The Lonely Hearts Hotel(76)

He liked the way she would laugh uproariously at any joke on the radio. He liked that she would write words in the air with her fingertip. He liked the way she put her hand out to check whether or not it was raining, when it clearly was. He liked the way she helped out the older people in the hotel. He liked how all the children in the neighborhood seemed to know her name.

She liked how all the children in the neighborhood seemed to know his name. She liked how he could fry up an egg while smoking a cigarette clenched between his lips. She liked the way he called up to her from the sidewalk. She liked the way he put his arm around her. She liked the way he talked about paintings when they went to the museum. She liked the things he noticed about the world.

He liked the things she noticed about the world. He liked the way she looked when she was wearing underwear and sitting cross-legged on the bed and describing bad things that had happened to her. He liked when she read passages that she had underlined in novels. He liked how she got involved in other people’s arguments on the street. He liked how she always read the newspaper first thing in the morning. He liked how she made him feel about himself.

She liked the way he made her feel about herself.

? ? ?

A YEAR PASSED, during which Rose and Pierrot lived in a happy state of penury. Because times were so difficult all around, Pierrot’s paycheck was often short. Rose sporadically found and lost jobs. She worked for a period in a dress factory, and then as a soda girl, and then as a maid at the fancy Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Every place she worked had to let her go in the end. Yet she and Pierrot still scrimped together enough to pay the rent and have a meal at the end of the evening, under a dim lightbulb in their hotel room. Despite the Depression, they were a happy unit, and it seemed as if the world, which had once been so cruel to them, had mercifully lost interest.

Rose was scribbling in her black journal one afternoon.

“May I look at your journal?”

“Yes! It’s not private at all. In fact, I hope to one day share it with the whole world.”

Pierrot picked up the book and flipped through the thick pages. The journal was filled with crude illustrations in black pen.

What marvels were there?

There was a sketch of a girl wearing a Napoleon hat. There was a drawing of a clown on a bicycle whose wheels looked as big as a house. There was an illustration of footsteps with arrows—a pattern to an extraordinary drunken waltz, no doubt. There was a drawing of a top hat with a lever so the crown could open and close like a chimney flap and smoke would come out of it. There was a tuxedo with a carnation tucked into its pocket, with holes in the elbows. The drawings on the paper became animated in his head, a Disney cartoon. It was Rose’s circus dream.

Pierrot sometimes came across Rose doing something incredibly odd. But it wasn’t because his darling had lost her mind. It was because she was working on different things for the show, which she never quite gave up on.

Once, she was balanced on the edge of the roof. A passerby might have assumed she was about to plunge to her death. Suicide wasn’t uncommon for women in the Depression. Having your husband home all day long drove women to great despair. But Rose happily waved to Pierrot.

The next day Pierrot came up to the room and found Rose sitting with a wooden spoon with a rag wrapped around the top. The rag was on fire. She had a little teacup that she filled with kerosene.

“Remember when we used to perform in those rich houses?” Rose said. “We seduced them. When we showed up in their living rooms, they didn’t know what had hit them. They were under a spell. We could have asked them to hand over the keys to their houses and they would have.”

She took a sip from the teacup and breathed a huge bolt of fire that shot halfway across the kitchen. She hiccuped afterward and a small flame shot out. They were both a little bit startled and frightened.

“I can’t believe I’m still here,” Rose said, looking up and down at her body.

“Never try that again.”

Rose shrugged. She wasn’t exactly sure how the plan would come together. But sometimes you just have to work at something for the end to appear in sight.

? ? ?

ONE AFTERNOON, Pierrot was taking a piss in an alley when a man came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“You owe me money,” the stranger said.

Pierrot buttoned up his fly and turned around. There was a man with a peaked cap down over one eye and a missing front tooth.

“Have I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance?”

“That redhead you used to go around with ripped me off. And now you’re going to pay for what she took.”

“Poppy? How is she? I think about her often.”

“She took all my money. I woke up and it was gone.”

“Well, I hesitate to say this, but Poppy was a generous person—so if she stole from you, there might have been a reason.”

“You’re going to pay for what she owes. So hand over a hundred dollars.”

“I don’t have a cent.”

“She said that I should come see you. She said that you would do right by her.”

“If I had money, I would give it to her. Or to you for her. But I have a new girlfriend. Doesn’t she still have that new fellow? He seemed to have his wits about him, an aggressive gent, a real go-getter.”

“He threw her out. She robbed me. Now you’re going to pay me.”