The old brass lattice door clicked shut and they began to rise. A dim hum of mechanisms, cables that slithered in a steep brick well.
You getting any of this white pussy, James? she said.
James shook his head that he wasnt.
She held Suttree’s arm. They got off at the fifth floor and went down a long corridor, a black rubber rug. Past door and door alike with metal numbers nailed on them or missing or askew. She put the key in her door and opened it and held out her hand for him to enter.
Go ahead, he said.
He followed her in and she shut the door and took off her coat and hung it on the back of the door and turned to him and began to unbutton his peacoat. The room was neat and orderly with a great sprawl of cosmetics across the dressing table and bureau top and a portable hairdryer and curlers and some expensive looking clothes hung from the walls. A great stuffed ape with long arms and orange hair sat on the bed.
That’s Og, she said.
Who named him that, you?
My girlfriend. She gave him to me.
Margie?
No. Chick in Chicago. Christ, this thing weighs a ton.
Let me get it.
I’ve got it. You’re not wet are you? Your head’s wet.
It’s all right.
She had a towel and was tousling his hair with it. You look like a little boy, she said. Here. Sit down. Let me see if there’s any music on the radio.
Suttree unzipped his shoes and kicked them off and scooted back on the bed and crossed his feet and lifted one of the ape’s arms and let it fall again.
You like hillbilly?
Anything.
I used to hate it.
Find something else.
There was a knock on the door and she went to answer it. The elevator man stood with a tin bucket of ice and a pint of whiskey in a paper bag.
Baby, she said, do you want a Coke or something? I didnt think to ask you.
I dont need anything.
She paid the stolid yellow James and shoved the change back at him and shut the door with her elbow. She set the bucket and the package of whiskey on the bedside table and took a pair of glass tumblers from the shelf above the sink and brought them over and filled them with ice. She sat on the edge of the bed and started peeling at the seal on the bottle until Suttree took it from her and twisted the cap loose with his teeth. He poured the drinks and they sat on the bed opposite each other and sipped and looked at each other and smiled.
I wonder if I’m already hungry again or if it’s something else, she said.
They say that’s the trouble with chinese girls.
What?
An hour later and you’re horny again.
She smiled and sipped from her glass. There was altogether too much of her sitting there, the broad expanse of thigh cradled in the insubstantial stocking and the garters with the pale flesh pursed and her full breasts and the sootblack piping of her eyelids, a gaudish rake of metaldust in prussian blue where cerulean moths had fluttered her awake from some outlandish dream, Suttree gradually going awash in the sheer outrageous sentience of her. Their glasses clicked on the tabletop. Her hot spiced tongue fat in his mouth and her hands all over him like the very witch of fuck.
He woke later in the night alone in the bed. She was sitting at the dressing table engaged in alchemic rituals with creams and lotions, she was at brushing her hair. In the dark window and partly obscured by the old lace drapes a red pulse of watered light bloomed and faded and the sound of the rain and the traffic in the wet streets made him sprawl deliciously in the sheets. She was watching him in the glass. She winked. Hi lover, she said.
Hello baby. What time is it?
She bent to see her watch. It’s quarter to one, she said. Did you have a good nap?
Mmm.
Would you like a drink?
Yes. I can get it.
No.
She rose and came over to the bed. She was wearing a pale blue negligee that flowed lightly behind her. She came and bent and kissed him and he stroked her breasts and she propped him up with both pillows and fixed the drink and sat on the bed for a moment.
What was all that racket a while ago?
Goddamned Ralph came up here trying to get room rent. You wouldnt believe it. Said you were supposed to be in the date room.
Did you get him straightened out?
She smiled. I told him you were no goddamned date. I think I called him a nigger cocksucker.
How did he go for that?
He didnt say. That fucking James has got a big mouth too.
Was that Margie in here?
Yeah. She’s jealous.
What, of you or me?
Silly. Her old man put her down I think. She’s jealous of me, sure, but that chick is almost fifty years old for Christ sake.
I dont see how she makes it.
She’s a hundred dollar a night girl.
Her?
Sure. All she has to do is turn fifty tricks. That’s mean isnt it?
What brought you down here?
Money what else. Anyway I cant go back to Chicago for a while.
You said you were under indictment. What for?
Selling my pussy.
Her impish grin. Watching him. He sipped the whiskey. Where’s Og? he said.
Oh, he’s over here on the floor. I guess his nose is out of joint too. She tucked the covers about Suttree’s naked chest and went back to her things at the dresser. He had finished the drink and almost drifted into sleep half sitting there in the sagging bed when she turned off the light and climbed in beside him, her warm soft scented body length to length against his own and her breath in his ear whispering obscene endearments.
The hammering of steampipes woke him in the small hours of the night and he lay in the strange room with the red neon flicker of the hotel sign silent at the window. Silence in the streets. She sprawled like a child, one hand loosely clutched by the side of her sleeping face.
In the morning it was still raining or raining again. Alone in the room, brailed in the soft and springshot bed he listened to the traffic below the window, the muted slicing of tires in the wet. Looking up at the ceiling, the petals of wallpaper hanging, the old and ornate gas fixture with brass cherubs. He eased himself up. Gray rain leaned past the window. There was some sort of horrendous foundrywork going on about the hotwater pipes and a little poppet valve on the radiator was hissing like a kettle. He crossed the cold buckled linoleum with puckered feet and stood naked by the window and watched the Monday morning traffic in the streets below. A different slant on life here. Old whiskey bottles with their bleached labels lying on the wet tar of the rooftops. A glass skylight covered with chickenwire. The cold winter rain failing everywhere over the city.
He put on his clothes and went down the hall to the bathroom. A door with MEN stenciled across it. A tall narrow hall of a room in domino tiles. A yellow tub on clawfeet, a sink and a toilet. Suttree pissed long and loud, peering out through the patterned glass of the window at the winter day.
When he got back to the room it was still empty. He took a towel and a bar of soap and went back down the corridor and had a hot bath. When he returned to the room he tried shaving himself with her electric razor. He looked through her things, careful to leave each as it had been. An eclectic tale of gewgaws, the fine with the shoddy. He borrowed her toothpaste and brushed his teeth with his fingers.
She came in smiling and bearing packages and smelling of perfume and rain. She took off the plastic babushka she wore and shook out her hair and came to him unbuttoning the belted raincoat and looking like a movie whore. She kissed him and said hello.
You havent eaten? I brought you some coffee and the paper.
What time is it?
It’s about eleven. Why dont we go over to Regas and have lunch.