Starts out with a bang: As if I wasn't
feeling bad enough it had to be one of those muggy New York City summer
nights when your breath comes out melting. With my room on the ground
floor and facing nothing, I lay in bed and sweated up the joint. The
summer hadn't been too rough till the last few days, about the time my
belly went on the rocks, when it became a Turkish bath. I stared up at
the flaky ceiling and wished the 52 Grover Street Corporation would
install air conditioning. Almost wished I was the house dick at a better
hotel. No, I didn't wish that—I had a sweet deal at the Grover. With my
police pension, the pocket money the hotel insisted was a salary, and
my various side rackets, I was pulling down over two hundred dollars a
week in this flea bag— all of it tax free. Turning over to reach a cool
part of the sheet, this warm, queasy feeling bubbled through my gut. I
belched and snapping on the table light took a mint. All I had on was
shorts, but they were damp and as I started to change them, there was a
knock on the door. When I said, “Yeah?” Barbara opened the door, fanning
her face with a folded morning paper. She never slopped around in a
kimono or just a slip. Barbara was always neat in a dress and
underthings, and shoes, not slippers. Which was one reason I let her
work the hotel steadily. Her simple face might have been cute—ten years
ago. Now it held that washed-out look that comes with the wear and tear.
But her legs were still cute, long and slim. She closed the door and
leaned against it. “My—what a lump of man.”
