Tabloid City by Pete Hamill

Author:Pete Hamill [HAMILL, PETE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316174923
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2012-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

9:20 a.m. Consuelo Mendoza. Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan.

She waits for the light to change, because she always obeys small laws, and when it’s green, she crosses Seventh Avenue. In the distance, Consuelo sees the sign for the Chelsea Hotel, which looms large and brown and dark. It’s on the south side of 23rd Street, but she stays on the north side. The cold wind blows hard from the river. Her breath makes small gray clouds.

She stops in front of a clothing shop but doesn’t look into the window. She stands with gloved hands jammed in her coat pockets and stares at the hotel. This is surely the place whose name he wrote on that piece of paper long ago. That time when he went to New York and came back with his wife and broke her heart. Fifteen years ago, when she was still almost a girl. If you need anything, Señor Lewis said, call me. Three days after he returned with his wife, Consuelo fled to Huajuapan, eight hours on three different buses, full of anger and bruised pride.

On this cold New York morning, she doesn’t know if he is here, and both the anger and the pride have long vanished. Who can insist on pride if the children will end up on the street in the rain? She called the hotel anyway and it was still the right number but the man who answered said that Mr. Forrest was still sleeping, try later. So he was there, and still alive. Y pues, estoy aquí. I’m here. He’s here too, up in one of those rooms with their iron balconies.

Consuelo knows he must be very old now. Un gringo muy viejo. He was old back then too, but full of life. Staring at her nakedness in his studio, wearing shorts and sneakers behind his easel, drawing or painting her breasts, her waist, her buttocks. Her long hair. Her uncallused feet. Her hands. Laughing about how hard it was to sleep now in his cama de piedra. His bed of stone. Singing songs by Don Cuco, singing about the anillo de compromiso, the engagement ring, and wailing, full of lonely hurt, “A dónde estás?” Oh, where are you?

Si necesitas algo, llámeme, he said. If you need anything, call me. Those were his words that time, when she thought he would come back alone, to her.

She thinks: I need help now, Señor Lewis.

A job.

Or a loan.

Now.

Fifteen years later.

She waits, as people go by in both directions, most hurrying, some strolling, more people in twenty minutes than she’d see in Huajuapan in a month of fiestas. Taxis honk and cars too, and the buses push hard, bullying the others. On the sidewalk, nobody bumps into anyone else. They turn sideways, or pause, or stop. But nobody challenges another to get through. A black man with one leg swings by on crutches. Two light-skinned Latinas go by giggling but Consuelo can’t hear the jokes. They are walking quickly so Consuelo knows they have jobs that must start at ten.

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