The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [106]
It was a sedate, four-story hotel, demurely invisible in that fire of cold, burning flesh. When they marched through the entrance they went directly to the elevator. They did not have to pass through the lobby since this particular entrance was used only by people like themselves. The elevator operator winked, a serious, business-like wink, by no means a frivolous comment on the job at hand, and took them up to the top floor. The elevator operator led them down a carpeted hall, left his iron cage open and unguarded to knock on the appropriate door and whisper the secret password, then studied them closely as they filed into the room.
It was the living room of a two-bedroom suite with too many small leather chairs. Usually there was a man reading a magazine, waiting his turn. There was a woman barely visible in the kitchen alcove, drinking coffee and directing traffic. In her cupboard were bottles of whisky and glasses. Anyone who wanted a drink could step into the alcove and put down a dollar bill, but usually things moved so fast there was not time. This woman had very little to do with the customers and seemed more like a guardian of this world.
It was this woman’s face that Vinnie remembered always—never the girls who worked in bedrooms. She was short and her hair was heavy and very black and though there was no way of telling her age, she was too old for the trade. But it was her face and voice that made her inhuman.
The voice was the horrible hoarse voice that some whores have, as if torrents of diseased semen flooding the body had rotted the vocal cords. She spoke only with some great effort of will. Her voice was more frightening than any visible scar. Her features were to Vinnie’s young eyes the very mask of evil. The mouth was thick and formless and pressed firmly over teeth that thrust out the flesh. The cheeks and jowls were heavy, pendulous, dowager-like, but the nose was bold and thickened by something more mysterious than nature, the eyes black and soulless as two pieces of coal. Beyond all this there was something in her every word and gesture which showed, not that she hated or despised the world, but that she no longer felt any fleshly emotion for anyone or anything in it. She was sexless. When she passed near you her head tilted sideways, sharklike. Once she glided by and Vinnie shrank back as if she would rend flesh from his body. As a man came out of a bedroom she pointed to the next customer but only after opening a bedroom door to croak inside, “O.K., honey?” Hearing that voice Vinnie’s blood would run cold.
But he was young. When he entered the bedroom, his blood ran hot again. He would just vaguely see the painted face of the woman, always the same. Usually blonde, she moved in the golden circle of a heavily shaded lamp so that the colors on her face seemed to refract the light, the painted red mouth, the long pale nose glistening through its powdery white bone, the deathly, ghostlike cheeks, and black-smudged green-looking eyeholes.
What happened next always embarrassed Vinnie. The woman would lead him to a low table in the corner of a room, where there was a basin filled with hot water. He would take off his shoes, socks, and trousers, and she would wash his private parts, taking a good, clinical look.
Then she would lead him to the bed against the far wall, he still wearing his shirt and tie (once, presumptuous with passion, he had started to remove