The Hotel New Hampshire (59 page)

They were ready to follow the instructions of a pornographer’s dream.

“Hitler, you know,” Frank loves to remind me, “had a rabid dread of syphilis. This is ironic,” Frank points out, in his tedious way, “when you remind yourself that Hitler came from a country where prostitution has always thrived.”

It thrives in New York, too, you know. And one winter night I stood at the corner of Central Park South and Seventh Avenue, looking into the darkness downtown; I knew the whores were down there. My own sex tingled with pain from Franny’s inspired efforts to save me—to save us both—and I knew, at last, that I was safe from
them
; I was safe from both extremes, safe from Franny and safe from the whores.

A car took the corner at Seventh Avenue and Central Park South a little too fast; it was after midnight and this fast-moving car was the only car I could see moving on either street. A lot of people were in the car; they were singing along with a song on the radio. The radio was so loud that I could hear a very clear snatch of the song, even with the windows closed against the winter night. The song was not a Christmas carol, and it struck me as inappropriate to the decorations all over the city of New York, but Christmas decorations are seasonal and the song I heard just a snatch of was one of those universally bleeding-heart kind of Country and Western songs. Some trite-but-true thing was being tritely but truthfully expressed. I have been listening, for the rest of my life, for that song, but whenever I think I’m hearing it again, something strikes me as not quite the same. Franny teases me by telling me that I must have heard the Country and Western song called “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.” And indeed, that one would do; almost any song like that would suffice.

There was just this snatch of a song, the Christmas decorations, the winter weather, my painful private parts—and my great feeling of relief, that I was free to live
my life
now—and the car that was moving too fast tore by me. When I started across Seventh Avenue, when it looked safe to cross, I looked up and saw the couple coming toward me. They were walking on Central Park South in the direction of the Plaza—they were headed west to east—and it was inevitable, I would later think, that we should have met in the middle of Seventh Avenue on the very night of Franny’s and my own
release
. They were a slightly drunk couple, I think—or at least the young woman was, and the way she leaned on the man made him weave a little, too. The woman was younger than the man; in 1964, at least, we would have called her a girl. She was laughing, hanging on her older boyfriend’s arm; he looked about my age—actually he was a little older. He would have been in his late twenties on this night in 1964. The girl’s laughter was as sharp and as splintering of the frigid night air as the sound of very thin icicles breaking away from the eaves of a house encased in winter. I was in a really good mood, of course, and although there was something too educated and insufficiently visceral in the girl’s cold, tingling laughter—and although my balls ached and my cock stung—I looked up at this handsome couple and smiled.

We had no trouble recognizing each other—the man and I. I could never forget the quality of the quarterback in his face, though I had not seen him since that Halloween night on the footpath the football players always used—and everyone else would have been well advised to
let
them use it, to let them have it for themselves. Some days when I was lifting weights, I could still hear him say, “Hey, kid. Your sister’s got the nicest ass at this school. Is she banging anybody?”

“Yes, she’s banging
me
,” I could have told him that night on Seventh Avenue. But I didn’t say anything to him. I just stopped and stood in front of him, until I was sure he knew who I was. He hadn’t changed; he looked almost exactly as he’d always looked, to me. And although I thought I
had
changed—I knew the weight lifting had at least changed my
body
—I think that Franny’s constant correspondence with him must have kept our family close to Chipper Dove’s memory (if not close to his heart).

Chipper Dove stopped in the middle of Seventh Avenue, too. After a second or two he said, softly, “Well, look who’s here.”

Everything is a fairy tale.

I looked at Chipper Dove’s girl friend and said, “Watch out he doesn’t rape you.”

Chipper Dove’s girl friend laughed—that high-strung, overstrenuous laugh like breaking ice, that laugh of little icicles shattering. Dove laughed a little bit with her. The three of us stayed in the middle of Seventh Avenue; a taxi heading downtown and turning off Central Park South almost killed us, but only the girl friend flinched—Chipper Dove and I didn’t move.

“Hey, we’re in the middle of the street, you know,” the girl said. She was a
lot
younger than he was, I noticed. She skipped to the east side of Seventh Avenue and waited for us, but we didn’t move.

“I’ve enjoyed hearing from Franny,” Dove said.

“Why haven’t you written her back?” I asked him.

“Hey!” his girl friend screamed at us, and another taxi, turning downtown, blew its horn at us and dodged around us.

“Is Franny in New York, too?” Chipper Dove asked me.

In a fairy tale, you often don’t know what the people
want
. Everything had changed. I knew I didn’t know if Franny wanted to see Chipper Dove or not. I knew I never knew what was
in
the letters she’d written him.

“Yes, she’s in the city,” I said cautiously. New York is a big place, I was thinking; this felt safe.

“Well, tell her I’d like to see her,” he said, and he started to move around me. “Can’t keep
this
girl waiting,” he whispered to me, conspiratorially; he actually winked at me. I caught him under the armpits and just picked him up; for a quarterback, he didn’t weigh much. He didn’t struggle, but he looked genuinely surprised at how easily I had lifted him. I wasn’t sure what to do with him; I thought a minute—or it must have seemed like a minute to Chipper Dove—and then I put him back down. I simply placed him back in front of me in the middle of Seventh Avenue.

“Hey, you crazy guys!” his girl friend called; two cabs, appearing to be in a race with each other, passed on either side of us—the drivers kept their hands on their horns for a long way, heading downtown.

“Tell me
why
you would like to see Franny,” I told Chipper Dove.

“You’ve been doing a little work with the weights, I guess,” Dove said.

“A little,” I admitted. “Why do you want to see my sister?” I asked him.

“Well, to apologize—among other things,” he mumbled, but I could never believe
him
; he had that ice-blue smile in his ice-blue eyes. He seemed only slightly intimidated by my muscles; he had an arrogance larger than most people’s hearts and minds.

“You could have answered just one of her letters,” I told him. “You could have apologized
in writing
, anytime.”

“Well,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, like a quarterback settling himself, getting ready to receive the ball. “Well, it’s all so hard to say,” he said, and I almost killed him on the spot; I could take almost anything from him but
sincerity
—hearing him sound genuine was almost too much to bear. I felt a need to hug him—to hug him harder than I had hugged Arbeiter—but fortunately for both of us, he changed his tone. He was getting impatient with me.

“Look,” he said. “By the
statute of limitations
in
this
country, I’m clear—short of murder. Rape is short of murder, in case you don’t know.”

“
Just
short,” I said. Another cab almost killed us.

“Chipper!” his girl friend was screaming. “Shall I get the police?”

“Look,” Dove said. “Just tell Franny I’d be happy to see her—that’s all. Apparently,” he said, with the ice-blue in his eyes slipping into his voice, “apparently she’d like to see me. I mean, she’s
written
me enough.” He was almost complaining about it, I thought—as if my sister’s letters had been
tedious
for him!

“If you want to see her, you can tell her yourself,” I told him. “Just leave a message for her—leave the whole thing up to
her
: if she wants to see you. Leave a message at the Stanhope,” I said.

“The Stanhope?” he said. “She’s just passing through?”

“No, she lives there,” I said. “We’re a hotel family,” I told him. “Remember?”

“Oh yes,” he laughed, and I could see him thinking that the Stanhope was a big step up from the Hotel New Hampshire—from either Hotel New Hampshire, though he’d only known the first one. “Well,” he said, “so Franny lives at the Stanhope.”

“We
own
the Stanhope, now,” I told him. I have no idea why I lied, but I simply had to do
something
to him. He looked a little stunned, and that was at least a mildly pleasing moment; a green sports car came so close to him that his scarf was flapped by the sudden passing wind. His girl friend ventured out in Seventh Avenue again; she cautiously approached us.

“Chipper,
please
,” she said softly.

“Is that the only hotel you own?” Dove asked me, trying to be cool about it.

“We own half of Vienna,” I told him. “The controlling half. The Stanhope is just the first of many—in New York,” I told him. “We’re going to take over New York.”

“And tomorrow, the world?” he asked, that ice-blue lilt in his voice.

“Ask Franny all about it,” I said. “I’ll tell her she can expect to hear from you.” I had to walk away from him so I wouldn’t hurt him, but I heard his girl friend ask him, “Who’s Franny?”

“My sister!” I called. “Your friend raped her! He and two other guys gang-banged her!” I shouted. Neither Chipper Dove nor his girl friend laughed this time, and I left them in the middle of Seventh Avenue. If I’d heard the squeal of tires and brakes, and the thud of bodies making contact with metal, or with the pavement, I wouldn’t have turned around. It was only when I recognized the pain in my private parts as actually belonging to me that I realized I had walked too far. I’d walked past 222 Central Park South—I was wandering around Columbus Circle—and I had to turn around and head east. When I saw Seventh Avenue again, I saw that Chipper Dove and his girl friend had gone. I even wondered, for a second, if I had only dreamed them.

I would have preferred to have dreamed them, I think. I was worried how Franny would handle it, how she might “deal with it,” as Susie was always saying. I was worried about even mentioning to Franny that I had seen Chipper Dove. What would it mean to her, for example, if Dove
never
called? It seemed unfair—that on the very evening of Franny’s triumph, and mine, I had to meet her rapist and tell him where my sister lived. I knew I was out of my league, I was over my head—I was back to zero, I had
no
idea what Franny wanted. I knew I needed some expert rape advice.

Frank was asleep; he was no rape expert, anyway. Father was also asleep (in the room I shared with him), and I looked at the Louisville Slugger on the floor by my father’s bed and knew what Father’s rape advice would be—I knew that any rape advice from Father would involve swinging that bat. I woke Father up taking off my running shoes.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“What a long run you had,” he groaned. “You must be
exhausted
.”

I was, of course, but I was also wide-awake. I went and sat at the desk in front of Frank’s six phones. The resident rape expert (in the second Hotel New Hampshire) was only a phone call away; the rape advice I wanted was actually residing in New York City now. Susie the bear was living in Greenwich Village. Although it was one o’clock in the morning, I picked up the phone. At last the issue had presented itself. It didn’t matter that it was almost Christmas, 1964, because we were back to Halloween, 1956. All Franny’s unanswered letters finally deserved an answer. Although Junior Jones’s Black Arm of the Law would one day provide New York City with its admirable services, Junior was still recovering from the thug game of football; he would spend three years in law school, and he’d spend another six starting the Black Arm of the Law. Although Junior
would
rescue Franny, he could be counted upon for his late arrivals. The issue of Chipper Dove had presented itself
now
; although Harold Swallow had never found him, Dove was out of hiding now. And in dealing with Chipper Dove, I knew, Franny would need the help of a smart bear.

Good old Susie the bear is a fairy tale, all by herself.

When she answered her telephone at 1 A.M. she was like a boxer springing off the ropes.

“Dumb-fuck! Creep-of-the-night! Pervert! Do you know what time it is?” Susie the bear roared.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Jesus God,” Susie said. “I was expecting an obscene call.” When I told her about Chipper Dove, she decided it
was
an obscene call. “I don’t think Franny’s going to be happy that you told him where she lives,” Susie said. “I think she wrote all those letters so she wouldn’t ever hear from him again.”

Susie lived in a simply terrible place in Greenwich Village. Franny liked going down there to see her, and Frank occasionally dropped in—when he was in the vicinity (there was a very Frank-like bar around the corner from where Susie lived)—but Lilly and I hated the Village. Susie came uptown to see us.

In the Village, Susie could be a bear when she wanted to be; there were people down there who looked worse than bears. But when Susie came uptown, she had to look normal; they wouldn’t have let her in the Stanhope, as a bear, and on Central Park South some policeman would have shot her—thinking her an escapee from the Central Park Zoo. New York was not Vienna, and although Susie was trying to break herself of the bear habit, she could revert to bearishness in the Village and nobody would even notice. She lived with two other women in a place that had only a toilet and a cold-water sink; Susie came uptown to bathe—preferring Lilly’s suite at the Stanhope to the opulent bathroom at Frank’s place at 222 Central Park South; I think Susie
liked
the potential danger of the upward-flushing toilets.