pierrot. A little girl leaned out her window and handed Pierrot a butter knife to defend himself with. She had just been using it to spread strawberry jam on her toast. The red jam on the end of the knife made it look like it had just committed a bloody deed.

At the top of the fire escape, Pierrot twirled the butter knife around as if it were a baton. The children on the third-floor balcony began to applaud. Although this was rather esthetically impressive, it raised no fear in the heart of the pimp. The pimp seized the knife from Pierrot’s hand. He held both of the blades toward Pierrot—like they were the horns of a bull that was about to charge him.

The sheets hung down from the laundry lines like they were the ceiling of a great, colorful, patchy circus tent.

Pierrot arrived on the roof and sprinted across, the pimp scrabbling up close on his heels. When Pierrot reached the opposite end of the roof, he momentarily considered himself trapped. He spotted a ladder and laid it down so that it extended from one building to the other, over the abyss. A girl looked up, let her skipping rope go slack and yelled, “Regardez en haut!”

Everyone came out of their houses to see. People crowded onto fire escapes as though the landings were theater boxes. They sat on the opposite roof with their legs hanging over the edge like they were in the very cheap seats in the balcony. Other people began shouting too. They yelled at Pierrot to not try to cross the ladder. They hollered that he would never make it.

The sun shone down on his head like a spotlight, but it was so bright that he wondered if he hadn’t set his wings on fire.

This was a spectacle indeed. Pierrot cut such a peculiar figure in his fantastic threadbare suit. Everyone gasped and became silent as they watched Pierrot begin to tiptoe across the ladder. He hummed his composition under his breath, so he could focus. He stepped quietly from one rung to the next. He had always been able to balance so well. A rung cracked under his foot. He heard the sound so clearly, as though it were a bone inside him breaking, and then he slipped between the bars.

As he fell, he had a clear memory of himself and Rose when they were little. They had stopped at a park to play. They hung upside down on the jungle gym, facing one another. They had a conversation while they were upside down. Pierrot imagined that she was a mermaid, her hair floating so mysteriously and weightlessly below her head. Pierrot smiled in his memory.

And then he hit the ground.

A cat crawled up on him. It showed the claws on its paw like a switchblade.

? ? ?

POPPY FLUNG OPEN the glass front doors of the building. She had gotten free of the chair, and the ties were still dangling from her wrists. She ran down the front steps and over to Pierrot. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed. He looked so peaceful that it would be easy to assume he was dead. But his mouth kept opening and closing, as if he were a fish on the deck of a ship, breathing its last breath and thinking, I knew that worm was too good to be true. Poppy took his hand and lowered her face close to his.

“Please tell Rose that I’m sorry, will you?” Pierrot said. “And that no matter how poorly I’ve acted, for me, she was the one.”

Poppy was taken aback and sat up. If you knew a little about Poppy’s past, you might surmise that she could put up with just about anything. She had sucked men’s dicks at the bottom of staircases. When she was done, she’d stood up, plucked out the pebbles embedded in her knees—like small diamonds—and then headed off down the street as though nothing had happened.

But this was where she drew the line. She had created this elaborate production just for him. And his last words were to Rose! Rose? She hadn’t done anything for Pierrot in years and years, but now she was the one he would devote his last words to?

The pimp, who had run down from the roof, raised his gaze from the boy on the sidewalk and looked for Poppy. He put his hand out for her.