“Get undressed,” she said.
She watched him rip off his tie and unbutton his shirt. When he took his shirt off, she saw that he was wearing a medical corset with hooks and laces. The corset went almost up to his shoulders and down past the web belt of his trousers. That’s why he stands so erectly, the young Captain. We made an aggressive landing and bounced. The punished flesh of soldiers.
“Did you ever make love to a man with a corset before?” Willie asked, as he started pulling at the laces.
“Not that I remember,” she said.
“It’s only temporary,” he said. He was embarrassed by it. “A couple of months more. Or so they tell me at the hospital.” He was struggling with the laces.
“Should I turn the light on?” she asked.
“I couldn’t bear it.”
The telephone rang.
They looked at each other. Neither of them moved. If they didn’t move, perhaps it wouldn’t ring again.
The telephone rang again.
“I guess I’d better answer it,” he said.
He picked up the phone from the bedtable next to her head. “Yes?”
“Captain Abbott?” Willie held the phone loosely and she could hear clearly. It was a man’s voice, aggrieved.
“Yes,” Willie said.
“We believe there is a young lady in your room.” The royal We, from the Mediterranean throne room.
“I believe there is,” Willie said. “What of it?”
“You have a single room,” the voice said, “for the occupancy of one individual.”
“All right,” Willie said. “Give me a double room. What’s the number?”
“I’m sorry, every room is occupied,” the voice said. “We’re all booked until November.”
“Let’s you and I pretend this is a double room, Jack,” said Willie. “Put it on my bill.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the voice said. “Room number 777 is definitely a single room for a single occupancy. I’m afraid the young lady will have to leave.”
“The young lady isn’t living here, Jack,” Willie said. “She isn’t occupying anything. She’s visiting me. Anyway, she’s my wife.”
“Do you have your marriage certificate, Captain?”
“Dear,” Willie said loudly, holding the phone out over Gretchen’s head, “have you got our marriage certificate?”
“It’s home,” Gretchen said, close to the receiver.
“Didn’t I tell you never to travel without it?” Marital annoyance.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Gretchen said meekly.
“She left it home,” Willie said into the phone. “We’ll show it to you tomorrow. I’ll have it sent down by special delivery.”
“Captain, young ladies are against the rules of the establishment,” the voice said.
“Since when?” Willie was getting angry now. “This dive is famous from here to Bangkok as a haunt of pimps and bookies and hustlers and dope peddlers and receivers of stolen goods. One honest policeman could fill the Tombs from your guest list.”
“We are under new management,” the voice said. “A well-known chain of respectable hotels. We are creating a different image. If the young lady is not out of there in five minutes, Captain, I’m coming up.”
Gretchen was out of bed now and pulling on her panties.
“No,” Willie said beseechingly.
She smiled gently at him.
“Fuck you, Jack,” Willie said into the phone and slammed it down. He started to do up his corset, pulling fiercely at the laces. “Go fight a war for the bastards,” he said. “And you can’t find another room at this hour in the goddamn town for love or money.”
Gretchen laughed. Willie glared at her for a moment, then he burst into laughter too. “Next time,” he said, “remember for Christ’s sake to bring your marriage license.”
They walked grandly through the lobby, blatantly arm in arm, pretending they were not defeated. Half the people in the lobby looked like house detectives, so there was no way of knowing which one was the voice on the telephone.
They didn’t want to leave each other, so they went over to Broadway and had orangeades at a Nedick stand, faint taste of tropics in a Northern latitude, then continued on to 42nd Street and went into an all-night movie and sat among derelicts and insomniacs and perverts and soldiers waiting for a bus and watched Humphrey Bogart playing Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest.
When the picture ended, they still didn’t want to leave each other, so they saw The Petrified Forest over again.
When they got out of the movie house, they still didn’t want to leave each other, so he walked her all the way down to the Y.W.C.A., among silent, empty buildings which looked like fortresses that had fallen, no quarter shown.
Dawn was breaking as they kissed in front of the Y.W.C.A. Willie looked with loathing at the dark bulk of the building, one lamp on at the entrance, lighting proper young ladies out on the town to their proper beds. “Do you think that in the entire, glorious history of this structure,” he said, “that anybody got laid here?”
“I doubt it,” she said.
“It sends shivers down your spine, doesn’t it?” he said gloomily. He shook his head, “Don Juan,” he said. “The corseted lover. Call me schmuck.”
“Don’t take it so hard,” she said. “There’re other nights.”
“Like when?”
“Like tonight,” she said.
“Like tonight,” he repeated soberly. “I can live through the day. I suppose. I’ll spend the hours in good works. Like looking for a hotel room. It may be in Coney Island or Babylon or Pelham Bay, but I’ll find a room. For Captain and Mrs. Abbott. Bring along a valise, for Queen Victoria. Fill it with old copies of Time, in case we get bored and want something to read.”
A last kiss and he strode off, small and defeated in the fresh dawn light. It was a lucky thing he would still be in uniform tonight. In civilian clothes, she doubted that any desk clerk would believe he was old enough to be married.
When he had disappeared, she climbed the steps and went demurely into the Y.W.C.A. The old lady at the desk leered at her knowingly, but Gretchen took her key and said, “Good night,” as though the dawn coming in through the windows was merely a clever optical illusion.
Chapter 8
I
As Clothilde washed his hair, he sat in Uncle Harold’s and Tante Elsa’s big bathtub, steaming in the hot water, his eyes closed, drowsing, like an animal sunning himself on a rock. Uncle Harold, Tante Elsa, and the two girls were at Saratoga for their annual two-week holiday and Tom and Clothilde had the house to themselves. It was Sunday and the garage was closed. In the distance a church bell was ringing.
The deft fingers massaged his scalp, caressed the back of his neck through foaming, perfumed suds. Clothilde had bought a special soap for him in the drugstore with her own money. Sandalwood. When Uncle Harold came back, he’d have to go back to good old Ivory, five cents a cake. Uncle Harold would suspect something was up if he smelled the sandalwood.
“Now, rinse, Tommy,” Clothilde said.
Tom lay back in the water and stayed under as her fingers worked vigorously through his hair, rinsing out the suds. He came up blowing.
“Now your nails,” Clothilde said. She kneeled beside the tub and scrubbed with the nail brush at the black grease ground into the skin of his hands and under his nails. Clothilde was naked and her dark hair was down, falling in a cascade over her low, full breasts. Even kneeling humbly, she didn’t look like anybody’s servant.