Dan Fante - Spitting Off Tall Buildings

Miss Hot-shit did not stop or turn her head from tugging at Bobo, she mumbled something condescending like ‘Oh, hello,’ or ‘How nice,’ then continued across the faded yellow tulips patterned into the lobby carpet. To me the communiqué was clear; she had no time for hotel flunkeys.

After Tonya was up the steps and down the hall Shi rocked forward on his elbows, picking up a pencil, and relapsed into his mumble. ‘Rather amazing, isn’t she?’ he hissed.

I nodded but I didn’t mean it. He wasn’t looking anyway. His expression was elsewhere.

Everything changed. He only wanted to talk about Tonya. I was filled in on every fucking detail of the half-conversations and asinine bits of moron shit that had transpired between the two of them. Not even Jesus Christ himself, nails in his hands and feet, strapped to the post with chicken wire and duct tape, would have given a rat’s dick about such nonsense.

My gut built to the point where it was beginning to knot and cramp and I felt a terrible need to punch Shi’s face again and again.

To escape the insanity, I lied and said that I needed a bathroom break, hoping maybe my leaving and coming back might derail this imbecile cocksucker’s brain and get us on some other subject.

When I was down the steps to my apartment I locked the door behind me, smoked half a cigarette, pissed, then took a long pull at the vodka jug I’d stored in the freezer.

But I was a fool. The minute I returned to the desk it started again. ‘You know,’ he began, as if I’d never gone anywhere, glassy-eyed, ‘her first week here she left two pairs of her panties in the dryer. I knew they were hers because I saw her going up and down the stairs to the laundry room. I folded the panties and brought them back up to her apartment. After I knocked on the door and she knew it was me, she opened up and recognized her personal garments in my hand. You should have seen her expression.’

My gut was back in a worse knot than before. My brain screaming at me for the immediate death of this mad nigger.

‘Another time,’ Shi snickered, ‘she clogged the toilet in her apartment with too many paper towels – it might have been Kotex – I had to use the big plunger from the maintenance closet on the second floor. Then a snake…’

My mind’s command was clear; it told me to remove the dullest pencil from the pen and pencil holder cup in front of us on the counter and plunge it deep into the side of this fucker’s neck, watch arterial spurts gush out onto the panelled walls and the flowered carpet until his lips went ashen and he was completely dead and his body no longer quivered.

I stopped him. Interrupted. I said that I’d forgotten something in my apartment, then excused myself.

Back down at my refrigerator, between gulps of air, I hammered more long hits at the vodka jug until finally I felt the click. Before going back up, I squeezed a wad of toothpaste into my mouth from the bathroom cabinet.

‘Another time,’ Shi went on through his moving lips, ‘she saw a man. You know, nobody, a guy in an army jacket…’ I nodded. I didn’t give a fuck anymore…‘Tonya’s funny. She gets paranoid sometimes – about guys. She thought he’d followed her up from the subway stop at Lexington Avenue. It happens – she thinks that men follow her.

‘She’s standing there in the lobby, shaking-like. Afraid…So what did I do? The guy’s still out there, you know…so I close the grate on the front desk and go outside under the awning by the curb and inform this individual lingering there, whatever, actin’ like he’s waitin’ to use the pay phone – runnin’ some kinda pervert game – I look him in his face and I say, “Hey, my man, I don’t know you or your deal but, you’re loitering in front of my hotel, you know? So take a fuckin’ walk.” Then I push my finger up in his chest a few times to make my point, you know. So the guy leaves and moves on down the block, you know. I’ve spooked him. Okay, sure, he’s sayin’ shit as he goes, like “Fuck you” and that but, he’s spooked…

‘Anyway, I’m back inside and Tonya gives me this look. This big wet smile with those cat’s eyes of hers. Man, you know. We really connected. Know what I’m sayin’?’

I nodded ‘Yes’ again. A broad smile because now I was buzzed and couldn’t give a shit even if there was a nuclear war.

Shi wanted to know if I’d noticed Tonya’s moles, above the ‘V’ at the top of her breasts. There were two. I hadn’t but I nodded again and smiled again.

‘From then on I knew,’ Shi said. ‘From that day on.’

‘Knew what?’ I asked, drawing a thicker and thicker circle around the dark ‘X’ I’d made on the message pad in front of me. ‘Knew what, Shi?’

‘C’mon man. Vibes. You know.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Course Mister Mistofsky’s got his rules. A policy about never fraternizing with a hotel guest.’

He reached under the desk and produced a gray loose-leaf hotel manual, flipping it open to a tab where there were two pages of numbered employee procedures and policies. ‘See,’ he said, ‘Mister Jeffrey M’s got a directive for everything.’ He thumped the plastic page with his finger. ‘Frankly, personally, I regard most of this as over-management. You know, excessive.’

I nodded. I knew excessive.

Later on we did a walk-around of the hotel. The building had only four stories. There was no elevator.

Shi showed me the laundry facilities and the roof sundeck. We went from floor to floor with him unlocking doors and pointing out the differences in amenities in the remodeled rooms. Some had newer carpeting. Each had a toaster oven, a small refrigerator, a color TV, and Hawaiian-type pastel bedspreads featuring exotic, stupid flowers.

Room number 316/318 was next to one of the hall toilets. ‘Remember who lives here?’ he asked, unable to contain himself, as we passed Tonya Von Hachten’s apartment.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Blanche-fuckin’-Dubois?’

The beginning of the end for me started the night before my scheduled first day off which was Sunday. My stuff had been in and unpacked and, except for a couple of times when the phone had rung past twelve, there had been no late-evening activity in the hotel to disturb me. Zero check-ins. No problems.

Shi was staying the four hours after his shift every day from five to nine, to train me, help me get used to the desk and the credit card machine and the manual accountingentry system.

If a steady month-to-month tenant came in through the front door, he’d introduce me.

My daily habit was to have a few beers with dinner after he left and after I closed the desk. Nothing heavy, just enough to take the bumps out of the road.

That night, because I was about to complete my first week, I decided to celebrate. I sat up, well past midnight, working on my play, finishing the second act, drinking gin with ice and grapefruit juice.

At one forty-five Ms. Von Hachten showed up outside my manager’s apartment and began pressing the night buzzer on the front desk. She was a resident so I knew that she knew that the hotel was officially closed. A big sign read, ‘EMERGENCIES ONLY AFTER NINE P.M.’ I watched through the distortion of my peephole for over a minute as she continued buzzing, hoping maybe she’d fuck off and disappear. Finally, having no other option, I unlocked the door.

She had on a silky robe with matching slippers, coordinated shades of green. To me, everything she wore announced, ‘lick me, fuck me.’

I was still wearing my tie.

‘Hello Miss Von Hachten,’ I said, flicking the front desk lights on, measuring the words, wanting to sound unintoxicated. ‘Can I help you with something?’

She was way higher than me. Blasted on booze but something else too. As soon as I saw her eyes I knew. ‘No,’ she slurred, ‘you can’t. I need to talk to Shi. Where is he?’