BE A’S PLACE
We parked the rented Fairlane on West 87th Street, making certain the suitcases were in the locked trunk, out of sight. Then we began tramping up one cross street and down the next, from Riverside Drive to Columbus Avenue. In that area, Beatrice Flanders looked like one of the World’s Ten Best Dressed Women, but no one gave us a second glance. There were harlequins on the streets you wouldn’t believe, drunks in the gutters, spaced-out addicts nodding in doorways.
We wandered from fleabag to fleabag, and after a while stopped asking each other how people could live like that. The answer was obvious: They had no choice. We saw crumbling walls, decayed ceilings, cracked plumbing fixtures, exposed electrical wiring. We saw one room that appeared to have decorative wallpaper until we realized it was an enormous roach colony. We saw a once-elegant hotel that had become a whores’ dormitory. And always the diseased dogs, scabrous cats, cripples on crutches, wounded drunks with filthy bandages, and what seemed to be hundreds of mental cases talking to themselves, urinating on the sidewalk, howling at the sky, or sitting catatonically on the curb, fingering gutter filth.
Finally, late in the afternoon, we found what we were looking for on West 94th Street between Broadway and West End. The Hotel Harding. Someone had defaced the outside sign to make it read ‘Hotel Hard-On.’ It had once been a structure of some dignity, with a facade of gray stone and pillars of reddish marble framing the entrance. The lobby smelled of urine, vomit, old cigar smoke, hashish, and a disinfectant so acrid it made my eyes water. There were no chairs in the lobby — to discourage loiterers off the street, I guessed. In fact, there was nothing in the lobby but the scarred desk and the birdcage of an ancient elevator shaft. The elevator itself, however, was a self-service and relatively new, but already layered with the ubiquitous graffiti. The brass indicator showed twelve floors.
The man behind the desk, reading a tout sheet through a hand-held magnifying glass, must have weighed at least 300 pounds of not-so-pure blubber. He was wearing a blue, sweated undershirt. His transistor radio was roaring racing results, and he was annoyed at being interrupted.
‘Five a day, thirty a week, a hundred a month,’ the fat man said, singsong, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. The thirty came out ‘thoity,’ hundred was ‘undert,’ and month was ‘munt.’
‘With private bathroom?’ I said in my husky whisper.
He looked at me disgustedly.
‘Ja say so?’ he demanded. ‘Seven a day, forty a week, one-thirty a month. You want it?’
‘We’d like to take a look at the room,’ Dick said firmly.
The clerk took a key attached to a brass tab from a board of hooks and tossed it contemptuously onto the counter. It would have skittered to the floor if Dick hadn’t caught it.
‘Room 703,’ the man-mountain snarled. ‘Cross ventilation. Sheets and towels every week.’
We waited for the elevator to descend, then took a leisurely ride to the seventh floor. As we inched past the third floor we heard loud screams of extreme anguish: either a murder in progress or a woman in labor. On the fifth floor, someone was playing acid rock on a radio or hi-fi, loud enough to make the elevator vibrate in its shaft.
Room 703 was on the east side of the hotel. I don’t know how the desk clerk figured it provided cross ventilation, unless you left the corridor door open and there was a breeze coming down the air shaft on the other side. The room was about fifteen feet square, with one window (on the shaft) and a small open closet. The walls were cracked, the paint rippled with age and peeling in patches. The floor was covered with slimed linoleum, so worn that in several places the brown backing showed through.
There was a single bed, a dresser, a tarnished mirror, an upholstered armchair, a small, rickety desk with a chair to match. Everything in that cheesy orangewood. There were no linens on the bed, and the mattress was stained in ways I didn’t care to imagine.
The bathroom door had been painted so many times it couldn’t be closed. There was a sink, a toilet, an open shower stall. The fixtures were yellowed and crackled, the sink rusted, the toilet seat cracked and peeling. Dick flushed the toilet. It sounded like the Charge of the Light Brigade.
We went back into the living room-bedroom-study-dining room-parlor, etc.
‘Let’s forget it,’ Dick said.
‘Look for another place?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s forget the whole thing. You can’t live here or anywhere like it. Give it up, Jannie.’
‘Bea,’ I said. ‘Watch yourself. And I’m not giving it up. This is great local color. I can get a page or two of description out of this place. Very realistic. I’m taking it.’
‘Maybe you should go to a doctor first and get some shots.’
We went back down to the lobby, and told the fat man I’d take it. By the week.
‘Week in advance,’ he said. ‘No cooking. No boyfriends sleeping over. No loud music. No wild parties. No pot-smoking. No hard drugs. No customers.’
I was delighted. My disguise was a success.
I handed over forty dollars and got a furious stare when I asked for a receipt. But I stared back just as furiously, and finally got what I wanted. It was barely legible, but I figured it was something to show the IRS when they questioned whether a week at the Hotel Hard-On was a legitimate business expense. Then I signed a registration card with the name Beatrice Flanders.
On the way back to the car, we stopped at a Broadway supermarket. I bought roach spray, rat repellent, soap, soap powder, washcloths, Brillo pads, etc. Then Dick insisted we stop at a liquor store where he bought me a fifth each of vodka, scotch, and brandy.
‘In case of snakebite,’ he said.
We drove back to the hotel, and Dick helped me upstairs with the suitcases and new purchases. It was then getting on to 6:00 P.M., and we decided to get something to eat in the neighborhood before Dick took a cab back to the East Side and I prepared for my first night alone in Room 703.
We went out into the narrow corridor and almost collided with a man coming from the elevator. He drew back politely to let us pass. He looked about thirty-five, but had one of those hard, young-old faces that made it difficult to estimate age. He was tall, at least six feet, slender as a whip, and very, very dark. Jet hair, strong black eyebrows, a complexion so brown it was almost russet. When he smiled at us, he displayed a gleaming array of shiny white teeth, dazzling against his tanned face and beard-shadowed jaw.
‘Just moved in?’ he inquired pleasantly.
I nodded.
‘Welcome to Waldorf West,’ he said wryly. ‘My name’s Jack Donohue. I’m in 705. If there’s anything I can help you with, bang on my door.’
‘Thanks,’ Dick Fleming said gratefully. ‘Appreciate that. We’re going out for dinner. Can you recommend any place in the neighborhood?’
‘Most of them are ptomaine places,’ Donahue said. He certainly did a lot of smiling. Mostly at me. ‘Your best bet is to eat Chink at Tommy Yu’s on Broadway.’
‘Thank you,’ I said in my boudoir murmur. ‘We’ll give it a try.
He nodded and went down the hall to his room.
In the elevator, Dick said, ‘Good-looking guy. And he seems pleasant enough. Won’t do any harm to have a helpful neighbor.’