Crowley returned to his room. He pulled the sun lamp apparatus over to the bed and turned on the current. He lay down on the bed, letting the lamp toast his body. The warm rays from the big bulb flowed over him and made him feel pleasantly relaxed. For minutes he let his mind dwell comfortingly on his strong, perfect body. The feeling of surging power inside him was almost sensual. But then he got to thinking about Moira and he became bitter about the tiny crumb she’d sent him when he’d appealed to her for a little financial help.
When Crowley had baked his front for ten minutes, he turned over and baked his back. When another ten minutes had elapsed, his daily regimen was finished. He’d had his sitting-up exercises, his cold shower, his sun-ray treatment. It was time to dress and get breakfast.
Crowley led a very orderly life. A good, clean life.
2.
He dressed very carefully because this was his night to prowl and he wanted to look his best. He’d discovered the Village traps, where the middle-aged, unaccompanied women hung out, quite by accident. Often, when the need for sheer physical exertion asserted itself, he would walk at a rapid pace from one end of Manhattan Island to another, with no destination at all in mind. One such walk had carried him to the Village and he had arrived there physically exhausted. He did not like to drink. Drinking was not part of the good clean life he led. But a bar had seemed the only place where he might pause and rest for a moment.
There had been an aging woman with a painted face at the bar and she had been a little drunk, and that was the start of it. He had learned that there were many such women, well-heeled women who had lost their men through death or divorce and who had lost their youth through the inexorable flow of time, and who were frantically determined to recapture the excitements of the past by bribing some young man with liquor or food or money or little luxuries. They came to these places in the Village because here they could find husky young men who were painters and sculptors and writers and didn’t have a dime and the aging women could retain some shred of respectability by pretending an interest in the young men’s work instead of the young men themselves and by calling them their protégés instead of their gigolos. Crowley was not a painter or a writer or a sculptor but his abundant physical assets made him attractive to such women, even without this thin coat of respectability.
Crowley took Moira’s letter and put it under a pile of shirts in his drawer, to hide it from the maid. He’d mail his own letter, but he could hardly expect Moira to come through in time for the rent, so he had to prowl tonight. He kept several things hidden from the maid under the shirts. He took out a small jar of cream deodorant and a bottle of rose hair oil. He glanced over his shoulder guiltily, as if he expected someone to be spying on him, before he rubbed the cream deodorant in his armpits. He poured several drops of the fragrant oil into his black, curly hair and massaged his scalp vigorously. He combed his hair, letting one curl spill down over his forehead. Moira had liked the way the curl hung down. She said it made him look like a mischievous little boy. He glanced again behind him, as if he were making sure he was alone in the tiny room, and then put a drop of the perfumed oil on his fingertip and rubbed it into his thick eyebrows. His eyebrows grew together in a straight line over his nose.
He replaced the hair oil and cream deodorant beneath the shirts. He put on a pair of shorts and chose a tight-fitting knit rayon gaucho shirt. It was white and showed off the deep bronze of his skin. He had almost as much trouble forcing his big upper torso into the shirt as a plump woman has squeezing her thick body into a latex girdle. He selected a pair of slim-legged, fawn-colored slacks with a pleated waist. He wore a wide leather belt with a Western buckle. His socks were soft wool argyle and his shoes were saddle leather with thick crepe soles. As a final adornment, he hooked on a slave bracelet with heavy sterling silver links that Moira had given him. His wrist watch was in hock.
He preened himself in front of the mirror and nodded with satisfaction. He’d qualify. The tight shirt and slim-legged trousers showed off his fine body to perfection.
He had to get a stamp for his letter to Moira, but he wouldn’t get it at the desk. He always avoided the desk when his rent was overdue. He went down the back stairs and crossed a yard of lobby at one long step and entered the lunch room which was connected with the hotel.
It was around two o’clock as usual before he breakfasted. He sat on a stool and he was a long time getting served because the girl behind the counter knew he never tipped. His breakfast was a very light one, considering the lateness of the hour and the fact he was a large, athletic-looking young man. He always ordered a certain brand of cereal because he believed implicitly in the ads which stated it was a breakfast of champions which furnished the principal nourishment for the most publicized heroes of the sports world. He never drank tea or coffee. He had milk, two boiled eggs and dry toast.
He handed the girl a dollar bill and showed her his strong white teeth in a smile. She didn’t react. As usual, she glared at him when he pocketed his thirty-five cents change. The tramp, he thought. They’re all alike, even the young ones.
He walked to Eighth Avenue and found a stationery store and stamp machine. He stamped the letter to Moira. As he dropped the letter into the mailbox he thought: I’ll show her. Going off and leaving me all alone like that, without even enough money to eat on. I should have asked for five Cs instead of two.
He walked to Broadway.
3.
The world’s most blatant midway was alive with women, it seemed. He hated them all. He especially hated the aging women, the old actresses with the thick paint on their withered faces who dashed from agent to agent desperately seeking a job. I’d like to smash them, he thought. God, how I’d like to smash them. But he couldn’t afford kicks. He was in this business purely for money, he reminded himself. Broadway wasn’t his beat. His beat was the Village. That’s where the ones with the gold hung out. The wealthy ones. The ones worth fooling with.
Trouble was the old dolls didn’t start hitting the Village bars until late afternoon and usually there wasn’t any real business to be done until after midnight. Sometimes you didn’t get picked up until almost closing hour. That bothered Crowley, having to hang around the bars so long. You couldn’t hang around unless you had a drink in front of you and he didn’t approve of alcoholic beverages. He didn’t think a clean-living man like him should drink at all. But he had to sip beer in the Village bars. He always took as long as he could over a bottle. A lousy bottle of beer cost half a buck in those dives. After half an hour or so of nursing your beer, the bartender started looking crosseyed at you and you had to buy another bottle — or go to another bar. It could be expensive if there wasn’t some bag around giving you the eye and paying for your drinks. What was worse, drinking beer ruined your health. If he started getting a waistline, his career as a model would be over and he wouldn’t stand a chance in the Mr. America contest.