The right to sing the blues an-3 Page 13

  "You sick or something?" the cabby repeated.

  "Something," Nudger mumbled. He lurched toward the cab and got the rear door open, slumped inside onto the back seat. He hit his head on the roof going in but barely felt it.

  "Hospital?" the driver asked, giving him a level, appraising stare in the rearview mirror.

  "Hotel Majestueux," Nudger said, letting the cab's soft upholstery envelope him like a mother.

  "Hell, that's right around the corner."

  "Then drive around awhile before you go there. I need a few minutes."

  "You look like you need more than that, mister. I'll get you to a doctor."

  "There'll be one at the hotel if I need him."

  "You'll need him."

  "You forgot to start your meter."

  The cabby sighed and pulled the taxi away from the curb. "Left or right?" he asked at the corner as he waited for the light to turn green.

  "Either," Nudger said. "It doesn't matter."

  "Nope," the cabby said, "I guess it don't." Nudger managed to walk through the lobby without bending over from the pain in his sides. He'd run up a twenty- dollar taxi fare, but he figured it was worth it; he'd needed the time to recuperate enough to make his way to his room. When he got there, he'd take careful inventory of himself. He really might need a doctor, but he doubted it; Frick and Frack were too good at their job actually to snap or rupture something. Their stock-in-trade was internal bruises, and they were craftsmen.

  There was no one else in the elevator, or in the hall, as he made his way to his room. Good. He didn't want to attract attention. The pain was wearing him down, causing him to hunch his shoulders and bend at the waist.

  He tried three times before he fumbled the key into the lock. Then he turned the knob, shoved in on the door, and staggered into the room.

  It was dark, almost totally; only a tall rectangle of lighter-gray shadow that was the window. He felt around on the wall, found the light switch, and flipped it.

  He drew in his breath, making a harsh sound that startled him.

  Sandra Reckoner was sitting on the foot of the bed with her long legs crossed, grinning. She was holding a half-full bottle of Southern Comfort and appeared to be a little drunk, but all the way undressed. Her clothes were folded neatly on the blue chair by the desk.

  Nudger tried to return her grin, but something in him seemed to shift and he groaned. He watched the smile disappear from Sandra's long, bony face. Alarm rearranged her features. She stood up. Boy, did she stand up!

  "Nudger, what's wrong?"

  "My timing," he said, and stumbled to the bed and collapsed.

  XXI

  Lilly Hollister's timing was better than Nudger's. While Nudger was floating through varying degrees of pain, Hollister was with Ineida.

  "What time is it?" she asked him. She lay huddled against him in his bed, her head resting in the crook of his lean arm. They were comfortably spent and cool, covered only by a light sheet; both of them smelled faintly of perspiration transformed to a musky scent by body heat, the result of their desperate coupling of only a few minutes ago.

  "Almost midnight," Hollister told her, squinting to see the luminous hands of his watch through the spray of Ineida's dark hair. He bent his head forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. He loved her. He was reasonably satisfied that he loved her.

  "I need to get home," she said.

  "Why? You might as well stay here tonight."

  W

  "I'm going in to the club early tomorrow morning to talk to Fat Jack about some new arrangements. Marty's going to pick me up at eight; I don't want to have to get up here at seven and try to get home to wait for him."

  "Why so early?" Hollister asked.

  "It's the only time Fat Jack has free tomorrow."

  Hollister knew that Fat Jack was probably humoring Ineida; new arrangements or not, she still would never bring the crowd to its feet. Polite applause, that was what Ineida would have to learn to feed on. It had never been enough for Hollister, but maybe it would be for her. He smiled faintly in the dimness of the bedroom. But what did it matter? His smile widened, unseen. Should he tell her not to bother with the new arrangements? Not to waste her time?

  She sat up suddenly, startling him, the curve of her back smooth and pale in the filtered light, her breasts swaying slightly from her abrupt movement. Hollister saw her fumble with something on the table by the bed. A lighter clicked, illuminating with its bluish flame her unlined face with a cigarette protruding from her compressed lips, her eyes narrowed against the smoke. She seldom smoked, but she had read and heard for a long time about the traditional cigarette after sex, and apparently she wanted to experience it. She often smoked after sex. The bedsprings creaked as Ineida settled back down and rested her head again on Hollister's arm.

  "Rather have a joint?" he asked her. "I've got some good Colombian."

  "No, I'll just smoke this and then leave."

  Hollister rested his head back on the pillow, listening to her long, easy intakes and expulsions of breath as she worked on the cigarette. She was breathing mostly through her nose. He had never seen her actually take smoke into her lungs except for the few times she had smoked marijuana.

  Ineida did love him, he was sure. Probably more than he loved her. It would soon be time for the pain, the way it always happened in love. His father had treated him so well after the pain of Willy's mother's death when Willy was only ten years old. The beatings had abruptly ceased. His father's drinking had begun. Then, after the drinking, the eyes-rolled-back, falling-in-the-aisles religion. And his father hadn't let them take Willy away after that incident at school with Iris Crane, take him where they could inject him with drugs and probe his mind with subtle sharp questions.

  Had he seen his father's hand dart out and edge his mother from the hayloft door? He couldn't know beyond doubt. His father, surprised to see him standing by the henhouse staring at his mother's limp body, registered nothing but numb disbelief on his rough farmer's face. One second Willy's mother had been standing with him, talking and looking out over the just-seeded fields, the next second she was fifty feet below on the bare ground, dead.

  Hollister couldn't be sure of what he'd seen that day. He knew that even his father probably wasn't sure about what had happened. Hollister had expected maybe a deathbed confession twenty years later in the sterile hospital room, but his father had simply looked at him, not unlike the way he'd stared at him seconds after his mother's plunge to death, and then turned to face the empty bed next to his and died quietly.

  Hollister still wasn't sure, not about anything, really, except his music. The fools who knew he was great could never imagine the cost of greatness. The price in pain that had to be paid. The trick was never to reach equilibrium, and to let the genuine agony of loss sing between the notes. How could anyone possibly understand the cost of that if they weren't touched by greatness and the need? The need and the way, and the roar of pain tamed to a seductive whisper. Hollister almost laughed out loud at the way so few could see and feel the deeper, wiser blackness against the night. The precious gain in loss.

  Beside him a tiny red meteor arced to the ashtray and Ineida stubbed out her cigarette. She sat up again, then twisted her body and leaned low to kiss him on the lips, his face tented softly by her dangling hair.

  She asked the eternal question. "Do you love me?" she said, sitting halfway up, still bent over him. "Do you? Even now that you've found out-"

  "That doesn't matter to me," Hollister interrupted. "In fact, I admit I'm pleased about it." He ran a fingertip lightly along the soft inside of her thigh and she sucked in breath sharply and her body twitched with pleasure. "I love you more than you might imagine," he whispered.

  "Are you sure?"

  "As sure as I've ever been of anything."

  She kissed him again, then got up and went into the bathroom. The light from the bathroom window spilled outside and illuminated the courtyard. A corner of the garden
was visible through the bedroom window.

  Hollister lay quietly staring at the symmetrical dark row of rosebushes. The roses would bloom soon, he knew.

  XXII

  God, you're pissing blood."

  Sandra Reckoner, shy thing that she was, had stayed after helping Nudger into the bathroom. She stood now near the door, nude and unafraid of what the harsh morning light might reveal about her long body. She had no reason to be afraid; the few stretch marks and the slightly pendulous angle of her breasts somehow seemed only to add to her attractiveness by making her real and sensuous in a way no mere centerfold candidate could approach.

  "It's from being punched in the kidneys," Nudger told her, leaning with one hand flat against the wall.

  "Don't you think you should see a doctor?"

  "No." He pushed away from the wall and turned toward the washbasin.

  "Why not?"

  "Doctors are like mechanics and a number of other people who charge too much for their services. If you go to them, they'll find all sorts of things wrong."

  "That's a stupid attitude."

  "It probably is at my age; there could really be all sorts of things wrong with me."

  "Doesn't it frighten you, seeing blood in your urine"

  "Sure. But it scared me worse the first time, after I'd been kicked in the kidneys a few years ago. But I know now it will eventually take care of itself; the people who did this to me knew just how far to go." He washed his hands, splashed cold water over his face.

  "You sound as if you admire their professionalism," Sandra said.

  "I don't admire it," Nudger told her, "but I'm counting on it instead of my medical insurance." Insurance which, it occurred to him, might have lapsed. Had he paid that last premium? That was something he'd better remember to check on.

  "Do you know who beat you up? And why?"

  "Yes and yes," Nudger said. "It was two very large primeval types who were underlining a message they'd delivered to me earlier."

  "There's such a thing as the police, you know," Sandra said. "Have you called them?"

  "No."

  "You should. You were assaulted. I understand there's a city ordinance against beating up out-of-towners. And maybe you could use police protection."

  "I'm not so sure, in this instance."

  Sandra looked at him curiously. "You weren't in any shape to talk about it last night," she said. "Would it help you to talk about it now?"

  "No," Nudger told her, "I don't even want to think about it."

  She knew when not to pursue a subject. She stepped around him, bent over and turned on the taps in the bathtub, then pulled the chrome lever that got the shower going. "Wait for the water to get warm," she said. "I'll be right back." She sidestepped around his listing form again and left the bathroom.

  Nudger stood remembering his night with her. She had comforted him, held his head close between her bare breasts, as he drifted in and out of sleep, in and out of pain. Several times she had suggested calling the hotel doctor; each time Nudge had refused. In the coolness of the air-conditioned room, it was the heat of her long body that he wanted, the warmth of her limitless compassion. Sex, of course, had been out of the question; Nudger was having enough difficulty simply breathing. But she had stayed with him and given him what at that moment he so badly needed.

  Nudger smiled briefly. He had kept his pledge of fidelity to Claudia. He felt rather smug about that.

  Sandra returned to the bathroom, wearing her panties and bra. She reached in behind the plastic shower curtain to test the temperature of the hissing water.

  "Are you ready for this?" she asked.

  Nudger nodded.

  She helped him step over the edge of the bathtub; he looked down as he did this and saw that his body showed only a few faintly purple bruises and was almost unmarked by one of the worst beatings he'd ever endured.

  "Can you stand up by yourself all right in there?" Sandra asked over the rush of water.

  "I can stand and move around okay," Nudger told her. "It just hurts when I do." The needles of hot water seemed to penetrate his flesh and soothe his stiffened and abused muscles. He looked over at Sandra, smiled at the concern on her bony features. "I'm on the mend," he assured her.

  She nodded, looking no less concerned. "Sure," she said, and pulled the shower curtain closed. He didn't hear her leave, but registered the sharp click of the latch as she shut the bathroom door.

  Nudger turned his body slowly to let the water work on his back, then turned again and raised his face into the powerful spray. He stood that way for several minutes, lost in the cascade of hot water. Finally he moved back a step so the spray struck his chest. Steam began to rise. He really could feel his body loosening up, his strength returning.

  He stayed in the shower a long time, running up the Hotel Majestueux's water bill. Then he gingerly toweled dry, used his fingers to brush his hair back, and wiped away condensation on the fogged mirror so he could look at himself.

  Same old Nudger, but maybe a few years older than he'd been last night.

  He walked stiffly out of the bathroom to locate some clothes. Each step made him ache, but less than he'd anticipated, and the pain at the base of his spine was almost gone.

  He felt like lying back down, but he knew that if he did his body would stiffen up again and he'd undo much of the good of the hot shower. With the slow deliberation of a man in a dream, he began getting dressed.

  Twisting back his arms to get his shirt on was painful, as was crouching braced against the wall to step into his pants. But the shoes and socks were the worst. Bending his body to reach his feet was a rare agony. He managed to get one shoe tied in a bow, then fastened the other one with a crude knot, sat up straight, and said the hell with it.

  The effort of getting dressed took more out of him than he'd thought it would. It also made him realize he was hungry. Should he phone down for a motorized wheelchair with chrome hubcaps, or just call Room Service?

  He decided on Room Service and ordered a two-egg cheese omelet, toast, orange juice, and a pot of coffee. Then he unlocked the door, slumped in the blue armchair, and for the first time looked at his wristwatch. He was surprised to see that it was almost eleven o'clock. Sandra Reckoner had given him her morning as well as her night, without much in return.

  Nudger realized that either the maid was late this morning or she'd found his door locked with the nightlatch and would make up his room on her late rounds. It occurred to him that she might come in at the same time as the bellhop from Room Service and bustle over to the wastebasket and empty it. That could cause minor complications; Nudger decided he'd better remove the stack of Ineida's love letters from the wastebasket where they were concealed inside the wadded napkin.

  He stood up and creaked over to the desk, placing his left palm on it to support himself while he leaned over the wastebasket and felt beneath crumpled papers to find the napkin.

  As soon as he touched the napkin he knew something was wrong; it was lying flat, not the way he'd carefully arranged it to conceal the letters.

  Blood was rushing to his head, making him dizzy, so he straightened, lifting the metal waste-basket as he did so and setting it on the desk. He stuck his hand in the wastebasket and probed around; still no letters. To be sure, he dumped the contents onto the desk.

  The letters were gone.

  "Damn her!" he said softly, but with enough vehemence to make his sides ache from the effort of abruptly expelled air.

  At the knock on the door, he scooped the trash back into the wastebasket and set it on the floor. Then he hobbled over to the door and opened it, expecting to say hello to his breakfast.

  But it wasn't Room Service at the door.

  It was Ineida Mann.

  XXIII

  Not Ineida Collins, Ineida Mann. She'd shed her ingenue image for her visit with Nudger. She was wearing tight black leather slacks that laced up the fly, and a navy-blue blouse with an oversized collar. Her dark high heels ma
de her seem six inches taller than the little girl who sang. She had on a spiked gold bracelet clasped tight around her wrist, and she was clutching a small leather purse in such a way that the long, thin strap dangled from her hand like a whip. Nudger thought she looked as if she'd been hanging around someplace taming lions.

  "I want to talk to you," she said, pitching her voice low, biting off the words hard. Everything about her was hard today except for her eyes. They tried, but had marshmallow centers.

  Nudger stepped back and motioned for her to come in. She stalked into the room, then paused, noticing that he was walking with difficulty.

  "What's wrong with your legs?" she asked.

  "I had an accident. Sliding into third base."

  She looked at him strangely but didn't press with more questions. That she wasn't here about the letters was obvious; she wasn't clawing at Nudger or threatening a lawsuit. Or maybe she was working up to that. Actually she would approach him differently, Nudger knew, if she found out that he'd stolen and read her sometimes clinical love missives to Willy Hollister; he would hear from her not at all, or he would hear from her attorneys.

  Standing just inside the door, she spread her feet wide and faced him squarely, establishing a beachhead that she might just expand into a full-scale invasion. "Why are you investigating me?" she asked.

  "I'm not," Nudger told her, which seemed for this occasion close enough to the truth.

  Her greenish eyes narrowed and managed to become tigerish. She'd practiced the expression; she was doing it consciously to demonstrate her anger. Nudger figured she was actually scared beneath all that bravado and makeup. "You're asking questions about me," she said. "Coming around my apartment lying to me, sneaking around the club. Does my father have something to do with this?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Do you know who he is?"

  "Yes." Nudger was getting tired of standing. He made his way painfully over to the blue armchair and eased back down into it. The old chair felt pretty good.