Читать книгу The Wicked City - Beatriz Williams, Beatriz Williams - Страница 20

A WORD ABOUT the few square feet of bedroom I call home.

I’m sure you’ve heard about those nice, respectable, wallpapered boardinghouses for professional young ladies. The ones uptown, where anxious matrons keep watch over fragile female reputations, and gentleman callers are to be kept strictly downstairs.

This isn’t one of those boardinghouses, I’m afraid. Although the landlady does her best, she really does! Mealtimes regular and nourishing, visiting hours established if not enforced. Sheets changed once a week, and possibly even washed during that interval, though certainly not ironed. But the hard truth is you can’t attract the same kind of boarder on Christopher Street as you can on, say, East Sixty-Ninth Street, and a boardinghouse is only as respectable as the boarders it contains, wouldn’t you say? I suppose the speakeasy next door doesn’t exactly elevate the tone, either. Anyway, to preserve appearances, Billy always climbs up the fire escape and enters through a window I keep unlatched (nothing to steal, after all), and he tips Mrs. Washington a dollar a visit because he’s a gentleman. I believe he enjoys the adventure.

He certainly doesn’t enjoy the furniture. Have you ever tried to entertain a lover on a single bed? Fosters intimacy, I’ll say that.