WHEN SHE STEPPED INTO the lobby of the Valentine Hotel, the old woman who worked behind the desk greeted her but had no idea that Rose now owned the place. She put her suitcase down next to her. The carpet didn’t sink underfoot the way it did at the Romeo Hotel. It had been worn down and was as hard as the floor, the patterns hidden under dirt. She stood taking in the room.
Everything in it belonged to her. It felt like she was home in a new kind of way. She felt proud of it. The wallpaper was telling her an old children’s story. There was an iron faun in the grate of the fireplace.
She noticed that the golden velour couch had springs coming out of it. She used to be able to ignore the broken things before. But now they were her problem. She liked that. She felt responsible for them. She knew exactly what this hotel could look like. There was a mural on the ceiling at the entrance. It was all grimy and dark. But if someone got up on a ladder with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge, the stars and planets would begin appearing and shining once again.
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MCMAHON OPENED THE CLOSET in the hallway to hang up his coat. He was startled and leaped back. There at the bottom of the closet was Rose, her hands over her eyes as she counted to ten, playing hide-and-seek with the children. But then he realized, of course, that it was just a folded blanket that had fallen from the shelf.
He walked to the staircase that led to the bedrooms. There was Rose again. She was wearing a three-cornered hat and a tuxedo jacket, a thin mustache drawn on her face. She was on her way to the masquerade with the children, no doubt. He hurried up the stairs, knowing it was too good to be true, then realized it was a coatrack.
He looked up the flight of stairs to the third floor. There was a tiny plume of cigarette smoke escaping from the keyhole of the nursery.
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AS ROSE TURNED UP the stairwell she stopped abruptly. There was McMahon at the top of the stairs, just around the bend. He’d come to kill her. He’d come to put her in her place. She almost dropped her suitcase, but then she realized it wasn’t McMahon at all. It was the curtain on the hallway window that had been puffed open by a breeze. She walked to the second floor. The lightbulb had burned out at the end of the corridor that led to her room. There was a black shadow lingering by the door.
It occurred to her that Jimmy might have betrayed her. How did she know that this was hers? Perhaps he had told McMahon her plan. Perhaps he had allowed McMahon to kill her. McMahon was still alive. Maybe Tiny had been put on the train to kill her. She hadn’t seen where he went after they arrived in Montreal.
As she approached the door her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see that there was nothing at all in the darkness. She stood outside the door of her room. She heard something inside fall to the floor.
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MCMAHON OPENED THE DOOR of the nursery very slowly and carefully. He thought he would have a vision of her in there. He was sure he would see her. She would be eighteen again. She would have no one else but him. She would be a virgin. With an apple balanced on her head. Waiting for him. Wanting him again.
“Rose,” he whispered.
The pug, looking like a butted-out cigar, tiptoed uneasily around the house.
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SHE OPENED THE DOOR to her room. She thought he would be there, sitting on a chair, waiting for her.
“Mac?” she whispered.
The poodle carefully looked into the room, as though it had come home late and was trying not to disturb anyone.
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THERE WAS THE SOUND of a gunshot.
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ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE CITY, McMahon and Rose clutched at their hearts. Each had arranged to have the other killed. Who had actually shot whom? Neither of them seemed to know. An act like that takes down both the victim and the aggressor. They both closed their eyes.
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ROSE OPENED HER EYES. She felt sick to her stomach. She could have sworn at just that moment that a bullet had entered her. She looked down, searching her body for the bullet wound.
She felt nothing. She wanted to feel the bullet hole. She needed to feel the bullet hole. She wanted to ascertain the gravity and reality of what she had just done. She wanted the bullet to kill her too. But she knew that it hadn’t. It would take a very long time for her to understand how she had done something evil like that.
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MCMAHON OPENED HIS EYES for the last time. As he lay on the floor, the last thought he had was, Thank God. Thank God I meant something to that lovely girl. And he looked up at the heavens and hoped, probably without any reason, that he would be going up there. And then he saw nothing ever again.
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THE POODLE BARKED at the rat on the shelf that had knocked over the vase. The rodent hurried out through the crack it had come out of.
Rose closed the door behind her. How had she abandoned all the men in her life? She felt the grandeur of being responsible for oneself. She was independent, and her actions had enormous consequences. What she did mattered. She had to get on with her path in life.
The pattern of red flowers on the carpet spread out around her like a pool of blood.
68
BALLAD FOR THE MOON IN C MINOR