“That you hate McMahon more than you love me.”
Just then the sound of a dog weeping and whining, as though fatally injured, emerged from the ring. Pierrot began to retreat, backing away from Rose. Men who had been standing behind Rose now rushed toward the ring to see the dogs. The fight was reaching its final throes: its apotheosis, its climax, its denouement. They got in between Rose and Pierrot. She reached her hands out between their bodies to get Pierrot’s attention. There was a wall of men separating the two of them.
“Oh, where are you going? Pierrot! Pierrot! Pierrot! Come back! Come back.”
When Rose finally got through the men, Pierrot was nowhere to be seen.
The sounds in the ring abruptly abated. There was a terrible crunch, almost certainly that of a neck being snapped. And it was followed by a terrible silence. The dogs stopped making noises. A quiet came over the hall. The crowd quieted down too, as if they were ashamed of their own violent natures. They couldn’t believe that moments before they had been desperate for something terminal and tragic: for a dog to die. In fact, now they were struck by the brevity and sweetness of life, which only death can make sense of.
Rose turned to the ring. She was terrified to approach. She couldn’t bring herself to view what she knew everybody else was looking at: the tiny gray poodle, its beautiful limbs still, its neck snapped and its head backward, its big dreams having got the creature nowhere. She began her walk over to see it for herself.
63
LADY OF THE POND
Pierrot ran far away from the hotel and Rose. When he was out of breath, he slowed down and wandered for an hour, ending up on Forty-Second Street, with all its brothels and whorehouses. The street was filled with girls leaning against poles. They were tying their shoes in strategically provocative ways. They were opening and closing their coats. One girl opened up her cheap brown fur coat as he was passing by, revealing pale breasts, like two cognac glasses filled with milk. One woman wore lipstick that had been mostly kissed off, and eye shadow that had been smudged, making her resemble a watercolor. When she spotted Pierrot, she blew him a hazy kiss.
He had rather surprised himself by showing up here. He didn’t think he wanted to be with anybody but Rose, but here he was. He wanted to hear some compliments. Even though he knew they weren’t real. They were just a sample of what the women were selling, hors d’oeuvres before the meal.
“Hello, handsome. What a face!”
“Look at you. Nobody as good-looking as you should have to be lonely.”
“You want to call me names? Come upstairs and call me names.”
“I’m dying for your cock. I’m desperate.”
“I painted my toenails pink this morning. Want to come back to my apartment and take a look?”
It was probably a mistake to walk down the street in his very handsome suit. Because it was like holding out a rose to a bunch of starving bees.
“Poppy, Poppy, Poppy,” he thought, letting it sink in what she had done for a living while they were together.
“Oh, fine. Who cares, anyway? You’re just a skinny broke-ass loser. You can’t afford to pay for me. Go find yourself some form of employment, and then you can come back and afford to make love to me.”
? ? ?
PIERROT WANDERED INTO A PARK. There was a rock next to a pond, and Pierrot climbed on it and sat on its rounded edge, looking into the water. He had the sudden urge to walk into the pond with his shoes on. It was an impulse he hadn’t had since he was a little boy. A swan approached him from the middle of the pond. When it got to the pile of rocks, it walked out of the pond, looking like a bride holding up her dress as she stepped out of a car. He wondered for a second if it would approach him and declare its love.
“How you doing, huh?”
He was startled for a moment, thinking the swan had spoken to him. But then he spun his head around to see a woman standing next to him wearing a white dress under a navy overcoat. There was a row of buttons along the sleeve of her jacket like an octopus’s tentacle. She had light brown skin and short black hair that she seemed to have brushed all the kink out of. Her eyebrows had been drawn on her face expertly with makeup. She sat down next to him. There was something so relaxed about her face; she gave the illusion of having just been made love to. The swan turned and returned to the water.
“I’m all right, I suppose,” Pierrot answered.
“So what brings you to the edge of the pond?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve wandered farther than you would think. I’m from Montreal.”
“I’ve heard of Montreal. I heard that the girls all have diseases and stuff like that. I’ve heard that it’s cold. Like, colder than here in the winter—and I can, like, barely stand that season here. My daddy went up there once. He told me allllll about it.”
She looked straight at him. She had this wonderful way of looking at people, Pierrot thought. So unafraid.