Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

Miguel whirled like an animal, the hoe raised high.

So you see, it was the next poor bastard who got it.

She was thirty-three years old.

She was not a pretty woman, and she knew it.

The bellhop who showed her to the room in the Miami Beach hotel whistled all the way up in the elevator, whistled as he unlocked the door and stepped aside for her to enter.

“Nice room,” he said. “Best on the floor. Has a balcony overlooking the ocean. Get the cool sea breezes.” He grinned. He was no more than nineteen, a redheaded boy with a leering wisdom far beyond his years. “First time in Miami?” he asked.

“No.”

“Been here before?”

“Yes,” she said. “I come down every year.”

“Oh?” The bellhop was still grinning. “First time at this hotel?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good hotel.” He put the valises on the stand. “You’re not married, are you?”

“No,” she answered, “I’m not married.”

“Must get lonely, a pretty girl traveling all alone.”

She looked at his face, and saw the lie sitting in his eyes. She said nothing.

“If you get... uh... too lonely,” the bellhop said, his grin widening, “why, just buzz the desk. My name’s Johnny. Be happy to... uh... come up and chat or something.”

“Thank you,” she said. There were four valises. She had read somewhere that a bellhop’s services were worth twenty-five cents per bag. She never tipped more than twenty-five cents per bag and never less. She took a dollar from her purse and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said briskly, lifting his coat and stuffing the bill into his watch pocket. “Anything I can get you?”

“No, thank you.”

“If you hurry, you can still catch a swim and some sun.”

“Thank you,” she said.

At the door he repeated, “My name’s Johnny,” and then he left. Alone in the room, she began unpacking. Every year it was like this. The drive to the airport alone. The flight down alone. The cab ride to the hotel — a different one each year — alone. The unpacking. Alone.

A pretty girl traveling all alone.

His lie still rankled. She was not a pretty girl. She had discovered this a long time ago. The discovery had been painful, but she’d adjusted to it. She was not pretty. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her eyes were a faded gray, and her nose was too long, and her mouth was too thin, and her figure was put together awkwardly. She was not pretty. Nor, she supposed, was she any longer a girl. Thirty-three. And next year thirty-four. And then thirty-five. And forty.

And alone.

The room was silent except for the steady hum of the air conditioner. She unpacked her bags and then went out onto the balcony. She could see the azure of the pool nine stories below, the men and women lounging around it in deck chairs. A muted sound of voices hung over the pool area, washed by the steady roll of the ocean against the beach beyond. She could almost see the bright golden shimmer of heat on the air, could taste the wet ocean salt on her mouth.

She wondered if it would happen this time.

The bellhop suddenly seemed an ill omen. His intentions had been clear, absolutely clear. Nor would he have so obviously spoken his mind had she been a pretty woman. A pretty woman somehow generated fear and respect. A plain woman did not. A plain woman was a lonely woman, and men sensed this. Oh, not lonely for the night, no. It was never difficult to find a transitory partner for the night. She had found many such partners, ever since the first time when she’d been twenty-six — she could still remember it clearly, remember the desolation she had felt, the sudden feeling that life was slipping away too fast and that she would die a dried-up old maid. And since that time there had been many, and she knew the approaches now, the pat approaches, the bold, bald propositions: “What’s a pretty girl like you doing all alone on a night like this?” “Why don’t we have a drink in my room?” “Come on, beautiful, what do you have to lose?” She knew them all; she had heard them all.

But this time it will be different , she vowed. This time it has to be different.

Purposefully she changed to her swimsuit and took the elevator down to the pool.

Sitting alone at the bar that night, she could feel her skin tingling, and she wondered if she’d taken too much sun that afternoon. Luckily she did not turn lobster red the way some girls did. She tanned steadily and graciously, and there had been a time when she’d thought she was more attractive with a tan, but she no longer believed this. Still, she was thankful that she tanned rather than burned, and she wondered now if she had taken too much sun, wondered if she would spend a sleepless night.

She reached into her purse for a cigarette, put it between her lips, and was digging into her purse for matches when the lighter sprang into flame at the cigarette’s end.

“Allow me,” the man said.

She turned slightly on the stool. “Thank you,” she said in cool aloofness, raising one eyebrow. She sucked at the flame and then blew out a cloud of smoke and turned away from the man, back to her whiskey sour.

The man sat on the stool next to hers. He was silent for a moment and then he said, “Do you like those filter tips?”

“What?”

“The cigarette.”

“Oh. Yes, I do.”

“I never feel I’m smoking with a filter tip,” the man said.

“I don’t mind them,” she answered. “It’s a cleaner smoke, I feel.”

“I suppose so,” the man said. He ordered Scotch on the rocks from the bartender and then turned to her again. “Just check in?” he asked.

“This afternoon,” she said.

“First time in Miami?”

“No, no,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been here before.”

“Are you with your husband, or is this just a rest?”

“I’m not married,” she said.

“No?” he said. He smiled pleasantly. “My name’s Jack Bryant,” he said, extending his hand.

“Connie Davidson,” she told him, and she took his hand. His grip was firm and warm. He released her hand almost instantly.

“Treating yourself to a vacation, is that it?” he asked.

“I come down here every year at this time,” she said.

“Where are you from?”

“New York,” she answered.

“What part?”

“Are you from New York, too?”

“Yes,” he said. “Brooklyn.”

“I’m from Manhattan,” she said. “Shall I make the Brooklyn jokes?”

He grinned easily. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he grinned. He was a pleasant-looking man in his late thirties, with warm blue eyes set in a tanned, even face. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “I’m a criminal lawyer. I defend most of the people the jokes are about.”

“That must be fascinating work,” she said.

“It is. It gets a little tiring, though.”

“Are you here on business?” she asked.

“No, no. Just a rest.” He sipped at his Scotch. “What sort of work do you do?”

“I work for an advertising agency.”

“Doing what?”

“I write jingles.”

“Really? No! You mean Pepsi-Cola? Like that?”

“Well, not Pepsi-Cola. But like that.”

“Well, that’s wonderful. You know, you hear the jingles, but you never realize somebody wrote them. It must be fun.”

“It is,” she said, smiling. “But it can get tiring, too.”

He looked at her empty glass. “Would you like another drink?”

“Thank you,” she said. “I would.”

He ordered for her. They sat silently for a while, and then he said, “Here comes the band. Would you like to dance?”