“Gee!”
“When they get used to you, you can even ride on one. Would you like that?”
A million stories down, the doorman’s whistle blew faintly. Who would want a cab at this time of night? Barnes lifted his wrist, but no scarlet numbers burned there. The last parties were leaving the bar where Candy had sung, the street-level bar, and all the other bars, all over the city. Glass clinked in the bathroom. Madame Serpentina’s toiletries must be in there, he thought, and the fat girl’s using them. Wonder if she minds.
“Here’s the main bath for your suite. The copper door leads to the hot pool, the marble arch to the cold one. We tried just putting in temperature controls when we built this place, but it took too long to cool the water down or heat it up. Want to see the cold one first? Seals, polar bears, stuff like that? All tame.”
“Gee, it sounds neat.”
“It is neat.”
Little Ozzie thought, his small face puckered with effort. (That was good. He’d have to think when he took the helm at Barnes Industries, Inc.) “The hot one. I want to save the cold one. What’s in the hot one?”
“Mermaids.”
The bathroom door opened with another burst of light. “All through, Ozzie. You still want that shower? Hey, you asleep?”
Barnes sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Almost.”
“I’m going to sleep over here. That all right with everybody? Jim, you said there was a spare blanket?”
“In the bottom drawer there,” Stubb told her.
Barnes got to his feet. “Boy, my suit’s going to look like hell tomorrow.”
Stubb said, “I’ll show you a place that’ll press it while you wait for fifty cents.”
“Do you wish a pillow?” the witch asked Candy. “They will not think there is more than one if both pillows are mussed—many sleep with two. I require only one.”
“That’s great. Just toss it.”
A dim blob of white seemed to float across the room. Candy caught it as Barnes shut the bathroom door.
The bathroom was so brilliantly lit that it hurt his eyes, although the mirrors were blind with condensation. Using a wet washcloth for a glove, he unscrewed all but one of the bulbs. His trousers he hung on a towel bar; the steam would take out what remained of their creases, but it would take out the wrinkles too. He hung up his shirt and tie and threw undershirt, shorts, and socks into the tub, got in with them and washed them out with hand soap and trod them underfoot in the accumulating water until no more bubbles came, then hung them on the bars inside the shower doors.
With what remained of the little bar of yellow, scented soap, he scrubbed his whole body. He was a hairy man, and the hair was black and curly. Each time he looked at it, he felt glad he had no daughter; she would have gotten that from him, and she would (rightly, he felt) blame him for it. Little Ozzie’s hair, though, was brown instead of black. Not very curly either, unless he got it wet plunging with the penguins and porpoises. But Little Ozzie was really his son. He remembered how he had looked as a boy, and there was something of that in Little Ozzie’s face. Not that it wasn’t likely Lois had played around. God knows she’d had a right to.
When the soap was gone, he made the water colder and colder until he was shivering as he watched the suds stream away. He stretched his arms as wide as he could in the shower, slapped himself, then did a little dance under the stinging spray. By the time he had turned off the water and stepped from the tub, most of the steam was gone from the mirrors. He had left his eye on the shelf over the bowl, and there was something of Popeye in his reflection, he thought. “I yam what I yam.” As he dried himself, he paused to caress the stubble of his chin.
The eye would make his socket sore if he wore it all night, but he felt he could not leave it in the bathroom. He hung up his wet towel and wrapped himself in a dry one, the next-tolast dry one, he noticed, before he opened the door.
Candy was standing there wrapped in her blanket. “Have a nice shower, Ozzie? You finished now?”
“Yes, certainly.” He slipped past her.
“I’ve just got to go. I won’t be a minute. Jesus, it looks like a laundry in here.”
As he had hoped, the room felt warm after his cold shower. He folded his suitcoat for a pillow, covered himself from the waist down with his topcoat, and moved the thick, dry bathtowel up to his chest. He felt very snug.
Belle And Whistle
The telephone rang, and he glanced through the glass panel that separated him from the girl. She was out. Probably gone to the can, gone for coffee.
The telephone rang.
He reached for his extension, sleekly black. Through the glass he could see the gold letters on the other side of the pebbled door that opened into the hallway: Ess, Eee, El, Ay, Ess. Ess, Eee, En …
The telephone rang.
Barnes sat up in the gray dimness. His arms were cold and stiff, and he rubbed them. As if he were still dreaming (and for a moment, he believed he was) the bathroom door swung open, releasing a flood of light. A switch clicked and the light went out. The telephone rang again.
“Hello,” Candy said. There was a pause. “Yes, it’s me … . I’m staying with her … . Okay. It was real nice hearing from you, you know? We thought something might have happened to you.” She hung up.
From the other end of the room, Stubb’s voice asked, “What was that?”
“Never mind.”
“You didn’t tell somebody from the hotel you were staying with Madame S.”
“Huh uh. It wasn’t from the hotel.”
“Who was it?” Stubb’s voice was sharper now.
“I said never mind. It was for me, all right? I answered it. I got the message. It was my business.”
The witch asked, “How would someone know that you were to be reached in my room?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him, and he didn’t tell me.”
“It was a guy then.”
“Jim, shut the hell up.” Trailing a corner of blanket, the fat girl stepped over Barnes. There was a grunt and a thump as she lowered herself. “Dammit, I’m not made for sleeping on floors. I don’t think I ever even passed out on a floor, for Christ’s sake. I usually find a couch or something.” A scuffing noise was followed by the flapping of the blanket.
No one else spoke. Barnes stared at the dim ceiling for a time, then allowed his eyes to close. The fat girl was near enough for him to hear faintly the sighing of her breath. He could even imagine the sensation of her body heat on the bare skin of his left arm. He was chilled, and she seemed to radiate warmth like a stove.
He tried to call back the great house in the mountains, but it was lost somehow, speeding away from the speeding car, always vanishing around the next turn in the road until they no longer saw it at all, were no longer sure it had even passed that way. Then something happened, somehow the car would no longer run, and Little Ozzie was wandering the windy mountain roads on foot, alone in the dark and looking for him.
Something touched his hand. Automatically, he drew it away; the touch came again, and after a moment he realized it was another hand, very soft, small and warm.
“Ozzie.” It was the faintest of whispers.
“Yes,” he said, glad to be taken away from the nightshrouded mountain roads where his son could not find him, where he could not even find himself.
“You awake?”
Outside, the doorman’s whistle blew.
“Yes,” he said again.
“Jim’s asleep. I can hear him and I think she’s asleep too.”
Barnes did not reply. He had opened his eyes, but they had closed themselves again. He lay in the dark, listening to her as he might have listened to some night-calling bird, innocent of the need for any reply.
“I feel like a hog, keeping this whole blanket to myself. Are you cold, Ozzie?”
“Little.”
“There’s plenty for both of us. It’s for a double bed.”