Marianne’s suite in the Waldorf Towers has six rooms, a view of St. Bartholomew’s, and a grand piano in the living room. The bellboy shows us around, opens closets, turns on lights, all to make sure we’re pleased. He tells us that the Secretary of State stays here. Ten minutes and a $100 tip later, we’re alone.
If Cray were providing the account of our week together in this penthouse suite, he would rush to what he considered the good parts—sex in front of the TV, a dinner of burritos, more sex, then a postcoital Amstel Light. But that’s not the way it goes.
We play our gigs and push each other to work the audience—not for diamonds or solid-gold credit, but just because we can. Each night ends with sweat and crowds and applause, not in the hotel rooms of strangers.
Saturday night finds us in our enormous bed, exhausted, ears ringing. We sleep together with more tenderness than passion—we’re tired. Sunday morning, the sky over Manhattan is blue and empty. Bright sunlight slants across our rooms. Down on the streets, students are coming back to college, people are out shopping and buying and spending. But we stay alone in our bed high above the city, a new couple finding our way.
“Why were you so shy with this?” Marianne throws back the covers and runs her hand up my thigh, takes me in her hand like a microphone. “Always denying your special lady friends the real action, just giving them your patented Mr. Fingers act.”
I pull away and yank the covers back up. “I was waiting for you to come along.”
“Thanks, but not good enough.”
“I didn’t want to leave a trail of young Wolfsheads along the road. You met Cray—can you imagine more of him?”
“Better, but you’re still not being honest.”
“Because I’m shy?”
“You play piano in front of hundreds of strangers and you’re worried about a little traditional sex?”
“I don’t want to owe anyone anything,” I say finally. “Every act is a transaction, an exchange. Even sex. Particularly sex.”
“That sounds more like it,” Marianne says. “But here’s what I think, Ross. Here’s what I think is at the core of your Mr. Fingers routine. You’re scared.”
“Scared?” I shift a little in the bed, rest my right ear between her breasts, hear her heart beating.
“Yes, scared. I’m not sure of what—maybe your parents’ crappy marriage or your greedy girlfriend—what was her name again, Alto?”
“Alta.”
“Anyway, maybe she put you off the whole love thing. We’ll leave that for a professional. But for now, I know you like being an outsider. You’re always talking about Miles Davis. He’s the ultimate outsider.”
“Actually, I think he managed to find his way inside a lot of willing women. Read the autobiography.”
“What I’m saying is this, Ross. Your days as an outsider are over.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m going to cure you.” Marianne smiles, then climbs out of bed. Perhaps it’s her free-spirited upbringing in sunny Florida, but Marianne is completely comfortable wandering around naked. She strides around the suite, opens a drawer, takes out a paperback, then another.
“Bibliocoitus,” she says when she crawls back into bed.
I give her a blank look.
“Sex with books.”
“Doesn’t that kind of stick the pages together?”
“Very funny, but that’s not what I mean.” Marianne turns away, dovetailing against me. “Here, take your medicine.” She hands me a copy of Beyond the Horizon, the biography of Conrad Hilton, found er of the Hilton Hotel chain, a paperback left in every room of the Waldorf to replace Gideon’s Bible, apparently.
“I’ve been waiting to read this for years,” I say. “Please don’t tell me how it ends. Wait a minute—I bet he gets rich and dies, right?”
“Don’t think of it as a book,” she says. “It’s like an eye chart, something to stare at, while . . .”
“While what?”
“While this.” Marianne presses close to me, both of us facing the row of windows that looks out on a gleaming Byzantine syringe of an office building rising above St. Bart’s. She reaches back to take me in her hand, guides me. I press slowly inside with a gasp.
“There,” she says. “Now read.”
“But I don’t want to read now.”
“I want you inside me as long as possible,” she says. “Everyone has it all wrong. Lingerie? Performance-enhancing drugs? They just speed up the act. But the right reading material can slow it way, way down.” Marianne takes out her book, Be My Guest, Conrad Hilton’s autobiography, also provided free with the room as part of the all-Hilton library.
I struggle to focus on the pages in front of me. I’m moving very slowly inside Marianne, who pushes against me in a delicate rhythm.
“You need to be reading something incredibly boring. That way you can postpone the inevitable until . . .” Marianne gazes over at the clock on the night table. It’s ten o’clock. “Until about noon. We’ll order lunch to celebrate. With champagne! But for now, focus, Ross. I’ve seen your intense powers of concentration. Time to put them to the test.”
I dutifully open my book and read about Conrad Hilton’s Norwegian father, his German mother, and his strong belief in the American dream. The preface is short, but I find myself skipping ahead. “It says here that Hilton was convinced that there is a natural law that obliges all mankind to help relieve the suffering, distressed, and destitute.”
“Sounds familiar,” Marianne says. “In the autobiography, he comes off a lot more arrogant.”
Marianne presses slowly against me and I close my eyes.
“Just read,” I say. “And hold still, please.”
We read on silently, or nearly so, for about an hour. We work our way through Conrad’s early years at St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe, the thrill of buying his first hotel in 1919—the Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas. The construction of the Dallas Hilton in 1925 was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as having sex in slow motion. Thankfully, I come to a bleak passage about the Great Depression, which reminds me of Chief’s stories about his own Dust Bowl boyhood. I read about Conrad’s obsession with efficiency and keeping costs low and quality high. It’s an inspiring read, I suppose, and it’s serving its purpose well. The clock grinds toward eleven o’clock. Conrad still only owns a handful of hotels and Marianne and I are already damp with sweat.
We’re both breathing quickly as we squint at the pages of the cheap paperbacks in our shaking hands.
Half an hour later, Conrad has expanded his empire to include the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco, the Plaza in New York, the Stevens, the Palmer House, the Waldorf-Astoria. I played a couple of gigs at the Palmer House and I try to distract myself by remembering the room, whether the crowds were good, how much I was paid.
“Are you up to the part where he marries Zsa Zsa?” Marianne says through clenched teeth.
“You’ve been skimming.”
“So what?”
“I’m reading about his efforts to use advertising to promote world peace through international trade and travel.”
“Boring.”
“Maybe not quite enough.” I look at the clock. Fifteen minutes until noon. “How do I know that you haven’t, you know . . . ?”
“Achieved success, as the French say?”
“Yes, that.”
“Believe me, you’ll know. All of Midtown will know. Tell me about something dull from your childhood,” Marianne says, eyes pinched closed. “Make it boring.”
“My brother and I used to spend hours at bookstores when we were kids,” I say, taking a break from Conrad and his own relentless march to success. “Our favorite was in Evanston. A place called City of Books. One city block, three floors, all packed with used books.”
“Were all the books dull?”
“Yes, they were very, very dull. Ray tended to get lost in the typography section and the coin books. Roman coins. Price guides. I read history books, musician biographies, crime novels that smelled like wet newspapers.”
Marianne nods quickly. “Tell me more. Make it really, really boring.”
“We’d sit in the store for hours, the air around us sparkling with dust, reading, never saying much, just reading like little weird animals hungry for facts,” I say. “It was the closest I ever felt to anyone in my family.”
“You should go visit your brother. See how Cray’s doing. Maybe we’ll drive up to see him after we finish having sex . . . I mean, after we finish this tour.”
“I don’t think Ray wants visitors. He’s definitely a solo kind of guy. Plus, he’s not particularly happy with me.”
“Why?”
“Cray’s little accident.”
“Oh. Well, that wasn’t exactly your fault.”
“I was supposed to be watching him.”
“A watched pot never boils.”
“I have no idea what you mean by that.”
“Me neither. I’m just talking.” Marianne looks at the clock. “Only five more minutes. Can you make it?”
I nod. “Back to our reading.”
Marianne dutifully opens her paperback. I read the last section of mine, which covers the post-Conrad era of the Hilton empire. Conrad’s son Nicky marries Elizabeth Taylor for a year. There’s a picture of Taylor with her legendary cleavage. I turn the page quickly. I read about his son Barron, who by the year 2000 owned more than five hundred hotels around the world. I skip the section on infamous celebutard Paris Hilton and her ninny sister.
Instead, I try to remember all the Hilton hotels I’ve stayed in, a version of counting sheep that allows me to forget for a moment that I’m in the final stages of a prolonged sexual act, one that’s drawing to a tumultuous finale.
“Twelve noon—it’s time,” Marianne shouts.
We toss our books on the floor. Marianne pushes hard against me until we merge into the beast with one back. I wrap my arms around her, crossing them, hands cupping an opposite breast, fingertips pressed gently over her nipples. We shut our eyes tightly. Looking at our faces, you might think we were falling from an airplane or enduring simultaneous outpatient surgery. We writhe together, closer, until our tower suite echoes with a duet of gasps, screams, then sighs, all in harmony.
That moment, I become a confirmed insider.
In the calm and exhaustion that follows, I take the lobe of Marianne’s ear and press it gently between my teeth, then run my finger across her lips. They move slowly, as if she were speaking to someone, telling the story of what just happened, as if by repeating it we could relive it again and again.
Marianne and I stay in our suite, playing piano and “reading for pleasure.” At night, we leave the hotel only for dinners at the latest one-word restaurants—Envy, Eon, Burn—long meals with meandering, wine-fueled conversations that go on until three in the morning. We wander through Central Park and I give away the occasional Jackson to one of the stunned-looking outdoors-men sprawled near the Reflecting Pool.
The first day of October finds us sitting on a bench on Fifth Avenue just south of the museums, the warm sun on our faces.
“I think I know why you give away money,” Marianne says softly. She’s been strangely quiet all morning.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t really care about money,” she says. “Otherwise you’d be scurrying down the street to some job.” She points around us, at the dozens of people rushing to work, ear-budded, cell-phoned, and oblivious to the morning sun stealing through the city block by block.
“Maybe I just care more about giving it away than keeping it.”
“That sounds good, Ross. And if I were writing a feature article on your Robin Hood meets Bill Evans act, that would be a great quote.”
I laugh uneasily, not sure where Marianne’s going with this.
“You’re just giving away something that means nothing to you, the way people put stuff out on the sidewalk with a FREE sign on it. It’s free because they don’t want it or don’t need it anymore.”
I say nothing.
“Do you even know what I’m talking about?” She turns toward me, green eyes blazing.
“I’m not sure,” I say.
“Maybe you’ll just decide you don’t need me anymore. Maybe you don’t really know how to care about anything, really. Except on some kind of abstract level.” She raises her hands in the air and wiggles her fingers.
“Hold on. We’ve been traveling together for a couple of months now. We’ve been in the city for about a week. And we’ve been together every minute. Do you really think I don’t care?”
“Want to know what I think?”
“Yes, I do.”
Marianne rises from the bench, turns, and levels a finger at me. “I think you like to keep the world at an arm’s length, Ross. Like those eighty-eight keys. And I don’t like it one bit.”
“You might have noticed that we didn’t spend most of last night at an arm’s length. In fact, we were about as close as two people can be, as far as I can tell.”
“Just because you were actually inside me instead of just touching me, doesn’t mean we’re close,” she shouts. Marianne’s powerful voice reverberates down Fifth Avenue, freezing pedestrians in their tracks for blocks. They turn and give me withering looks. What the hell’s wrong with that waiter? And what’s he doing with that hot chick? Isn’t that Julianne Moore?
They move on. Marianne sits back down.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m emotional.”
“So am I, believe it or not.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. And not just when you’re channeling all those dead piano players during a gig.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been with someone else. You know that.”
“Me too, Ross. I’m just saying it’s time to forget about all that and let it go. Forget about the stupid ex-boyfriends and-girlfriends. And everyone we met and ripped off on the road. They’re not here. They mean nothing now, right?”
I nod. “Nothing.”
“So that just leaves the two of us. And a big question.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you willing to really love someone?”
I jump from the bench. “I don’t even know why you’re asking this, Marianne. I haven’t been with anyone in years. Maybe I’m rusty about saying exactly how I feel. But you’ve got to know that I’m in love with you, Marianne. Hear that?”
No one walking through the park stops—shouting about love, lost or found, is old news in the city. “I’ll even quit stealing.”
The people streaming by pause for a moment, then move on. Tough crowd. I sit back down.
“That’s not what I’m asking, Ross,” she says. “I just want one thing from you.”
“What’s that?”
“I just want you to trust me. All the time. Not just in bed or on stage or on the road. Just give in and trust me. I’ll never do anything to make you regret it.”
I pause for a moment. “Of course,” I say. “You don’t even have to ask.”
We kiss, not the tentative kisses of young lovers, but like confident pros, who know exactly what they’re getting into and where it might lead. Two grifters, off to see the world.
I click on the overhead light. My studio apartment on Elizabeth Street is nearly empty and even more desolate than I remember. A futon. A couple of suitcases full of old clothes. Some books. One window faces a brick wall about five feet away. If I look up at just the right angle, I can see the back of another apartment on Mott Street. Malcolm never claimed that a studio in the clubhouse was elegant, but the price is right. Anyone on the circuit can rent one for five hundred dollars a month.
I sit on the futon for a moment, feel the presence of an earlier self, one more spartan and single-minded. The earlier, more doctrinaire version of me—the felonious monk who lived solo, played the piano, stole, and gave the money away—is dead.
I fold up the futon and drag it down the stairs and out the front door, leaving it on the sidewalk.
Malcolm’s merry lodgers share the shadowy main room of the club house. The usual clump of musicians gathers near the old Mason & Hamlin upright, passing charts back and forth, lost in arcane chords and melodies. They look up when I walk in.
“Hey Ross, check this out,” someone says. Malcolm’s crew knows me as someone who has managed to stay out on the circuit long after most players drop out.
They’re huddled around Harry Briggs, a journeyman guitarist who specializes in suburban bank jobs. He’s tapping on a laptop.
“You’re not going to believe this scam.” Harry points at the screen, runs his hand through his long, thinning hair. “You agree to play their set and they cut you a check for five hundred bucks.”
The others gathered around the computer scrawl down a phone number in their fakebooks.
“Companies. Mostly consumer products. Anyone trying to generate a buzz about their small-batch Bourbon, celebrity fragrance, new car, whatever. You just play the songs they tell you to, work in the product name during the between-song banter, and they pay you. And the best thing about it is, they keep paying for as long as the deal is active. Sometimes it’s for years.”
I look at the list of songs, find them pretty hokey. “Are you really going to do that?”
“Sure, why not? It’s easy money, Ross,” Harry says. He leans toward me, whispers, “Easier than holding up bank branch offices with a starter gun.”
“It just seems kind of wrong. I mean, trying to get people to buy things.”
“That’s pretty much what we’re doing already, Ross, you know that. They’ve just broadened the mission a little bit.”
“The mission?”
“Yeah, like it says right here.” He points—“Our mission is to expand the unconventional marketing opportunities for innovative products by tapping the talents of America’s touring musicians.”
“I’d rather play Moondance until I drop dead.”
The others laugh.
Harry smiles. “Choose your poison, friend.”
Back upstairs, I haul out my suitcases and put them on the sidewalk. Someone has already dragged off the futon. My years as a boarder in Malcolm’s nest of thieves are over.
Malcolm rarely comes to the club house. He prefers a worn Italian restaurant down on Mulberry, where he sits at a café table and drinks espresso in the afternoon, switching to Barolo exactly at five, Scotch at seven.
I join him at his table. He’s wearing a narrow-cut Savile Row suit in a delicate pinstripe. His hair is almost completely gray now, swept straight back, making him look like an extremely dapper Charlie Watts.
“Good shows, I hear,” he says. His glimmering brown eyes still follow every woman who walks by.
“Definitely.” I pick up Malcolm’s silver lighter from the table and relight his small cigar.
“Club owners are happy. Lots of return bookings. You’re going to be busy this winter.”
I pause. “I want to talk to you about something, Malcolm.”
“Sure.” He drains his glass.
“I’m thinking of switching over to a duo.”
Malcolm knocks the ash from his cigar. “Let me guess. You and the talented, lovely Marianne London.”
“Yes.”
“Well, well,” he says, smiling. “Such a surprise.”
“I thought you might have been doing some matchmaking.” Maybe Malcolm, not fate, brought us together.
He shakes his head. “I can’t take credit for it, though I’d be glad to. It just happened. Like everything else in the world. And good for you that it did.”
“I think so.”
“You don’t want to end up like me, Ross. Lonely and too old to do anything about it.” Malcolm signals for another glass of wine. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
“It’s not like we’re leaving the circuit,” I say. “We want to play out together. Same rooms we’re playing now, maybe even bigger.”
“We played out a few times together and went over great. Been practicing our timing.” I think about our long afternoons in the Waldorf Towers.
“I can imagine. And I think you’re smart to look for a new angle. Can’t keep doing the same thing over and over, Ross. Makes you a very dull boy.” Malcolm smiles and the lines in his face deepen for a moment.
“So you think it’s a good idea?”
He shrugs. “If it’s what you want to do, then it’s a good idea.”
I try to guess what Malcolm’s telling me. For years, he’s been my advisor, closer to me than my father, brother, anyone.
“What I’m saying is, if you become a duo, you can’t go back, Ross. It’s like deciding to play weddings or to put together a band. Once you get your names out there, you have to stick with it, through thick and thin . . . or thin and thinner, more likely.”
“Like getting married.”
“Like getting married and then some. Take it from me, I’ve seen plenty of duos go out in my time, and not a lot of them come back.”
“What happens?”
“They get tired of each other, burn out, fight about money, drink too much, fool around. There are lots of endings, none of them particularly good.”
“Marianne and I are different.”
Malcolm’s green eyes turn cold for a moment. “That’s what everyone thinks.”
“We have a lot in common.”
“I assume you’re not talking about a mutual appreciation for the early stride era.”
“I’m talking about extracurricular activities.”
“Don’t talk too loudly about them.” Malcolm leans closer. “Things have been a bit strange lately. I’m like a spider at the center of a web. I feel something new crawling out on the edges of our little nighttime universe. And it isn’t good.”
“Anything I should look out for?”
“New friends,” he says. “Always be worried about new friends. You never know what they can bring. New friends can be enemies you just haven’t sized up yet. You’re a fast study. You’ll be fine. Just keep your eyes open. And your bag packed.”
“I will.”
“I know you will.” He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “You’re the one the others want to be, Ross. You’re legendary.”
“Don’t you have to be dead to be legendary?”
“Not always, but it helps.”