Motel полностью

“You all feel threatened,” she said. “If I’d ever told Michael about even posing for Paul, he’d probably have hit me or something.”

“What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me he beats you?”

“Don’t be silly, he’s Jewish.”

“So was Louis Lepke,” Frank said.

“Yes, but he got mixed up with a lot of Italians. Now don’t get offended.”

“I’m not offended.”

“You do find it threatening, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t find it threatening,” he said. “In fact, I find it lovely. In fact I find it delightful that you picked up a belly-button sculptor, and posed for him, and went to bed with him, and can still remember the exact date, October eighth...”

“Sixth,” she corrected.

“Yes, I find that all perfectly damn wonderful,” he said, his voice rising. “I thought we were, for Christ’s sake, supposed to be in love with each other! I thought we were supposed to be able to trust each other and...”

There was a sudden hammering on the wall opposite the bed. Frank stopped mid-sentence, and turned to look at the wall.

“The black Cadillac,” Millie whispered.

There was more hammering now, louder this time.

“Stop that banging!” Frank shouted, and it stopped immediately. “Fat bastard,” he said, and Millie giggled. “Thinks he owns the place. Move the car, lower the television, bang, bang, bang with his goddamn fist!” He glared at the wall. Millie was still giggling. “Go ahead!” he shouted. “I dare you to hit that wall one more goddamn time!”

There was no further hammering. Frank turned from the wall. Millie had stopped giggling. She was watching him steadily.

“Are we supposed to be in love with each other?” she asked.

“That was my understanding,” he said quietly.

“That was my understanding, too,” she said. She walked to him, and turned her back to him, and lifted the hair from the nape of her neck. He reached for the zipper at the back of her dress, and gently lowered it.

It was October outside, but the drapes were drawn, and in the room it might have been any season. The bedclothes were rumpled, and a pillow was on the carpeted floor. Millie, in lavender tights and brassiere was applying lipstick at the mirror. In the bathroom, Frank was singing loudly. He sang badly off-key, and she could not recognise the tune.

“Frank?” she said.

“Mm?”

“Don’t you think you should call her?”

Frank came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair wet. He had been growing a moustache for the past month, and he wore it with supreme confidence.

“What, honey?” he said.

“Don’t you think you should call Hope?”

“What for?”

“It’s pretty late. She...”

“Hell with her,” he said, and picked up his shorts and trousers, and went back into the bathroom again.

Millie put the cap on her lipstick, dropped it into the bag, and then picked up her hairbrush. Brushing out her hair, she said, “You still haven’t told me why Mae closed the shop so suddenly?”

“I guess she just got tired of it,” he said.

“Maybe she took a lover,” Millie said.

“What?” Frank said, and came out of the bathroom in his shorts.

“I said maybe she...”

“I doubt that sincerely,” Frank said.

“It’s a possibility,” Millie said, and shrugged.

“I doubt it.”

“You forgot to say sincerely.”

“I think she just got bored with selling antiques, that’s all,” he said, and stepped into his trousers and zipped up the fly.

“Probably the pitcher that did it,” Millie said. “My returning the ironstone pitcher. Michael says that stores operating on a small volume...”

“Mae’s shop wasn’t Bloomingdale’s,” Frank said, “but I’m sure a refund on a pitcher that cost fifteen dollars...”

“Seventeen dollars.”

“...wouldn’t drive her out of business. Anyway, why’d you return it?”

“I didn’t like having a pitcher belonging to another woman.”

“It didn’t belong to her. The moment you bought it, it became yours.”

“It still seemed like hers.” Brushing her hair, evenly stroking it, she said, “Would you like to know why she sold the shop? I can tell you, if you’d like to know.”

“Why’d she sell it?”

“Because of your trip last month.”

“My trip?”

“Mmm. Your second honeymoon,” Millie said.

“You mean the trip to Antigua?”

“Well, where else did you go last month?”

“That was not a second honeymoon,” he said. “Have you seen my shirt? Where’d my shirt disappear to?”

“I meant to tell you, by the way, that September is the hurricane season down there. Why anyone would go to Antigua in September is beyond me.”

Frank lifted the bedspread from one of the chairs; his shirt was not under it. “We had beautiful weather,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come back with a tan? All you came back with was a moustache.”

“I also came back with a tan. Now where the hell is that shirt?”

“Not a very good tan, Frank. Would you like to know why? Because it was a second honeymoon, that’s why. It’s a little difficult to get a tan when you’re up in the room all day long.”

“We were not up in the room all day long,” he said, and got down on his knees and looked under the bed. “Now how did it get there?” he said, and reached under the bed.

“Then where were you?” Millie asked.