Читать книгу Manila Gambit - John Zeugner - Страница 14

But the Ramada is hardly better than its surroundings. Litter Kingdom. About one block back from Logan Circle on Rhode Island, the hotel sits like a market at the end of the restored neighborhood. Below it, toward the White House, little town houses have been restored and re-bricked, pottery shops and boutiques have been refurbished, but above it, going toward the Circle there are only burned out shells of buildings, second hand television repair shops, window-smashed liquor stores, unpainted grocery markets, as if the flotsam of 14 Street had simply washed down to the Inn which served as a kind of dam.

Logan Circle is huge, open, and filthy. The statue of the General stands amid beer bottles, and pop top lids, mounds of broken glass and benches flocked with sleeping drunks. The buildings facing the Circle betray 1890s circularities and aspirations, mounting higher and above their narrow foundations like gothic thrusts of would-be elegance, but their interiors are burned out, boarded up, broken through. A glimpse of plumbing pipes here, an empty fireplace there, stripped of its best marble and bricks, naked studs and beams, thick eight by twelve’s are clearly visible through the gapping exteriors.

“This must be the shabbiest Ramada Inn of the whole chain,” Pam says as we settle into the “Honeymoon” double, a mammoth chocolate carpeted room with a small dining alcove and linoleum-topped dining table, vinyl chairs. There is a small kitchenette complete with dishwasher and refrigerator and stove.

The ceilings are a trifle too low, the lighting highly diffuse from hidden bulbs mounted in a valence above the twin double beds that watch the dining alcove. Did someone imagine a foursome Honeymoon? Light beige drapes. There is a residue film from cleaning rags raked over the Formica night stands.

“Talk about tacky,” Pam says, pulling out a chair and sitting at the dining table. “I find this very discouraging.”

“We could request another room,” I offer.

“I don’t think that would help.”

“Yes, another life somewhere else. Perhaps on the coast of North Carolina, or . . . or. But what does it matter? I feel better already. I used to think climate and surroundings made a big difference. But of course they don’t. You carry into them whatever, isn’t that so?”

“If Dr. Coffee says so.”

“He does, I think. Although I’m never very clear on what he is saying. Always asking me, did I mean this or that? Was I feeling this or that? Am I clear on this or that? This or that . . ..This or that.”

I unpack the two suitcases we had brought. There is a fifth of Jack Daniels wrapped by my undershirts. I pour about an inch into the glass on the nightstand, careful to avoid the strip of paper across the top of the glass. Does the paper signal germ-free sanitation?

“I want some too,” Pam says.

“Not a wise idea. This stuff doesn’t mix with Librium or Lithium or whatever it is, those little yellow and red things you’re taking.”

“I know all that, but all the same, I want some.” She comes over and takes the glass up, flicking away the paper strap. “I thought they only wrapped toilet seats with these.”

I pour another glass. “To Dr. Coffee and his wonderful open-mindedness on this.”

“This drink?” she asks.

“This trip. This being together.”

She smiles a wide, vacant grin. Her eyes glaze a bit. “Being together,” she says slowly.

The track of a vacuum cleaner spreads out at our feet. I can trace the motions of the maid, the parts she skipped, the parts she did twice. I wonder what is underneath the bed, for surely the old wheeled Hoover beater she evidently used could not fit under the edge of these Honeymoon beauties.

“Do you think we should be together now?” I say quietly to Pam, brushing away the thick black hair that shields her wonderfully vulnerable ear.

“Oh, I think so,” she answers, setting down the drink.

Down comes the thick corduroy spread, folded five times in a neat, narrow band at the end of bed. Back comes the thick polyester brown blanket. Down comes the tired, evidently worn sheet. The thick, crisp pillows, beneath their slips encased in some sort of crinkly cold material, get stacked up under Pam’s head.

“Talk dreamy to me,” Pam says, as I undo her clothes and underwear. She has a lovely peach colored and coolly soft skin.

“Dreamy, kid?”

“Yes. You know, real Don Ameche stuff.”

“Your breasts are like melons or sea dunes, that kind of stuff?”

“Yes. That’s good. Yes. That’s it. Very good.”

The delicate scallop sculpture of her stomach is fiercely exciting as always.

“Cover me. It’s cold in here.”

After I am undressed and on top of her, I pull the blanket up, then the corduroy spread. Brown dark warmth surrounds us. I pull it over our heads.

“Now talk dreamy to me.”

I begin a slow moaning in her left ear. A slower, rocking exploration.

“Dreamy stuff,” I say to her.

“Yea, really dreamy stuff. Oh, dreamy, dreamy.”

“A chocolate shag sea,” I whisper in her ear and then watch her vacant, grinning face as she brings her legs around my back. Her hands do a tattoo on my back, delicate palpitation that finds the most erogenous zones, taut niches of flesh above my kidneys. Then her fingers go rubbery, slip off and flop back on the sheet. Her legs settle in as if consciousness has gone somewhere else. Has she passed out? I push a bit of the brown spread back. Track light creeps in from the kitchen. She is smiling, face sideways on the sheet, a little curl of saliva coming out of the top of her mouth.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Is anybody?” she answers, suddenly clamping on me again. “Fooled ya!”

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“You know. You know,” she says slowly flopping back on the sheet. We repeat this game a while, rocking and flopping. Rocking slowly until we both fall asleep.

At dinner in the Ramada’s tiny dining room downstairs, overlooking the front entrance, she seems zombie-like, glazed, indifferent. We pick at Salisbury steaks, and thick, soft French fries, side orders of slaw. The dining room is empty. About twelve tables arranged in straight lines. A counter at one end, apparently for cafeteria style breakfast the next morning.

“It was lots better before all this medication,” she says.

“It was?”

“Sure,” she answers. “You know that. You can tell, too. I’m sure.”

“You had more energy,” I offer.

“I’m sorry,” she returns, pushing her little dish of cole slaw toward me. “Take this as compensation.”

“A fair trade?”

“If you think so.” We fall to silence, mutual mastication.

Pam says, finally, “I suppose people are upstairs in their own kitchenettes.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I should cook for you. Little elegant dinners. Candle-lit dinners in room 412.”

“With harpsichord music.”

“Yes, with harpsichord music and, and, oh, I don’t know. You notice that sometimes I begin a sentence and then it goes away. Just trails off some place like a pennant. I can catch the beginning of it, but then it goes by and I can’t catch the end of it—like skywriters or, rather, you know those planes that fly along the beaches with big signs behind them. When they turn, sometimes you can’t see entirely what the message is. Do you know that?”

“Hmnn.”

“Don’t do that. You don’t have to do that.”

“Sorry.”

Just as our coffee arrives a large, matronly woman wearing excessive orange shaded powder and a boy in bluejeans and a grey, white, and red polo shirt come into the dining room. They take a table against the far wall, but after a few minutes the woman negotiates a change, apparently so they don’t overlook the lobby. The woman received a tall bourbon, apparently without asking for it, then a shrimp cocktail. The boy puts a small electronic box on the table top and begins punching buttons. She gets a second shrimp cocktail and puts it to one side. After a few moments the boy looks up and smiles at the woman, then pushes the box around for her to look at. She inspects the box and then passes him the shrimp cocktail.

I nod toward them and say to Pam, “Our prey.”

“Do you think so?” Pam responds, very interested.

“Yes, indeed. David M. Spendip and friend.”

“She looks ferocious and he looks like a child.”

“Maybe fourteen. It’s hard to tell.”

“He looks older, but dresses younger,” Pam says staring at them.

The woman looks around, cruises her eyes on us and pauses long enough to issue a little chastisement, then insolently tosses her head back toward the boy. Their Salisbury steaks arrive and a glass red wine for the woman. The boy concentrates on the electronic box, pausing only to show the results periodically.

“We have an eleven o’clock interview in their room, 1210.”

“Is that a computer chess kit?”

“Presumably. No sense wasting time with conversation.”

“Amazing. He’s so cute.”

The woman turns around again and returns Pam’s stare, but if she had hoped a simple test of will, she had not quite bargained for the Librium advantage. Pam’s eyes merely take on a recessive soft glow, as if some internal supports or embarrassment mechanisms had gone to sleep. The woman screws her face up tighter and cocks her head. But nothing seems to break Pam’s inert concentration.

Finally the woman says loudly, “Dearie, didn’t somebody ever tell you it’s impolite to stare!”

The boy at this outburst looks up from his computer. I take hold of Pam’s upper arm. She turns toward me, smiling that warm, soft, simple-minded grin. The woman turns back, barks something at the boy who returns to his buttons. I pull Pam up and together we leave.

“You’re not helping much,” I say as we wait for the elevator.

“I know. I know. But did you see how he was playing with those levers? He’s very, very quick, wasn’t he?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you think that’s what he does all day, plays with that chess machine? I would like that. I could like that a lot.”

I contemplate chastising her, but decide nothing positive would come of it. It isn’t as if she could be blamed, I decide. “Maybe you can talk to him about it.”

“I have a whole list of questions to ask him. I wrote them all out and I’d like to show them to you.”

“Sure.”

“But if you’d rather ask the questions, that’s okay with me. I just want to work as hard for you as I can, and in the best possible way. So that you can see how good I am for you and for your work.”

“My work?”

“Yes, working on your column and doing this kind of special research.”

“Special research?”

“Yes. I know I can help in lots of ways. You’ll see how important and helpful I am. That’s what Dr. Coffee says about marriage. About getting married. What I have to do is work. Work very, very hard and show you, sort of unconsciously, how much you depend on my working.”

“That’s Coffee’s idea?”

“Yes. We talk about it all the time. And of course I add things of my own. I know what you like after all. Don’t I?”

“Especially in our honeymoon suite.”

“Yes, especially there,” she says dopily, half-laughing.