Siegel, James - Derailed

The Fairfax Hotel.

Flanked by a Korean deli on one side and a woman’s health center on the other. Kind of dingy, yes, but wasn’t that the kind of hotel made for these things?

And she’d said, Fine, yes, that one looks fine.

And they’d made a date.

The train ride into Penn Station.

Both of them were surprisingly quiet, he thought, like boxers before the biggest bout of their lives.

He spent most of the time counting the minutes between stations: Merrick to Freeport to Baldwin to Rockville Centre. Under the darkness of the East River, she grabbed for his hand and locked fingers. They felt ice cold, as if all the blood had rushed out of them, frozen with. . . what? Guilt? Shame? Fear?

There was something nonspontaneous about all of this. Before, they’d been sort of fumbling around in the dark, but now it was all coolly premeditated. On the walk to the taxi stand, she leaned against him not so much from desire as from inertia, he thought. As if he were dragging her there — lugging dead weight up the escalator and through the entranceway.

He understood. It was one thing to make out in a car and another thing to check into a hotel with the intention of having sex.

The inside of the Fairfax Hotel looked pretty much the way the outside looked — shabby and faded and just this side of destitute. The lobby smelled of camphor.

When they walked up to the desk, he could feel Lucinda’s white-knuckled grip somewhere up by his throat. He told the deskman that he’d be paying in cash and was given a key to room 1207.

They rode the elevator up in silence.

When the doors opened on twelve, he said, “Ladies first.”

And Lucinda said, “Age before beauty.”

So they walked out together. The floor was in need of a few more light bulbs, he thought, since the only light seemed to be coming from a half-draped window to the left of the elevator. The carpet smelled of mildew and tobacco.

Room 1207 was way down at the end of the hall where it was darkest, and Charles needed to squint just to make out the numbers on the door.

This is what they got for ninety-five dollars in New York City: a room smelling of disinfectant, with one queen-size bed, one lopsided table lamp, and one table, all pretty much within two feet of one another.

A room that was virtually equatorial — with no discernible thermostat to help.

There was a white paper sash encircling the toilet lid. Charles did the honors; he had to go the moment he entered the room. Nerves.

When he came out of the bathroom, Lucinda was sitting on the bed, playing with the TV clicker. Nothing was actually appearing on the TV screen.

“I think you have to pay extra,” she said.

“Do you want to . . . ?”

“No.”

There was an awkward politeness to their mannerisms, he thought, as if they were a couple on a blind date. Jitters masked as solicitude.

“Why don’t you sit down, Charles?” she said.

“Fine.” He sat in the chair.

“I meant here. ”

“Oh. Right.” He slipped off his coat and hung it up in the closet next to hers. Then he walked over to the bed — a very short walk given the dimensions of the room — and sat down.

I shouldn’t be here. I should get up and leave. I should . . .

But she laid her head on his shoulder and said: “So. We’re here.”

“Yes.” He was sweating right through his shirt.

“Okay.” She sighed. “Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“ Yes? Which is it?”

“Stay. Or go. What do you want to do?”

“Fuck you,” she said. “I think I want to fuck you.”

It happened when they were ready to leave.

They’d dressed quietly, and Charles had searched the room to make sure they hadn’t left anything.

Then they’d walked to the door.

He opened it to usher her out. She moved past him, and he could smell the perfume she’d just dabbed on in the bathroom. Then he smelled something else.

There were two of them standing there — Lucinda and him, and then suddenly there were three.

He was knocked backward onto the floor.

He was kicked in the ribs, then kicked in the stomach as the air was forced out of him. Lucinda was thrown on top of him, then not on top of him, then she was lying there beside him.

The door slammed. The lock turned.

There were two of them, and then there were three.

“Make one fucking sound and I’ll blow your heads off,” the one who wasn’t either Lucinda or himself said.

A man with a gun — Charles could see him, could see the gun, too, something stunted looking and oily black. He was panting, as if he’d just run a long distance to get there.

“I’ll give you all my money,” Charles said. “You can have it.”

“What?” The man was black but Hispanic, Charles thought, a kind of accent, anyway. "What the fuck d’you say?”

“My money — it’s yours.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up.” He kicked him again, not in the ribs this time, but lower down. Charles groaned.

“Please,” Lucinda said in a trembling little girl’s voice, a voice that didn’t seem capable of coming out of a grown woman. “Please . . . don’t hurt us. . . .”

“Don’t hurt us," the man said, mimicking her, taking pleasure in making fun. Of her fear. That little-girl voice . . . like she was going to cry or something. “Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt you, baby . . . uh-uh. . . . Now throw me your fucking wallets.”

Charles reached for his pocket, through the folds of his down jacket saturated with sweat — reached in and grabbed his wallet with a shaking hand.

This only happens in movies. This only happens on the front pages. This only happens to someone else.

He threw his wallet to the man with the gun. Lucinda was fumbling inside her pocketbook, looking for hers, the one with the picture of a five-year-old girl on a swing somewhere in the country. Somewhere other than here — the threadbare floor of room 1207 in the Fairfax Hotel.

By the time she threw him her wallet, he was already looking through Charles’s, pulling the cash out of it — quite a bit of cash, too, the cash Charles was going to use to pay for the room. But after the man took the cash, he kept looking at the wallet — grinning at something.

“Well, look at this,” he said.

He was looking at Charles’s pictures — Anna and Deanna and him. The Schine family.

“Funny,” he said. “That don’t look like you . . .” talking to Lucinda. “That sure as shit don’t look like you.”

Back to Charles. “That don’t look anything like her, Charles. ” Smirking at them.

Then, looking through her wallet and finding a picture of hers. “Ain’t that something,” he said. “ This guy don’t look like you, Charles. Uh-uh. This guy ain't you, Charles.”

He snorted, laughed, giggled; he’d figured something out.

“Let’s see here. Know what I think? Hey” — he kicked Charles again, not as hard this time, but hard enough — “I said, Know what I think?”

Charles said, “What?”

“ What? What? I think you guys are fucking around with each other. Stepping out on the old lady, huh, Charles? Getting some strange, my man. That what you doing, Charles? ”

Charles said, “Please, just take my money.”

“ Just take your money? Just take your money? Thanks, but I already took your fucking money. See”—holding the cash out to him—“this is your money. I got your fucking money.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I see. I promise we won’t go to the police.”