Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House - A Romance

“How tall do you think?” James asked.

“Well, I say, seven feet at the most. Louise says you’re at least seven five.”

I laughed. “What do you stand to win if you’re right?”

He looked delighted; clearly he thought he was victorious. “We haven’t negotiated yet.”

“What kind of betting is that?” I asked. “Go back and decide, then we’ll tell you whether you win.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “ ‘Fess up. Whatever she has to pay, she deserves it.”

I leaned back to locate his friend. Across the room a woman in a green dress and red eyeglasses smiled embarrassedly, then waved.

James smiled at the man, then at me. “Sound fair to you?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“So?” the man said. “Who’s right?”

“Louise,” James answered.

“Damn,” said the man. He leaned against the nearest ivied pillar. “How tall?”

“Eight six,” said James.

The man looked at me.

“It’s true,” I told him. “Don’t feel bad. Don’t begrudge Louise. Remember: something she deserves.”

He was looking across the dining room then, and he turned his palms to the ceiling, as if to say, what can I do? you’re right again . Then he blew her a kiss. “No,” he said. “I never begrudge her anything.” He looked at us. “Are you two married?”

“No,” I said, surprised. “Just friends.”

“No, not to each other, or not at all?”

“Neither one of us,” I said.

“Son,” he said to James. “Quit dilly-dallying. Women only wait around so long.” He turned to me. “How long you been waiting on him?”

“No comment,” I said.

“Roses,” said the man to James. “Love poems. Write your own, don’t copy ’em out of a book. What do you do?”

“I’m a performer,” said James.

“Ah. And you?”

“Librarian.”

“Okay,” said the man. “Son, all you have to do is figure out what rhymes with Dewey Decimal.”

I burst out laughing.

“I’m serious.”

“How long has Louise been waiting on you?” asked James.

The man looked at his watch. “Since the twelve o’clock train from New Haven,” he said. “And I think she’s getting impatient. Good to meet you both. You make a handsome couple.”

“He was drunk,” James said when the man was gone. But he didn’t look mad.

I poured myself another glass of champagne. “Oh dear,” I said as the bottle slipped out of my hand and splashed into the wine bucket. “Maybe we have that in common.”

“You’re drunk?” James asked. He grinned at me.

I stopped to consider the question. In other company I wouldn’t have owned up. “Tipsy,” I said.

“We’ll have to get the bellhop to carry you up in the chair.”

I leaned on the table with my elbows. “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” I said. “Unless I fall asleep.”

“You’re right,” said James, “I could take this life for a while.” His plate was beaded with juice from his lamb chops.

“Tomorrow will be a big day,” I said. I looked at my watch. It was already ten o’clock. “We should think about sleep.”

“Let’s eat dessert first. Let’s take the hotel for everything they’ve got.”

“Deal,” I said.

After dessert and coffee — after I had, in fact, consumed my cut of the champagne and James’s — we got up to leave. I didn’t feel drunk except when I tried to speak, and then only because I had thoughts that did not arrive at my mouth intact.

“You are drunk,” James said fondly.

I shook my head, then shrugged.

We stepped onto the plush carpet of the lobby. I was glad for the cushioning; it felt less precarious than the parquet of the dining room.

We went to our separate rooms. I immediately washed my face and felt a little more clearheaded. Part of me knew it would be a good idea to change into my nightgown, but I felt suddenly too exhausted. After a minute I heard a knock, and I realized it came from the door that led from my room to James’s. I went to it.

“Here you go, Peggy,” he said. He handed me a folded piece of hotel stationery. “Good night. See you in the morning.” He closed his door, and I closed mine.

The stationery said:

Love Poem for a Librarian

Although her love for me is infinitesimal ,

Her eyes are as Dewey as any old decimal .

I lay awake for what seemed like hours but was probably minutes, repeating those two lines in my head. Sometimes I could not quite get the meter right; sometimes the syllables all fell into place exactly. James was on the other side of the door. I strained to hear what he was doing — pushing aside the drapes to look out, turning down the sheets of his bed, maybe untucking his shirt before taking it off. I thought I could hear the brush of fabric against fabric that might have been any of these things. Life should be like this always, I thought again, and in my drunken state I wondered how I could make it possible. There has to be some way, I thought. Then I fell asleep.

“Clear day,” Pat Anderson said at ten-thirty the next morning, when he met us in the hotel lobby. There was a crowd around James, reporters and gawkers, asking questions. One man in an awful plaid jacket shook James’s hand again and again. “Perfect Empire State Building weather!” Pat said. “Who knows — maybe we’ll go out to the Statue of Liberty.”

“We can’t get to the top of that,” I said.

“No, but good pictures there anyhow.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll go flag the taxi. You flag Jim.”

James was reluctant to leave the crowd. The plaid man was still shaking his hand, then pulled out a business card. I saw that he was the drunk man from the dining room.

“Nice people,” James said absentmindedly, pocketing the card. “Wow. What’s today?”

“Tuesday. Empire State Building Day. Remember to tell me when you get tired. No point in wearing yourself out first thing.”

“No,” said James. He climbed into the back of the taxi.

“You already sound tired. Are you up for this? Maybe you need to rest.”

“No,” he said. “I’m in New York. I guess I should be allowed to do a little sightseeing.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I just—”

“Peggy,” he said, “you’re not my mother, and I’m over eighteen, and I can tell when I’m tired.” He looked at me. “I promise.” You would have thought he was the one with the hangover. I didn’t feel sick, exactly, just dried out and slow-witted.

The Empire State Building’s lobby was big enough that had he stood in it alone, James would have looked quite in scale. A pack of reporters trailed us, from the daily papers, from the newsmagazines. A man in a derby, who said he’d once been mayor of New York, shook James’s hand.

“The only thing that rivals you is this building,” he said.

We couldn’t avoid the elevator, of course, but it went so fast — so alarmingly fast! — that James didn’t have to crick his neck for long. Then we stepped out.

James immediately went to the observation deck. The ex-mayor followed him. “Winds are thirty miles,” he said, and as I stepped outside, I could feel it. I hadn’t imagined it windy up here; I thought for sure we’d left all the weather on the street. The ex-mayor took off his hat, put it back on, and clamped his hand down on its crown. Photographers took pictures of the three of us.

“Well, Jim,” he said, “New York isn’t such a big place when you look down on it, is it?”

“It’s a pretty good size,” James said.

Reporters wrote this down.

“You keep growing the way you do,” the ex-mayor said, “and you’ll be able to get up here without using the stairs or elevator.”