Little Easter

The Hindenburg

The Hotel St. Lawrence was a nondescript soot-faced building buried somewhere on Lexington Avenue below 34th Street. Its heritage could not be described as proud nor even once-proud. It’d never been a poets’ or musicians’ haunt like The Chelsea. Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe hadn’t slept there, so The Waldorf was safe. And at last check, the rat pack, brat pack, jet set and royalty still preferred The Plaza, Pierre and St. Moritz. What the Hotel St. Lawrence offered was rooms, plenty of them and, unlike the aforementioned establishments, at prices a little less inflated than the Hindenburg.

Actually, business at the front desk was pretty brisk, but not brisk enough for management to break out the “No Vacancy” sign. I had my pick of rooms. Wow! I could face brick, steel, or the street. I picked a room with the view, surrendered my credit card and got my key. How novel; a hotel that still used keys. It was real metal and everything, not some encoded piece of plastic. I hurried through the slip cover and green velveteen lobby and into the Seaway Lounge.

Just outside the cocktail quarters, an entire wall was covered in black and white publicity photos of mostly dead and totally forgotten comics. I went in anyway. I’d been in worse bars. I’d sat on less comfortable stools. I’d gotten slower, ruder service from nastier barmen and sipped flatter beer from dirtier glasses. I’d even seen uglier wallpaper in an acid flashback once. But, having noted all this, I wouldn’t bet that I’d be back at the Seaway Lounge anytime soon.

The room was an improvement. Not a quantum leap, mind you, but a step up. Its last facelift had been done when younger men wore acetate shirts and platform shoes. There were starving artist prints on the walls, but mercifully, no dead comics. The TV reception looked more like a blizzard than my view onto Lexington Avenue. Maybe I’d be headed back to the bar sooner than expected.

I dialed Kate Barnum’s number at The Whaler. I was ready to deal. Being indebted to Larry Feld made bargaining with Barnum seem like a minor detail. She wasn’t in. I tried her shack in Dugan’s Dump and listened to the phone ring endlessly. I stopped listening and lay back on the bed.

Somebody drummed their knuckles against the door. I let them drum for a bit before answering. And like some witless schmuck, I just flung the door open without inquiry.

“Queen-sized bed,” Kate Barnum commented, looking beyond my shoulder. “That’s good.” She sounded as if she’d made a short detour at the Seaway Lounge before coming my way. “Take this,” the reporter shoved a brown paper bag into my hands and removed her coat. The bag contained some bags of bar nuts, barbecue chips, a full bottle of Grand Marnier and a six pack of Diet Coke.

“You’ve been-” I began.

She cut me off with a light kiss. “Yes, Klein, I’ve been following you around all day. You’re quite the fellow about town. That’s a fascinating assortment of acquaintances you’ve got, but we can talk about that later. I am tired of talking just now.”

She kissed me again and I returned the favor in the growing darkness. The flavors on her tongue-orange, smoke and brandy-began to overwhelm my senses. The kisses deepened quickly without the pretense of challenge and surrender. There seemed an urgent sadness in all of this, a hemorrhaging emptiness and not all of it hers. But as I pulled her familiar sweater off, the apparent urgency diminished.

“Wait,” Burnum demanded, literally holding me at arms length.

She reached into the goody bag which I’d unconsciously let fall at the first sign of passion. The bottle of Grand Marnier appeared in her hand. She broke the seal and took a prodigious gulp. She put the bottle down and finished undressing without my help. I walked to the bed. That seemed to please her. But when I reached for my belt buckle, she shook her head violently. That would be her job, her candy.

I rolled over. She was at the bottle again. She turned the bottle over on her bare breasts and rubbed the resulting stream into the thin patch of hair below her waist. Barnum turned to me, seemingly startled that I was watching. I took the bottle, then a drink, and then her.

Her breasts were surprisingly solid, sticky to the touch and sweet to my taste. Her nipples spread wide over the front of her breasts and their bloom was brownish. I had dreamed them differently, but their real feel and flavor did not disappoint. I played hard with the bumpy brown circles of skin, capturing her erect nipple between my top and bottom teeth.

“Bite, goddamit. Bite!” a breathless voice begged.

I bit hard, very hard.

“Christ!” she cried. I’m. . I’m. ” her body arched like the back of a bronco, throwing me off to the side.

I moved to mount her, but she held back.

“Wait,” she coughed in the deepening night and fumbled along the rug. “Here,” she handed me what might’ve been a wet nap, but since we weren’t eating ribs or lobster. .

I didn’t put it on and tried to move my mouth along the dried brandy river, into her positively soaked crotch.

“No!” she pushed me off the bed, her feet against my shoulders.

When I crawled back up, I found her knees down, tucked and spread. Her head faced away from me and a pillow was wedged under her breasts. The full pink of her lips seemed to glisten with a light of their own. I rolled the latex on and went looking for that light.

As I was about to enter she reached back and guided my penis into a spot above where I was aiming. God, it was tight and I could feel the muscles fairly close around me. A groan rose up from Kate Barnum that spoke volumes of the thin lines separating pleasure and pain.

“God, Dylan,” she gasped. “Hard. Just hard.”

I pounded into her, slapping my mass against her with each thrust. It was over quickly for me. The explosion burned right through me, so intensely that I couldn’t judge whether any of this was hard enough or long enough to suit Kate Barnum.

I staggered into the bathroom. She followed. We showered in silence. We didn’t kiss. We touched only through the medium of soap. None of it had been about romance anyway. Punishment? Manipulation? Maybe. But surely not romance. . Our fucking was food shared between the starving, food we might otherwise have ignored.

“I need you to find out what you can about the dead woman,” I spoke straight out. We were back in bed, ignoring what had just passed between us.

“Why? Can’t his royal highness, Larry Feld, defender of any and all scumbugs be bothered with such small details?” she asked with feigned surprise.

“Next question,” I waved her on.

“What was the trip to the Diamond Ex-”

“Let’s get something straight,” I stepped on her words. “You’re gonna get your fucking story. I was ringing your house when you knocked. But how I dig and why I dig is my turf. Don’t step on it. When I ask you to dig,” I flattened her nose with my left index finger. “You dig. I’ll worry about what your shovel brings up,” I pulled my finger in. “I want to know about the dead woman.”

“Yes Tarzan,” Barnum mocked me with a bow, her still bare breasts brushing the covers. “But if I can’t come along for the ride, what guarantees do I have that you’re giving it to me straight?”

“My word.”

“Your word?” She lit a cigarette.

“That’s all you get,” I grabbed the cigarette and took a puff. “And if,” I coughed the smoke out with my threat, “I catch you pullin’ what you pulled today, it’s no deal. No story. Don’t follow me again. Don’t have me followed. I’ll be lookin’ now.”

“I get the whole story, unedited, unwashed?”

“Dirty as a clamdigger’s toenails,” I assured her.

“Let’s drink on it. Pass me the Grand Marnier,” she pointed out its hiding place.

I leaned over the bed’s edge, recouped the quarter-filled bottle and took a choking swig. Kate Barnum snatched the bottle, matched my swallow and killed the bedside lamp. She moved near me and let the remainder of the bottle flow into my lap. Even in the blackness, I could see that she had moved to clean up the latest puddle. She cleaned and I let her.