“Yes, indeed, you sho’ right about that,” Miriam agreed heartily.
“Just take this one here — as long as you happen to be in it tidying it up and I happen to be on my way past the door. Now, I don’t know a thing about the person living in it—”
“Mist’ Mitchell?” prompted Miriam, almost mesmerically engrossed by now. Her chin had come to rest on the rounded point of the mop handle.
The lady made a careless gesture of one hand. “Mitchell or whatever the name may be — I don’t know him and I’ve never seen him. But just let me tell you what his room shows me — and you correct me if I’m wrong.”
Miriam squirmed her shoulders with anticipatory delight. “Go ‘head,” she encouraged breathlessly. This was nearly as exciting as having your palm read by a fortuneteller, free of charge.
“He’s not very tidy. That necktie twisted around the light fixture—”
“He’s a slob,” confirmed Miriam pugnaciously.
“He’s not very well off. But of course the hotel itself would tell me that; it’s not very expensive—”
“He’s been a month and a half behind in his rent fo’ eight years straight!” divulged Miriam darkly.
The lady paused — not like one who is trying to put one over on you, but like one who wants to weigh her words carefully before committing herself. “He doesn’t work,” she said finally. “There’s an early edition of today’s paper standing on end in the wastebasket. I can see it from here. He evidently gets up around noon, reads for a while before going out for the rest of the day—”
Miriam nodded enthralled, unable to take her eyes off this apparition of wit, wisdom and graciousness. The mop handle could have been snatched away from under her and she probably would have retained her half-inclined position unaltered, without noticing it. “He shiftless, all right. He live on some kind of a sojer pension come in each month, I dunno what it is.” She shook her head reverently. “Gee, you sho good.”
“He’s lonely, hasn’t many friends.” Her eyes went up to the wall. “All those pictures up there, they’re a sign of loneliness, not popularity. If he had many friends, he wouldn’t have to bother with pictures.”
Miriam had never thought of it in this light before. In fact, if the pictures had meant anything at all to her — which they hadn’t for years past now — they had stood for a certain nastiness of mind on their owner’s part, a gloating over his misdeeds. In the beginning she had even expressed this aloud once or twice, at sight of them. To wit: “Dirty ole thing!”
“Even,” the lady went on, “if he actually knew all those girls well — which he probably didn’t — he knew them only one at a time, not all in a group. There are the ear puffs of right after the war and the Japanese-doll bob of the early twenties and the flat, shoulder-length hair of a few years ago—”
Miriam had swiveled her head, was looking around and up at the wall behind her; the rounded point of the mop handle now rested just above one ear. She even scratched her head by moving it slightly back and forth in this position.
“He’s never actually found the girl he’s looking for; there wouldn’t be so many of them up there if he had. There wouldn’t be any of them up there if he had. But they—” She tapped the rim of one of her lower teeth reflectively. “Blend them all together, into one composite picture, and they try to tell you what he has been looking for.”
“Blame!” marveled Miriam, who apparently hadn’t even known he had been looking for anything. Or at least, not something that you discussed in polite company.
“He’s been looking for mystery. An illusion. A type of girl who is not to be found anywhere in this world. Who does not exist outside his own imagination. A rootless creature floating detachedly above the everyday world, with no points of contact. An odalisque. A Mata Hari.”
“Who?” queried Miriam alertly, swinging her head around.
“Just look at them up there. Not one of them as she really is — or was, rather. Soft-focused in tulle, haloed in photographic mist, peering through a lace fan, ogling the camera in reverse through a mirror, biting a rose—” She smiled a little, not altogether unkindly. “A man and his dreams.”
“I ’spect he never goin’ get one like he really wants her,” suggested Miriam.
“You never can tell,” the lady in the doorway smiled. “You never can tell.”
Then she deferred to Miriam with an enchanting, quizzical little quirk of her head. “Tell the truth now, haven’t I been right more than I’ve been wrong?”
“You been right all the way!” Miriam championed her stoutly.
“You see? That’s what I mean. It just goes to show you what an empty room can tell you.”
“Don’ it though! It sho do.”
“Well, I mustn’t keep you from your work any longer.” She gave a chummy little flurry of her fingers, an extra-warm smile of parting, and moved on her way.
Miriam sighed regretfully as the doorway showed blank. She let the mop staff stagger against the wall, went over to the entry and stood in it, watching her down the hall and around the turn. Then that showed blank, too.
She sighed again, more disconsolately than ever. What an enjoyable conversation! What an instructive, entertaining one! What a shame it had to be over so soon, couldn’t have kept on a little longer! Just until she finished one more room, for instance.
The elevator door clashed faintly, out of sight around the turn there, and she was gone for good now. Miriam moved unwillingly back into the room to her uncompleted task.
“She sho was nice,” she murmured wistfully. “I bet she don’ ever come back again, either.”
II
Mitchell
Mitchell came into the shabby lobby of his hotel at his usual time, folded paper under his arm. He stopped at the desk to see if there was any mail. He got that special look from the clerk, reserved for those who are chronically a month and a half behind in their room rent. He got three letters.
The first was a note from Maybelle, his blond friend from the restaurant. The second was a mistake, belonged in the pigeonhole above. The third one was either a circular or a bill, he could tell right away by looking at it. The address was typed, and the envelope bore no return address. He didn’t open it right away, for that reason. He could scent bills and advertisements a mile away.
He went upstairs, closed the door and looked around the room. He’d been living here twelve years. The room had acquired facets of his personality in that time. There were framed photographs of girls galore all over the walls. A regular gallery. It wasn’t that he was a roué; he was a romanticist. He’d kept looking for his ideal. He’d wanted her to be glamorous, mysterious. Masks and fans and secret rendezvouses and that sort of stuff. And all he’d ever got was waitresses from Childs and salesgirls from Hearn’s. Pretty soon it would be too late to find. Her any more; pretty soon it wouldn’t matter.
He hung up his coat, with the third letter making a white scar above its side pocket. He got out the gin bottle from underneath his dirty shirts on the floor at the back of the closet, where the maid couldn’t get at it. He allowed himself only two fingers every evening, parceled out each bottle so that it lasted two weeks. He shot the pickup bodily into the back of his mouth, without putting lips to the jigger glass at all.
Here it was night again, and nothing wonderful, nothing glamorous was ever going to happen to him. Just cheapness. A cheap hotel room, a chap man in his shirt sleeves, cheap gin, cheap regrets. He supposed he might as well call up Maybelle now as later and get it over with. He knew he was going to in the end, anyway. It was a case of Maybelle or nothing. But he knew just what she’d say, just what she’d wear, just what she’d think. Beer and liverwurst.