My Secret History (18 page)

Was that Irish-looking doorman staring disapprovingly at me? He had white hair and a red face and a graceful way of reaching for the door. When I saw people doing lowly jobs like opening doors and hailing taxis I tried to picture them as presidents or kings by mentally giving them different clothes; and usually it worked. I made that doorman a presidential candidate and then breezed past him.

What Mrs. Mamalujian had called Peacock Alley was a long corridorlike entry way, with oriental carpets the length of it, and mirrors on the sides. Between the mirrors there were ornate chairs.

“There you are,” I heard.

Mrs. Mamalujian was sitting in a big soft chair, her legs crossed, and kicking one up and down.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your clothes on before,” she said.

That made a passing couple smile.

“It’s impossible to tell whether you’re blushing, you have such a good tan.”

She stood up, wobbled a little in her shoes, and gave me a wet kiss.

“Oh, I’ve left lipstick all over you,” she said, and then made a business of wiping it off, which she did with a very fragrant handkerchief. “Shall we go?”

She had made me unsure of myself. It was the confident way she spoke to me, and the fact that she seldom said anything that called for a direct reply. She just uttered odd statements and she seemed to be making them as much to people who might be eavesdropping as to me.

“I’ve seen trees come up faster than that elevator,” she said, and behind us some men chuckled.

She smiled, enveloped in a cloud of strong perfume.

“What’s the book?”

“Moby Dick
,” I said, trying to whisper.

“I’ve always liked that title,” Mrs. Mamalujian said.

One of the men cleared his throat.

“You look good in clothes, Andre. You should wear them more often.”

Someone snorted behind me.

“What floor is it on?” I asked, when we got into the elevator, just to have something to say.

“Six,” she said, and poked the button with one of her bulging rings.

When we were outside the door I asked, “Is this a restaurant?”

She just laughed and jangled the key and fumbled with the lock. It was not that she was unmechanical, but rather that she was too vain to wear her glasses. At last the key turned and she pushed the door open.

“Do you like it?”

I stepped inside and looked around.

“Is it a living room?”

There was no bed. I saw a sofa and some wing chairs, and a table with a new copy of
Look
on it (Kennedy on the cover), all of Boston out the window.

“The bedroom’s in here.”

It was my first hotel room. I did not have to be told it was a suite. I was impressed—by the luxury, the silence, the coolness on this hot summer day.

Mrs. Mamalujian said, “Sometimes when I’m feeling really awful I check into a hotel. This one or the Ritz-Carleton, or the Parker House. And after a few days I feel much better, and then I check out. Do you ever do that?”

“I don’t usually feel awful.”

“It’s wonderful to be young,” she said. “Sit down and have a drink.”

She handed me a menu with a list of drinks on it. I wanted a beer but there was something wrong with drinking a beer in this suite at the Copley Plaza. I looked down the list:
Pink Lady. Sidecar. Grasshopper. Manhattan. Tom Collins
.

“I’ll have a cocktail,” I said, stalling.

“Which one?”

“A Grasshopper.”

“That’s exciting,” she said. “I’m having a dull old gin and tonic. But tonic’s healthy, you know.”

As I was wondering where the drinks would come from, Mrs. Mamalujian lifted the phone and said, “Room Service? This is six-oh-eight. We want three Grasshoppers and three gins and tonic.” She hung up and said, “I can’t wait to see what a Grasshopper is.”

I had no idea what it was. I said, “Is the restaurant on this floor?”

I was sitting deep in the sofa, and Mrs. Mamalujian smoked in a wing chair across the room. She was swinging one leg over the other with her shoe dangling.

“Room Service,” she said, blowing smoke. “Hungry?”

“A little,” I said, to be polite. I was very hungry and I knew the drink—whatever it was—would make me hungrier.

She said, “I wish I were hungry. I love the idea of food, but the sight of it affects me, and when I start eating I lose my appetite.”

The drinks came—three for Mrs. Mamalujian, three for me. After she signed the bill, the bald man in the tight vest said, “Very good, Madam,” and left the room walking backwards.

“What would you like to eat?”

“Whale steak,” I said.

She looked at me strangely and said, “Are they on the menu?”

“They must be,” I said. We looked. I was very surprised that they weren’t.

She dialed Room Service again and said, “Do you have whale steaks? No? Well, what do you have?”

To simplify matters I said I’d have a hamburger. She ordered crab salad. She smiled at me and said, “Grasshoppers. Whale steaks.
Moby Dick
.” She winked. “You’ve got a sense of humor.”

A Grasshopper was a minty green drink in a wineglass, mingled with alcoholic chocolate and topped with a layer of thick cream. It was sweet sticky goo, and the liquor in it made my eyes water.

“Is that drink all right? It looks like creme de menthe to me. I don’t know how you do it. You’re so thin!”

“I always drink these,” I said. Did that sound debonair? I didn’t think so.

She had already started her second gin and tonic. “It’s good if you have malaria,” she said. “By the way, they miss you at the club. It hasn’t been the same since you left. That idiot Mattanza still walks around in his stupid bathing suit, thinking he’s so wonderful.”

“I’m still pissed off about that job.”

“You don’t need them,” she said. “You’ve got me.”

I wondered what she meant by that. Why was I here? It seemed the most inconvenient place to have a meal. You ordered a drink and waited twenty minutes. You ordered food and a half an hour later you were still waiting.

She said, “What sort of people stay here, do you think?”

She seemed to be genuinely wondering.

“People from out of town,” I said. “Society people.”

“Oh, society people,” she said, and made a disapproving noise in her throat. “Have you been reading the papers?”

I said no, I never read the newspaper. I was too busy with books.

“The scandal about that so-called debutante—Olivia Harrison? The one who was jilted by that Brazilian? The one they just locked up? Know what they locked her up for?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“After the greaseball jilted her for another so-called deb, she went to Brazil—just got onto a plane and flew there. She saw the guy and shot him dead. But she wasn’t finished with him. She cut his penis off and took it back to Boston in a box, and gave it to his new girlfriend.” Mrs. Mamalujian took a sip of her drink. “Society people.”

The food came on a wheel-in table. There was an upside-down silver bowl over my hamburger and Mrs. Mamalujian’s crab salad was in a dish balanced on cracked ice.

“I’m really impressed that you’re reading
Moby Dick.”

“I’m rereading it.”

“Any particular reason?”

She put her fork down and wiped her mouth carefully so that she wouldn’t smudge her lipstick. Was she through after two mouthfuls?

I was too embarrassed to tell her how I imagined eating whale steaks and reading her passages from the chapters “Stubb’s Supper” and “The Whale as a Dish.” I wanted to eat whale, so that I could say that whale was my favorite meat.

“You’ve finished your hamburger,” she said. “I wish I had your appetite. Can you eat any of my salad?”

I ate all the crab salad, and all the rolls, and even chewed the thin slices of orange and the sprigs of parsley that decorated the plate. But I had only drunk one Grasshopper.

Mrs. Mamalujian had finished her gins. She took a small gin bottle out of her bag and said, “Be prepared,” and poured herself another drink.

“You’re a great reader, aren’t you?” she said, raising her glass.

“I guess so.”

“But you can get lost in books. Remember you once told me you were writing a play set in a department store—something about a notions counter?”

I nodded, too humiliated to speak, hearing the thing described to me. I had said that in order to keep what I was really trying to write a secret.

She said, “I got so sad thinking of you indoors staring at a blank piece of white paper on a beautiful summer day.”

That was exactly what I loved doing.

She was too drunk to notice that I hadn’t said anything.

“I love books, but sometimes you have to put them down and go into the next room. Art is wonderful, but—you know what’s in the next room?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Life,” she said.

The first time I heard that I was deeply impressed: it was an experienced woman’s wisdom.

She said, “You’re very bad—you’re making me drink too much!”

“Isn’t it supposed to be healthy?”

“It has a nice clean taste,” she said. “That’s why I like gin.” She plopped a little more gin into her glass.
“Moby Dick,”
she said, and giggled.

She still wore her hat. She stood up unsteadily and sat down beside me on the sofa. I wondered whether anyone would find her attractive—her face was somewhat lined, probably more from sitting in the sun than from old age. She was big-breasted and had skinny legs and her high heels made her seem tall. She was well-dressed—the sort of woman who had her picture taken: an important man’s wife.

“I bet you have a fur coat,” I said.

“I have three fur coats.” she said. “What a thing to say on a hot summer day! You’re a scream.”

She became very quiet and nodded a little: I had the impression that time was passing very quickly for her, though it was passing very slowly for me.

She said, “Sometimes you have to put your books down.”

I finished the thought in my head and this second time it sounded corny.

“Look at the time,” she said, putting one eye against the dial of her watch. “I’m too drunk to go home. I’ll have to take a shower.”

She plumped her hand on my knee, and then my shoulder, struggling to her feet.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“I don’t mind.”

“I’m just going to get into the shower.” She tottered a little as she made for the bedroom.

I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll be in the next room.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

She went into the bedroom, leaving doors open and talking to herself, repeating things, sort of narrating what she was doing. “Right in here … Pull the drapes … Put my bag down …” In a muffled and straining voice she said, “Get these clothes off.”

After a while I heard water running very loudly. The bathroom door was open. I heard the hiss and crackle of the shower curtain being hit by spray.

I picked up
Moby Dick
.

That mortal man shall feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you might say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it
.

I read on and became so absorbed in it, and in the subsequent chapters, that I was startled when I heard “Have you seen my dress?” Mrs. Mamalujian was standing over me, very wet, and dripping, and wrapped in a small towel.

Fear made me jump up and find her dress in the next room.

“My eyes are terrible,” she said. “I can’t tell whether you’ve got your clothes on or not.”

“They’re on,” I said.

It was four o’clock. I had been reading for half an hour or more. When Mrs. Mamalujian dried off and got dressed and put on her lipstick, it was after four-thirty.

She said, “Will you do me a very big favor?”

I was afraid to say yes, but I managed it.

“I have to go home now, but I want you to pay for the room.”

She paused, making me choke for a moment at the thought of my paying for the room with the three dollars I had in my pocket.

“I’ll give you the money.” She took out crushed and crumpled bills, not seeming to count them. “That should be enough,” she said, adding another one to the pile.

It was over a hundred dollars.

“If there’s any left, you can keep it. Buy some books.” She kissed me. “I have this feeling you never want to see me anymore.”

“No,” I said. “I had a good time. Really.”

She smiled and kissed me again, and her lips moved as though she were speaking to me.

“You don’t have to go home,” she said. “Sit here. Stay as long as you like. Stay overnight. I can think about you sitting here, reading—what?”

“Moby Dick.”

She laughed in her deep-throated way. “That title kills me!”

“It’s the whale,” I said.

Then she left, mumbling a little. I read a few pages, and put the book down. I couldn’t read. I went into the other room—her smell was here, of perfume and clothes, and the shampoo or
soap. The bathroom was unpleasantly wet and the towels soggy. The bed was the biggest, the widest, I had ever seen.

I picked up the telephone and called Lucy.

“Darling,” she said.

“I’m sorry I’m so late in calling you.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I knew you’d call.”

I loved her for that.

Very soon she was with me in the room. She said, “You’re amazing. What are you doing here?”

“It’s a secret,” I said, and when I looked up again she had her clothes off. Now what Mrs. Mamalujian had said did not seem so silly. We were in the next room and this was better than anything. She had been right—this was living. Lucy arched her back beneath me as we made love, and she gasped at how deep I had gone, as though she had just then lost her virginity.

That was the oddest day I had ever spent—the afternoon in the hotel; lunch with Mrs. Mamalujian; her shower and my
Moby Dick;
and then a long night with Lucy. We checked out at five in the morning, and with the thirty dollars left over I took a taxi home. If I had blundered in at midnight my mother would have asked me where I had been. But because I arrived just before breakfast and didn’t wake them they assumed I had been in bed all night and had just got up early. I was in the yard, ankle-deep in dew, marveling at my luck.