The Hotel New Hampshire (60 page)

She was trying to be an actress in those days. The two women she shared the terrible apartment with were both members of something called the West Village Workshop. It was an actors’ workshop; it was a place that trained street clowns. Frank said of it that if the King of Mice had still been alive, he could have gotten tenure at the West Village Workshop. But I thought that if there’d been such a thing as the West Village Workshop in Vienna, maybe the King of Mice would still be alive. There ought to be someplace where you can study street dancing, animal imitations, pantomime, unicycling, scream therapy, and acts of degradation that are only acts. Susie said the West Village Workshop was basically teaching her how to be as confident as a bear
without
the bear suit. It was a slow process, she admitted, and in the meantime—hedging her bets—she’d had the bear suit refashioned by an animal costume expert in the Village.

“You ought to see the suit now,” Susie was always telling me. “I mean, if you think I looked like a real bear before, man ... you haven’t seen the whole story!”

“It
is
rather remarkable,” Frank had told me. “There’s even a
wet
look about the mouth, and the eyes are uncanny. And the
fangs
,” Frank said—always an admirer of costumes and uniforms, Frank would say, “The fangs are great.”

“But we all want Susie to get
over
being a bear,” Franny said.

“We want the
bear in her
to emerge,” Lilly would say, and we’d all grunt and make other disgusting sounds together.

But when I told Susie that Franny and I had saved each other from each other—only to meet up again with Chipper Dove—Susie was all business; Susie was that ever-essential friend, the one who’ll be a bear for you when the going gets rough.

“You at Frank’s?” Susie asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Hang in there, kid,” Susie said. “I’ll be right up. Warn the doorman.”

“Should I warn him about a bear or about
you
, Susie?” I asked her.

“One day, honey,” Susie said, “the
real
me is going to surprise you.” One day, it was true, Susie
would
surprise me. But before Susie got up to 222 Central Park South, Lilly called me on one of Frank’s six phones.

“What’s wrong?” I said. It was nearly two in the morning.

“Chipper Dove,” Lilly whispered, in a frightened little voice. “He called here! He asked for Franny!” That son of a bitch! I thought. He’d call up a girl he’d raped when she was
sleeping
! He must have wanted to be sure that Franny really
did
live at the Stanhope. So now he knew.

“What did Franny say to him?” I asked Lilly.

“Franny wouldn’t talk to him,” Lilly said. “Franny
couldn’t
talk to him,” Lilly said. “I mean, she couldn’t get her mouth to work—no words came out,” Lilly said. “I told him Franny was out and he said he’d call again. You better come over here,” Lilly said. “Franny is
afraid
,” Lilly whispered. “I’ve never seen Franny afraid,” Lilly added. “She won’t even go back to bed, she just keeps looking out the window. I think she thinks he’s going to rape her
again
,” Lilly whispered.

I went to Frank’s room and woke him up. He sat bolt upright in bed, throwing back the covers and flinging the dressmaker’s dummy away from him. “Dove,” was all I had whispered to him. “Chipper Dove,” was all I had to say, and Frank woke up as if he were still banging the cymbals. We left a message for Father in the tape recorder next to his bed. We just said we were at the Stanhope.

Father was pretty good on the telephone; he counted the holes. Even so, Father still got a lot of wrong numbers, and they made him so cross that he invariably shouted to the persons on the receiving end of his calls—as if the wrong numbers had been
their
fault. “Jesus God!” he would holler. “You’re the wrong number!” Thus, in this small way, did my father and his Louisville Slugger terrorize a portion of New York.

Frank and I met Susie at the door of 222 Central Park South. We had to run up to Columbus Circle to find a cab. Susie was not wearing the bear suit. She was wearing old pants and a sweater over a sweater over a sweater.

“Of
course
she’s afraid,” Susie told Frank and me as we sped uptown. “But she’s got to deal with it.
Fear
is one of the first phases, my dears. If she can get over the fucking fear, then she gets to the
anger
. And once she’s angry,” Susie said, “then she’s home free. Just look at me,” she declared, and Frank and I looked at her and didn’t say anything. We were over our heads, and we knew it.

Franny was sitting wrapped in a blanket, her chair drawn up to the heat register; she peered out the window. The Metropolitan Museum stood in the pre-Christmas cold like a castle abandoned by its king and queen—so abandoned it looked cursed; even the peasants were staying away.

“How can I even go
out
?” Franny whispered to me. “He could be
anywhere
out there,” she said. “I don’t
dare
go out,” she repeated.

“Franny, Franny,” I said, “he won’t touch you again.”

“Don’t
tell
her things,” Susie said to me. “That’s not the way. Don’t tell—
ask
her things. Ask her what she wants to do?”

“What do you want to do, Franny?” Lilly asked her.

“We’ll do anything you want us to do, Franny,” Frank said.

“Think about what you
want
to have happen,” Susie the bear said to Franny.

Franny shivered, her teeth chattered. It was stifling in the suite, but Franny was bone-cold.

“I want to kill him,” Franny said, softly.

“Don’t say anything,” Susie the bear whispered in my ear. There was nothing I could say, anyway. We sat in the room with Franny looking out the window for about an hour. Susie gave her a back rub to try to warm her up. Franny wanted to whisper something to me, so I bent down to her. “Are you still sore?” she whispered. She wore a little smile and I smiled back at her and nodded. “Me too,” she said, and smiled; but she looked right back out the window again, and she said, “I wish he were dead.” In a little while she repeated, “I simply can’t go out, I can take all my meals here—but one of you will have to be here, all the time.” We assured her we would be. “Kill him,” she repeated, just as it was getting light above the park. “He could be
anywhere
out there,” she said, watching the light grow. “The bastard!” she screamed, suddenly. “I want to kill him!”

We took turns staying with her for a couple of days. We made up a story for Father—that Franny had the flu and she was staying in bed so that she’d be all better in time for Christmas. It was a reasonable lie, we thought. Franny had lied to Father about Chipper Dove before; she’d told him she was just “beaten up.”

We didn’t even have a plan—if Chipper Dove
did
call back, we had no idea how Franny even wanted to deal with it.

“Kill him,” she kept saying.

And Frank, waiting in the lobby with me for the Stanhope elevator to arrive, said, “Maybe we
should
kill him. That would take care of it.”

Franny was our leader; when she was lost, we were all lost. We needed her judgment before we could settle on a plan.

“Maybe he’ll never call again,” Lilly said.

“You’re a writer, Lilly,” Frank said. “You ought to know better. Of course he’ll call.” Frank was making one of his anti-world statements—expressing one of his perverse theories that precisely what you don’t
want
to happen
will
. As a writer, Lilly would one day share Frank’s
Weltanschauung
.

But Frank was right about Chipper Dove; he called. It was Frank who answered the phone. Frank was very uncool about it; when he heard Chipper Dove’s ice-blue voice, he twitched—he underwent such a spasm on the couch that he batted the standing lamp beside him, he sent the lampshade spinning, and Franny knew right away who it was. She started screaming, she ran out of the living room of the suite and into Lilly’s bedroom (it was the closest hiding place), and Susie the bear and I had to run after her and hold her on Lilly’s bed, trying to calm her down.

“Uh, no, she’s not in right now,” Frank said to Chipper Dove. “Want to leave a number where she can call you?” Chipper Dove gave Frank his number—two numbers, actually: his number at home, and his number at work. The thought that he had a job seemed to make Franny suddenly sane again.

“What does he
do
?” she asked Frank.

“Well,” Frank said. “He just said he was with his uncle’s firm. You know how everyone gets their rocks off the way they say ‘firm’—the fucking
firm
, whatever a
firm
is,” Frank said.

“It could be anything, Franny,” I said. “A law firm, a business firm.”

“Maybe it’s a rape firm,” Lilly said, and we had our first good sign in days. Franny laughed.

“Atta girl, Franny,” Frank encouraged her.

“That super shit of a human being!” Franny yelled.

“Atta girl, Franny,” said Susie the bear.

“That fuck-off in his uncle’s fucking
firm
!” Franny said.

“That’s right,” I said.

And finally Franny said, “I don’t
care
about killing him. I just want to scare him,” she said. “I want him to be
frightened
,” she said, shivering suddenly; she started crying. “He really
scared
me!” she cried. “I’m
still
afraid of him, for Christ’s sake,” she said. “I want to scare the bastard, I want to frighten him back!” Franny said.

“Now you’re talking,” said Susie the bear. “Now you’re dealing with it.”

“Let’s rape him!” Frank said. “Who’d want to?” Lilly asked.

“I’d do it—for the
cause
,” Susie said. “But even with me, I think he’d like it. Men are creeps that way,” Susie said. “They could hate your guts but their
cocks
will still like you.”

“We
can’t
rape him,” Franny said. So Franny was okay, I thought. She was our leader again.

“We can do anything we want,” Frank argued—Frank the agent, Frank the arranger.

“Even if we could figure out a way to rape him,” Susie said, “even if we could find the perfect rapist for him, I still say it wouldn’t be the same: the fucker would find a way to
enjoy
himself.”

And then Lilly, the author, spoke up. Our little Lilly, the creator: she had the best imagination. “He wouldn’t enjoy himself if he thought a
bear
was raping him,” Lilly said.

“Sodomy!” cried Frank, gleefully, clapping his hands—like the cymbals he’d once used on Chipper Dove. “
Sodomize
the bastard!” Frank cried.

“Wait a fucking minute!” said Susie the bear. “Maybe
he’ll
think it’s a bear, but
I’ll
still know it’s
him
. I mean, anything for the
cause
,” Susie said, “anything for
you
, honey,” Susie told Franny, “but you’ll have to give me some time to think this over.”

“But I don’t think you’d have to really
do
it to him, Susie,” Franny said. “I think you could scare him enough by
almost
doing it.”

“You could pretend to be a bear in heat, Susie,” Lilly said.

“A bear in heat!” howled Frank, with delight. “That’s it!” he shouted, wildly. “A bear in heat goes berserk! You could wolf the bastard’s
balls
right into your terrible bear’s
mouth
!” Frank screamed at Susie. “Make him think he’s going to get
blown
by a bear! For the last time!” Frank added.

“I could take him right to the edge,” Susie the bear said.

“But no further, Susie,” Franny said. “I just want to frighten him.”

“Scare him to death,” Frank said, exhausted.

“Not quite,” said Lilly. “Scare him
almost
to death.”

“A bear in heat: that’s brilliant, Lilly,” I said.

“Just give me a day,” Lilly said.

“For what, Lilly?” Susie asked.

“The script,” Lilly said. “I’ll need a day to get the script right.”

“I love you, Lilly,” Franny said, and gave her a hug.

“You all have to be very good actors,” Lilly said.

“I’m taking
lessons
, for Christ’s sake!” Susie roared. “And I’ll bring my friends! Can you use two friends, Lilly?” Susie asked.

“If they’re
women
, I can use them,” Lilly said, frowning.

“Of
course
they’re women!” Susie said, indignantly.

“Can
I
be in it?” Frank asked.

“You’re not a woman, Frank,” I pointed out. “Maybe Lilly wants all women.”

“Well, I’m a fag,” Frank said, huffily. “And Chipper Dove knows that.”

“I can get a great costume for Frank,” Susie told Lilly.

“You can?” Frank asked, excitedly. He hadn’t had a chance to dress up in a while.

“Let me work on it,” Lilly said. Lilly the worker: she would always work a little
too
hard. “It will have to be just perfect,” Lilly said. “To be
believable
,” Lilly said, “we’ll have to get everything just right.”

And Franny asked, suddenly, “Will I have to be in it, Lilly?” We could see she didn’t want to be, or she was frightened to be in it; she wanted it to happen—she thought she wanted to
see
it, but she didn’t know if she could actually take a
part
.

I held Franny’s hand. “You’ll have to
call
him, Franny,” I said, and she shivered again.

“You’ll just have to invite him here,” Lilly said. “Once you get him here, you won’t have to say much. You won’t have to
do
anything, I promise,” Lilly said. “But it’s got to be you who calls him up.”

Franny looked out the window again. I rubbed her shoulders so she wouldn’t be cold. Frank patted her hair; Frank had an irritating habit of showing his affection for human beings by patting them as if they were dogs.