Spitting Off Tall Buildings (4 page)

Shi showed me the laundry facilities and the roof sundeck. We went from floor to floor with him unlocking doors and pointing out the differences in amenities in the remodeled rooms. Some had newer carpeting. Each had a toaster oven, a small refrigerator, a color TV, and Hawaiian-type pastel bedspreads featuring exotic, stupid flowers.

Room number 316/318 was next to one of the hall toilets. ‘Remember who lives here?’ he asked, unable to contain himself, as we passed Tonya Von Hachten’s apartment.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Blanche-fuckin’-Dubois?’

The beginning of the end for me started the night before my scheduled first day off which was Sunday. My stuff had been in and unpacked and, except for a couple of times when the phone had rung past twelve, there had been no late-evening activity in the hotel to disturb me. Zero check-ins. No problems.

Shi was staying the four hours after his shift every day from five to nine, to train me, help me get used to the desk and the credit card machine and the manual accountingentry system.

If a steady month-to-month tenant came in through the front door, he’d introduce me.

My daily habit was to have a few beers with dinner after he left and after I closed the desk. Nothing heavy, just enough to take the bumps out of the road.

That night, because I was about to complete my first week, I decided to celebrate. I sat up, well past midnight, working on my play, finishing the second act, drinking gin with ice and grapefruit juice.

At one forty-five Ms. Von Hachten showed up outside my manager’s apartment and began pressing the night buzzer on the front desk. She was a resident so I knew that she knew that the hotel was officially closed. A big sign read, ‘
EMERGENCIES ONLY AFTER NINE P.M.
’ I watched through the distortion of my peephole for over a minute as she continued buzzing, hoping maybe she’d fuck off and disappear. Finally, having no other option, I unlocked the door.

She had on a silky robe with matching slippers, coordinated shades of green. To me, everything she wore announced, ‘lick me, fuck me.’

I was still wearing my tie.

‘Hello Miss Von Hachten,’ I said, flicking the front desk lights on, measuring the words, wanting to sound unintoxicated. ‘Can I help you with something?’

She was way higher than me. Blasted on booze but something else too. As soon as I saw her eyes I knew. ‘No,’ she slurred, ‘you can’t. I need to talk to Shi. Where is he?’

It was downers. Maybe Valium. Maybe Seconal. ‘He’s unavailable. Gone home. He doesn’t live here,’ I said, still trying to appear businesslike, avoid problems.

She flopped down on the lobby couch then glared at me. ‘I’ll wait.’

‘Look, I can take a message. Do you want me to do that?’

There was an interval, a few seconds until the meaning of all my words fully filtered past the narcotics in her brain. Ms. Von Hachten got up, teetered for a moment, began walking away, then stopped. ‘Hey look,’ she slurred, ‘I’ve…we’ve got a problem.’

‘Ha ha. I see.’

‘…You find me funny?’

‘What’s our problem, Ms. Von Hachten?’

‘…Noises. I was changing…getting ready for bed after my bath…there were sounds…from outside the window, or in the hall. You’d better come up…you know, check it out.’

‘Someone using the hall washroom?’

‘…What?’

‘Somebody taking a piss.’

She shot me an evil look - it too came on time delay. ‘Hey, goddammit, listen! That’s not what I said! I said…there’s somebody…spying…watching me. Like a perv. A weirdo.’

Getting rid of her was my only priority. ‘Ya know,’ I said, measuring my words carefully, ‘I did my rounds just before nine o’clock. I walked the halls, checked all the doors. You’re in no danger.’

‘Swell…so…I’m hallucinating?’

I began edging back toward my apartment door. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing I can do.’

Her crazy laugh was loud. It filled the lobby. ‘That’s the goddam truth…’

‘I’ll report your “incident.” When Shi comes in tomorrow he’ll see my note.’

‘…Now hear this…pay attention here, goddamn it!…I want you - you, the clerk behind the desk - to come up to the third floor now…immediately, and have a look. Do your job!’

‘The hotel desk is closed. I’m off at nine except for emergencies.’

‘…What am I, a TV commercial!’

‘You’re loaded on your ass, lady. And a noise isn’t an emergency. To me, at this time of night, noise hearing is a non-relevant, unimportant, chickenshit, irritating, non-emergency!’

‘…Let me speak to a real decision maker. Get Shi on the telephone. Or whaziz name, Mistofsky…No! Forget that! Call 911.’

‘Call anybody you want! Call the weather, call Dial-A-Duck for all I care. Just do it away from me.’

‘Do you want to keep your job at this hotel?’

‘Is this blackmail?’

‘…Hand me the telephone…’

‘Go fuck yourself you crazy cunt!’

The next morning when I woke up sober and remembered the confrontation, I felt pretty sure I’d be fired.

But it was my day off so I spent the next few hours reading and drinking beer, listening to Jimmy Reed on my portable tape deck and waiting for Shi or Jeffrey Mistofsky to knock on my apartment door and tell me that I was bumped, to pack my gear and move out.

Noon came and it hadn’t happened so I decided to do my laundry in the laundry room downstairs, then go to the movies, a Claude Rains festival at the Thalia.

It was mid-afternoon when I passed the front desk on my way out. Shi was cordial, whispering as usual, trying to make small conversation. I didn’t ask if he’d seen Tonya Von Hachten and he didn’t bring her up.

By the next afternoon at a few minutes to four I still hadn’t heard anything. Before coming on duty, I did my rounds as usual, emptied the wastebaskets in the bathrooms
on each floor and inspected to make sure that the hallways were clean. Shi wasn’t at the desk so I unlocked the cage, looking for signs that I’d been fired; an envelope, a notice posted in the log book. I didn’t see anything so I began my usual ‘check-on’ routine.

The hotel answering machine registered one message. I played it back. It was from Shi. A rushed memo letting me know that he was doing errands for Mistofsky and would be back at six o’clock to continue my training. I still had a job.

Just after sunset I was filling in the daily linen charts when I looked up and saw Ms. Von Hachten come up the hotel steps with two shopping bags hooked to her arm and Bobo on his leash.

I watched.

She stopped at the landing, setting her bags down to unlock the door. For a moment our eyes met through the glass. If she expected me to do what Shi always did, deport myself like some limpdick sycophant and leave the desk to rush around and open the exterior entrance, she was mistaken. Not me. Screw her. I wasn’t her chump.

Holding onto Bobo Ms. Von Hachten groped in her purse for her keys. After locating them she unlocked the heavy glass front door, swung it open, then dragged her dog and her bags inside.

Instead of ignoring my presence, which is what I thought she would do, I was surprised when she walked directly up to the front desk.

She looked past my shoulder to the mail slots located on the wall behind me. ‘Bruno,’ she said, in an even, pleasant, un-fuck-you voice, ‘I see something in my slot. Would you hand me my mail, please?’

The situation was awkward. I didn’t say anything. I turned,
located the slot labeled #316, then passed her the envelopes and bulk junk mail.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ I said.

But she didn’t leave. She stood looking down, sorting through the envelopes and papers while I pretended to go back to counting what rooms were on the list to have their towels and sheets changed. Finally, she spoke again. ‘Bruno,’ another voice announced, a more business-like voice, ‘I have something I need to say to you.’

I looked up.

‘I owe you an apology.’

I didn’t talk. I wasn’t sure what to say.

There was more silence. When I realized she’d been waiting for me to speak, I said, ‘Okay,’ which was all I could think of to say.

Finally she went on; ‘This is hard for me…I’m sorry…I was rude…The other night I got some bad news. A family problem. I’d taken some medication and then I heard those noises outside my apartment…I was a bitch. I let my frustration out at you.’

‘Did you talk to Shi?’

‘Oh yes! What a sweetie! He came up and re-keyed the lock on my door and put some kind of security latch on my windows to keep them from being unlocked from the outside or forced open. Everything’s resolved.’

‘That’s not what I meant. Did you tell him about our argument?’

She was smiling. Perfect straight white teeth. Green eyes the color of a warm Florida ocean. ‘No, I didn’t.’ She extended her hand. ‘Friends?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’

In her heels Tonya was at least three inches taller than me.
As our hands shook the top of her dress containing her fat white freckled tits pressed up against the front desk counter.

We stood there.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to work. You’ll have to excuse me.’

She smiled again. ‘Have a nice evening, Bruno.’

‘Okay. You too.’

Shi continued to spend his time licking Tonya Von Hachten’s ass and running her errands and drooling every time she crossed the lobby with her two-pound mutt. But I had an instinct about her. We were on speaking terms again and her smile made my dick hard but I was still leery.

And I was right too. A few nights later a similar deal to the first deal that happened with Ms. Von Hachten happened again. This time it was later at night, past two in the morning. I’d been in bed reading, sipping from a pint of Ten High instead of beer, hoping to induce my brain to give me a break and slow down. The front desk buzzer sounded several times. Pissed off at the intrusion, I took my time slipping my feet into my shoes and putting my pants on.

The buzzing got more persistent. Someone was holding the fucker down with their thumb.

I climbed the stairs and opened my door.

It was her in her green robe and nightgown. ‘Hello, Miss Von Hachten,’ I said, ‘here we are again.’

She was stoned again but not as stoned as before. And upset. ‘There’s somebody there, Bruno,’ she blurted. ‘God damn it! Some perv’s after me!’

‘What happened?’

Now she was yelling; ‘I’m moving out! It isn’t bad enough that I have to share my apartment with ten thousand fucking cockroach roommates, now there’s a goddam night stalker
tip-toeing up and down the halls, probably rubbing his wang, licking my doorknob!’

She was way too loud for my hotel lobby. ‘Okay,’ I said, a finger to my lips. ‘Keep it down, okay.’

‘I hate this dump! I hate the cheap pink cretin wallpaper in the laundry room and the floral carpet!’

‘Hey!’

‘Okay, okay,’ she said, lowering her volume. ‘I heard someone, something. Either the sounds came from the fire escape or the hall bathroom next to my apartment. Just like last time - like somebody breathing hard, you know, humping the wall or something.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay…what?

‘I’ll put you in another room for tonight.’

‘What about this: you go sleep up there! Tomorrow morning at trash collection time let the detectives sift through the dumpsters on Lexington Avenue and gather up your body parts.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Call 911!…Right now. Immediately!’

‘No cops, Ms. Von Hachten. They won’t come anyway.’

‘Then go investigate!’

‘Okay,’ I said, knowing I was hooked. ‘I’ll go look.’

I went back down to my apartment. In the closet I located the long house flashlight that Shi had told me to keep handy for emergencies; floods in the basement, boiler room malfunctions. Then I put on my jacket, tucking my pint of Ten High into the pocket.

On Ms. Von Hachten’s floor I looked in the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall. Nothing. Then, with her behind me, I climbed the next two flights to the top floor to make sure that the heavy door leading to the sundeck was closed and
locked. She insisted that I go out on the roof and check, so I did. It was cold, maybe twenty degrees. I shone my light around, then came back in. Nothing.

Downstairs outside her apartment, I checked the hall bathroom. I pulled the shower curtain back and looked inside. It was okay. I checked the bathroom window. It was okay too. Secure. Nobody’d gotten in.

Inside Ms. Von Hachten’s living room her dog Bobo was fast asleep on the couch. I checked her closets. Nothing. Then I inspected the windows, wiggling the latches, undoing the security gadgets Shi had installed, then retightening them.

Ms. Von Hachten was on the couch next to Bobo, watching me, petting the dog. Her robe’s belt had come loose. Inside, I could make out the nipple of her chunky left breast as it pressed against her nightgown.

In front of her on the coffee table were half a dozen brown prescription vials. She picked one up, popped the plastic top, then let two blue triangle-shaped tablets slide down into her palm.

I was still cold from being outside on the roof. Shaking.

‘Hey, you’re chilled,’ she slurred. ‘Want a drink of something?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Whatever you’ve got, I’ll take it straight up. No ice, no mix.’ I was looking at the bulging nipple of her big left tit. ‘You cold too?’

Ms. Von Hachten folded her robe closed then tied the belt. Her expression was odd. There was an attempt at a smile but not a real smile.

Dropping her pills on the table, she got up, wobbled, then headed toward the kitchen. At the doorway she stopped, spun back around like a breakdancer, then marched back to the couch, grunting as she flopped down. ‘I forgot,’ she said.

‘Forgot what?’

‘There was some…gin…I think…but I drank it.’

The robe was open again. The green silk nightgown was more than half way up her thighs.

I was smiling. Leering. ‘You’re coming apart there,’ I said. ‘Again.’ I pointed.

This time she made no effort to close the gown or cover her legs. Instead she locked eyes with me. ‘So…have you checked everything?’

I didn’t answer. I walked to the kitchen.