The Hotel

When I got off the train I caught a cab and asked the driver to take me to the nearest hotel. I started asking the driver if her knew where all the ducks went in winter. I mean, think about it. Where exactly do they go? When the lake freezes over in Central Park during the winter months, does some guy come from the zoo, scoop up all the ducks and take 'em to the zoo for the winter? Anyway, I asked the driver. He didn't answer. He didn't say anything the whole time I was in the cab. So I didn't either after that. When I got to the hotel they gave me this crumby room with nothing to look out of the window at. I didn't care much. I was to depressed to care. Eventually I did look out of the window. You'd be surprised what was going on on the other side of the hotel. There was this one guy who was checking himself out in the mirror dressed in woman's clothes. Next to him in the other room there was this couple who were squirting water into each other's faces and were enjoying it. They even took turns for Christ's sake! The Hotel was lousy with perverts. Sex is something I really don't understand, probably as much I as I didn't understand why it was fun to squirt water into a girl's face.

I picked up the phone wanting to give Old Phoebe, my kid sister, a buzz. But changed my mind. She's only ten, she wouldn't be up at this hour. I started toying with the idea of giving this girl who's card I got off some moron who went to Pinceton. I took the card out of my wallet and dialled the number. Faith Cavendish was her name. For a while I didn't think someone was home, it took her forever to answer the phone. She was pretty ticked-off about being phoned up at just gone midnight. But as soon as I told her I was a friend of Edmund Birdsell from Princeton she warmed up a bit. I asked her out for cocktails but she made up some phony excuse about her roommate being sick and how she didn't want to leave her.

"How about tomorrow night?" she suggested.

I made up some excuse about only being able to make it tonight and put the phone down. I felt pretty fouled up after that. I should've at least made it for cocktails.