Evan Hunter: Candyland

There are only two women sitting at the bar.

He wonders if either of them is a hooker,

He has met hookers who tell you they assemble Ancient Sumerian artifacts at the local museum, hookers who say they sell real estate, hookers who claim they are here for the Philatelic Convention, hookers who look like kindergarten teachers from North Dakota. It is sometimes enormously difficult to distinguish a working girl from a so-called respectable woman. Actually, he never knows for sure until it gets down to the wire. Until the essential question comes from either him or her.

He looks at his watch.

There is time.

He doesn't have to leave for the airport till six-thirty in the morning. There is time to savor his second drink tonight, and listen to the conversational hum, the spongy sound of cocktail lounge music, the rattle of cutlery in the adjacent dining room, where he may or may not be having dinner, if he has dinner at all tonight.

The woman sitting closest to him, a stool separating them, seems an unlikely candidate for a hooker, but he has been wrong before, and often. She looks to be in her late thirties, dressed to the nines, a possible sign that she's on the prowl, but then again she may be a Park Avenue divorcée who dresses for dinner and visits a different restaurant every night, stopping at various hotel bars for a drink beforehand. She is elegantly dressed in a gray tailored suit with a pink silk blouse, ruby and gold cufflinks showing at the wrists. She is smoking a cigarette and drinking what appears to be a Manhattan, a slice of orange and a maraschino cherry still floating in it.

She seems distressed about something. Sorrowful somehow. Taking occasional long drags of the cigarette, peering into her glass, seemingly unaware of anyone or anything around her. Sometimes they put on that act, to encourage conversation. Is anything wrong? you're supposed to ask. You seem sad, you're supposed to say. Oh, no, she'll answer, my mother just died five minutes ago, that's all. And one thing will lead to another until the essential question is asked by one or the other of you. He has asked and been asked the essential question many times in many different hotel bars.

The other woman at the bar tonight is sitting at the far end, closer to the service bar. She is a redhead in her mid twenties, he guesses. She seems to know the bartender. At least, she is in occasional conversation with him, checking her watch every few minutes, as if she is expecting someone who's late. They sometimes do this. They'll sit at the bar, becoming more and more concerned when a phantom date doesn't arrive, making nervous chatter with the bartender because they're presumably embarrassed sitting here alone at a bar. You're supposed to make some comment about signals getting crossed, he probably went to the Plaza instead of the Peninsula or wherever, and she'll immediately correct the impression that she's waiting for a man, this is her girlfriend who works at the same bank she works at, over on Whatever Street, she's worried something might have happened to her.

She'll finally leave the bar to make a phone call, giving you an opportunity to look her over top to bottom and when she comes back she'll tell you Wouldn't you know it, her girlfriend's baby came down with double pneumonia, and she had to get the doctor, and there goes her dinner date, oh well. At this point, you're supposed to ask her if she'd like to join you for dinner, seeing as you're all alone in a big strange city and A. Or else you simply ask the essential question. Or wait for her to ask the essential question. Which, if she's a hooker, she will eventually ask unless she thinks you're a hotel detective or somebody on the Vice Squad. Some of them will ask you straight out if you're a cop. That's the prelude to the essential question. Once she asks you if you're a cop, she's upstairs in your bed.

The redhead sitting there looking at her watch is dressed in a simple black dress, no jewelry except the watch, which is gold and expensive looking. High-heeled black pumps, hair falling loose and sleek, she turns to glance toward the entrance door, her eyes grazing him in passing. If he were a betting man, he would put his money on her as the professional. In fact, the lady in the gray suit and pink blouse is already paying her check and preparing to leave, putting her cigarettes and lighter in her handbag, pushing her stool back — display of long legs as she does so — same sad look on her face, not a glance at anyone in the room as she moves away from the bar. She is either off to a costly dinner alone at Le Cirque, or — if she's a pro — she's decided there's nothing here for her and is moving on to another venue. If he'd been interested — he should have indicated at least some regard for her obvious sorrow, the poor woman's mother so freshly deceased and all. You choose or you lose is the name of the game at these hotel bars, and the lady in the pink blouse — if she's a pro — has obviously decided that he's already chosen the redhead and so she is now on her way to greener pastures, fuck you, mister.

The redhead has obviously reached the same conclusion: she herself is the chosen morsel from tonight's menu of hors doeuvres, no pun intended. The next time she turns to check the door for her girlfriend who is now so terribly tardy, she initiates the action, making eye contact and tossing a slight shrug in his direction. The shrug seems to say I really don't know what's wrong, do you? Where can she possibly be, do you think it's the rain that's keeping her, it doesn't look all that bad to me, does it to you? All of this in the simple shrug and the helpless eyes and the little girl moue. All of it saying Why don't you move over here, Big Boy, where we can discuss this?

He shrugs back.

She smiles.

Quite a dazzling smile.

Or…

She is probably waiting for her husband, who just flew in from Chicago. Ben hopes not. But that's it, of course. Her husband is right this minute rushing from La Guardia in a taxi, on his way to the hotel where he's supposed to meet her here in the bar because they have an eight o'clock dinner date.

He hesitates only a moment longer.

Then he picks up his drink, walks toward her…

She is still smiling.

… and sits on the stool next to hers.

"It must be the weather," he says.

"What do you mean?" she says.

He thinks at once he's made a mistake. She will signal to the bartender and complain that this man is making unwanted advances. But she is still smiling.

"I thought you might be waiting for someone. ”

"No.”

"… and the weather. ”

"No, I'm not. But thanks for your concern," she says, and flashes a quick appraising look before turning back to her drink.

He supposes that Grace would find what he's about to do quite disgusting. Is already doing, in fact, since the game has been afoot since the moment the girl made eye contact. Well, since long before then, actually. Afoot since he first decided how he would be spending this night alone in New York City. Afoot, in fact, since the very first time he'd ever placed his hand on a strange woman's silken thigh in a hotel lounge, on an airplane, at a dinner party, anywhere, everywhere, afoot for a long, long time now, my dear Watson.

If only you knew how much there is to be disgusted about, Grace. If only you knew that an hour from now, a half-hour from now, ten minutes from now, I may very well be eating this young girl's pussy, would you then ask me if I'd used your goddamn sacrosanct towel or toothbrush? I mean, really, Grace, if a woman won't let you use her toothbrush, how can she even entertain the notion of sucking your cock? Think about it, Grace. If you ever think about such things.

"Isn't it awful what happened?" the redhead asks, turning to him again.