T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

He was feeling no pain as he followed Steve up the steps of the hotel and into the darkened lobby. Two doormen — studiously hip, mid-thirties, with phone plugs in their ears and cords trailing away beneath their collars — swung back the doors on a big spreading space with low ceilings, concrete pillars and a cluster of aluminum and leather couches arranged in a grid against the wall on the right. People — various scenesters, mostly dressed in black — lounged on the couches, trying their best to look as if they belonged. Beyond them, the pool area opened up to the yellow night sky and the infinite lights of the city below. A minute later he and Steve were crowding in at the pool bar — glasses that weren’t glass but plastic, a rattle of ice cubes, scotch and soda — while the music infected them and the pool sucked and fell in an explosion of dancing blue light. Girls, as promised. And swimming like otters. “Pretty cool, huh?” Steve was saying.

He nodded, just taking in the scene, thinking nothing at this point, his mind sailing free the way it did when somebody else’s dogs were fighting and he had no betting interest in the outcome. Suddenly he felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over him — or was it boredom? After a moment he excused himself to find his way to the men’s, and that was when the whole world shifted on him.

Right in the lobby, set right there in the wall above the long curving sweep of the check-in desk, was a lit-up glass cubicle, maybe eight feet long, four high, with a mattress and pillow and a pale pink duvet turned back on itself — how could he have missed it on the way in? It was like the window of a furniture store, or no, a stage set, because there was a girl inside, propped up against the back wall as if she were in her own bedroom. She was wearing pajamas — nothing overt like a teddy or anything like that — just pajamas, button-up top and draw-string bottoms rolled up at the ankles. She had a cell phone stuck to one ear and a book open in her lap. Her hair was dark and long, brushed out as if for bed — a brunette, definitely a brunette — and her feet were bare and pressed to the glass so you could see the pale flesh of her soles. That was what got him, that was what had him standing there in the middle of the lobby as if he’d been nailed to the floor: the soles of her feet, so clean and white and intimate in that darkened arena with its scenesters and hustlers and everybody else doing their best to ignore her.

“Can I help you?” The man behind the desk — big-frame glasses, skinny tie — was addressing him.

“I was”—but this was genius, wasn’t it, the hotel advertising what you could do there, in private, in a room, if you had a girl like that? — “just looking for the men’s…”

“Down the hall to your right.”

He should have moved on, but he didn’t, he couldn’t. The guy behind the desk was studying him still — he could feel his eyes on him — probably a heartbeat away from informing him that he couldn’t stand there blocking traffic all night and another heartbeat away from calling security. “Does she have a name?” Royce murmured, his voice caught low in his throat.

“Chelsea.”

“Does she—?”

The man shook his head. “No.”

When Steve finally came looking for him, he was squeezed in at the end of one of the couches in the dark, just watching her. At first, she’d seemed static, almost like a mannequin, but that wasn’t the case at all — she blinked her eyes, flipped the hair out of her face, turned the pages of her book with a flick of enameled nails, each gesture magnified out of all proportion. And then, thrillingly, she shifted position, stretching like a cat, one muscle at a time, before flexing her arms and abdomen and pushing herself up into the lotus position, her feet tucked under her, the book in her lap and the cell cupped to one ear. He wondered if she was really talking to anybody — a boyfriend, a husband — or if it was just part of the act. Did she eat in there? Take bathroom breaks? Brush her teeth? Floss?

“Hey, man, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Steve said, emerging from the shadows with the dregs of a drink in one hand and all trace of his grin gone. “What are you doing? You know what time it is?”

He didn’t. He just shook his head in a slow absent way as if he were waking from a deep sleep, and then they were down the steps and out on the street, the cars crawling past in a continuous illuminated loop and a sliver moon caught like a hook in the jaws of the yellow sky. The cell in his left front pocket began to vibrate. It was Joey. “What’s up, big guy?” he said without breaking stride. “Shouldn’t you be asleep? Like long asleep?”

The voice was soft, remote. “It’s the Lab.”

“What about her?”

“She’s crying. I can hear her all the way from my bedroom.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks for telling me — really — but don’t you worry about it. You just get to sleep, hear me?”

Even softer: “Okay.”

He wanted to add that they’d work the dogs in the morning, that they’d devote the whole morning to them because there was a match next weekend and if Joey was good he was going to bring him along, first time ever, because he was old enough now to see what it was all about and why they had to put so much time into training Zoltan and Zeus the way they did, baiting them and watching their diet and their weight and all the rest of it, but Joey had broken the connection.

—

Most of them were creeps, pure and simple — either that or old men who stood there gaping at her when they checked in with their shrink-wrapped wives — and she never had anything to do with any of them, no matter if they sent her ten-page letters and roses and fancy candy assortments, the latter of which she just gave to the maids in any case because sweets went straight to her hips and thighs. In fact, it was against the rules to make eye contact — Leonard, the manager, would jump down your throat if you even glanced up at somebody because that was like violating the fourth wall of the stage. This is theater, he kept telling her, and you’re an actress. Just keep that in mind. Right. The only thing was, she didn’t want to be an actress, unlike ninety-nine percent of the other girls clawing their way through the shops and bars and clubs seven days a week — she was two years out of college, waitressing mornings in a coffee shop and doing four nights a week here, representing some sort of adolescent wet dream while saving her money and studying for her LSATs.

Was it demeaning? Was it stupid? Yes, of course it was, but her mother had danced topless in a cage during hippie times — and that was in a bar where people could hoot and throw things and shout out every sleazy proposition known to humankind. She wasn’t an actress. Anybody could be an actress. She was going to go into immigration law, help give voice to people who didn’t have a say for themselves, do something with her life — and if using her looks to get her there, to get paid to study, was part of the deal, then that was fine with her.

So she was in her cubicle, embracing the concept of the fourth wall and trying to make sense of the logical reasoning questions TestMasters threw at her, good to go sometimes for an hour or more without even looking up, but she wasn’t blind. The scene drifted past her as if she were underwater, in a submarine, watching all the strange sea creatures interact, snatch at each other, pair up, stumble, glide, fade into the depths, and her expression never changed. She recognized people from time to time, of course she did, but she never let on. Matt Damon had been in one night, with a girl and another guy, and once, just after she clocked in, she thought she’d seen George Clooney — or the back of his head anyway — and then there were people she’d gone to college with, an older couple who were friends of her parents, even a guy she’d dated in high school. Basically, and it wasn’t that hard, she just ignored them all.