Read Online Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy by Joshua Corey - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joshua Corey
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its glowing sconces, a kind of
silence and antiseptic grace over everything, and the bellhop would lead me to
the room, bearing my key in place of a suitcase, and use it to open the door to
what was invariably a small, almost cramped room with a single queen-sized bed
and an armoire (rarely were there closets) and a television and a window, and
he would busy himself drawing the curtains or lighting the bathroom or pointing
out the telephone while I stood there breathing in the pure, false, expensive
air, until at last a small bill would find its way from my hand into his and
he’d step out with a little bow that reminded me thrillingly and fearfully of
the uniformed men of my childhood and close the door behind him with the
quietest of clicks, and I would stand in the window for a while looking at the
city from an angle unavailable to my apartment, a taller bleaker more brilliant
city than the sleek fat domestic cat of a city that lies perpetually purring
with its tail of suburbs wrapped around it; or I’d lie on the bed fully clothed
after carefully removing the bedspread (it’s there you’ll find the bedbugs and
all varieties of dead matter, the maids never wash them until they are
vigorously and permanently stained) looking up at the ceiling, listening to the
faint sounds of traffic and the occasional timbrel of sirens from below, or the
muffled voices in the next room (the finer the hotel the thinner the walls),
sometimes accompanied by the creak of furniture, or the empty high-pitched
whine of a television, or of course, more frequently than not, the sounds of
people making love. I remember once coming into the room with the bellhop while
my neighbors were at it, a comic opera of bedsprings and low moans and lumping
thumps that shook the large bad painting over my own chaste bed, and the
bellhop, who was very young, perhaps not even eighteen, turned scarlet to the
roots of his hair and rushed out of the room without so much as unhooking the
drapes or extending his palm—it probably didn’t help that I was laughing loud
and hard and painfully and for so long that I imagine the lovers could hear me,
for they quickly subsided without audible climax and I went on laughing until
the tears came.
What would I do afterward? Almost nothing. Listen to the radio or turn on the TV. Take a shower. Sit in the single
armchair by the window listening to the hotel breathing, to the city grumbling
and grating to itself, to the small sounds and movies of my own body as it
turned against me. Sometimes looking at the door where no lover would appear,
comfortable in the knowledge that one would appear if I so chose, if I ever
wished to surpass the possible. But then again there is no surpassing the
possible: the actual is cheap, experience has taught me that. Too often I’d
gone to see for myself and returned disappointed in the oldest sense of that
word: an appointment that was not kept, a messenger that was only a man with an
empty envelope up his sleeve, a maddening sort of helpless shrug, a
compassionate distracted glance over the tops of spectacles, a woman with a red
face. No, look at the door, a solid rectangle of wood with its brass-covered
peephole that I might lift to survey the fishbowl the lens made of the hallway,
which was empty: it was emptiness I paid for. It would end with me in the bed,
bedspread folded and tucked into the bottom of the armoire, lying on top of the
blankets, fully clothed, listening . Dawn waked me, not
with sunlight (even the highest hotel windows in the city rarely offer an angle
by which the morning sun might penetrate) but by the change in tone, an
impalpable waking presence of life in the streets, the gurgle of pipes feeding
showers, the sober murmuring of adjacent solitary guests talking into phones.
I’d wake dry, in a wrinkled dress, underneath my coat if it had been cold, a
taste in my mouth, the stale sick self I hadn’t after all escaped for a single
moment. It would have been simpler to
silence and antiseptic grace over everything, and the bellhop would lead me to
the room, bearing my key in place of a suitcase, and use it to open the door to
what was invariably a small, almost cramped room with a single queen-sized bed
and an armoire (rarely were there closets) and a television and a window, and
he would busy himself drawing the curtains or lighting the bathroom or pointing
out the telephone while I stood there breathing in the pure, false, expensive
air, until at last a small bill would find its way from my hand into his and
he’d step out with a little bow that reminded me thrillingly and fearfully of
the uniformed men of my childhood and close the door behind him with the
quietest of clicks, and I would stand in the window for a while looking at the
city from an angle unavailable to my apartment, a taller bleaker more brilliant
city than the sleek fat domestic cat of a city that lies perpetually purring
with its tail of suburbs wrapped around it; or I’d lie on the bed fully clothed
after carefully removing the bedspread (it’s there you’ll find the bedbugs and
all varieties of dead matter, the maids never wash them until they are
vigorously and permanently stained) looking up at the ceiling, listening to the
faint sounds of traffic and the occasional timbrel of sirens from below, or the
muffled voices in the next room (the finer the hotel the thinner the walls),
sometimes accompanied by the creak of furniture, or the empty high-pitched
whine of a television, or of course, more frequently than not, the sounds of
people making love. I remember once coming into the room with the bellhop while
my neighbors were at it, a comic opera of bedsprings and low moans and lumping
thumps that shook the large bad painting over my own chaste bed, and the
bellhop, who was very young, perhaps not even eighteen, turned scarlet to the
roots of his hair and rushed out of the room without so much as unhooking the
drapes or extending his palm—it probably didn’t help that I was laughing loud
and hard and painfully and for so long that I imagine the lovers could hear me,
for they quickly subsided without audible climax and I went on laughing until
the tears came.
What would I do afterward? Almost nothing. Listen to the radio or turn on the TV. Take a shower. Sit in the single
armchair by the window listening to the hotel breathing, to the city grumbling
and grating to itself, to the small sounds and movies of my own body as it
turned against me. Sometimes looking at the door where no lover would appear,
comfortable in the knowledge that one would appear if I so chose, if I ever
wished to surpass the possible. But then again there is no surpassing the
possible: the actual is cheap, experience has taught me that. Too often I’d
gone to see for myself and returned disappointed in the oldest sense of that
word: an appointment that was not kept, a messenger that was only a man with an
empty envelope up his sleeve, a maddening sort of helpless shrug, a
compassionate distracted glance over the tops of spectacles, a woman with a red
face. No, look at the door, a solid rectangle of wood with its brass-covered
peephole that I might lift to survey the fishbowl the lens made of the hallway,
which was empty: it was emptiness I paid for. It would end with me in the bed,
bedspread folded and tucked into the bottom of the armoire, lying on top of the
blankets, fully clothed, listening . Dawn waked me, not
with sunlight (even the highest hotel windows in the city rarely offer an angle
by which the morning sun might penetrate) but by the change in tone, an
impalpable waking presence of life in the streets, the gurgle of pipes feeding
showers, the sober murmuring of adjacent solitary guests talking into phones.
I’d wake dry, in a wrinkled dress, underneath my coat if it had been cold, a
taste in my mouth, the stale sick self I hadn’t after all escaped for a single
moment. It would have been simpler to
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