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“I’m afraid of fires in those things. I’ll cover the covers with my coat.”

“Then if you weren’t a barowner I’d say ‘Like a bottle sent up?’”

“I would. Forgot mine and I’ve run out. Scotch, oldest and best you got. I feel I deserve it.”

“Like a little lady also? She lives here but doesn’t work out of the hotel and told me for my special friends she’s on call anytime.”

“No. It’s been so long I forgot.”

“Don’t worry what she thinks. And baby-cute, dancer’s boobs, and to even men who are eighty and have no chance in the world of reaching it she never makes them feel like fools.”

“Just the scotch.”

“Give me ten minutes to age it.”

Knocks on my door while I’m under a cold shower because there’s no hot and I’m pig-filthy and reek. I yell “Hold it,” get in a bathrobe and then a coat and go to the door, pay him and give a tip. “Who minds the store while you’re delivering?”

“That mean you want to chat and offering me a drink?”

“Sure.”

“I bolt the lobby door — Pour just a trickle more. Switchboard rings or guests want to come in and their frozen fingers are falling off, let them — I have to turn an extra bill over my salary or my family and I can’t survive. When people complain I say ‘Diseased bladder.’”

“So you’re married.”

“Oh yes, it’s the best thing. Cheers,” and we click glasses and drink.

“When do you see your wife, and children?”

“Children sure. Why do without? Wife when I come home and snuggle into her an hour before she has to roust the house and kids and on my one night off. That’s time enough.”

“I ought to get married. Never bothered me till now and I haven’t spoken of it much before, but I’m damn lonely and for some probably logical reason getting lonelier every day.”

“Marriage covers lots of rough spots. Not that I want to force you into it, Mr. Fleet — Shaney may I call you now? And facetiously force you into it of course. Anyway, my petty enterprising is piss poor in this dive, since how many fine scotch tipplers and horny guys you think I’ve got? I only stay here because this hotel is still keeping barely alive, and locatable nightclerk jobs in safe neighborhoods are short. But if you’re seriously interested in getting connected, then once you give up your bandage and blackeye disguise and grow in the shaven scalp hair, there’s another little lady here, this one maybe big once but now stooped through age and not so shapely or cute, who’s quite rich and only tolerating substandard housing because she abhors hostel snobbery as she says. She lives on the sixth and is looking for a much younger man than she for companionship and to run errands and eventually keep and every so often if the desire moves her, a little physical diddling, and if it works out for both of them, inheritance and wedlock. We could pretend you’re ten years younger than you are. For a small part of whatever she contributes to you, I could smooth through the introductions and claim you’re Casanova come back.”

“No, with me it’s got to be to fall-in-love. Must seem silly at my age and it’s another idea I haven’t thought about for years, but I haven’t felt strongly for someone since high school.”

“This is the one I’d fall for if given half a second chance. Though my wife’s all right. Works hard, great mom, lays out for me what I need and carries me through streaks of unemployment and debauchery, so I’ve no gripes. But think it over. And you must be freezing and I have to leave. Sure you don’t want the younger one? She can be rung up till past four and then she dreams till noon.”

“No thanks.”

“Then one quick one more. Higher… higher… lower the wrist some — there, and I’ll take the glass with me and send it back tomorrow smelling of soap.”

“By the way, if you were interested in a parttime or changing jobs to one with I think better hours and free food and drinks at the end of the day and perhaps more pay—”

“Oh, I don’t want to get tangled in what you’re presently involved with, kind as you are to ask. Just from those eerie phone voices and your broken skull, it eventually seems fatal.”

I drink some more. Probably just the unusual amount of booze that’s making me feel like having sex and I think what the hell, got a few dollars in my pocket and it’s been a long time, even though I know it’s not right and I could get a disease, but what the hell, tired of doing it to myself when I’ve the energy to and it’s been a long long time and there’s always antibiotics if they still work and I call the nightclerk and say “I don’t like asking this, but how much for the younger woman?”

“Sure you don’t and don’t worry: she’s in your means. I’ll have her rap on your door and you can catch me next loop around. If you want more from her the price rises by halves for each added service and a cut higher than that if what you want is bizarre, but nobody has enough cash for her to get kicked or slapped.”

“I only want the natural way once.”

“Twenty then.”

“Seems more than fair.”

She taps. I don’t want to answer, hold my breath. She taps. I get an erection, let her in, am nervous, in my street clothes, offer her a drink. She’s young and okay-looking and small and already taking her sweater off with nothing on underneath, and underneath has a couple of long stomach scars and stitch marks and pregnant belly I think and almost flat breasts, so I guess that’s what a dancer’s are, though I wouldn’t bet.

She says “No thanks, maybe just a glass of water if you wouldn’t mind. Let the tap run as the water here straight out of the faucet tastes like car oil, you find the same with yours?” Now naked, sitting on the bed, legs a little spread, squeezing something on her thigh. “Yes I’m pregnant if that’s what you’re gaping at and seems to be disturbing you. If it does I can go, no trouble, and you don’t have to pay me a thing. You want me to? Good. Take off your clothes, you’re making me feel like I undressed on the street and it’s not just the cold. Any other night I’d give you plenty more time if you wanted it, the whole foreplay, but can we start soon? — I’m pooped. But my water first. And wash your penis clean while you’re in there and then come and get on top and stick it right in — I’m ready. I might look frail but can handle three times my own weight.”

I wash, give her the glass of water and sit next to her on the bed.

“Don’t worry about the fetus either if that’s what’s bothering you now — it’ll be dead in a few days anyway. Not a legal clinic, I’m too far gone for them, but a good butcher. But let’s forget all that now — get in here. Not around my knees but between them — that’s right, that’s nice, just the way you’re moving.”

Later she says “Truthfully I should be paid time and a half for what it took you, but you’re probably just a bit intoxicated and tired. At least your body was clean and not so fat and you were a gentleman and didn’t fake like a lot of men do that it wasn’t great and you didn’t squirt, just so you can get, after a long wait, your second as a freebie. Night-night, sweetheart. Beginning Wednesday I’ll be recuperating for a few days from the operation. After or before that if you want me again, help me skip the fee to the nightclerk. Just go outside and from the booth across the street dial the hotel direct. My name’s Helena, and maybe you can disguise your voice a bit when you ask him for it, and I’m in 807.”

After she leaves I scrub my genitals, just to be on the safe side, and have a drink and think I should get married. Someone to talk and get warm to and occasionally do it with but free from possible disease. And maybe to help around the bar like my mother with my father did, cooking big dishes at home for it and some table and counter serving at lunch where we could earn a little extra through her tips. But I don’t want to do it again, though it felt good, with a hooker. Not enough of that feeling of blamelessness and routine, so too much like doing it with my own kid or close niece.