Double Play

20.

There was no other white person in sight when Robinson and Burke got out of the cab in St. Louis. The Royal Crest Hotel was a narrow three-story building with dingy red asphalt shingle siding and dirty windows. There was no doorman. The door was narrow and had a dirty glass panel. It opened into a pinched lobby, lit by a hanging bulb, with just room for a small reception desk behind a wire mesh partition. The place smelled bad. The desk man was a thick-bodied Negro with yellowish skin and a fat neck. He looked at them without speaking.

“I called earlier,” Burke said. “About a room, for me and Mr. Robinson.”

The desk man’s eyes shifted.

“Didn’t tell me you was white,” the desk man said.

“Forgot,” Burke said. “We need a double room.”

“Colored only,” the desk man said.

“I’m with him,” Burke said. “Pretend I’m a mulatto.”

The desk man stared past them at the front door.

“Colored only,” he said.

Robinson took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the counter in front of the little opening in the wire mesh.

“We need the room,” he said.

The desk man stared at it.

“Ain’t even sure that it ain’t against the law to domicile colored and white together,” he said.

A set of narrow stairs wound behind the reception desk. A colored man and woman came down the steps and saw Burke and stopped abruptly and stared at him. Then they quickly looked away, skirted him as widely as the small space permitted, and slipped out the front door.

Burke took the .45 from under his coat and aimed it carefully at the desk man’s nose.

“What’s the law on me shooting you in the fucking nose?” Burke said.

The desk man shrank back a little before he froze still. Robinson put his hand on Burke’s arm and pushed the gun down.

“Step outside a minute,” he said. “Let me talk to this man.”

Burke put the gun away and went and stood outside the front door and looked at the street. It was hot, the way Guadalcanal had been, steaming and dense. The buildings came right to the sidewalk. Around their foundations weeds grew. Where there was paint it was faded and peeling. Four or five small black children in shabby clothes stood across the street from the hotel and stared at Burke. A window went up in the paintless gray building behind them and a woman’s voice shouted something Burke couldn’t hear. The kids turned and straggled away down the littered alley between the houses. A blue 1939 Plymouth sedan went by. It slowed as it drove past Burke. Dark faces stared out of its windows at him. An empty pint bottle was tossed out the window. The bottle broke and the car picked up speed and drove away. The door behind Burke opened.

“Desk clerk decided to let us in,” Robinson said.

They went in. The desk clerk wouldn’t look at Burke. They walked up the stairs behind the desk, two flights, to a room that looked out at the sagging porch on the back of a tenement. The stairs smelled as if someone had vomited. When Robinson opened the door, the heat came out like a physical thing. Robinson walked to the one window and pushed up. The window was stuck. He put a hand on each corner and spread his legs and bent his knees and heaved. The window didn’t budge. He looked at Burke.

“Take one side,” he said.

Burke stood on the left side and Robinson on the right.

“On three,” Robinson said.

He counted. At three they heaved, and the window went up. They looked at each other for a moment, and Robinson nodded very slightly. Each of them almost smiled. The air outside wasn’t much better.