“Yes. Maybe you see where I’m going now. Maybe you get a little more what I mean about natural fathers.
Blaze of Heaven: Blaze of Glory.”
“But if your Pete had read this Mr Jefferies’s book, isn’t it possible that-”
“Course it’s possible,” Martha said, making that pshaw gesture again, “but that ain’t what happened. I ain’t going to try and convince you of that, though. You’ll either be convinced when I get done or you won’t. I just
wanted to tell you about the man, a little.”
“Then go ahead,” Delores said.
“I saw him pretty often from 1957 when I started working at Le Palais right through until 1968 or so, when
he got in trouble with his heart and liver. The way the man drank and carried on, I was only surprised he didn’t
get in trouble with himself earlier on. He was only in half a dozen times in 1969, and I remember how bad he
looked – he was never fat, but he’d lost enough weight by then so he wasn’t no more than a stuffed string.
Went right on drinking, though, yellow face or not. I’d hear him coughing and puking in the bathroom and
sometimes crying with the pain and I’d think, ‘Well, that’s it; that’s all; he’s got to see what he’s doing to
himself; he’ll quit now.’ But he never.
“In 1970 he was only in twice. He had a man with him that he leaned on and who took care of him. He was
still drinking, even though I knew he wasn’t supposed to.
“The last time he came was in February of 1971. It was a different man he had with him – I guess the first one
must have got disgusted and just quit the job. Man was in a wheelchair by then. When I come in to clean and
looked in the bathroom, I seen what was hung up to dry on the shower-curtain rail. Man was in continence
pants by then, too. He’d been a handsome man, but he wasn’t handsome no more. He looked just … just
raddled. Do you know what I’m talkin bout?”
Delores shuddered a little and nodded. She knew. She had seen such creatures at some of the AA meetings
she had attended with Harvey, human ships wrecked up on the rocks which border the sea of alcohol.
“He always stayed in 1163, one of those corner suites with the view that looks toward the Chrysler Building,
and I always used to do for him. After a while, it got so’s he would even call me by name, but that was just my
name-tag and his memory. I don’t believe he ever once really saw me. Until 1960 he always left two dollars
on top of the television when he checked out. Then, until ’64, it was three. Then, until the end, it was five.
Those were good tips for those days, but he wasn’t really tipping me; he was following a custom. Custom’s
important for people like him. He tipped the way he’d hold the door open for a lady. The way he prob’ly used
to put his teeth under his pillow when he was small. Only I was the Cleanin Fairy instead of the Tooth Fairy.
“He’d come in to talk to his publishers or sometimes movie or TV people, and he’d call up his friends – some
of them were in publishing, too, or were other writersand then there’d be a party. Always a party. Most I just knew about by the messes I had to clean up the next day – dozens of empty whiskey bottles, mostly jack
Daniel’s, millions of cigarette butts, wet towels in the sinks and the tub, left-over room service
everywhereonce I found a whole platter of jumbo shrimp turned down into the toilet-bowl. There were glass
rings on everything, and people snoring on the sofa and the floors, likely as not. That was mostly. But
sometimes those parties were still going on when I started to clean at 10:30 in the morning. Mostly those were
just …. what do men call them? …bull-sessions. Talking and drinking. And always it was the war, the war, the