The Lonely Hearts Hotel(82)

Pierrot walked into the room at the Valentine Hotel with a suitcase now filled with cash, completely in shock. He plopped the suitcase on the bed. It rocked like a ship on a stormy sea. Rose came up to him as he unfastened its clasps and threw open the lid.

“What in the world will we do with this?” said Pierrot.

“Let’s start a business.”

“The Snowflake Icicle Extravaganza!”

? ? ?

THAT WAS WHAT THE DOVE first brought back in its mouth. It wasn’t a little bough with a pretty leaf on it. It was a dollar bill.





48


    SELF-PORTRAIT ON TRAIN



Rose woke up one morning and Pierrot was still fast asleep. He would be for several more hours. She was restless and wanted to get out into the world. She had spent the past two weeks visiting different venues. Each had turned her down because they were afraid of repercussions from McMahon. He had ordered that she not be allowed to work in any club, and the indictment was still nonnegotiable. They would end up out of business or have their legs broken for booking Rose’s show.

She wanted to have something to read, it didn’t matter what. She walked toward the café. She picked up the newspaper at a stand next to it. She settled into a table, ordered herself a cup of coffee and unfolded the paper. On the cover was a story about the arrest of Montreal heroin dealers on their way to New York City. A group of gangsters had gone in a boat that had been stopped by customs officers at the border. Half of them had been gunned down, and the entire shipment had been seized. The border guards were on the lookout for the heroin dealers coming in from Montreal. They declared that it would be almost impossible to move anything across now. Those routes would be too carefully monitored. All the customs officers and the state patrolmen would be on the lookout for more men from Montreal.

Rose laughed. This was McMahon’s organization. How would he be able to get his drugs into New York City? McMahon would have to recalibrate his entire operation. This would piss off all sorts of gangsters in all sorts of places—he’d be stepping on their toes and territory.

She worried for a moment about his wild children, who would be by now fourteen and fifteen. She wondered if they would get fewer gifts. But, as always, she was a little impressed by McMahon too. There was something oddly amusing about the idea of hometown criminals making a splash in New York City.

Then Rose had an idea. McMahon didn’t run New York City, did he? There was a massive audience just a few hours across the border. She would make her mark in New York City. She would stage her grand revue there. Why not? It was there that all the world’s greatest acts got their beginnings. There were dreams that you could realize in New York City that were impossible in Montreal. She sat back as the possibilities grew exponentially in her head. She was aiming high. New York City! She felt almost dizzy by the new heights of her own ambition.

The ink from the newspaper had come off on her fingertips, as if she had just had her prints taken.

? ? ?

SHE HAD TO LOOK THE PART of a professional producer. The first investment she made with the money Pierrot had acquired was in clothes. She went to a seamstress and had an outfit made for herself out of a long roll of black velvet. The light shone off it and the velvet appeared to be a strange shade of blue—the way the fur of black cats sometimes did. The dress fell straight to the floor, with a black jacket to go over it. And a hat she wore at an angle.

After two days of phone calls made from the lobby of the Valentine Hotel, she was able to secure an interview with a theater manager in New York City. The rotary dial of the phone was like the barrel of a shotgun. She told him she would be in New York City, as was her custom, on Wednesday and agreed to a time to come by his theater and present him with an exquisite idea that would knock his socks off.

At first she considered taking Pierrot with her. He had the gift of the gab and could certainly impress the people in New York City. But he was unpredictable and might make them come off as lunatics. She knew how to deal with high-powered men.

The very next morning, Rose went to the train station and bought herself a ticket to New York City. Just like that! She showed the conductor the ticket and he ushered her into a compartment. She sat next to the window. There were two men beside her and three men across from her. She put her little valise, which held a change of underwear, a cucumber sandwich and the original plan she had written in pencil when she was just a child, in the shelf above her head.

The train pulled out of the Montreal station. The movement sounded like someone typing, becoming more and more inspired, hitting the keys faster and faster to keep up with the ideas. The train traveled over a bridge, away from the place she had spent every day of her waking life. The cliffs of sedimentary rock along the train track looked like different bits of ripped wallpaper. She was impressed with herself. She smiled at herself in the small mirror in the train’s bathroom. Even if nothing worked out in New York City, she was about to achieve the extraordinary accomplishment of just laying eyes on it.

When she stepped off the train and into New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, she saw the ceiling arched up above her. It was as if she were in an air balloon.

There was no way you could capture New York City in a photograph. Each building was beautiful. There were iron staircases running up the sides. There was all sorts of fancy masonry in the shape of leaves and vines and waves. There were more gargoyles hanging out on the top of one building than there were in an entire Montreal neighborhood. She peeked into building lobbies with golden tiles and doormen with small hats. There were rows of people in business suits. There were department-store windows filled with gloves for women of every temperament. There were so many grand church spires, which stuck up straight into the heavens, daring lightning bolts to strike them.