How nice it was here! The oldest, “historic” part of the General Washington Hotel, that Rebecca had never before seen.
Colleen was twenty-one, and so could drink: Tignor ordered a draft beer for her. Rebecca was under-age and so could only have a soft drink. Tignor gave their orders and spoke with them politely, rather formally, at first. His manner with the girls was very different from his manner with the men.
Clearly, Tignor was taken with Rebecca, though his initial conversation was with Colleen, a flirty sort of banter. How big the man’s teeth were, a horse’s teeth! Somewhat crooked, and of the hue of rotted corncobs. And his odd broke-looking face. And his eyes that were pale, metallic gray, lighter than his skin; their glisten, fixed upon Rebecca, made her uneasy, yet exhilarated. Her heart was beating as it had beat in the high school that morning when Gloria Meunzer pushed into her from behind and Rebecca had known that she wasn’t going to run this time, she would turn, confront her enemies, she would fight.
Tignor smiled, asking Rebecca about her work at the hotel.
“Must be, a chambermaid sees lots of things, eh? Bet you could tell some stories.”
Rebecca laughed. She was very shy, with Tignor focusing upon her so. She said, “No. I don’t tell stories.”
Tignor laughed, approving. “Good girl! That’s a good girl.”
He would know, she had not spoken of him to the police. There was the secret between them, that Colleen could not guess.
On the sly, Rebecca drank from Colleen’s glass. For there was the pretense that the hotel management must not see, here was an underaged customer. Tignor ordered two more draft beers, Black Horse of course, for the table.
Damn Rebecca had no intention of remaining sober that night. She was sick of always-so-serious, God-damned heavy heart as her friends chided her. Looking like a funeral God damn. No guy wants to go out with a girl with a heavy heart. Rebecca heard herself laughing, and she felt her face flush, and she knew she looked damned good, that was why Niles Tignor was attracted to her. She would drink as much as Colleen drank, and she would not get drunk, or sick to her stomach. And when Tignor made a show of offering them Chesterfield cigarettes from his fancy silver cigarette case, engraved with the initials NT, Rebecca saw her fingers extract a cigarette just as readily as Colleen did, and this too made her laugh.
It was then that Tignor said, unexpectedly, frowning, in his awkward, head-on way, “”R’becca Schwart.“ I have heard of you, and I am sorry for your loss.”
It was a painful moment. Rebecca wasn’t sure at first what she had heard.
Bit her lip to keep from laughing. But she could not keep from laughing.
Why do you think I have a loss! I don’t. I don’t care. I wanted them dead, I hated them both.
It was a purely nervous reflex, Rebecca’s laugh. Both Tignor and Colleen stared at her. Rebecca wanted to hide her face in her hands. She wanted to leave the booth, and escape from this place. She managed to say, to Tignor, “I…don’t think about it, now.”
Tignor cupped a hand to his ear, he hadn’t heard.
Rebecca repeated her faltering words. By now her face was throbbing again with blood. Tignor nodded. “That’s right, girl. Good.” There were things of which Niles Tignor did not wish to think, either.
He squeezed her hand. She felt that she would faint, at the touch.
Rebecca’s hand was hardly a small, delicate female hand and yet, in Tignor’s grip, it became so; his fingers, squeezing, with unconscious strength, made her wince.
Girl he’d called her.
They’d known each other a long time.
“Like this, Rebecca. Don’t breathe in right away, wait till you get more used to it.”
Colleen was showing Rebecca how to smoke. As Tignor looked on, amused. A Technicolor movie it was, music billowing beneath. Not Ruth Roman but Debbie Reynolds, June Allyson. Rebecca was behaving like these pretty, pert film actresses. She was a good-girl-learning-to-smoke, she coughed, tears spilled from her eyes. She was a girl learning-to-drink. She was a girl to please a man, not just any man but a man like Niles Tignor, and though she looked like a slut, in her tight sweater and tight skirt and her mouth a lurid lipstick red, and her hair wavy and tangled down her back, yet she wanted you to think she was a good girl, and naive.
A girl a man wanted to protect, and to love.
Why this happened, Rebecca didn’t know: Colleen leaned over and kissed her on the lips!
A joke, it must have been. Tignor laughed.
Oh, but tobacco had such an ugly taste. Mixed in her mind with milk…
Damn Rebecca was not going to puke. Not here! Not her.
Luckily, the subject shifted. Rebecca let her cigarette go out. Washed away the taste with a swallow of her lukewarm cola. Colleen, a shrewd girl who’d “dated” many men, and some of these men old as Niles Tignor, knew the questions to ask of their escort: where did he travel, where did he like best, did he have girlfriends all over the state like people said, where was he headed after Milburn, did he have an actual home, anywhere?
Tignor answered most of these questions with a pose of seriousness. He liked everywhere he went but favored Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. He liked all the people he met! For sure, he liked the General Washington: the hotel was a damn good Black Horse customer.
He had no “home”-maybe. He wasn’t one to especially want a “home” like other people. Near as he could figure, “home” was a weight dragging at your ankle. Unless “home” could be something he could take with him anywhere he went, like his car.
Rebecca was struck by Tignor’s words. She knew no one who had ever articulated such thoughts. There was a precision here of thinking, though Tignor’s actual words were commonplace, that thrilled her. Like Herschel, he was. A crude expression yet something subtle beneath, and unexpected. For wasn’t “home” a trap, really? Confinement, a prison. A dank airless cave. You crawled into your cave, to die. What would a man like Niles Tignor want with a mere home?
Rebecca said eagerly, “I don’t have one, either. A ”home.“ Just someplace I keep things. I live on Ferry Street with my friends but it isn’t my home. I could sleep out anywhere-by the canal, or in a car.”
Tignor laughed, and stared at her, and drank. Rebecca was drinking beer now, from a glass someone had set before her.
It was past nine o’clock: Tignor ordered food for them.
Roast beef on kimmelwick bread, a specialty of the Tap Room. French fries, dill pickles. Foaming glasses of Black Horse draft ale. Rebecca would not have thought she could eat, in Niles Tignor’s presence, yet she was surprisingly hungry. Tignor devoured not one but two of the enormous roast beef sandwiches, washed down with ale. His big teeth flashed, he was utterly happy.
“Gin rummy, girls. Know it?”
Rebecca opened her heavy-lidded eyes. Suddenly there was Tignor shuffling cards.
Out of nowhere, a shiny, new-looking deck of playing cards! With remarkable skill Tignor shuffled, caused cards to flash in the air in a kind of waterfall, fascinating to observe. Rebecca had never seen anything like Tignor’s skill with cards. And such big, ungainly hands! “Cut, babe.” He’d slapped down the deck, Rebecca cut it, and Tignor snatched up the deck again and continued to shuffle, grinning at his audience. Like glittering blades he dealt cards to Colleen, to Rebecca, to himself, to Colleen, to Rebecca, to himself…When had it been decided that they would play cards? Rebecca recalled the gin rummy games she’d played at the Greb house, and wondered if Leora had taught them correctly.
Tignor announced this game would be Gypsy-gin-rummy, a variation of the other.
Gypsy-gin-rummy? Neither Colleen nor Rebecca had heard of it.
Tignor removed his jacket and flung it across the back of the booth. His white cotton shirt was of good quality but had become damp and rumpled. His face too was damp, a rivulet of sweat at his temple. The strange steely hair looked like a cap of wires. His eyes were pale, as if luminescent against his ruddy face. A deep-sea predator’s eyes, Rebecca thought. For a man of his type Tignor had surprisingly clean fingernails, close cut, though thick and somewhat discolored. He wore a wristwatch with a black leather band, not Baumgarten’s watch. And a ring on his right hand, a strange figure like a lion, with a human face, in bas-relief, in gold. “Pick up your cards, Rebecca. See what you have.”