up again somehow? I mean, how, uh, badly … ”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Out of the question.”
“Listen, White, if I get busted over this, I won’t let myself be the only one to get hurt. You understand. There are going to be questions.”
White nodded vaguely. He seemed to go away and return. “Well then, take a look yourself.” He handed Ab an old-fashioned brass key. There was a plastic Yin and Yang symbol on the keychain. He pointed to a four-tier metal file on the far side of the office. “Through there.”
The file wouldn’t roll aside from the doorway until, having thought about it, Ab bent down and found the release for the wheels. There was no knob on the door, just a tarnished disc of lock with a word “Chicago” on it. The key fit loosely and the locks had to be coaxed.
The body was scattered all over the patchy linoleum. A heavy rose-like scent masked the stench of the decaying organs. No, it was not something you could have passed off as the result of surgery, and in any case the head seemed to be missing.
He’d wasted an hour to see this.
White stood in the doorway, ignoring, in sympathy to Ab’s feelings, the existence of the dismembered and disemboweled corpse. “He was waiting here, you see, when I went to the hospital. An out-of-towner, and one of my very … I always let them take away whatever they want. Sorry.”
As White was locking up the room again, Ab recollected the one thing he would need irrespective of the body. He hoped it hadn’t gone off with the head.
They found her left arm in the coffin of simulated pine with the Identi-Band still on it. He tried to persuade himself that as long as he had this name there was still half a chance that he’d find something to hang it on.
White sensed Ab’s renascent optimism, and, without sharing it, encouraged him: “Things could be worse.”
Ab frowned. His hope was still too fragile to bear expression.
But White began to float away in his own mild breeze. “Say, Ab, have you ever studied Yoga?”
Ab laughed. “Shit no.”
“You should. You’d be amazed what it can do for you. I don’t stick with it like I should, it’s my own fault, I suppose, but it puts you in touch with… Well, it’s hard to explain.”
White discovered that he was alone in the office. “Where are you going?” he asked.
----
420 East 65th came into the world as a “luxury” coop, but like most such it had been subdivided by the turn of the century into a number of little hotels, two or three to a floor. These hotels rented rooms or portions of rooms on a weekly basis to singles who either preferred hotel life or who, as aliens, didn’t qualify for a MODICUM dorm. Chapel shared his room at the Colton (named after the actress reputed to have owned the entire twelve rooms of the hotel in the ’80’s and ’90’s) with another ex-convict, but since Lucey left for his job at a retrieval center early in the morning and spent his afterhours cruising for free meat around the piers the two men rarely encountered each other, which was how they liked it. It wasn’t cheap, but where else could they have found accommodations so reassuringly like those they’d known at Sing-Sing: so small, so spare, so dark?
The room had a false floor in the reductionist style of the ’90’s. Lucey never went out without first scrupulously tucking everything away and rolling the floor into place. When Chapel got home from the hospital he would be greeted by a splendid absence: the walls, one window covered by a paper screen, the ceiling with its single recessed light, the waxed wood of the floor. the single decoration was a strip of molding tacked to the walls at what was now, due to the raised floor, eye-level.
He was home, and here, beside the door, bolted to the wall, quietly, wonderfully waiting for him, was his twenty-eight-inch Yamaha of America, none better at any price, nor any cheaper. (Chapel paid all the rental and cable charges himself,
“No. No, I don’t think so. Out of the question.”
“Listen, White, if I get busted over this, I won’t let myself be the only one to get hurt. You understand. There are going to be questions.”
White nodded vaguely. He seemed to go away and return. “Well then, take a look yourself.” He handed Ab an old-fashioned brass key. There was a plastic Yin and Yang symbol on the keychain. He pointed to a four-tier metal file on the far side of the office. “Through there.”
The file wouldn’t roll aside from the doorway until, having thought about it, Ab bent down and found the release for the wheels. There was no knob on the door, just a tarnished disc of lock with a word “Chicago” on it. The key fit loosely and the locks had to be coaxed.
The body was scattered all over the patchy linoleum. A heavy rose-like scent masked the stench of the decaying organs. No, it was not something you could have passed off as the result of surgery, and in any case the head seemed to be missing.
He’d wasted an hour to see this.
White stood in the doorway, ignoring, in sympathy to Ab’s feelings, the existence of the dismembered and disemboweled corpse. “He was waiting here, you see, when I went to the hospital. An out-of-towner, and one of my very … I always let them take away whatever they want. Sorry.”
As White was locking up the room again, Ab recollected the one thing he would need irrespective of the body. He hoped it hadn’t gone off with the head.
They found her left arm in the coffin of simulated pine with the Identi-Band still on it. He tried to persuade himself that as long as he had this name there was still half a chance that he’d find something to hang it on.
White sensed Ab’s renascent optimism, and, without sharing it, encouraged him: “Things could be worse.”
Ab frowned. His hope was still too fragile to bear expression.
But White began to float away in his own mild breeze. “Say, Ab, have you ever studied Yoga?”
Ab laughed. “Shit no.”
“You should. You’d be amazed what it can do for you. I don’t stick with it like I should, it’s my own fault, I suppose, but it puts you in touch with… Well, it’s hard to explain.”
White discovered that he was alone in the office. “Where are you going?” he asked.
----
420 East 65th came into the world as a “luxury” coop, but like most such it had been subdivided by the turn of the century into a number of little hotels, two or three to a floor. These hotels rented rooms or portions of rooms on a weekly basis to singles who either preferred hotel life or who, as aliens, didn’t qualify for a MODICUM dorm. Chapel shared his room at the Colton (named after the actress reputed to have owned the entire twelve rooms of the hotel in the ’80’s and ’90’s) with another ex-convict, but since Lucey left for his job at a retrieval center early in the morning and spent his afterhours cruising for free meat around the piers the two men rarely encountered each other, which was how they liked it. It wasn’t cheap, but where else could they have found accommodations so reassuringly like those they’d known at Sing-Sing: so small, so spare, so dark?
The room had a false floor in the reductionist style of the ’90’s. Lucey never went out without first scrupulously tucking everything away and rolling the floor into place. When Chapel got home from the hospital he would be greeted by a splendid absence: the walls, one window covered by a paper screen, the ceiling with its single recessed light, the waxed wood of the floor. the single decoration was a strip of molding tacked to the walls at what was now, due to the raised floor, eye-level.
He was home, and here, beside the door, bolted to the wall, quietly, wonderfully waiting for him, was his twenty-eight-inch Yamaha of America, none better at any price, nor any cheaper. (Chapel paid all the rental and cable charges himself,
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