The landlady banged on the door so loudly one morning that they both scurried underneath the table. The landlady warned them that if they didn’t have the money by the end of the day, they’d be thrown out.
Rose began to pace around the little hotel room, back and forth, like a frustrated lion inside a circus cage: despising being entrapped and dreading being released to perform humiliating acts.
She looked so skinny and pale that she wondered whether she could even get a role in a pornographic film now. She took off her clothes and looked at herself naked in the mirror. Her black pubic hair against her pale skin looked like a splotch of ink on a piece of paper. At twenty-three she had the look of a harried wife. Rose gathered together all her underwear to sell it. She wrapped it in a bundle. “I’ve found a couple of things to sell,” she told Pierrot.
Pierrot told her he would rather starve to death than not be able to see her in her pretty pink silk underwear. Pierrot knew that Rose had had a boyfriend who bought her anything she wanted. He couldn’t expect to sleep all day and keep a girl like that. All over the city, men out of work felt they no longer had a place in the world. They felt useless. Pierrot had to do extraordinary things. She would get bored with this tiny world. He had to keep her. He had to make some money.
It was truly amazing to him that he had not thought about the apple in all this time, especially when he was on heroin and desperate to get high. If you have trouble believing that Pierrot hadn’t thought about the apple, trust me when I tell you that no one was as surprised as him.
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PIERROT TOOK HIS BICYCLE to Westmount, pushing it all the way up the hill to where the massive houses were. He went out of his way to avoid the giant mansion he had lived in with Mr. Irving, which had become the old man’s tomb. He couldn’t bear the sadness of thinking of his dearly departed friend. There was the tree. He prayed that God would make him invisible, then up he went. He hopped from one branch to another and then reached into the hiding place. He felt all sorts of odd soft objects, and beneath them, a hard, circular form.
? ? ?
HE HADN’T LOOKED AT IT in a great while, and Rose had never seen it at all. It was so sparkly and spectacular on their kitchen table. Pierrot had taken it when he was living in rather splendid circumstances, so it hadn’t seemed quite as amazing as it did now. It was so unlike anything else in their grubby little Depression-era world that it seemed surreal and ethereal. It was absolutely out of context.
“How have you kept this until now? We’ve been down on our luck for so long and you’ve had this strange priceless apple all along.”
“When I stole it, I was surrounded by splendor. It was nothing to me. So I forgot it!”
“How much do you think we’ll get for this apple?” Rose asked.
“Surely we’ll get enough money to get by until Sunday.”
“I’ll go with you, then,” Rose said. “I’m quite worried you’ll get ripped off.”
“Mr. McMahon always gives me particularly good deals, so long as I promise to sell only to him. But it would be nice to have you along.”
Rose was shocked when she heard Pierrot say the name. She felt a numbness, as though she were standing too close to ringing church bells. She had never realized that Pierrot and McMahon could exist in the same reality. She had managed to avoid him for so long that she believed she was done with him. Of course he would come back. Pierrot was going to see him right this second. This was dangerous, but she had to take a risk. She wouldn’t go—she knew full well that she would get her head blown off.
He attached the suitcase to the front of the bicycle with belts. Rose had changed her mind about coming along.
“Are you sure?”
“Isn’t he a violent gangster?”
“Well, yes. But I thought you had no problem with murderers and whatnot.”
“Just don’t mention that you have a wife.”
“And why not?”
“He might use it as leverage.”
“Hmmm. I have no idea what that means, but since you are smarter than me, I will defer to your judgment.”
McMahon was surprised to see Pierrot, having assumed that the idiot was long dead. There was something about Pierrot’s smell that took McMahon aback. McMahon had a strange impulse to seize Pierrot in his arms and inhale him.
The sparkling, jewel-encrusted apple was priceless. The art dealer said he wasn’t giving them nearly what it was worth, but they had to understand he would have to sell it on the black market, maybe to someone with European connections. McMahon gave Pierrot twenty thousand dollars for the apple. He kept the same amount for himself and watched Pierrot leave, confused.
Pierrot walked into the room at the Valentine Hotel with a suitcase now filled with cash, completely in shock. He plopped the suitcase on the bed. It rocked like a ship on a stormy sea. Rose came up to him as he unfastened its clasps and threw open the lid.