Derailed

NINE

It was called the Fairfax Hotel. The kind of hotel that had fallen into disrepair and anonymity. The kind of hotel most people would choose to bypass for something better.

But not Charles, and not now.

He was on his way there to spend the morning with Lucinda.

He’d finally screwed up the courage to ask.

They’d had two more dinners and two more car rides where they’d made out like overly hormonal high school kids. They’d kissed and petted and snuggled, and now it was time to take the relationship further. He’d actually used those words. Surprised they’d actually made it out of his mouth and eternally grateful she hadn’t laughed at him. Even more grateful for her response, which after several moments of silence had been: Sure, why not.

He’d asked her this over two cups of coffee in Penn Station, and then they’d walked out onto Seventh Avenue arm in arm and shared a taxi, even though he’d be going approximately seventy blocks out of his way to drop her off—but then that was seventy more blocks of her company—embracing and clinging to this new idea of them. And she’d said, Where? Good question, too. Where exactly were they going to consummate things? And they’d passed one hotel in the taxi — No, she said, too close to Penn; and then another — too stuffy looking; and then one more when they’d made it all the way downtown.

The Fairfax Hotel.

Flanked by a Korean deli on one side and a woman’s health center on the other. Kind of dingy, yes, but wasn’t that the kind of hotel made for these things?

And she’d said, Fine, yes, that one looks fine.

And they’d made a date.

The train ride into Penn Station.

Both of them were surprisingly quiet, he thought, like boxers before the biggest bout of their lives.

He spent most of the time counting the minutes between stations: Merrick to Freeport to Baldwin to Rockville Centre. Under the darkness of the East River, she grabbed for his hand and locked fingers. They felt ice cold, as if all the blood had rushed out of them, frozen with. . . what? Guilt? Shame? Fear?

There was something nonspontaneous about all of this. Before, they’d been sort of fumbling around in the dark, but now it was all coolly premeditated. On the walk to the taxi stand, she leaned against him not so much from desire as from inertia, he thought. As if he were dragging her there — lugging dead weight up the escalator and through the entranceway.

He understood. It was one thing to make out in a car and another thing to check into a hotel with the intention of having sex.

The inside of the Fairfax Hotel looked pretty much the way the outside looked — shabby and faded and just this side of destitute. The lobby smelled of camphor.

When they walked up to the desk, he could feel Lucinda’s white-knuckled grip somewhere up by his throat. He told the deskman that he’d be paying in cash and was given a key to room 1207.

They rode the elevator up in silence.

When the doors opened on twelve, he said, “Ladies first.”

And Lucinda said, “Age before beauty.”

So they walked out together. The floor was in need of a few more light bulbs, he thought, since the only light seemed to be coming from a half-draped window to the left of the elevator. The carpet smelled of mildew and tobacco.

Room 1207 was way down at the end of the hall where it was darkest, and Charles needed to squint just to make out the numbers on the door.

This is what they got for ninety-five dollars in New York City: a room smelling of disinfectant, with one queen-size bed, one lopsided table lamp, and one table, all pretty much within two feet of one another.

A room that was virtually equatorial — with no discernible thermostat to help.

There was a white paper sash encircling the toilet lid. Charles did the honors; he had to go the moment he entered the room. Nerves.

When he came out of the bathroom, Lucinda was sitting on the bed, playing with the TV clicker. Nothing was actually appearing on the TV screen.

“I think you have to pay extra,” she said.

“Do you want to . . . ?”

“No.”

There was an awkward politeness to their mannerisms, he thought, as if they were a couple on a blind date. Jitters masked as solicitude.

“Why don’t you sit down, Charles?” she said.

“Fine.” He sat in the chair.

“I meant here. ”

“Oh. Right.” He slipped off his coat and hung it up in the closet next to hers. Then he walked over to the bed — a very short walk given the dimensions of the room — and sat down.

I shouldn’t be here. I should get up and leave. I should . . .

But she laid her head on his shoulder and said: “So. We’re here.”

“Yes.” He was sweating right through his shirt.

“Okay.” She sighed. “Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?Which is it?”

“Stay. Or go. What do you want to do?”

“Fuck you,” she said. “I think I want to fuck you.”

It happened when they were ready to leave.

They’d dressed quietly, and Charles had searched the room to make sure they hadn’t left anything.

Then they’d walked to the door.

He opened it to usher her out. She moved past him, and he could smell the perfume she’d just dabbed on in the bathroom. Then he smelled something else.

There were two of them standing there — Lucinda and him, and then suddenly there were three.

He was knocked backward onto the floor.

He was kicked in the ribs, then kicked in the stomach as the air was forced out of him. Lucinda was thrown on top of him, then not on top of him, then she was lying there beside him.

The door slammed. The lock turned.

There were two of them, and then there were three.

“Make one fucking sound and I’ll blow your heads off,” the one who wasn’t either Lucinda or himself said.

A man with a gun — Charles could see him, could see the gun, too, something stunted looking and oily black. He was panting, as if he’d just run a long distance to get there.

“I’ll give you all my money,” Charles said. “You can have it.”

“What?” The man was black but Hispanic, Charles thought, a kind of accent, anyway. "What the fuck d’you say?”

“My money — it’s yours.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up.” He kicked him again, not in the ribs this time, but lower down. Charles groaned.

“Please,” Lucinda said in a trembling little girl’s voice, a voice that didn’t seem capable of coming out of a grown woman. “Please . . . don’t hurt us. . . .”

“Don’t hurt us," the man said, mimicking her, taking pleasure in making fun. Of her fear. That little-girl voice . . . like she was going to cry or something. “Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt you, baby . . . uh-uh. . . . Now throw me your fucking wallets.”

Charles reached for his pocket, through the folds of his down jacket saturated with sweat — reached in and grabbed his wallet with a shaking hand.

This only happens in movies. This only happens on the front pages. This only happens to someone else.

He threw his wallet to the man with the gun. Lucinda was fumbling inside her pocketbook, looking for hers, the one with the picture of a five-year-old girl on a swing somewhere in the country. Somewhere other than here — the threadbare floor of room 1207 in the Fairfax Hotel.

By the time she threw him her wallet, he was already looking through Charles’s, pulling the cash out of it — quite a bit of cash, too, the cash Charles was going to use to pay for the room. But after the man took the cash, he kept looking at the wallet — grinning at something.

“Well, look at this,” he said.

He was looking at Charles’s pictures — Anna and Deanna and him. The Schine family.

“Funny,” he said. “That don’t look like you . . .” talking to Lucinda. “That sure as shit don’t look like you.”

Back to Charles. “That don’t look anything like her, Charles. ” Smirking at them.

Then, looking through her wallet and finding a picture of hers. “Ain’t that something,” he said. “Thisguy don’t look like you, Charles. Uh-uh. This guy ain't you, Charles.”

He snorted, laughed, giggled; he’d figured something out.

“Let’s see here. Know what I think? Hey” — he kicked Charles again, not as hard this time, but hard enough — “Isaid, Know what I think?”

Charles said, “What?”

“What?What? I think you guys are fucking around with each other. Stepping out on the old lady, huh, Charles? Getting some strange, my man. That what you doing, Charles? ”

Charles said, “Please, just take my money.”

“Just take your money? Just take your money? Thanks, but I already took your fucking money. See”—holding the cash out to him—“this is your money. I got your fucking money.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I see. I promise we won’t go to the police.”

“You promise, huh? That’s fucking nice of you, that’s real fucking kind of you, Charles. I can take your word on that, huh? You won’t go to the police. Well then . . .”

He waved the gun around in little looping circles, first toward him, then her, then back again. Inky black, snub-nosed barrel. . . .

“Well then . . . if you ain’t gonna go to the police and all . . .”

Lucinda was trembling beside him, shaking like a wet stray.

“Hey, baby,” the man said. “Hey,baby . . .”

“Please . . . ,” Lucinda said.

“How is she, Charles? Better than the old lady, I bet. Nice pussy, Charles? Nice tight pussy?”

Charles started to get up. He was back in the bar and the man was insulting her, and Charles would have to set him straight, to show him what’s what. Except the man pistol-whipped him across the face and Charles went flying back again. Hearing a crack before feeling the pain—first one and then the other, first the sound of his nose being broken, then the nauseating pain of his nose being broken. And the blood starting to seep out on the floor.

“What was that, my man? I didn’t hear you, Charles. What’d you say? You said you can fuck her if you want? Why, thank you, Charles. That’s fucking kind of you. Letting me have your bitch and all.”

“No,” Lucinda moaned. “No . . .”

“No?Didn’t you hear him say that I could fuck you, Lucinda. ” It was the first time he’d said her name—in a way, it seemed every bit as horrible as kicking them to the floor and stealing their wallets. “That’s what the man said. You giving it to him—you can give it to me. Whore’s a whore, baby. Am I right, Charles? Am I?”

Charles was choking on his own blood. It was pouring down his throat and clogging his windpipe — he was drowning in it, sputtering for air.

“Sit up here, Charles.” The man pulled him up, led him over to the lone chair, which had fluff seeping out of a ripped cushion decorated with a faded floral design. He sat him down on it. “Feeling better there, Charles? Take a deep breath. That’s right—in, out. You’ll want a good seat for this, Charles. Championship fucking, my man. Twelve rounder. You don’t want to miss this.”

Lucinda ran.

She’d caught him by surprise — the man with the gun, lying there trembling like that, and then suddenly springing up and making a run for it. She made it all the way to the door.

She even turned the knob and got it half-open before he reached her and pulled her back in. By her hair. That dark, silky hair that tasted of shampoo and sweat, so soft you could comb it by hand — twisted in his fist as she screamed.

“You want to shut the fuck up, Lucinda. ” He’d put the barrel into her mouth, straight in, knocking it up against her teeth. Lucinda stopped screaming.

Charles was still wheezing through his own blood, dizzy enough to pass out, a white light searing the bridge of his nose. Watching as the man laid Lucinda onto the floor as if they were engaged in some eerie kind of dance, some modern pas de deux, laying her down and standing over her. As he pulled her skirt up above her waist. As he snorted and wolf whistled and slowly, slowly pulled her black lace panties down to her knees.

As he unzipped his pants.