Nor did he ever question Zoe about her private life. They respected each other’s pain. It brought them closer than confessions and confidences.
“Sergeant Coe called me last night,” Pinckney told her. “At home. His wife is pregnant.”
“Again?” Zoe Kohler said.
“Again,” he said, smiling. “So he’d like all the work he can get. Naturally. You’re going to make out next week’s schedule today?”
She nodded.
“Can you use him?”
That was the way Everett Pinckney was. He didn’t tell her to find work for Sergeant Coe, although he had every right to. But the employment schedule of the Security Section was one of her duties, so he asked her.
“Could he fill in for Joe Levine?” she asked.
“I’m sure he could.”
“I’ll check with him before I show you the schedule.”
“Fine. Thank you, Zoe.”
Pinckney, Barney McMillan, and Joseph T. Levine, the three security officers, worked eight hours a day. Each had two days off a week (Pinckney, the chief, on Saturday and Sunday). To fill in on their days off, or during vacations or illness, temporary security guards were employed.
Most of the temps were moonlighting New York policemen and detectives. The Security Section had a list of a dozen or so officers who might be available, and had little trouble keeping a man on duty around the clock.
Pinckney told Zoe Kohler he was going to check at the desk and then he was going to inspect the new locks on the steel doors leading to the roof.
“Be back in about an hour,” he said.
She nodded.
He slid off her desk. He stood a moment, not departing, and she looked up inquiringly.
“Zoe …” he said.
She waited.
“You’re all right?” he asked anxiously. “You’re not ill? You seem a little, uh, subdued.”
His concern touched her briefly.
“I’m fine, Mr. Pinckney,” she said. “It’s that time of the month again.”
“Oh, that,” he said, relieved. Then, with a harsh bark of laughter, “Well, I have to shave every morning.”
He smiled, and was gone.
Yes, he shaved every morning. But you didn’t get back pains and cramps from shaving, she should have told him. You didn’t see the dark, gummy stains. You didn’t imagine the ooze and flow. The constant crucifixion.
The longer she lived, the more vulgar life seemed to her. Not society or culture, but life itself. Breathing, eating, excreting, intercourse, bleeding.
Animal. Crude. Disgusting. Those were the words she used.
She worked slowly, steadily all morning, head bent over her desk, a silent drudge. She didn’t look up when Everett Pinckney returned from his tour of inspection. She heard him in his office: desk drawer opened, clink of glass, drawer slammed shut.
She was not bored with her job. To be bored, she would have had to think about it, be conscious of it. But she moved mechanically, her hands, eyes, and a snippet of brain sufficient for the task. The rest of her was away and floating.
At 12:30 she took her japanned tray and went into the kitchen. One of the chefs fixed her a tunafish salad plate with lettuce, tomato and cucumber slices, a single large radish cut fancily to resemble a flower. She carried the food and a pot of hot tea back to her office.
Pinckney never ate lunch.
“Got to keep this down,” he would say, patting his sunken stomach.
But she heard the sliding of his desk drawer …
She ate her lunch sitting erect in her stenographer’s chair, her spine not touching the back. The cramps were intensifying, the pain in the lumbar region beginning to glow. It seemed centered just above the sacrum, but internal. The pain was a sun, spreading its rays.
She picked delicately at her salad, taking small bites, masticating thoroughly. She sipped her tea. When she had finished the food, she lighted a cigarette and poured a second cup of tea.
She kept a small pharmacopoeia in the middle drawer of her desk. She washed down two Anacin, a Midol and a vitamin C tablet. Then she patted her lips lightly with the linen napkin and brought the used dishes back to the scullery.
It was a rackety, steaming room, manned by two youths, a black and a Puerto Rican in sweat-soaked T shirts. They worked at top speed, scraping plates into garbage cans, filling racks with china, glassware, cutlery, pushing the racks into a huge washing machine.
They looked up when she came in, gave her scurvy glances. The Puerto Rican winked and shouted something in Spanish. The black roared with laughter and slapped his thigh. She emptied her tray, turned, and walked out. Their laughter followed her.
She called Sergeant Coe at his precinct, but he wasn’t on duty. She called him at home. Mrs. Coe answered, and Zoe identified herself.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Coe said anxiously. “Can you hang on a sec? He’s working in the basement. I’ll call him right away.”
When the sergeant came on the phone, breathless, Zoe informed him that she had him down for Joe Levine’s shift, 5:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M., on Monday and Tuesday nights.
“Great,” he said. “Many thanks.”
“If for any reason you are unable to make it,” she said formally, “please let us know as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be there,” he assured her. “Thanks again.”
She took the employment schedule into Mr. Pinckney’s office and stood by his desk as he read it.
“I checked with Sergeant Coe,” she said. “He told me he’ll be able to fill in for Joe Levine.”
“Good,” Pinckney said. “It looks fine to me, Zoe. You can type it up. Copies to the desk, front office, and bookkeeping.”
He said that every week.
“Yes, Mr. Pinckney,” she said.
She had just started typing the roster when her phone rang, an unusual occurrence.
“Hotel Granger,” she said. “Security Section. May I help you?”
“You sure can, sweetie,” a woman’s voice said briskly. “Come to a great cocktail party Harry and I are throwing this afternoon.”
“Maddie!” Zoe Kohler said happily. “How are you?”
“Full of piss and vinegar,” Madeline Kurnitz said. “How they hanging, kiddo?”
The two women chatted awhile. Mostly, Maddie chatted, rapidly and loudly, and Zoe listened, smiling and nodding at the phone.
It seemed to her she had been listening to Madeline Kurnitz all her life. Or at least since she had shared a room with her and two other girls at the University of Minnesota. That had been in 1960-1963, and even then Maddie had been gabbling a blue streak.
“A four-year vacation from the realities of life,” was her judgment on the value of a college education, and her scholastic career reflected this belief. It was one long party studded with dates, escapades, affairs, unexplained absences, threats of expulsion, and an endless parade of yearning boys and older men that awed her roommates.
Maddie: “Listen, the only reason we’re all here is to snare a husband. Right? So why don’t they teach us something useful—like moaning. The only reason I got all these guys calling is that I’ve learned how to moan realistically while screwing. That’s all a woman has to know to be a success: how to moan. This place should have a course called Moaning 101-102. Then the second year’s course could be called Remedial Moaning.”
Maddie: “Look, there are men, and there are husbands. If you were male, would you want to be a husband? The hell you would. You’d want to charge through life banging everything in sight. Men fuck, husbands have sex. Men smell, husbands use fou-fou. Men drink whiskey, husbands drink beer. Men are hung, husbands have hernias. Shit, I don’t want a husband, I want a man.”
The three roommates, from small towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, listened to these pronouncements with nervous giggles. It wasn’t the way they had been brought up. Maddie, from New York City, was a foreigner.
They worshiped her, because she was smart, funny, ge
nerous. And she passed along the men she didn’t want or had tired of. In return, they loaned her lecture notes, coached her, covered up her absences, and finally got her through the four years to a BA degree.
She didn’t show up for graduation, having taken off for Bermuda with a Yalie. But her diploma was mailed to her.
When Zoe Kohler came to New York from Winona, Minnesota, after her divorce, her first phone call was to Maddie. She was now Madeline Kurnitz with her own number in the directory. Harold Kurnitz was her fourth husband, and Maddie took Zoe under her wing as an experienced combat soldier might comfort, advise, and share his know-how with a raw recruit.
Maddie: “A divorce is like falling off a horse. You’ve got to get right back up and ride again or you’ll be spooked for life.”
“I don’t think I want to marry again,” Zoe said timidly.
Maddie: “Bullshit.”
She had done her best—cocktail parties, dinner, blind dates—but finally she realized Zoe Kohler had been telling the truth: she didn’t want to marry again, not at that point in her life.
Maddie (wrathfully): “That doesn’t mean you can’t screw, for God’s sake. No wonder you have cramps. If I go two days without a bang, I sneeze and dust comes out my ears.”
Now, listening to Maddie natter on about all the beautiful people who would be at her cocktail party (“A zillion horny studs!”), Zoe Kohler caught some of her excitement and said she’d come over from work, just for a few minutes, but she had to get home early.
Maddie: “That’s what they all say, kiddo. But they come and they stay and they drink up all our booze. There’s a guy I want you to meet …”
“Oh no,” Zoe said. “Not again.”
“Just meet him,” Maddie urged. “That’s all. Just shake his paw and say, ‘How ja do.’ Is that so awful?”
“No,” Zoe said faintly, “I guess not.”
Maddie finally got off the phone and Zoe went back to typing the Security Section roster for the following week. She guessed that she had been invited to the cocktail party at the last minute because Maddie had realized that she would have a preponderance of male guests and not enough women. So she was calling friends and acquaintances frantically, trying to redress the balance.
Zoe wasn’t offended. That was the way she received the few invitations that came her way. At the last minute. To even up a dining table or take the place of a reneging guest. She was never first choice.
The empty afternoon wasted away. She distributed copies of the Security Section’s employment schedule. She typed up four letters to departed guests who had left personal property in their rooms, and took the letters to Everett Pinckney for his signature. She delivered petty cash vouchers to the bookkeeping department.
She spoke briefly and coolly to the other Hotel Granger employees she dealt with, and they replied in kind. She had rebuffed their attempts at friendship, or even light-hearted companionship. She preferred to do her job swaddled in silence.
Back in her office, she spent the last hour at her desk, idly leafing through the current issue of a weekly trade magazine devoted to the hotel business in New York City. It contained articles on current occupancy rates, conventions scheduled for the coming months, predictions on the summer tourism season.
The most interesting section, to Zoe, was that dealing with hotel security matters. Frequently the names and addresses (undoubtedly fictitious) and physical descriptions of deadbeats were given. Numbers of stolen credit cards were listed. Crimes committed in hotels, especially swindles and cons, were detailed.
A regular column titled “WANTED” gave names, aliases, and descriptions of known criminals—robbers, burglars, prostitutes, pimps, professional gamblers, etc.—working New York hotels. In addition, unsolved hotel crimes were listed, with the name and phone number of the New York Police Department officer investigating the crime.
The last item in the column read:
“Homicide at the Grand Park on February 15th. Victim of stabbing: George T. Puller, 54, white male, of Denver, Colo. Anyone with information relating to this crime please contact Detective Sergeant Abner Boone, KL-5-8604.”
That notice had been in the magazine for the past three weeks. Zoe Kohler wondered if Detective Sergeant Abner Boone was still seated by the phone, waiting …
Madeline and Harold Kurnitz lived in a high-rise on East 49th Street. The apartment house was just like Maddie: loud, brash, glittering. Five people crowded into the self-service elevator behind Zoe Kohler. She huddled back in a corner, watching them. They were laughing, their hands on each other. Zoe guessed they were going to the party. They were.
The door of the seven-room duplex was open. Sound surged out into the hall. In the foyer a uniformed maid took hats and coats, hung them away on a temporary rack, and handed out numbered checks. That was the way Maddie did things.
The party was catered, with two bartenders working behind counters and liveried waiters passing trays of hors d’oeuvres and California champagne. Maddie was lost in the throng, but her husband stood near the doorway to greet guests.
He was a big, hairy man, tufts sprouting from his ears. Zoe knew he was in yarn, fabrics, linings—something like that. “The rag business,” Maddie called it. He had a slow, dry manner, ironic, amused and amazed that he found himself married to a jangling, outgoing, capricious woman.
Zoe liked him, and kissed his cheek. He seemed very solid to her, very protective, as he steered her to the nearest bar and ordered a glass of white wine for her.
“You remembered, Harry,” she said.
“Of course I remembered,” he said, smiling. “Of all Maddie’s friends, I like you the best. I wish you’d see more of her. Maybe you can calm her down.”
“No one can calm Maddie down.”
“That’s true,” he said happily. “She’s something, isn’t she? Isn’t she something?”
He moved away to greet more guests. Zoe put her back against the bar, looked around. A typical Maddie stand-up party: crushed, smoky. A hi-fi was blasting from somewhere. People were shrieking. She smiled, smiled, smiled. No one spoke to her.
She had never seen so many beautiful men. Some were elegant in three-piece Italian suits, gold aglitter at cuffs and wrists. Some were raffish, with embroidered Greek shirts opened low, medallions swinging against furred chests. Some, many, she supposed, were homosexuals. It didn’t matter; they were all beautiful.
White, flashing teeth. Wicked eyes. Jaws bearded or shaved blue. Twirled mustaches. Hair slicked, dry-blown, coiffed, or deliberately tangled. Wet mouths in motion. Hands waving: long, slender fingers. Sprung hips. Sculpted legs and, here and there, jeans tight enough to show a bulge.
She thought of their fuzzed thighs. The satiny buttocks. Coil of tendon, rope of muscle. Most of all, their strength. Physical strength. The power there.
That was what had astounded her about Kenneth. He was not a stalwart man, but when he first gripped her on their wedding night, she had cried out in shock and surprise. The force! It frightened her.
And that—that thing. That reddish, purplish, knobbed thing poking out, trembling in the air. A club. It was a club, nodding at her.
She looked dazedly around the crowded room and saw the clubs, straining.
“Zoe!” Maddie screamed. “Baby! Why aren’t you mingling? You’ve got to mingle!”
A bouncy ragamuffin of a woman with a snarl of long black hair liberally laced with gray. Silver wires didn’t bother her. She couldn’t be slowed by age or chastened by experience. She plunged vigorously through life, kicking up her heels.
Her face was a palette of makeup: black eyebrows like carets, shadowed eyes with fake lashes as thick as feather dusters. A whitened face with a bold, crimsoned mouth. Sharp teeth, feral teeth.
Her plump, unbound body capered; everything jounced, bobbed, swung. Diamonds sparkled at throat, ears, wrists, fingers. Her smart frock of black crepe was stained with a spilled drink. She smoked a thin cigar.
“He’s
around here somewhere,” she shouted, grasping Zoe’s arm. “David something. How are you, kiddo? He’s wearing some kind of a cheesy velvet suit, but on him it looks good. My God, you’re pale. David something. A mustache from here to there, and he smells of pot. You’ve got to take care of yourself, sweetie. Now get out there and mingle. You can’t miss him. David something. Oh God, he’s gorgeous. A young Clark Gable. If I see him, I’ll grab him and find you. They say he’s hung like Man-o’-War.”
Then she was gone, diving into the mob. Zoe turned her back to the party, pressed against the bar, asked for another glass of white wine. She would sip it slowly, then slip away. No one would miss her.
This city had a rude vigor she could not countenance. It swirled her, and she felt adrift. Things were always at high tide, rising and rubbing. Noise, dirt, violence. The scream of sex everywhere. She could not endure the rawness.
A shoulder touched her; she pulled away, and looked at him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, smiling timidly. “Someone bumped me.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
He looked at what she was drinking.
“White wine?” he asked.
She nodded.
He asked the bartender for a glass of white wine.
“Quite a party,” he said to Zoe.
She nodded again. “Noisy,” she said.
“Isn’t it. And crowded and stuffy. My name is Ernest Mittle. I work in Mr. Kurnitz’s office.”
“Zoe Kohler,” she said, so softly that he didn’t hear and asked her to repeat it. “Zoe Kohler. I’m a friend of Maddie Kurnitz.”
They shook hands. His clasp was tender, his smile fragile.
“I’ve never been here before,” he offered. “Have you?”
“A few times.”
“I guess it’s a beautiful apartment—without the people.”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’ve only been here for parties. It’s always been crowded.”
She thought desperately of something more to say. She had been taught to ask men questions about themselves: their work, ambitions, hobbies—whatever. Get them talking about themselves, and they would think you interesting and clever. That’s what her mother had told her—several times.
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