The Lonely Hearts Hotel(65)
He was too cold and too hot all at once. He didn’t know whether or not he was suffering. His body was restless no matter what he was doing. When he was sitting down, he wanted to be standing, and when he got up, he wanted to be lying down. He sat on a chair as he crossed and uncrossed his legs. There were bugs all over him. There were ants in his pockets. He had ants going up his sleeves. They were all around his neck. They were stuck to the sweat.
He puked into a bucket. There was nothing but a little bit of bile. But he knew he had exorcised the demon inside him. How mundane demons were, he thought as he flushed it down the toilet and then washed out the bucket. Our trials always seemed so tiny and insignificant in retrospect, once they faded away into the distance.
He thought of the enormous erection he would have when it was all over. He thought of the look that would be on Rose’s face when he penetrated her the way no man had ever penetrated her before. But most of all, he wanted to do something he had never done before.
He wanted to have sex with someone he was in love with.
35
ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE
One night Rose went out drinking with the other girls after a long day of shooting. They sat on the row of stools at the bar together.
“Isn’t it an obvious fact that the pursuit of happiness always makes a person miserable?” Rose said ponderously after two beers. “So do you think that if we went out of our way to look for things that made us miserable, we would find ourselves perfectly content in the end?”
“Oh, ne commence pas avec tes idées folles, Rose,” said a girl named Georgette. “Anytime you start thinking and drinking at the same time, you end up going a little bit cuckoo.”
“Don’t worry, my pretty darling. All of you are worried about me steering the night into melancholic waters, but don’t be! I’m in a fantastic mood tonight.”
A man asked her to dance, but she waved him off. She didn’t like following the same steps that everybody else was following. She took a flower from the vase on the bar, stuck it behind her ear and stood.
“Ladies, have you met my beau? Don’t judge him because he’s a bear.”
She put her arms around her imaginary bear and they waltzed around the dance floor. People stopped to look. At first they thought they were looking because it was so incredibly odd. But then they started looking because they wanted to watch the expression on Rose’s face as she waltzed. It was a look of rapture, as if she were having the most wonderful dream. They wondered whether they would be able to find love like that in their own lives. They all wanted to hurry home and jump in their beds and have the same dreams she was having.
? ? ?
OF ALL THE GIRLS, Mimi was her favorite, because they could carry on such interesting conversations. On a Friday, Rose and Mimi tried to figure out what they would do with their Saturday.
“There’s a movie theater where a really great piano player works,” said Mimi. “Let’s go there.”
“I’m not a fan of movies,” said Rose. “I prefer live performances. But anyway, let’s go somewhere where we can talk.”
? ? ?
ROSE AND MIMI MET UP outside the Valentine Hotel the next day so they could go see the Picasso exhibit together. It was fall. The curled-up brown leaves fell from the trees like sea horses.
“It’s going to be wonderful,” Rose exclaimed. “All these paintings where he sticks a nose on a cheek and an eyeball on a forehead. He captures the modern condition. All our thoughts are fractured. Everything is a dead end. You have to look at something from all angles at once to see it from the inside out. Not just be obsessed with the obvious, stereotypical way of looking at something, you know? To make things appear as they really are.”
? ? ?
THE MUSEUM WAS a distinguished-looking building with columns, in the middle of downtown. They had to climb up a flight of rather large marble stairs. Rose quite liked the feeling because it made her feel as though she were a little child again. The building had a huge echo inside it. All the noises were amplified. It was like you were on a stage, speaking into a microphone.
? ? ?
ON THE WAY TO THE EXHIBIT, they passed through a display of the wildlife that lived around Montreal in the woods, that never dared to venture into the city limits. If you were a creature afraid of fire, you could only imagine the sight of marquee electric lights. A taxidermied wolf stared at them, its giant teeth bared and one of its paws raised, though it really wasn’t frightening in the least. It just seemed odd out of context.
“All fear is dependent on context,” Rose said.
? ? ?
THEY STOOD LOOKING AT the portrait of Gertrude Stein together. The subject was so serious and intelligent-looking. Rose had read her poetry and had admired it. It had made her feel better about herself and her sex. Everything written by any woman was written by all women, because they all benefited from it. If one woman was a genius, it was proof that it was possible for the rest of them. They were not frivolous. They were all Gertrude Stein. Rose looked at the portrait of herself as a poet.
“Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?” Rose asked. “If someone made a portrait of me, I would want to look exactly like her.”
“Oh look, Rose!” Mimi exclaimed. “Let’s go into this room. It’s called the Rose Period. It’s been named after you.”