The Lonely Hearts Hotel(64)

34


    TINKER BELL’S REAL NAME



Pierrot was feeling lonely. He looked up at a building whose windows were all lit up at night. They each looked like a luminous oil painting hanging on a wall. There was a girl with a big fat ass trying to get a knot out of her hair with a brush. It looked like a Rubens painting. There was a skinny girl with her hair pulled back reading a recipe book. It was a Giacometti! The girl with the strawberry-blond hair—with her arms folded over her large breasts and sticking her toe in the bath—was a masterpiece by Botticelli.

He didn’t have the will or drive or courage to make love to anyone ever again.

Pierrot made friends with an usher who worked at the Savoy with him. They were walking home in the same direction along Saint Catherine Street one night after closing up. Pierrot was staying at a men’s hotel on Saint Dominique called the Conquistador. The usher lived with his mother on Saint Christophe.

They passed a noisy proscenium that had the word Arcade written in tiny red lightbulbs across the top. There were blue and green tiles leading into the arched glass doorway. The usher grabbed Pierrot’s wrist and dragged him down to the front of the establishment. “Let me show you the greatest footage ever recorded by mankind. I’m going to show you a wonderful film. I mean, this is going to change the way you think about everything. This is real moviemaking.”

“You didn’t like the film tonight?”

“Not my cup of tea. I hate singing and dancing. And I despise sailors. If I didn’t live in Montreal, I might feel differently about American sailors. But I do happen to live here, and I hate their guts. Come on! I’m going to give you culture!”

He led Pierrot into the arcade. They passed rows of colorful new devices called pinball machines. They were dinging and whistling and making a racket. The noises reminded him of the nursery at the orphanage, the babies shaking their rattles and the bars of their cribs. The noisy babies were the ones who lived. The silent ones slipped away into the great eternal quiet they so clearly preferred.

He passed by a miniature racing track with wooden horses making their way across. They were black and white and dappled. The jockeys riding them had their backs hunched and their heads down, imploring the horses to advance. It made him think of the horse-drawn carts at the orphanage at Christmastime. He didn’t know why everything was reminding him of the orphanage and his childhood.

The usher gestured toward the back of the arcade. There, up against the wall, was a row of three light blue machines screwed to a heavy wooden table. A sign on the wall above them had the words Peep Show written in red letters. Written on the machines themselves in red glittering letters were the words Beautiful Ladies. Underneath, the fine print swore that for a penny you could have all your earthly desires met.

Pierrot had so little money. Naturally, he didn’t like to waste it. He didn’t even want to part with a penny. But he was enticed and frightened by the machine. He instinctively knew that it was more than it seemed. You could look through a keyhole and have everything you knew about people transformed by what you saw on the other side. It reminded him of Sister Elo?se having him peek under her habit.

And he wasn’t quite sure what he felt: terror or desire. He was unused to desire because he was a junkie. And when he felt it, he got it confused with all kinds of other things. Nonetheless, he dropped his penny in. He had the feeling that he had dropped it down a well. It was irretrievable now. He lowered his head. He pressed his eyes against the telescope that looked down and not up.

There was a girl with a black mask flittering on the screen. She had on a black corset and black panties. She had leather high-heeled boots that went up to her thighs. She was carrying a long riding whip in her hand. She tiptoed quietly and cautiously around the room. She seemed to dance about on her toes as she looked about, searching for a victim who was apparently eluding her.

He didn’t have any trouble recognizing her with a blindfold. They had often played hide-and-seek when they were at the orphanage. In so many of his memories of Rose, she happened to have a blindfold on. Because children who couldn’t hold in their laughter were usually discovered, Rose was often it.

In the film, she was tiptoeing back from the closet when she noticed a pair of men’s shoes sticking out from beneath the bed.

You might think he was upset by what he saw. But Pierrot felt the opposite. He didn’t judge Rose for this. He had also had sex with people he hadn’t loved. Rose was silent up on the screen. He thought she was like a fairy trapped inside a bottle. He had never wanted to make love to someone so badly in his life.

This meant that she wasn’t married. It was a lie. Elo?se had lied. She was by no means leading a conventional life. By no means! And Poppy had been incorrect. She was no protected gangster’s moll. She was free to do as she pleased. She belonged to no man. He could find her. Rose lifted up the bedspread and bent down to peek under the bed.

“Oh, come catch me! Catch me!” Pierrot found himself saying. The screen went black, as if a guillotine blade had dropped.

? ? ?

PIERROT DECIDED to go through withdrawal. For the first time since he had become an addict, he had a reason to get clean. He wanted to have an enormous hard-on when he found his Rose again.

He was sweaty all night. He reached for a teacup. The teacup shivered and shook as though it were a tiny boat on a terribly tempestuous sea. Everything he touched he seemed to electrocute. It was as if his finger were a lightning bolt. He picked up his jacket and it shook like a man being hanged and jerking around trying to stay alive.