Every time he looked at one of the photographs, for a split second he was sure it was Rose.
There was a woman with a tie around her mouth, put there no doubt so that she couldn’t voice her own disappointment at being murdered. There was a woman fastened to a kitchen chair. Her head hung forward, almost like she had fallen asleep that way. There was a girl with a pillowcase over her head. He thought for a moment that if he were just able to pull off the pillowcase, he would see Rose. But the body of the girl was quite plump. Too plump to be Rose. There was a girl lying on a bed with a bullet hole in her forehead. She seemed to be looking up at the hole. There was a girl in the park. Dark-colored autumn leaves had fallen on her. She had on boots and a hat but nothing else.
There was a girl who was found beside the fairground. She’d had a good time there, as she had a stick of cotton candy lying next to her, and a stuffed black panther with a red bow tie around its neck. It was something she had won, tossing balls into baskets and rings around the necks of bottles. She was wearing black tights. Those black tights reminded him so much of Rose. He liked when she would sit in her tights on the side of the bed with her legs dangling over the side. They reminded him of a little girl, but a little girl he could fuck.
He loved Rose so much, he needed her dead. It was a man’s right to kill the woman he loved. McMahon closed the portfolio and went to find Rose. The smoke ring from his cigar hung in the dark like an eclipsed moon.
34
TINKER BELL’S REAL NAME
Pierrot was feeling lonely. He looked up at a building whose windows were all lit up at night. They each looked like a luminous oil painting hanging on a wall. There was a girl with a big fat ass trying to get a knot out of her hair with a brush. It looked like a Rubens painting. There was a skinny girl with her hair pulled back reading a recipe book. It was a Giacometti! The girl with the strawberry-blond hair—with her arms folded over her large breasts and sticking her toe in the bath—was a masterpiece by Botticelli.
He didn’t have the will or drive or courage to make love to anyone ever again.
Pierrot made friends with an usher who worked at the Savoy with him. They were walking home in the same direction along Saint Catherine Street one night after closing up. Pierrot was staying at a men’s hotel on Saint Dominique called the Conquistador. The usher lived with his mother on Saint Christophe.
They passed a noisy proscenium that had the word Arcade written in tiny red lightbulbs across the top. There were blue and green tiles leading into the arched glass doorway. The usher grabbed Pierrot’s wrist and dragged him down to the front of the establishment. “Let me show you the greatest footage ever recorded by mankind. I’m going to show you a wonderful film. I mean, this is going to change the way you think about everything. This is real moviemaking.”
“You didn’t like the film tonight?”
“Not my cup of tea. I hate singing and dancing. And I despise sailors. If I didn’t live in Montreal, I might feel differently about American sailors. But I do happen to live here, and I hate their guts. Come on! I’m going to give you culture!”
He led Pierrot into the arcade. They passed rows of colorful new devices called pinball machines. They were dinging and whistling and making a racket. The noises reminded him of the nursery at the orphanage, the babies shaking their rattles and the bars of their cribs. The noisy babies were the ones who lived. The silent ones slipped away into the great eternal quiet they so clearly preferred.
He passed by a miniature racing track with wooden horses making their way across. They were black and white and dappled. The jockeys riding them had their backs hunched and their heads down, imploring the horses to advance. It made him think of the horse-drawn carts at the orphanage at Christmastime. He didn’t know why everything was reminding him of the orphanage and his childhood.
The usher gestured toward the back of the arcade. There, up against the wall, was a row of three light blue machines screwed to a heavy wooden table. A sign on the wall above them had the words Peep Show written in red letters. Written on the machines themselves in red glittering letters were the words Beautiful Ladies. Underneath, the fine print swore that for a penny you could have all your earthly desires met.