The Lonely Hearts Hotel(97)

And then someone tiptoed out onto the stage. There was a smattering of little moans in the audience, with people oohing and aahing. It sounded as though they were making love. When the woman stepped out onto the stage, everyone in the audience stiffened their spines and stared. Jimmy felt a small surge of desperation when he looked at her. There she was. That was her. She was the one.

She was different from the other girls. She moved wonderfully. She landed so lightly on her toes. She landed as quietly as a snowflake on a mitten. Her face seemed so interesting. He wanted to look at her forever.

Of course this was the girl he was supposed to kill. Indisputably she was the type of girl who could drive a man so crazy that his only option would be to stick a bullet in her head. He hadn’t even met her yet and she had already driven him quite mad.

? ? ?

JIMMY WOKE UP in the morning feeling hungover: melancholic and lazy and afraid of death. But it was the show, and not drinking, that had caused him to feel this way. He was distracted all day. That evening he kept staring at the outfits in his closet, trying to decide what he should wear. He put on the black suit he only wore on special occasions. Although he had been told a hundred times in his life that he was good-looking, he found himself standing in front of the bathroom mirror wondering.

He hurried out of the building, not wanting to tell Caspar that he was going to see the show again. He had always looked down on guys who fell in love with chorus girls. Those women only got into that racket to get married. But she wasn’t a chorus girl anyhow. He didn’t know what she was.

There was a larger crowd than on opening night. He rented out the box to the right of the stage and sat there by himself. He felt lonely. He felt completely lost. But then she came onstage. She reminded Jimmy of something that was buried deep in his childhood.

Jimmy went to see her every night. At each performance more and more of the seats were filled up.





58


    THE HONEYMOON HOTEL



Pierrot and Rose stayed at the Honeymoon Hotel on Forty-Fourth Street, only a few blocks from the theater. There was a framed ink drawing of a bluebird on the wall in their room. Their room’s windows were arched like those in a church. The tiles were a lovely shade of light blue, blue like the type of cloak the Virgin Mary liked to wear. Rose looked out at all the different lightbulbs on the theater signs across the way and felt like anything was possible. She felt that the world was gigantic. She was suddenly taken by just how beautiful the world was, and how lucky it was that she had been born, especially since her parents hadn’t wanted her.

Pierrot was lying on the bed, his arms spread out on either side of him. Rose had a bare foot on either side of his hips. She slowly descended. She seemed to be descending for five years. It was so lovely. He put his hands on her knees. He put his mouth on her cunt and gave it a kiss. Rose could put on some very pretty little private shows.

? ? ?

THE CLOWN SHOW was a huge success. They all crammed around a table in a diner to listen as Pierrot read the papers out loud to them.

“The clowns seemed to imply that we are really nothing more than our foibles and that, were we to eradicate our flaws, there would be nothing left of us at all.”

They laughed and held up their big glasses of beer and clanked them against one another. And they all felt really good. And they drank until their foreheads were sweaty and flushed, as though they’d just made love. And the words in their sentences crashed into one another like clown cars, because they really had nothing important that they needed to say.

? ? ?

AN HOUR BEFORE SHOWTIME, there were always people lining up outside the theater to get in the door. They blocked the sidewalk. And when it was over, they all rushed out the door like carbonated bubbles heading to the top of a bottle, to go off and tell their friends. What in the world did Pierrot and Rose’s absurd and sad story have to do with them? How had it become entertainment? Pierrot knew that he shouldn’t be surprised. When he and Rose were little and performed before rich people, they always enchanted their audiences. But it was still quite something to see it on a larger scale like this. It was that sweet and happy feeling he had when he was with Rose. They had somehow managed to convey that feeling of innocence and play in the face of oppression and calamity, and this had proven an addictive elixir. There were more and more dates booked, and the show’s run was extended for a month. Much to Jimmy’s consternation.

? ? ?

PIERROT WAS IN A GOOD MOOD as he strolled down the street. He reflected on how he adored New York. The buildings were so tall and skinny, they seemed like ladders up to the heavens. Because he was new to the city, he noticed all the details that someone who had grown up there wouldn’t. It was as though he were on a first date with the city. Every building made him curious. In Montreal, every building reminded him of something really shitty that had gone on in it. With Montreal, it was as if he were spending time with a spouse who just criticized him all the time. And who kept bringing up mistakes that he had made years and years before. And almost seemed to be mounting an argument at the breakfast table about why he was, in fact, an abominable person.

He felt he had escaped his past. His past was back in Montreal. It was checking out all the clubs where he used to hang out. It was knocking on the door of friends he used to know, asking if they’d spotted him, or if he’d mentioned anything about where he might be headed. It would not find him.