Editor’s Note: The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites by Sonia Pilcer. This is the 10th installment of her tales of the Upper West Side in the 1970s. Look for it every Friday. To read the ninth installment, with links to previous ones, click here. Of this work, the author Anne Roiphe writes: “Bittersweet, funny, human and humane, a movie surely waits.”
And Sonia Pilcer notes: “Serialization, shmerialization. If you want to read THE LAST HOTEL in its entirety, go to Amazon.com. Meanwhile, we’ll be bringing you weekly serialization.”
Penthouse
Leah awoke with a start. She’d been chased by a dark-skinned man with a bleeding gash across his cheek. Who was he? She caught her breath, looked out the window. Darkness. She glanced at the clock. 8:30. AM or PM? A thick film of soot covered the single window.
Moving slowly, shifting her head from side to side, she tried to rouse her aching body. Get the blood moving inside her head. Ouch! She stretched her legs. It had been a long night. Her neck and shoulders hurt like hell. The last stretch began Friday morning. All those hours stooped over galleys, poring over each article until she thought she’d collapse at her desk.
It was the perfect job for her. Twenty hours plus overtime. Thursday, Friday, Saturday till however long it took. She had worked at Newsweek for four years, having started out as a proofreader. Now she was a copy editor. Hers were the last pair of eyes that saw the copy before it went to the printer. This week’s issue had not been put to bed till eight that morning. It was almost ten by the time Leah lay down on her bed, dead and a half.
She stretched her arms and sighed. 9:10. PM, she thought. She could fall back asleep in a snap. But if she hoped to cop anything, she’d have to get her act together. Kofi didn’t like waiting around.
Leah reached for her black sweater, slipping into its sleeves. She still felt overweight, though she was 108 lbs. It was her tits she detested. People were always staring at her boobs. She’d surgically reduce them if she had the money. She pulled down her leather pants, slung over the closet door. The black skin slithered over her skinny ass as she tucked herself in. Then she sat down on the bed and laced her black boots.
Opening the top drawer of her desk, she removed a small plastic tube and twisted the cap off. Two black beauties rolled into the palm of her hand, her black beauties: dark, shiny ovals that looked like capsules of India ink. She swallowed one with a swig from a bottle of Tab. Leah threw on her black trench, shielding her bloodshot eyes with Ray-Bans. The door locked automatically behind her.
She took the stairs to the sixth floor, then pressed for the elevator. It came immediately. Leah stepped in as the guy with his bicycle followed her. Always giving her the once over. Leah looked down. How she hated when people stared at her. Why couldn’t someone have privacy in her life?
She let him go out in front of her, peeking out from the doorway, looking in both directions. The lobby was empty. Thankfully, she didn’t see anyone she knew. Bad enough having to live at the hotel and being subject to appraisal in the elevator. She hated people nosing around her business. New York City, the biggest zoo in the world, and still she ran into people she didn’t want to see. She crossed Columbus Avenue briskly.
72nd Street buzzed, even at eleven on a weeknight. She had told Kofi to meet her at the Nickel Bar, which was just down the block from Stone Free, a boutique. It was that kind of neighborhood.
From the outside, the Nickel Bar looked like the other Irish bars in the neighborhood. Plain on the outside, with GUINNESS flashing in red neon. But it attracted a heavy trade. An interracial scene, lots of black guys hitting on white women, who often wanted exactly that – but not always. There were fights, and someone had been shot at the Nickel Bar. Besides, everyone knew its name referred to a nickel bag of dope.
Tap-A-Keg “A Hell of a Joint” on 75th and Columbus had had a shooting too. And Tweed’s, further down 72nd, West of Broadway, was the site of the Looking for Mr. Goodbar pick-up, which led to a murder, a book, and a movie too. It also led to a name change – the All-State Café. That sounded sufficiently generic. I could give a Murder and Mayhem Walking Tour of Manhattan, she thought.
It was dark inside the Nickel Bar. Leah dropped her shades on her nose to check out the scene. Hard-drinking patrons sat at the bar, covered in a cloud of smoke. She walked past them to a stool at the far end.
“What are you drinking?” asked Peggy, who’d once been a dancer with Martha Graham. She wore a long braid down her back, large silver and topaz jewelry.
“Tab with a slice of lemon.”
“Sure,” Peggy said, smoking a Newport as she squeezed the hose and filled a glass. “Here.”
She forgot the lemon, but Leah didn’t want to bother her. She was wide-hipped now, with a Down syndrome daughter.
For a few minutes, Leah stared into the mirror. The liquor bottles created a prism of colors. The opening bars of Bee Gees “More Than A Woman,” Leah spun on her stool to face the lit-up dance area, surrounded by ruby and emerald glass beads. They made a lovely tinkling sound when someone entered the magic circle. A mirrored globe slowly spun, throwing dappled light on the walls and the smooth wooden floor, which was empty.
Eyes shut, she imagined entering the magic circle. The colored beads shimmered in raindrops of light, swishing around her. Her body slinking across the dance floor, a snake woman slowly uncoiled as Barry Gibb’s falsetto ran through her veins. “How Deep Is Your Love…”
Leah felt his presence before she knew it. Startled, she opened her eyes. A fine-looking black Ras with long dreadlocks, a single glittering gold tooth set in the center of his white pearlies, sat down next to her at the bar.
“Kofi!” she cried out.
“What’s with the shade shit?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I always wear my shades,” he said. “So how ya doin’?”
“What’s happening with you?”
“Same old,” Kofi answered. “Did you hear about Cathy Jones?”
“No, what?”
“She got busted.”
“You’re kidding.” Leah dropped her voice. “How?”
“A narc,” he said. “Some long-haired prick who fucked her.”
“No shit.” She shook her head.
“She sold him two joints,” he said. “Can you believe it? How fucked-up is that?”
”Speaking of fucked up,” she whispered in his ear.
“Powda Room?”
Leah put two dollars on the bar, then made her way to the back. Closing the bathroom door behind her, she checked out her reflection. Her hair needed washing.
A light knock on the door. “Kofi?” She opened the door for him.
“Hey, babe!” he said, leaning against the sink.
“You have a nickel?”
When Kofi smiled, his gold tooth glowed like sunrise on a New York skyline. “Prices are up, babe,” he said. “My nickels are dimes.”
Kofi went into his Guatemalan knapsack and took out a plastic baggie. She inhaled its bouquet. “Smells good.”
“Mexican.”
‘”How much?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Would you accept twenty?”
“No can do.”
Leah dug into her Indian bag for her wallet. “Here.” She handed him a twenty and five singles.
He pocketed the cash, then gave her an approving appraisal. “You’re attractive for a dyke.”
“You’re not bad for a male.” She stuck the baggie into the inside pocket of her trench. “I like your dreads.” She smiled. “How often you wash ‘em?”
He took out a rolled joint, lit it, drew on it, passed her the joint. Leah inhaled deeply. “Mmmm,” she sighed.
“Every two months,” he said, twirling a braid around his finger. “But I clean them everyday with a toothbrush.”
He took another hit, gave her the joint again. She breathed in the smoke, beginning to cough suddenly.
“Easy does it,” Kofi said.
She took a sip of her Tab. “I’m okay.” She passed the joint back to him.
“You ready?”
She nodded.
Opening the door, fumes escaped into the area. An older black patron in a Yankee cap looked like he’d been waiting for the toilet awhile. He was pissed. “What the hell you been doing in there?” he demanded.
Kofi shrugged. Leah just looked down, her best defense.
After the door slammed shut behind them, they cracked up and slapped each other five. “As if he didn’t know,” Leah said.
“He’s probably in there shooting up.”
Outside the Nickel Bar, Kofi asked, “Which way you walking?”
“I live across the street.”
“Where?”
“The Last Hotel.”
“That dive?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That old place on the corner?”
“It’s not a dive.”
“Whatever you say.” He shrugged. “Babe, did you get off?”
“A little,” she said. “Hey, thanks, man.”
He flashed his golden smile. “I’m performing my poetry at the Nuyorican Café in a few. Send you a flyer.”
“Hey, thanks, man.”
Kofi’s tooth lit up for a moment. “No problem. I like to help my friends,” he said. She watched as he walked down 72nd Street towards Broadway, his dreadlocks bouncing on top of his Guatemalan knapsack.
Leah entered the lobby, making a beeline to the elevator. She pressed the button impatiently. She really didn’t want to see anyone. The door opened immediately. It was empty. Thank God for small favors. She pressed 6.
Stepping out of the elevator, she opened the stairwell door and walked up a flight of metal steps. The plaster dust rose in a cloud as she closed the door. There were cans of paint and a ladder leaned against the wall. Leah coughed as she turned the key. Someone had a sense of humor. Calling an attic the Penthouse. The ceiling slanted down to a narrow triangle, where a single bed huddled at the point. There was a chest of drawers, a table, a sink and toilet in a closet. She, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, lived in the attic like Anne Frank, and if that wasn’t fucking ironic.
Leah switched on the single bare bulb that lit her cell. God, the place sucked. But she had it gratis, and everyone knew the best things in life were never free. She could buy a lampshade, she supposed, but this was only temporary, until she could pay off some of her bills. Then she’d find her own place.
In April, Angela had asked her to move out of her loft on Wooster. Just like that. Said she didn’t want to live together anymore. They’d been together for two years. Said she wanted to be free. There was someone else, of course, younger, with “less baggage,” as she had put it. As if one’s life could fit in luggage, SML. Small. Medium. Large.
Leah was screwed, big time. Deep in credit card seventeen-percent-per-month hell. She’d pissed thousands of dollars following the itinerant Angela to the Dominican Republic, where she researched an article, to New Zealand, during her summer vacation, always paying her own fare while Angela’s were freebies. Post-Angela, she couldn’t even scratch together an extra month’s deposit. Though she hated to do it, she had contacted her father at the hotel.
Leah had known about the attic room, having played there as a child. “I just need someplace to crash for a few months,” she told him.
“What are you crazy?” her father yelled into the phone, exactly as she expected. “It’s not a place for a decent person to live. Why don’t you come back home,” Saul said. “You can have your room in the house. No one will bother you.”
When she didn’t say anything, he started up. “It’s a shit hole! That’s why I’ve never rented it. Why would you want to stay there when you could be perfectly comfortable –?”
“You’re not using it for anything,” Leah insisted. She wasn’t going to give up.
“It’s not legal for anyone to live there.” He hemmed and hawed. “Let me phone Luba,” he said finally.
That was it. “What did you say?” she demanded. “You’re going to ask some lady you met at a Holocaust Conference and married two years ago whether your own daughter can live in a hotel her father owns?”
“You know I’m just a partner,” he said densely.
She began to shake with fury. “How could you?” The unsaid words. “Luba?” She spat the name. “A Polish shikseh. Do you remember how Mom and you carried on if I ever went out with someone who wasn’t Jewish?”
“Mom did more than I did.”
”Well, you went along with it.”
“I went along with a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have with your mom.” He paused, then said, “Luba’s family helped my family during the war. I knew her when we were both children. Leah, you have to move on with your life.”
“Well, you certainly have,” she had said, beginning to tear up.
Her father just couldn’t wait to get married again. It was thrift – as Hamlet said. The wedding expenses could be saved by using the funeral canapés. Actually it had been more than the prohibited year, three years and change, but who was counting? It wasn’t as if time had made her loss any easier.
Her mother’s death had been so fast. There were the stomach aches and gas. “Who goes to the doctor with an upset stomach?” Ruth insisted. Finally she went to the emergency room at Medical Center. A few tests later, the diagnosis: pancreatic cancer. Too late for surgery. The doctor advised against chemo. Quality of life, he said. She had died exactly a year after the news.
“When can I have the key, Dad?” Leah demanded.
“I could get Henry to do some painting and fix it up a little.”
“I need a place now,” she said.
“Monday,” he answered.
“Nobody will even know I’m there,” she told him. “I usually work at night. Don’t worry. “I won’t stay here long. I just need to save some money.”
”Will you come home for the holidays?” he asked. “It would mean so much to us.”
She stared at him. “You know when I’ll do that, Dad? Never. Understand. Never. And don’t think you can pull strings — ”
“Leah, I know you loved Mom –“ His voice trailed off. Then he said in that wisdom of the ages way. ”You’re still so young. We can never know what will happen to us. How we will feel. I loved your mother. Then I was alone and it was terrible. I have now Luba, thanks God.”
Leah scrutinized her face in the mirror. She didn’t look like either of her parents. Maybe she was born to one of those relatives who got gassed by Hitler. A refugee changeling. It probably wasn’t true, but she never felt part of her own family.
Leah emptied her plastic baggie on a record jacket. Jimi’s Afro aflame like a black sun god. She started up her turntable. The small pile of weed cast its fragrance.
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don’t seem the same…
First, she crushed the bud, removing twigs, stems, and seeds, then tilted the record jacket. Using a matchbook cover, she swept through the dope so the good stuff slid to the bottom. She pulled out two Bambu papers, licked them together, and rolled a perfect joint. She tongued her doobie, and wrapped it in the matchbook. It would make a good traveler.
At home, Leah preferred her hand-blown glass hookah, which she filled with ginseng tea. She sprinkled several flakes and lit up, drawing deeply on the long tube until the liquid in the bowl began to boil. The smoke floated up, filling her lungs. Like Alice’s Caterpillar, she sat on her lily pad, sucking on the hose of her hookah, blowing smoke rings in the air. The scent from the sacred plant filled the room.
Oh, how she loved it. Gentle and green. When Kofi asked whether she got off, she hadn’t, actually. She rarely did — with another person. She was just being polite. Smoking was a solitary activity for her. It wasn’t about parties or sex, though that was fun, of course. Mainly, she did it for herself, to herself, by herself. It was a lifeline. Having grown up with the psychos, her parents, she should have an IV pumped directly into her veins.
A mild buzz kept the doctor away, she mused. Most of the time. Dope allowed her to live. To imagine. To have time off from her demons. There had been times she let someone in her lair. Oh, Angela. You bitch, you cunt…
A cockroach scurried across the floor, followed by another one. “Gross!” Leah stood up and stomped on both of them. Good thing she was wearing her boots. Maybe they were a couple.
She sat down and lit the hookah again. Its magic smoke surrounded her. She thought of Angela’s white, milky thighs. She could live there forever.
I’m acting funny and don’t know why
Excuse me, Miss, while I kiss the sky.
Leah heard something. She jolted to attention. Someone was outside. She strained to listen. Standing up, she walked over to the door. Listened again, holding her breath. Now it was quiet.
Slowly, she pulled open the door a crack. No one. She opened it wider. Looking down at her feet, she saw a stack of books and a pair of brown gloves. She stepped out into the hallway. No one. She picked up the books. Stories by John Updike. Birds of North America. The Women’s Room. And a pair of blue cashmere gloves. She sniffed the gloves. They smelled freshly washed. Confused, but not displeased, she carried her gifts into the apartment.
__________
Sonia Pilcer is the author of six novels including The Holocaust Kid. The Last Hotel will be published in December by Heliotrope Books, available at Amazon.com. Visit Sonia Pilcer’s web site here.
