He’s pleased to learn he’s not even a medalist for most suspicious character at the hotel. The bartender chuckles to learn he supposed he might be and takes time out from doing nothing to point out two the top three. The dog-scented, hound-faced man in the deribboned grenadier’s jacket, holding an upside down copy of the afternoon Excelsior, squinting at it and laughing blatantly to himself. The bartender makes the universal gesture for off his rocker, followed by the one for well-trousered from the old country. A latter-day remittance man, it seems. The other, pacing beneath the half-glow chandelier, claims he is a royal bastard, although the seeding house changes and changes back. He whispers (loudly) of an armoire filled with proof, can barely contain himself when schoolgirls crowd the sidewalk at midday. The management’s granted the mercy of one more week, than out on his ass with the other loonies who add color to the demimonde of gangsters and curbside lovers. The third character is kept a secret, although ‘she’ might be along any moment, about the time you’ve paid for that drink and ordered another.
Thunder rolls in from the piss-mad ocean and the mirrors and bottles rattle high and familiar. Kurtz was by this morning and was sorry his timing was off. Antarctica can wait but not the Senora and her mission. Here’s the phone number. Take it or leave it. Pot roast and potatoes and carrots so long they could be an obscene joke.
Getting all this down, are you? Either way, I wouldn’t leave my journal lying around if I were you. This is a town of long memories and idle hands, the Devil’s own recruiting station. Ah, but the napkin rings aside, it’s not so bad as all that, and looking on the garish side, Lara has promised to drop by for a bath and a session of the latest ripe nastiness. Her notion of oral history is as you might expect, literal to the punning stud. What she sees in him only a Jungian could say.
Like a bird hopping on one leg a waiting taxi driver picks out a string of notes on the lobby piano, claws them into accidental Rachmaninov and breaks off abruptly, looking round sheepishly to see if he’s irritated the sad mill of guests.
While the elevator smells of surrender the hallway reeks of defeat by attrition. The prostitutes and hangovers are what keep him alive. Shelley had his Mont Blanc, he his blindfolded Cleopatras. Under this red roof everyone’s accent eventually sounds the same, compatriots from the rainy kingdom of Somewhere Else.
He prepares the bed, arranges the small table for Lara’s entrance. She has perhaps panted under the erotic weight of a name so famous, if so little shared. Cornsilk and a single tawdry violet, red tea as yet unlemoned and a champagne of blistering sweetness. She pours through the door in high drama, to antidote her lateness, casts a glance into the bathroom, offers him her cheek to kiss. The boisterousness, the lipless kiss, the sweat stains delicate at armpits and between her breasts … therein lies a tale he’ll doubtless shortly hear. I’m glad you haven’t run a tub she says, sniffing the flowers, sipping the champagne, troubling the surface of dark tea with a dabbing pinkie. I could use a shower first. He leans against the wall and smiles, watches as she strips off cowboy boots, leg warmers, jacket, vest, and tights and dances before him, pantied in baby blue.
Was there an appetizer? Or an entrée? he asks. Oh, you know, the Old Boy caught me on the way out the door and a screw was quicker than a chat. Oh my poor, my sacrificial pet, the things you do rather than keep me waiting. Time, love. One day time is all we’ll have but right now every minute counts. By way of coda she wads her skivs and pitches them at his head. He follows her with the bottle, stops short of the shower, makes a perch of the ancient wicker hamper, watches each turn and bend and arch, his glasses fogging as the steam goes tropic. He entertains her with a story about Rosenzweig the sweet-toothed bisexual, whose houseboat seethes with runaway boys and castaway girls, every panel of seesaw wood an ache of turquoise looted from heaven and the East. A Doppler warning sounds through the thin wall, followed by a noise like someone falling heavily out of bed. Lara is a talented listener, her body indicating approval, confusion, interrogative pause. With her eyes closed, the soap rinsing in runnels down her neck, she carries tenderness to a breaking point. He looks away, lets Rosenzweig’s parable sneer to its natural close, tongue sweetened by her nearness, the happy sickness of their friendship. He towels her off and nuzzles her wet head, murmuring an invented climax, a quote from someone they should both know and love, caged under manmade light, broken in the blazing sun. ‘Ten years gone, ten years of my life, never get those ten years back again.’