Hotel No Tell Read online

  “I mean, personally, if the woman I loved didn’t want children, I would just go with her wishes,” he continued, lying through his recently whitened teeth. “If I loved her, I would do whatever she wanted.”

  “A nonissue when you’re in love with a senior citizen,” I hissed.

  He pinched me. I kicked him.

  The last thing I needed was for this subject to arise in my parents’ presence. I would not be a sacrificial lamb for my horny brother. Normally a funny, thoughtful guy whose company I mostly enjoyed, Gideon was intolerably adolescent when he set his sights on a woman.

  “Avocados!” my father proclaimed from the kitchen.

  “Ah, Bella,” Roxana cooed to my mother, causing Gideon’s head to swivel. “Zat ees breeliant! Truly, you haf heet zee screw on zee nose.” There was a moment of polite, confused silence.

  “Nail on the head,” I said throwing my arms up over my eyes. “You mean hit the nail on the head, Roxana.”

  “Ah, yis, sank you, Zepheer,” she trilled with an easy laugh.

  “Tuna!” cheered my father.

  “You’re welcome,” I mumbled, once again mildly disconcerted by how tightly the progression of Roxana’s career was intertwined with the progression of my own. A few years earlier, as a med-school dropout and a law-school-deposit forfeiter, in dire need of a yellow brick road, I found myself working as the super of our building. When I wasn’t tackling the leaky oil tank in the basement and scheduling the exterminator and removing spontaneously reproducing locksmith business cards from our stoop, I stumbled across the brothel Roxana was running out of her apartment on the third floor.

  Roxana saved herself from a decade of involuntary handcuffing by helping the feds and the NYPD lure in the reigning members of the mob family that controlled her and the brothel. I saved myself from a lifetime of professional soul-searching by throwing my hat into the law-enforcement ring, at the urging of Gregory, whom I met during the course of the whole surreal episode.

  The feds had barely untaped the mike from Roxana’s teddy before my mother, who regularly passed off her outlandishness as optimism, had come up with the idea of tapping the prostitute procuress for her business acumen. As the newly minted vice president of MWP Financial Seminars for Women, Roxana earned a salary that allowed her to continue renting apartment 3B, though it took a few months for her to afford to give it a full makeover. The first item to go was the leather-clad bondage jungle gym, which was replaced by a moiré love seat from Shabby Chic. (The gym sold in four hours on Craigslist.)

  “Bok choy!”

  Roxana was thriving, glowing, her French genes a guarantee of sexiness in perpetuity, and it was no wonder that Gideon was panting. I, on the other hand, had reverted to kicking my sibling and sulking on my parents’ couch. I glared up at the pebbled skylight and wondered why I couldn’t manage to get both love and work to flourish simultaneously. Forget flourish—I’d settle for something shy of flatlining.

  “Roxana!” Gideon said suddenly. She and my mother looked up from their PowerPoint presentation printouts. I peeked out from under my arm. “I’ve decided I want my next movie to be about …” He took a deep breath and smiled broadly, like a first-grader about to unveil his best finger painting. “You. I want to make a movie about you.” He sat back and waited for his magic to take effect.

  “Oh, for the fucking love of—” I spat, and burrowed deeper into the couch.

  “Gideon!” Roxana gasped. “Really? A movie about me? Zat is so flattering! How eggzyting!” She turned to my mother. “Bella, can you belief it?”

  “Oh, I can,” my mother said drily. She tucked a lock of silver hair behind her ear and studied Gideon. I could see the opposing forces of liberal motherhood taking up arms within. On the one hand, my parents had an “Endless This War” bumper sticker pasted below the Darwin fish and beside the “Coexist” banner on their Ford Fusion Hybrid. On the other hand, no woman, attendance at Woodstock and Stonewall notwithstanding, can get one hundred percent behind the idea of her twenty-eight-year-old baby boy taking an obvious interest in an aging former madam.

  I devoted a moment to imagining Gideon and Roxana’s wedding. Would she dare to wear white? What if they did have kids? Would they tell them about her past? If they didn’t, would they ask me to keep the secret? Would I? I wanted to be the fun aunt, the honest aunt, the outrageous aunt. Maybe I could plant some evidence and let them find out by themselves. Mostly I just wanted to be there to see the looks on the kids’ faces when they did, inevitably, find out.

  My father pushed through the kitchen door and grinned down at us from his unflappable NBA heights.

  “One hundred fifty dollars’ worth of groceries and we have absolutely nothing for dinner!” he announced cheerfully.

  “Ollie,” my mother said, in a falsely light voice, “Gid says he’d like to make a movie about Roxana.”

  My father threw his arms out wide and gazed at Gideon with the same marvel he genuinely felt whether one of us had potty-trained or graduated summa cum laude.

  “Brilliant! An absolutely brilliant idea! It makes so much sense for so many reasons!”

  “Oh, Ollie,” my mother sighed.

  I hauled myself off the couch and headed for the door.

  “Darling daught!” my dad crooned. “I didn’t know you were under there! Stay for dinner?”

  I sighed and managed a smile for him. “You just said there’s nothing here.”

  “Define ‘here’!” boomed the prosecutor. “If ‘here’ means New York City, well, then, there most certainly is something ‘here.’ There are ten thousand restaurants ‘here.’ Surely one of them will be happy to deliver food to our fine family!”

  I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Rain check,” I said tiredly.

  His eyes lit up and I groaned inwardly, knowing immediately what was coming.

  “Rain check! A baseball term! When did it enter the common lexicon? Does anyone know? Do you know?” He turned to me earnestly, then to Gideon, my mother, and Roxana. They all dutifully shook their heads. “This century? Last century?” He strode down the hall, and we all knew he was headed for the O.E.D.

  “Bye, Daddy!” I put my hand on the front door.

  “Aren’t you dying to know …?” he called from down the hall.

  “Some other time.”

  “Everything okay, Zephy?” my mom asked, as though she didn’t spend every spare moment worrying for me and my future.

  “She misses Gregory.” Gideon smirked.

  I spun around. “What are you, ten? Leave me alone!”

  “Oh, Zeph,” my mom sighed. A look of pity crossed her face, a look that irritated me to my very core, tied me into knots, because I was desperate to wail in her arms about Gregory but couldn’t. There was this new barrier between us. Her daughter had declared that she didn’t want to have children, a decision she could not fathom, a decision that, despite what she claimed, she took as a reproach and a personal failing.

  “I am fine,” I snarled, and headed down to my apartment to feed my bunny and call any one of a number of people with whom I shared not a shred of DNA.

  * * *

  My evening grew radically more interesting, and not just because Hitchens had escaped from his cage, shattered a miniature rendering of the High Line (the only surviving evidence of my stained-glass class), and chewed up four months’ worth of New Yorkers. Three messages had come in on my landline while I was upstairs finding zero solace in my family. The first was from Lieutenant Fisk, and even though I wasn’t sure how I felt about him, it was exactly the right time to hear how he felt about me.

  “Zephyr,” came his deep and preposterously confident voice. “I’m on duty and it’s my turn to cook. Come by the station, have dinner with me and the men.” He hesitated. “Actually, if you’re a vegetarian, don’t bother. But I think you’ll like what you taste. I use lots of butter,” he drawled. His tone was so brazenly suggestive that he could as easily have been asking me to arrive in
nothing but an overcoat and lipstick. An involuntary shiver of anticipation zapped through me as I pictured a gleaming engine, a pole, and me, supremely feminine amidst the testosterone-saturated air.

  I dumped a dustpan full of shredded summer fiction into the trash and hustled to my bedroom, hoping that my never-fail Levi’s and long-sleeved H&M shirt (just a tad to the tight of respectable) combo were clean and ready to see action.

  “Zeph!” It was Macy’s voice. I stopped in my tracks and gazed hopefully at the answering machine. There was a crash in the background. “Crap. I can suck venom out of my own calf and persuade women to forgo matching bridesmaid dresses, but I cannot make bookends reliably hold up books. And, hey, sorry I was huffy today, but it’s been about eight hours and apparently I’m codependent, because I miss you and we never figured out which train we’re taking to Hillsville tomorrow. Alcohol consumption is permitted on Metro-North, so … that’s a bonus.” She cackled over the last words, and I recalled the old woman foisting her son’s skin-protection services on Macy that morning. “Yes, I called the dermatologist and we’re going out next weekend. Call me!” she sang, and I could picture the mischievous grin on her freckled face as she hung up. I added this to my mental dossier on Macy: Does not stay angry for long.

  As I shed my work clothes and stepped into my jeans, I realized I was nervous. As much as I was titillated by the nerve-racking component of a budding courtship, it was … well, nerve-racking. Not for the first time I wondered how hard it would be to get to know another man as well as I’d known Gregory. How long would I have to be with someone before I knew at which hospital he’d been born? Before I could read in bed with my headlamp? Before I didn’t have to worry that an unusual lilt in his voice one morning signaled the end of the relationship?

  I sank down on the bed, caught in a confused state between excited and sapped. This did not need to be a relationship, I reminded myself. This could be a hookup. This could simply be the first step in life after Gregory. At the very least, I would do it for Lucy and give her a good story tomorrow night. She counted on us for vicarious singledom.

  I located the shirt on my floor, and as I performed a quick sniff test—shirt and armpits both passed—another message began to play. The air left my lungs when I heard Gregory’s voice, deep and hesitant. I zoomed back to the living room and planted myself in front of the answering machine, hoarding every syllable.

  “Zephyr.” His gravelly voice cracked. “Hey, Zeph, it’s me. Gregory. Uh … I’m coming to town.” I closed my eyes against the wave of longing that threatened to overpower me. “Okay, actually, I’m already—I’m already in town.” A long pause, during which I tried to regain control over my breathing. “Stupidly, stupidly, I’m at Bar Six. Okay? I’m around the corner, sitting in Bar Six, just sort of hoping you’ll walk by—”

  I never heard the end of the message. I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my keys and wallet, and was out the door in ten seconds, where I was greeted with a concerned look by Zoltan, our new super—a short, fastidious poet who had dropped out of refrigeration school. My parents were building a dubious tradition of hiring dropouts of every ilk as superintendents.

  “Hello …,” he said, his eyes wide in surprise.

  I nodded and tore down the stairs from the landing we shared to the front door.

  “Zephyr!” he called after me, Hungarian lilt beautifully coloring my name.

  “What?” I said, irritated by the millisecond delay.

  “Are you sure … do you mean to …?”

  “WHAT?”

  “You have no shirt on.”

  * * *

  Figuring in for vacations and leaving town for college and a year of med school, I’d probably covered this stretch of 12th Street between Seventh and Sixth Avenues well over three thousand times since the age of five. That night, though, charging toward Gregory, the block looked unfamiliar. Had there always been an awning over the hospital entrance? Had the James Beard Society really never had a stoop? When had the owners of 153 planted a pear tree in their front yard? Who knew pear trees could grow in the West Village? A tree grows in Manhattan, I thought wildly.

  I declined the offer of a pamphlet from a man wearing a sandwich board advertising eyebrow threading and turned onto Sixth Avenue. Bar Six loomed in the near distance, its outdoor brass-topped tables pulsing with the promise of heightened, extravagant emotion. Not unlike the way the Magic Kingdom beckons to the under-twelve set.

  I pulled open the door.

  “Zephyr!” Gregory’s voice rose above the din; the place was hot and crowded, even on a Monday night. I had hoped to see him first, but he wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he’d been watching the door as intently as a driver searching for a parking spot. Gregory often ignored social norms, a trait that had required regular deciphering and Sterling Girl analysis at the beginning of our relationship.

  I started to throw my arms out and race to him but caught myself and instead wound up awkwardly lurching and pretending to scratch my neck. He was perched on a bar stool, and even in the dim light I could see tension radiating from every gangly limb. Would we hug? Could I push the mop of chestnut hair off his forehead, stroke his sharp cheekbones, entwine my fingers in his?

  For the umpteenth time that day, that week, that month, I nearly buckled under the impossibility of our situation. Neither of us, as far as I knew, had fallen out of love. When we were together, I’d only grown happier with him, and it seemed the feeling was mutual. There was only that single, cosmically huge sticking point. Was he back because he’d changed his mind? Decided I was more important to him than some unknown child?

  “Why are you here?” I wailed, three months of barely restrained longing bursting forth. Our faces were inches apart.

  He looked stricken. “What—”

  “I mean …” I half-whacked him on the arm in a bizarre, man-to-man gesture. “Hi.”

  He shook his head. “Hi,” he said quietly, letting a slow smile spread across his face. It was the same smile with which I first fell in love, and it took more self-control than I knew I possessed to keep from crying at the sight of it.

  I slid onto the stool beside his, surreptitiously glancing down to confirm that I was, after my hasty initial departure from my apartment, fully clothed and shod.

  “I’m at a loss,” I finally said. “This is … I don’t know what this is. Why are you here?”

  “Here in New York or here in the neighborhood?” He studied the wineglass in front of him, placing his palms on either side of the stem.

  “Both.”

  “Are you sorry I’m here?” His voice cracked and so did my heart.

  “You dummy,” I said, watching him watch his drink. “What do you think?”

  “What can I getcha?” The bartender hovered in front of me, broadcasting a fair-weather friendliness that was conditional upon an expensive order and commensurate tip.

  “A glass of merlot?” I asked timidly, even though all I wanted was juice. “And ice water.”

  “You got it!” he singsonged, and darted away.

  “You caved.” Gregory grinned shyly at me.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  “It’s really good to see you.”

  I nodded again.

  “Really good.”

  “Gregory.” I lingered over his name, warm and spicy in my mouth.

  He took a deep breath and suddenly I realized he was here to tell me he’d met a belle in Alabama and was headed to a chuppah made of hickory. No, he was already married. And he’d called because he realized he’d made a grave mistake. Oh, it would be complicated, sticky, but I’d take him back. I’d help him get an annulment, suffer through court hearings and property disputes, prepare for a mint julep or two to be tossed in my face.

  Or he was dying. He had only a few months to live and he’d come back to get treatment and be with me. An ugly thought arose that I tamped down before it was fully formed but not before it registered: Impending death wo
uld instantly wipe out our hurdles. We’d have a blissful few months or years together, unhampered by irreconcilable long-term differences. I shook my head, disgusted by what my brain could come up with unchecked.

  “I’m moving back,” he said.

  “Are you sick?” I cried out.

  He shook his head, familiar with my diesel trains of thought.

  “I’m moving back because I hate my parents and I hate Alabama and I love New York and I miss my job and …”

  I held my breath, hoping.

  “Well, obviously, Zeph, I miss you and I love you, but … that wasn’t our problem, was it?”

  I exhaled shakily. This was most unsatisfying and inconclusive.

  “You knew you hated your parents and Alabama when you left,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, well.” He took a sip of his wine. “You didn’t leave me a lot of choice.”

  “Heeeere we go!” sang the waiter, setting down my drinks with a flourish before bustling away.

  Without looking at me, Gregory tapped his wineglass to mine.

  “Are we toasting something?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep sarcasm out of my voice.

  “I’m just. Happy to see you again,” he said simply. “But I already said that.”

  I took a sip of wine to hide the irrational, useless pleasure that flooded out of my belly and warmed my fingers and toes.

  “The chief said I could end my leave early and come back next week. I found a sublet in Boerum Hill. One of the guys, his niece eloped to Sicily and isn’t coming back. He gave me a good deal.”

  He was coming back to New York. He was coming back and we wouldn’t be living together. He was coming back and he’d committed an act of real estate without consulting me. It had been sinking in for months that our relationship was over, but this cemented it, even as I could detect whiffs of a potential if unwise resurrection.

  “I had visions, fantasies, of coming home,” he continued. “To New York, I mean. Other guys fantasize about …” He paused and frowned. He probably really didn’t know what lighted the libidos of his brethren. “I don’t know. Big boobs? Lap dances?” He shook off his mental detour. “Anyway, I … I’d lie awake in that stupid narrow bed in that stupid chintz-infested room with my judgmental, hypocritical parents in the next room and think about, I don’t know, sitting next to you at one of Mercedes’s concerts or watching you and your dad cheat at cards on Wednesday nights or standing at the cheese counter of Fairway with you, comparing Gouda varieties.” He shook his head, then drained his glass.