I shouldn’t be here. I’ve come too far. This is wrong.
He will marry me. Someday!
Tignor had told her he was crazy for her. Told her he wanted to be with her. Be with. Rebecca knew what that meant.
Sex. This desire. Only through the sex was there the possibility of love. She had to be cautious of the man, she dreaded becoming pregnant like other girls she knew in Milburn, high school dropouts, some of them younger than Rebecca and already mothers. Tignor had warned her he wasn’t a man to marry.
Yet if he loved me. Then!
She knew that ugly things were said of Tignor. Even Mulingar who counted himself a friend of Tignor’s repeated rumors. He’d been married, more than once. No doubt he was married now. He had a family at Lake Champlain who knew little of his life elsewhere. He had a family in Buffalo. The remnants of families scattered through the state: his former wives mourning him and his children fatherless.
But not me. He would not leave me. I will be different.
“What is this surprise, Tignor?”
“Wouldn’t be any surprise, honey, would it? If I told you too soon.”
“Is it something to make me happy or…”
Rebecca’s voice trailed off. What was she thinking of, to hint such things to any man. That a surprise, to her, might make her unhappy.
Tignor grunted yes. He thought so.
She was wearing a peach-colored angora sweater she’d found in a wastebasket in one of the rooms at the General Washington whose stretched neck she hid with a knotted scarf, and a black wool skirt that fitted her hips snugly, and shiny black boots to mid-calf. So happy!
At the Beardstown Inn, Tignor had the use of a room.
A private room, a room-with-a-double-bed, and a bathroom.
A second-floor room available at the historic old inn for the Black Horse Brewery agent whenever he came there on business. Rebecca wondered uneasily was she meant to stay with Tignor, to sleep with him in that bed?
Tignor gave no sign. He was brusque, matter-of-fact. He left her in the room and went downstairs and would be gone more than an hour having drinks and “talking business” with the hotel manager. Rebecca used the bathroom cautiously and dried her hands not on a fresh-laundered white towel virtually identical with the towels at the General Washington but with toilet paper. She sat in a hard-cushioned chair by a drafty window, she would not stretch out on the bed, on an earthen-colored brocade bedspread that exuded a wintry chill.
My surprise, what is my surprise…
Tignor, don’t tease!
The Beardstown Inn was smaller than the General Washington, but of a comparable age. Like that hotel, it had originally been a stagecoach stop a very long time ago. The oldest parts of both hotels were their taverns, “tap rooms.” It was known that brothels-“whore houses”-were often part of these services for men.
Rebecca was made to think, shivering in a room at the Beardstown Inn: so long ago, girls and women designated as “whores,” how frightened and desperate they must have been, in the wilderness of the Chautauqua Valley. They would have been homeless, penniless. No families. No husbands to protect them. Some must have been mentally retarded. In time, they would become pregnant, they would become diseased. And yet there was something comical about the very words whore-whore house. You could not utter such vulgar words without smirking.
This room, Rebecca saw, with a critical eye, had been flawlessly made up. The bed, that was just slightly higher than beds at the General Washington, with a plainer headboard and old-fashioned bedposts, was perfectly made. The ugly velvet drapes were arranged just so. A faint smell of cleanser prevailed. And a deeper smell of age, moldering plaster. The carpet was nearly threadbare in places and the walls were papered in a floral print with an off-white background that looked discolored. The ceiling was waterstained in a way to make you think of long-legged spiders scuttling overhead. The tall, gaunt window beside her, framed by heavy velvet drapes, overlooked a snowy waste of a side yard crisscrossed with numberless dog tracks, and now the sun was setting, these tracks were darkening like mysterious markings in code.
Tignor returned, in a heightened mood. His pale eyes lit upon Rebecca, seeing she had not removed her coat, nor even unbuttoned it, and he laughed, telling her to take it off: “You look like somebody waiting for a bus, girl. We’re not leaving yet. We’re having supper here, for sure. Relax.” When Rebecca stood, and fumbled with the cloth-covered buttons, Tignor tugged at them, and a button flew off, rolling across the carpet in a way that would have made Rebecca laugh at another time.
Tignor pulled off her coat, and tossed it carelessly onto a chair atop his own coat he’d tossed there earlier. He smiled at her with his big glistening teeth, stroked her shoulders and hair and kissed her wetly on the mouth. His mouth seemed to be swallowing hers the way a snake would swallow its small paralyzed prey. His tongue tasted of whiskey, and cigarette smoke, yet was oddly cool. Rebecca pushed from him and began to shiver uncontrollably.
“Tignor, I can’t. I can’t stay here. Do you expect me to stay here tonight? Is this the surprise? I can’t, see I don’t have my things. I don’t have a, a change of clothes. I have to work tomorrow, Tignor. By seven A.M. I have to be at the hotel. They will fire me if…”
Tignor let her chatter nervously. He smiled at her, bemused.
“No fuckers are gonna fire you, sweetheart. Take my word.”
What did this mean? Rebecca was feeling faint.
“I can’t stay the night. I…”
“I didn’t say we were staying the night. I just said I have this room. It’s here.”
He spoke like a father reproving a small willful child. Rebecca felt the sting, she could not bear to be rebuked.
Tignor went to use the bathroom not shutting the door. Rebecca pressed her hands over her ears not wanting to hear the zestful splash of his urine that went on, and on. She hoped he had not splashed up onto the toilet seat or onto the tile wall. Not that!
She would clean it away, if he had. She would not leave such evidence behind for the chambermaid to clean.
Just as Tignor returned to the room, zipping up his trousers, whistling, there was a cautious knock at the door: he’d ordered a bottle of bourbon, two glasses, a bowl of mixed nuts. The bourbon Tignor ceremoniously poured into glasses for Rebecca and himself insisting: “It’s no good a man drinking alone, Rebecca. That’s my girl!”
Tignor clicked his glass against Rebecca’s, and they drank. The bourbon was liquid flame going down Rebecca’s throat.
“First time I saw you, girl. I knew.”
He had never before alluded to their first encounter. Even now, it wasn’t clear what Tignor meant, and Rebecca knew she must not question him. A man who chose his words carefully, and yet awkwardly, Tignor would not wish to be interrupted.
“See, you’re a beautiful girl. I saw that right away. In your maid-uniform, and ugly flat shoes, I saw. Only you need to smile more, honey. You go around looking like you’re thinking your own thoughts, and they sure ain’t making you happy.” Tignor leaned foward and kissed Rebecca on the mouth, lightly. He was smiling at her, his eyes were of the same pale metallic hue as his hair, and he was breathing quickly.
Rebecca tried to smile. Rebecca smiled.
“That’s better, honey. That’s a whole lot better.”
Rebecca was seated on the old-fashioned, hard-cushioned chair, that Tignor had dragged close to the bed, and Tignor was seated on the edge of the bed, pleasantly heated, giving off an aroma of male sweat, male desire, bourbon-and-cigarette-smoke, looming over Rebecca. She was thinking that she was drawn to Niles Tignor because of his size, he was a man to make a not-small girl like herself feel precious as a doll.
Out of his trouser pocket Tignor pulled a handful of loose dollar bills. He tossed them onto the bed beside him, watching Rebecca closely. Like a card trick, this was. “For you, Gypsy-girl.”