IN THE RESIDENT HOTEL

(1).

In the lobby a woman, indented into the panelled oak, sells newspapers, magazines — cigars, cigarettes.

A hair pin caught at the base of her neck bobs to a rhythm, her own tuneless pleasantries. She is trying to make me feel at home.

On the counter — magazines, small books. One by a woman whose poems I admire. Covered red, about 8 × 10, it is bound with a black, textured tape. Pushed through the tape

carpet tacks. They extend — dangerously past a coverless back. Inside

not poems — prints, which unfold to poster size, drawn in Beardsley-style, washed pastel pink and green. I ask.

I am told:

Ms. Turningheist lives twenty miles northwest, in the Jersey hills you see from New York. She needs money and often brings books. They take what she gives them. Sometimes it’s poems — sometimes it’s not.

(2)

I walk across an empty lobby, past the over-stuffed chairs. I enter a function hall. It has not been used in years. A contractor sits on a plank he intends for minor repairs. I sit next to him. He presses against me. He locks an arm around my neck. He hangs a hand between my breasts. I am not rude: I do not move. I wonder how I have encouraged this. Someone begins hammering nails in the balcony across the room. It is the contractor’s helper, his son. He calls to his father. He comes down to discuss the details of rail construction.

The contractor is angry with his son: couldn’t he see he was spoiling things? couldn’t he see I was almost laid? now I’ve gone — I’m in the lobby again.