Chapter Eight
Prelude and Fugue
in Chesterfields
and a Leopard Skin Coat
Prelude and Fugue
in Chesterfields
and a Leopard Skin Coat
The bathroom window in room 112 looks out onto the bottom of a well: four stories of mortised walls rise above the covered skylights of the Jefferson Court. Unclean screened windows and rusting air-conditioners mount floor by floor to the abandoned Tuscan roof garden which yawns onto the metal gray sky, hiding the unruly sun before it begins to shower on a doubtful populace. Issuing from the encumbered cloister, a glaucous fog that illuminates as much as it obscures, fills the bathroom, fretlessly wandering through a meticulous hermit's order on a water-stained glass shelf suspended under a blackening mirror and over the shining white porcelain of a sink.
With rectilinear precision, the implements of good grooming on the shelf anticipate the drizzle and slow movements of the day to come. The oval oxblood hair brush collects stray motes of dust on its greasy bristles. The dented yellow tin of pomade sits unquiveringly next, gently perfuming itself in lavender swirls. A blue box of Alka Seltzer followed by a green toothbrush precede three identical glasses, tainted for water, Alka Seltzer, and bourbon. In chronological order, the sedate ivory-handled shaving brush stretches up, an ancient straight razor glints burnished brass ducks in the morning stillness, and an ebony (not ebonair) comb laments two of its missing teeth. A gold-lettered shaving mug lingers below on the sink, in the company of a bar of Ivory soap and a styptic stick. A dull alligator manicure set bides its time on the peeling Renaissance commode between the toilet and the sink.
Down, down, down, Tom Wharton is musing over his cigarette in the switchboard room with its vast electric light, sitting at the dormant switchboard. He is reading the morning paper and waiting for the wake up calls or Lucille, or whatever else may happen to arrive first. The second hand on the clock above the board of black holes sweeps to a post deco twelve and the 6:15 buzz expands as Tom hastily reaches up an arm and pushes the brass pin back into place. As his hand descends, it picks up the blue lined sheet with the quarter hours from 5:30 printed in black and its miscellany of room numbers in ball-point and pencil.
“524: Good morning, it's six-fifteen.”
“437: Good morning, it's six-fifteen.”
“618: Good morning it's six-fifteen.”
“112: Good mo...”
“Gosh durnit ya durn fool, don't ring the blessed phone so long. I'm not deef, you know. “
“Sorry Brantley. It's six-fifteen. Time to wake up!”
“See you at seven.”
The wake-up calls in the morning begin the ritual of work, the last vestige of any meaning in life for Brantley Hall, the morning clerk: 7 am to 3 p.m. at the front desk of the Hotel. They are the relentless call to order in Brantley's days, so that he can shave and dress and go to the fountain room. There he smokes a Chesterfield, drinks a cup of coffee and a glass of water fizzy with Alka Seltzer. There he sits in the glum opening stillness and chats with Perk of the things all men have talked about for the last three hundred years: state politics, the latest sports match, their day to day problems, and the increasing number of attractive young whores to be found. Perk's bald head and toothless mouth occasionally twitch. Brantley curses these wake-up calls, knowing full well that he is utterly obliged to them.
“Goddam phone. Goddam room. Goddam Hotel.”
Brantley is awake, but not quite alive. He throws the sheets off his sagging frame and slides his feet into the corduroy slippers by the bed. The room is a wreck. Pictures of women with their empty legs open are littered around all three sides of the bed. The curtain in a blue and green floral plaid hangs from its rip at the curtain rod, dispersing vague chiaroscuro light from the pit of the fenestrated shaft to reveal the careful order of a man of style, and the nonchalant disorder of haphazard maids given free reign under the theory of increasing entropy.
The first wary steps of the day on legs that won't saunter any more push Brantley toward the inevitability of the bathroom. A grisly inspection in the mirror reveals a healthy pink face with long satchels hanging from the corners of the mouth, blending smoothly into the high-draped chin that slides down to two sagging breasts. Bright blue eyes bleared by the fixed stare toward oblivion, mournfully check the decrepitations that another night and another day have wrought. The tap spurts out lukewarm water and the face in the water and the hands sudsing up, feebly clean away the opaque dreams of rooms without numbers and numbers without rooms. Now the limp hands attempt to scrub away the brown sludge from Chesterfields imbedded between the rows of yellowing teeth, but only succeed in removing the nocturnal rot from his breath.
“Yow.”
A long inhalation between closed teeth bewails a stomach that is already complaining, demanding its ration of Alka Seltzer. The acid burn of the Alka Seltzer needs to be administered even before the fountain room this morning, Plop plop, Fizz fizz, and no relief in sight, only dull rumbling in the stomach assuaging the fires of his ulcers which raged a moment earlier.
Brantley leaves the bathroom for the night-stand and returns, strapping on the square gold wristwatch, his precious reward for twenty-five years of devoted service, in an era when a gold watch was de rigeur. Crossing the threshold and polishing his glasses, he glances down at 6:27.
“Oh Hell, already running late.”
Hurrying in a palsied imitation of rushing, Brantley snatches up the shaving brush and soap. After the meticulous application of a foamy white beard, he deftly manages the cocked straight razor. He pulls the various facial flaps of chin and cheek in to arbitrary positions, and cuts a wide swath down through the soap to reveal a skin beyond irritation as tiny capillaries exude along the crests of flesh. A nick, goddam, and the styptic stick scurries to his aid.
“6:37, goddam.”
(It had once occurred to Brantley that canned shaving cream and a disposable razor might hurry things along in the morning, but the face complained after a preliminary test.)
“You jest have to do things right or not at all.”
Now for the hair. Impertinent licks stick out at irregular angles and intervals. The pomade descends upon the follicles, and along with the comb, Brantley's white mane is furrowed into glistening, softly scented rows, back, back, back to the occiput and thence to the next row. A quick passage of the oxblood brush reduces the ridges to an imitation of naturalness. His toilet is complete. He looks at his flaccid forehead, clean and waiting to arch its brows, as his eyes twinkle twice through his bifocals.
“You ole debbil, you. Tell'em to send the girls up two at a time, so I can see to them quicker. A lady, you know, should never be kept waiting.”
Downstairs, Brantley is already later than usual. Tom has finished counting up the cash drawer, grateful that the audit is on balance. Lucille has arrived and Perk is toting buckets of ice to the fountain room. Tom starts to do the morning preps for Brantley.
“The last time I didn't do them, he walked up to look at them and drooled on my right hand just as I was leaving. Oh, I know he didn't mean to do it, but it was right gross all the same.”
“Hey kiddo, didn't you wake up ole sourpuss?”
“Lucille, I called him at 6:15. We're gonna have to start calling him at six. He rolled in right late last night, too, full of himself.”
“Been to see them nekkid ladies at the Lee Art?”
“Sure enough, and in the sauce too. Told me to send the girls up in fours.”
“I'd best call up the old ruptured duck's bee-hind and make sure the girls come down before he does. He's gettin' forgetful you know, and he just might come down in the elevator with all twelve of'em. It just wouldn't reflect well on the Hotel.”
“You're durn tootin'. He'd need at least sixteen.”
When the phone buzzes upstairs Brantley has just finished knotting a blue and white striped tie over a blue and white striped shirt.
“Cotton and silk. And stripes. Just ain't no combination can come up to it in the whole world. Damn phone. What in Hell's bells do you want Lucille? I am walking out the door right this instant.”
“I'll tell Perk to have your morning highball ready and waitin', Brantley.”
“No, don't do it Lucille. Last time you did, he dropped the Alka Seltzer in before I got down there and it don't do me any good 'less it's still fizzing.”
Brantley slams the phone down and goes to the closet for a jacket. Azures and creams and beiges hang crisply above neat rows of shoes with mahogany shoe forms. His clothes are all brushed and immaculate, the shoes glossy and up at heel. They are his last defense, his final coat of armor against an oncoming tide that will wash away the little that he still treasures, the ebb tide of mediocre canons of fashion for people without identities.
Brantley shuffles out the door and locks it. His legs propel him down the long empty hall of the morning shift, long before most anyone else has the chance to wake up or even the desire to arise and meet the world that Brantley must make ready. Brantley's slightly bent torso inches forward over his calves without tendons, under the dusty globes of the musty corridor. He turns the corner and pushes the button with the down arrow. The elevator doesn't come.
“Hell! Fandangled contrivances ain't worth the tits on a dead whore.”
Although he glances in the Chippendale mirror impatiently, he is pleased at his high white collar and the subtle harmonies of the tenuous stripes. He arches his left brow, flashes his eyes and smiles, content with his appearance after 73 years of the spo’tin life. Closing his smile, his lower lip hangs slightly too low, and a long strand of saliva drops to his lapel before striking the carpet.
Brantley doesn't notice. The elevator arrives; the bell sounds and the door opens. He enters, and as he turns to push “L” for lobby, a thick red curtain drops to close the hall from view. The elevator fills with smoke, engulfing and bewildering Brantley. He struggles to see through the thickening fog as it becomes brighter and brighter, then suddenly turns dark as the elevator halts.
The doors open onto a scene of panic on the Mezzanine. Men are galloping in front of him to make for the West staircase. Everyone is running, rushing, trying to save whatever they can from ruin. A prostrate crowd coughs and moans, twisting their heads above the alligators. They decide that they are going to live as Brantley moves among them.
He seeks a stuffed chair in a darkened corner.
“Oh, gimme another little nip sweetheart, just another little something to warm me up a tad.”
The woman lying on the bed is a familiar stranger to Brantley, for he has seen her a thousand times. He realizes that she is as naked as the day she was born under her voluminous leopard-skin coat.
“Oh dahlin', you're just a little overheated, there ain't no smoke in here. Gimme another little drop of gin, why don't you, and cool your feet down in the sweet, sweet, waters of the Pocahontas.”
The garlands over the rushing men and prostrate crowd glimmer into long summer afternoons after Sunday dinner, small swags of flowers on high white urns placed where the earth turns to water. The flowers drip down off the high white column, down to the grass under the elms, onto the long outstretched body of Brantley's beloved Alethea while she laughs and tosses the bouquet of daisies back into his face.
“Oh, sweetheart, let's walk over to the dock, but first, do be a gentleman and get me another cup of punch, if you would please?”
The wedding guests have become impatient and as Brantley nudges his way to the bar, he overhears Alethea's father.
“I just don't care Marian. He's only a hotel clerk, half railroad employee, and that's not ever going to get him anywhere because he's just got no ambition.”
“Oh, Thaddeus. Alethea's happy and Brantley's cuts such a fine figure and. . .”
“You can't live on that kind of figure; Marian, it'll put the clothes on your back, but don't do much good about getting the chops on the table. I simply won't stand for it, and I'm sure Alethea. . .”
The crowd swells and swells. Everywhere ripped satin nightgowns and the smell of smoke and groups of sailors pervade a lucid atmosphere of distress. An occasional sleep-drugged soul dismounts to the Mezzanine as the line of soldiers ascends, trying to jimmy open doors and see what's inside. Once inside the room, they systematically drop their pants and move toward the dead whore. The popcorn bags in the Lee Art rustle when the old men change position in their seats so they can enjoy the film to the hilt. The cigarette smoke rises, clouding Brantley's face. The train for Miami is going through its final preparations.
“All aboard! Train leavin' in twenty minutes!”
Brantley stares down at his bag of dull alligator and sighs. Hell, he might as well be going to the end of the world if that's what's on the other end of the line. Steamer trunks and Pullman cars and grand suites and one-night stands, the strands of a life of transience come and go, while he silently pulls the name slips out of the brackets. All is transient, nothing remains except what you’ve got on your back. Might as well keep it clean.
Anxiously he shines the buttons on his uniform and saunters into the bathroom. Once inside, he quickly empties the new shoe box and slides a disoriented baby alligator inside.
“I'll just get her to let it go in one of the pools. She'll like that.”
The elevator is too long coming, so Brantley decides to mount the left staircase. This way, they won't see him, and they won't know anyone has been on the sixth floor. Using his passkey, he unlocks room 642 and lighting one Chesterfield after another, he moves about the room, depositing them on the bed, in the wing chair, on the carpet, and between the sheers and the drapes. The various fabrics ignite and sweetly burn upward in small yellow daisies of flame.
Brantley knocks softly on the door.
“Miss, oh Miss. There's a package for you.”
Opening the door, there is a long pause before a chubby arm encircled by rhinestone seahorses on a bracelet grabs the box and disappears back into the room.
“Alethea, Alethea, it is you, isn't it?”
“Yeah sweetheart, that's what they call me. And how 'bout you, dahlin'?”
“It's me, Brantley.”
The door swings open onto a room in extreme disorder, filled with empty beer and liquor bottles and stray bits of brightly colored lingerie. The lamplight, veiled by a cheap silk scarf, softens the worn and heavily made up features of a woman who knows far too much for her age. There are footsteps in the bathroom. Zaque, the black transvestite slithers out.
“She is a right smart niggah gal, with that shapely round ass stickin’ out.” A few other comments pass through Brantley's brain as he sips the stiff drink she has mixed for him.
“Daddy B, the occupant of 334 is not a woman.”
Brantley and Beauchamp stare at Tom as if he had just recited the Pledge to Allegiance in Hebrew.
“Well, she's sure not boiled chitterlings. What're you talkin' about son?”
Brantley is perched on the cashier's stool and loses count of the nickels. It never occurred to him that 334 was anything more than an ordinary hooker, even if she did do an awful lot of business.
“Daddy B, the client in room 334 is a transvestite.”
“Well Hell, Tom, even if she was a Methodist, she'd still be a woman.”
“Daddy B, a transvestite is a man that dresses up like a woman.”
Brantley doesn't fathom this revelation for a good five days, until he seriously considers the matter, and even then he doesn't want to believe it. Nonetheless, Brantley decides to invite her (or is it him?) up to his room for drinks. More than once.
Glancing at her through a veil of her own cigarette smoke, she winks at Brantley and tilts her head back, laughing.
“Daddy, I like your style.”
“I don't care Marian, I just don't care. And why do you go on about his style? It may mean the right appearances, but he can't even afford to keep a maid and I won't have my Alethea doing any housework. The answer will just have to be NO.”
“I always do just what my Daddy says Brantley, and you know that we can't get married. I don't want to end my days in some old hotel, even if it is the Hot or the White. I have to save myself for the right man, the man that Daddy thinks is right.”
Brantley sets off for Richmond immediately. He looks down at his gleaming valise, and says good-bye to Roanoke and boards the train, the pained expression on his face disappearing into the white steam of the train.
Through the haze, he sees a small light extinguish, and as the atmosphere clears, he sees in its place the number one, which means that the limbo between the floors is behind him.
“Oh my God! I must be having a heart attack!”
The red curtain rises for Act Two.
“JEZEBEL! PAINTED JEZEBEL!”
The poker game across the hall comes to an abrupt halt and the players poke their heads out the door to see the young soldier quaking and screaming at the B-girl in 642. Another soldier is hastily retreating from the room, pulling his trousers up as he scampers out the door. The painted lady pulls the shouting soldier into her room, covering his mouth, her jewelry clinking in the corridor full of curious heads.
“ALETHEA! ALETHEA! Alethea!”
“You know that dame?”
Brantley is offended by the front desk clerk, who is a little too slick for his tastes.
“That is not a dame sir. That is a lady. We were engaged to be married. Did she come in here alone?”
“Oh yeah, she's only been here two nights and should be leaving tomorrow. Maybe you can catch her before you leave for the base at Hampton Roads tomorrow. I don't think she's going to be here much longer...”
The front desk clerk gives the manager a knowing glance which Brantley can't see. Yes, there's her name up on the board in 642, one of the smaller rooms as Brantley remembers it, but definitely ladylike. He hasn't seen her for six years now, ever since he left for the job in Newport and winters in Florida at the Alcazar. He has to see her and he will. Maybe this time her father...
“Oh Daddy, don't you just not worry none about it, you ain't gonna make it tonight, but that's all right, 'coz you'se a gempmum and I just love to sit here and drink your liquor. Don't fret your poor self, we can just sit here and talk.”
Brantley really does want to try just one more time, but after the trio of bourbon and waters and the long afternoon at the Lee Art, he just can't make it. He just can't do it anymore. He can dress himself up and work like hell, but there just isn't any way that he's ever going to do it again in his life. The jacket is willing but the flesh is weak.
Soon enough, the phone in room 642 goes off in the switchboard room. It's Lucille's first day at the Jefferson, and she doesn't know what's going on, because nobody in 642 will answer. She calls the front desk clerk over.
“Listen Buddyroo, who's in 642?”
“Why Dwight D. of course.”
Brantley strolls over to the room board, and in the midst of the confusion upstairs on the Mezzanine, deftly pulls out BRIDEWATER/ALTHEA MISS, and removes the name from the manager's file, the folio sheets and the switchboard room.
“Yes, apparently there is a fire on the sixth floor, no I do not have any further information.”
“Brantley, even if you are in uniform, please come here and give us a hand; the switchboard's lit up like the fireworks after the Bal du Bois. And these fool reporters keep buttin' their way in here so's I can hardly work.”
Eunice is fairly frantic as each outside line lights up and then extinguishes like so many electric phoenixes. Brantley seats himself at the left switchboard and starts to answer outside lines.
“Morris, McMurphy, nossir, there is no Morris McMurphy registered here.”
“Dolores Menschen, yes, yes there is a Doris Menschen on the sixth floor. I'm sorry, there has been an accident and there is no way of communicating with the sixth Floor. Please calm down sir, there is no way we can page her. May I take a message? OK.”
“Alethea Bridgewater, just a moment.”
“This is Thaddeus Bridgewater, her father calling. She phoned to say she was planning to stay at the Jefferson for a week or two before coming home. The radio is giving awful reports about a fire at the hotel. I just wanted to make sure that my baby was safe.”
“I'm sorry sir, there is no Alethea Bridgewater registered. Good evening.”
Brantley pulls the plug.
“Yes, she will remain a complete stranger, even if the world will recognize her for what she has become. But they will never know who she used to be or what she still is underneath, no one. ”
“Oh Brantley, calm down and give me a little drink. You know my name isn't Jezebel. I honestly don't know where these ideas of yours come from. Never did understand most of them anyway. What's in the box, sweetheart?”
Florida. Nepenthe and relief from Virginia with its whispered peccadilloes and trying to remember other people's mothers’ maiden names. Florida is the answer, and Brantley makes up his mind, after two grisly years of war, to go and take the summer sun in February again. The hurried stop in Roanoke is only to settle up his poor mother's estate, most of which goes to his brother.
“Between the V.A. and the railroads, I will always be taken care of.”
Florida had been fine, even if the people were a little too well off for their own good. No dinky alligator pools, and the pay was great. Florida, the land of oranges and warmth, so much of what had been but meager commodities for Brantley as a child, so much that his seven-year stay nauseated him. The new railroad offer had been a lucky coincidence and excuse for him to leave.
“Alethea, we’ve got to leave.”
“Oh sweetheart, I don't know what you're talkin' about, you know I can't marry you. No, I'm going to stay here by the cool water of the Pocahontas and soak my feet.”
Brantley hesitates.
“Gimme another drink.”
Alethea isn't nearly as interested in the box as she is in the flask Brantley has brought along with him.
The liquor store is full of lines of young black men buying fruity wine. As Brantley shuffles his way up to the front of the line, the clerk sees him coming and reaches back for a bottle of Early Times.
“Man, you are one baaad dude.”
Brantley grumbles as he reaches his hand back to his pants pocket to produce an alligator wallet and the necessary bills. As he shuffles out the door, brown bag in hand, one of the customers grins and laughs and says, “More power to you.”
Once outside the liquor store, Brantley dashes back to the Hotel, his thoughts filled with his one and only true love: Alethea. Alethea. The only girl I will ever love. And nobody is going to besmirch our love or her name. I will not have our few moments of bliss desecrated by tourists or traveling salesmen. No one is ever going to lie in that room again.
“Brantley, why don't you go up and check room 642 for me please? I can't for the life of me figure out why the phone is buzzing when there hasn't been anyone in there for at least a week.”
“Lucille, I'm on vacation here from Florida, and am not about to go running all over this hotel after one thing and another. Call the engineer, it is his job after all. Besides, I want to catch the singalong with Mitch on the tellyvision in a quarter of an hour. Damn Republican President, makes the whole population think they're Nixon, or Mamie in your case.”
The mechanic wastes no time as he calls from the elevator.
“Smoke, Hell, there's a fire on the sixth Floor!”
Checking the stairs, a young soldier discovers that the fire is coming from the west wing and the sixth Floor is filling up with smoke rising through the west service stairs.
“Call the fire department now and get those people off the fifth floor and then work your way down.”
“What! A fire on the sixth Floor. Where?”
Brantley rushes to the aid of Lucille, calling out names and numbers from the room sheet, and runs to get the manager.
Smoke. Smoke everywhere. Trains going north and trains going south and people with broken suitcases rushing past. Brantley stops in the middle of it all, and glances down at his pass.
“I'll just get on the next train that comes into the station. I'll just leave. I just want to live the best I can. The hotels will take care of me anywhere. I am one of the finest on the East Coast.”
Newport hadn't been what he had expected. Virginia and Florida called and he was off again. Never stay in one place too long, or people stop appreciating you. Familiarity breeds disrespect, don't you know.
“Respect? What are you talkin' about sweetheart?”
Alethea lifts the cover on the shoebox and squeals with delight as she pokes the alligator.
“Why honey, it's just precious; I do appreciate the small thoughtfulnesses you have always carried me.”
She shoves the box under the bed and asks for another drink – there should be a gin bottle on the dresser.
Brantley is sick at his stomach, and after all, a drink will help him calm his nerves. As he glances around the room, he finds a clean glass next to a box of condoms on the dresser.
“Alethea, let's go, I'll skip...”
“Oh sugarpie, just fix me a little drink for right now and we'll have a cozy little chat about the good old days. Come on sweetheart, sit here on the bed where it's warm.”
The room isn't too badly damaged, mostly smoke and luckily no one was injured; even more fortunately, the room was beyond repair.
“We'll just use it for storage.”
“Ain't much else you can do with it, Mr. Barclay.”
The manager and Brantley stare around at the empty room. The drapes are blackened with soot, and the empty liquor bottles strewn across the floor are smudged with smut as well. There is a large indentation on the bed where the body had lain, and the cold winter wind rustles through the cracked panes of the window. The box is still under the bed.
Brantley inadvertently kicks it as he sits down. Alethea leans over to get her drink, exposing the rosy aureola of her nipple.
“You like my curves, Daddy?” The colored gal prances around the room and Brantley gives her a tweak on the cheek. When she doesn't notice it, he finally grasps the fact that she isn't anything more than foamy rubber padding.
“It looks nice all the same.”
Even her nipples are fake. Brantley begins to notice the various accouterments of her singular trade as her thick pink lips suck down the old fashioned, and her big brown eyes wink at him lasciviously.
“Let's give it a try Big Daddy, what you say?”
“Oh good Lord Brantley, you act as if I were some common piece of trash. I am your sweetheart, don't you remember me, your Alethea?”
The corvine roots in her peroxided hair start to convince Brantley. When he saw her in the hall, he'd seen her white-clad body stretched at length on the grass, tossing daisies at him. Now he only sees dim pulsating movements as the fellow in the next seat groans and the girls sitting in front of him decide that they have seen just about enough. These movies are really trash, and he knows it, but it's the only pleasure left at this advanced stage of his life. He hasn't missed a Saturday since his return to Richmond.
The trains are broken. They have collapsed and will not recover. The hotel isn't doing enough business to keep him on any longer, so the owner, his boss for the last thirty years, offers him the position as the head front desk clerk at the Jefferson. It's 1969 and they are getting ready to remodel. There isn't much use of him staying here, and his brother has already sold their mother's home. It's the Jefferson or the Veteran's Hospital, and Brantley knows which of the two is preferable. He can swallow his pride, but goddammit, he is not going to choke on it as it slowly reaches his wasted gut.
The Hotel is just as he remembers it. The Lobby hasn't changed a bit, even though the front desk clerk says they'll soon be covering up the skylights in accordance with air raid ordinances. The gray marble counter and the staircase are what count anyway, and they're just the same. He is glad to see something familiar before embarking on that long voyage to Europe and the latest war-to-end-all-wars.
“I have met the enemy and it is me.”
The Mezzanine “M” Flashes as the elevator proceeds downward through the red curtains into the third and final act.
Lucidity overtakes Brantley. “Alethea! Alethea, the room's filling up with smoke!”
“Oh honey, it's those damn Chesterfields you smoke. They stink so bad anybody'd think that the whole world was on fire. Come on Brantley sweetheart, finish.”
“Oh Daddy, just give it up; it's no use beating a dead dog, and you got one dead one. You can't even start and I ain't got no time to lose on a Saturday night.”
“Alethea, we’ve got to go.” Brantley dismounts and puts his feet on the floor. Alethea yawns and pulls the leopard hide tight over her ample body. One breast insists on popping out.
“Yep, this looks like a real good picture.” The ticket is bought, the threshold crossed and Brantley begins his last exercise in futility.
“Oh well, of course we could remodel this room.”
“This room? It ain't worth the trouble, go ahead and use it for storage. Or, I'll tell you what. If you keep the rent low enough, I'll take it to store my things in between Florida and Newport, and the Hot of course in August.”
“Brantley, that'd get right expensive.”
“I’ve got plenty of money, and after the article in the paper, no one in Richmond is going to let their out-of-town guests stay in that room.”
“. . . Among the victims, Mrs. Powell G. Menschen wife of Del. Menschen from Queen Anne County, two young ladies from the Morants Dance Troupe giving performances here at the City Auditorium, a sailor and an unidentified white woman. The cause of death is universally purported to be smoke inhalation as the flames did not reach above the second floor...”
Brantley's eyes skim down the column of the morning paper. No news. Nothing new. Hasn't been anything new in these papers for the last thirty years. The Lord only knows why he reads the paper all the same every day.
He has gotten away with it. The room is useless and no one is ever going to do anything behind that pale green door again.
The days tread into one another as do the movies and trips to the liquor store. The dimes and nickels and pennies of Brantley's existence are fingered by the worthless trash invading the Jefferson in its final days. He only has his dignity left, his innocence and youth long gone.
“Brantley, now come on, give it to me. Give it to me sweetheart, I can take it. And your big Roanoke Mama wants it.”
“Alethea, we’ve got to get out of here.” The room is filling up with smoke and Brantley hears the frightened cries of two girls in the next room. Even the alligator is starting to scramble against his cardboard prison.
“The unidentified woman in room 642 was carried to the lobby by three firemen early this morning after the flames in the west laundry room were subdued. She was wearing...”
“Alethea, we’ve got to go.”
Brantley stoops over the bed to try to pick her up, but it's useless. She just giggles and he can't budge her. Alethea has become so heavy, weighted down by the pleasures of the flesh that there isn't any way he can hope to carry her and she won't leave of her own will.
“ ...fire in room 642 of the Hotel Jefferson remains an enigma. Fire officials report that the flames probably started from the chair and bed; there is however evidence that the drapes and rug may well have been the origin of the small blaze. The phone, found melted onto a night table, signaled the alarm. No one was injured by the spreading flames. Hotel officials have declined...”
Brantley watches the lumps of foam rubber walk past the night table, out of the room. He sighs. She turns and smiles before she leaves.
“Well Big Daddy, you jes' go ahead and save up all your love for ole Zaque with a 'Q-U-E' and maybe next time, we'll just see if we can't get something on.”
Brantley turns his head and looks at the fattened-up old whore as they bring her down to the Mezzanine from the East Staircase. As the firemen gently lay her on the floor next to the alligator pools, a reporter comes up to him.
“Excuse me sir, but do you know anything about this dame here? I hear from the front desk clerk that she was apparently once your...”
“Listen buddy, I don't know what you're talking about. That's just some old dead B-girl. I never saw her before in my life. “
“Empty hotels, empty rooms, empty elevators. Does it always finish this way? Am I doomed to another empty hall?”
“...a leopard-skin coat over apparently nothing. Fire officials have yet to identify the body, as no record appears to have been made of the woman's presence in the hotel. The woman's room had been visited several times during the evening by soldiers awaiting departure for Hampton Roads the following morning. Her empty room was...”
Brantley turns to glance at the breast which pops out of her coat once more, and an alligator snaps at her. The smoke starts to burn his eyes and he rushes to the bed and gently bending over the heaving mass of flesh, he brushes the stray locks from her forehead and softly kisses her at the temples, where her roots are still the raven black of their youth.
Farewell Alethea, farewell.
“....littered with broken liquor and beer bottles. A small alligator in a shoebox under the bed was found to have survived the asphyxiating atmosphere of the room. It has since been released into one of the ponds of the Jefferson Court. Police are still uncertain as to...”
“Didn't you say the lady in room 642 was your fiancée at one time, Brantley?”
“Look bud, I don't what the Hell you are talking about and I wish that you would keep your nose in your own business and not go around telling reporters spicy lies.”
“Well pardon me! That's one subject I won't touch with you again.”
Brantley glances down at the breast still hanging outside her coat. His beloved Alethea lies on the cold marble floor, her head turned toward the alligators, her mouth gaping open. It agitates the alligators. The soldiers make vulgar remarks and a sailor entertains the injured guests with an imitation of a hen and a rooster feeding on jumping beans in the barnyard.
“Cockadoodledooooooo!”
The light in the elevator brightens behind “L” for Lobby; Brantley realizes that it is all over. He is still confused and light-headed, but he knows that he has finished his career of small change and eight-hour stretches. The trains had failed him long ago, and he has finally failed himself.
The bell sounds, and Brantley arrives in the Lobby for the last time. No more griping at the engineer, no more arguing with Frank for the money Brantley loans him. No more punching in at 7:02 and punching out at 2:57 to aggravate Old Beauchamp. Brantley knows he won't punch in this morning, he won't return to his room, he won't sleep in the Hotel tonight. Brantley knows that he will never sleep alone again, that his toilet will remain in the alligator travel bag for the rest of his life, if he ever does manage to get it back, and most of all, he knows that he has made his solitary trek down the empty corridor in the morning for the last time. From now on, he will be one of the sleeping heads, waiting for other people to make the world ready, while nurses and orderlies trudge up and down the long aisles of the Veteran's Hospital, Brantley's last hotel and refuge. Brantley knows that he probably should have gotten married, that he shouldn't have severed all ties in Roanoke, that he has no relations to call on, much less anything that resembles a friend outside the staff of the Hotel. Brantley has always known that sooner or later this day would come, but he had hoped to die peacefully in his sleep in his room, in his own studied disarray, with his surgical precision waiting on the bathroom shelves, and all of his clothes hanging crisply in a perfectly ordered closet. He has done his best, worked hard all his life, and now comes the fee for his independence: crowded solitude at twilight.
The bronze doors of the elevator hesitate as the box gently balances itself to Lobby level and Brantley's knees give way. He grasps the rail as the doors roll open with mechanical precision and the Lobby appears to Brantley in all of its soon to be lost splendor. Staring out of the upper lenses of his bifocals, he holds his head high and ventures a step forward, but his knees buckle again and catching on the rail, he pulls himself up, grits his teeth, and gives in. Brantley surrenders, for even though betrayed by love and respect, he had gone on. Even when the mighty iron horses they once called trains were put to pasture and the boneyard, Brantley had persevered. Even as his potency flickered, he continued to pay tribute to the vital flow of life and energy. Everything and everyone had failed him, and now he has finally failed himself.
Brantley has arrived at his moment of truth: the realization that he can no longer live without plainly leaning on someone else, someone who can help him. He has passed up his last chance at suicide with the brass ducks of his straight razor.
The elevator doors start to close and with all his might, Brantley pushes the “Door Open” button.
“Lucille, Lucille, Tom, anybody!”
Tom is finishing the morning preps is back in the switchboard room while Lucille yaks on the telephone. Brantley's plea is too feeble to waft over the partition to the Hotel's offices, but Lucille has heard the elevator’s bell when its doors opened. She rings up the fountain room.
“Perk, I think old sourpuss is on the way.”
“Lucille, I haven't seen Brantley.”
“Din't you hear the bell?”
Tom's eyes brighten at the thought of going home. He yawns and stretches.
“Tom, Lucille, Lucille!”
The open ceiling of the Hotel's offices soars above Brantley's hoarse cries. Tom lights another cigarette and goes out to the front desk to greet Brantley as he passes. Brantley's stomach starts to burn and he bows his head in defeat. The doors start to close again and Brantley pushes the button.
The old fart must have just whisked by here. Tom glances up and down the Lobby, but no sign of Brantley. The Main Street doors cast a large rectangle of sun in the low den of the lobby as day becomes ever higher and brighter. Mae pushes the doors open and walks into the Lobby, striding briskly and pretending to smooth her perfectly lacquered hair. She fairly flies past the front desk.
“Morning Mae. How're you?”
“Morning Tom. Hahayeufahnfahn.”
As Mae marches back past the mahogany phone booths and heads straight for the broom closet, a pathetic tableau vivant stops her dead in her tracks, but for no more than an instant.
“TOM! LUCILLE!”
Slumped over in the near corner, of the elevator, is Brantley. His glasses are crooked across his nose and his head nods down, looking at the floor. His mouth is open and a small pool of saliva is gathering on the maroon indoor outdoor carpeting of the elevator floor.
“TOM! LUCILLE!”
Mae can scarcely hear Brantley's lament herself as she leaps into the elevator.
“Oh my gracious Lord! Brantley's having a heart attack!”
“TOM! LUCILLE! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!”
Mae never yells even in the direst moments of the kitchen and as soon as TOM AND LUCILLE hear her the first time, they snap their heads toward the elevator, dropping pencils and switchboard lines to run out of the offices. Lucille waddles out the burgundy doors, with Tom in mad pursuit to see just what is happening.
Mae enters the elevator and grabs Brantley by his armpits, carrying him out fireman-style.
“Here Mae, let me take him.”
“That's all right hon, I’ve got him. Lucille, call an ambulance.”
“I just don't feel right. I think something's wrong.”
“Everything's going to be just fine now Brantley. Come on over here and sit down. Tom, go get some towels in the men's room.”
As Tom descends to the marble floor of the men's room, it occurs to him that he is most likely going to have to work another two hours on the morning shift.
But Brantley? What is Brantley going to do? Where is he going to go? He hasn't got a soul in the world. Brantley is just going to die in some Godforsaken hospital, and it's . . .
“Hello, VA emergency room, yeah, this is the Hotel Jefferson, and it looks like we got a heart attack on our hands. Yes sir, he's a Vet; send a ambulance right away, 'coz he looks like he's in right bad shape.”
Tom returns with the towels and Mae cleans Brantley up.
“Well Brantley, how d'ya feel?”
Brantley's stare is blank as he looks up into Mae's face in the lamplight by the sofa.
“Oh, I'm not too bad except for this cat that's sharpening her claws on my gullet. Can you get me an Alka Seltzer?”
“Not now Brantley. We'll wait for the ambulance to come.”
“Ambulance? Why don’t you just call my mother?”
Brantley knows it's worthless to protest, but he has to at least demonstrate his bravado.
“Now there ain't no call...”
“Brantley, be quiet. Don't agitate yourself.”
Brantley accedes. A guest walks past on his way out and Tom scurries back to the front desk.
“Your bill, sir?”
“Young man, I hope you’ve called an ambulance. I would say that elderly gentleman has just had a mild stroke, with those dilated pupils. Now, how much is the bill?”
“Twenty-two dollars and eighteen cents. Yes sir, we’ve called an ambulance. What else can we do for him?”
“Not much. Keep him calm. Nothing else to do. Here's twenty-five dollars.”
“I'll have to give you your change in nickels if you don't mind sir. I’ve only got twenties and six rolls of nickels.”
As soon as the client leaves, Tom goes back to the Jacobean couches. Brantley looks a little bit better, even though his pupils are still dilated. Mae is sitting beside him, reading him the morning paper.
“I’ve got to take a leak.”
“Here you go Brantley, I'll help you down into the bathroom.”
Once in front of the urinals, Tom bolsters Brantley as he performs his necessary offices.
“I may have had a heart attack, but I'm not about to piss in my pants.”
Brantley is having problems with the zipper so Tom pulls it up for him.
“Okay Brantley. Ready to go back?”
“Wait a second son, let me take a look in the mirror.”
Brantley is pale and his chin is still glistening slightly with the sheen of his slaver. He winks once and arches his brow. He begins to speak in a labored voice.
“Listen son, I'll tell you one thing. I ain’t never going to come back here, and I know it and you know it.”
“Brantley, it’s...”
“Ya durn fool, shut up, I'm talking. I'm done for. There's only one bit of advice I got to give you. Giv’em Hell. Giv’em all Hell, and do what ya dam well please. We all end up where I’m going now, sooner or later. I’ve seen it happen before, and it don't make no difference to no one except yourself. Just giv’em Hell as long as you can.”
Tom smiles.
“Brantley, things just aren't going to be the same.”
“Well Hell, what d'ya think they'll be for me? Here, take this and keep it for me. They'll probably steal it from me at the hospital.”
Tom stares at Brantley's watch as he unstraps it and puts it in Tom's hand. Tom had often admired it, but had never said anything.
“You're the only front desk clerk here left worth his weight in chicken shit. I know I can trust you, so when I ask for it back, I expect to find it in working order.”
Brantley falters as Daddy B enters the Men's Room.
“What air you two kooks doin' in here? Cain't Brantley play with his gobbler by hisself no more?”
“Beauchamp, get your fat ass out of here.”
“Come on Brantley, let's go.”
Despite the fact they usually spat like mongrels, Beauchamp helps Brantley hobble up the steps this morning, and Brantley lets him do it.
“Go take care of the desk, son.”
The bell at the front desk rings and Tom absent-mindedly slips the watch into his breast pocket. Lucille is trying to hunt up Brantley's brother's number, and when Tom gets to the front desk, it's the ambulance men.
“Straight on back to the couch.”
When they return with Brantley on the stretcher, Tom waves and Lucille comes out from behind the switchboard, to pat Brantley’s shoulder.
“Tom, I'm going to the hospital with Brantley. Cain you hold down the front desk for another couple of hours?”
“Sure Daddy B, but I'll have to come in late this afternoon.”
“Lucille!”
Brantley motions for the ambulance men to stop.
“Yeah sourpuss, what do you want now?”
“Lucille, tell the girls I’m at the big “VH” and send'em over in threes; a lady, you know, should never be kept waiting.”
Brantley lays his head down on the pillow and with Beauchamp limping along at his side, they disappear into the blinding glare of the morning sun through the Main Street doors. Tom counts up the cash drawer, Lucille drifts from conversation to conversation on the switchboard and life goes on. After a while, Mae brings down a pot of coffee and some scrambled eggs for Tom, and as Tom lights his cigarette, he remembers the watch. After a sip of coffee, he pulls the timepiece out of his pocket and looks at it. Alligator strap, real nice late deco housing, and there on the back is an inscription, faintly eroded by human sweat:
A hotelier is a gentleman on a level with his guests.
