simply don’t care to hear your voice and whatever cock-and-bull story you’ll come up with in that schoolmarmy sleaze of yours. It may shut up those slum kids you’ve decided to sacrifice your life to, but it won’t get to me. And please don’t tell me you had no inkling my daughter was heading for Paris! It won’t hold water, I’m on to what you’ve been up to, I knew it the minute I got back and found this pile of shit you’ve sent me. Actually I’ve been in Mexico on a deal — we’re selling them helicopters, not that some of those honchos down there can tell an engine from a horse’s ass. The plain fact of it is I assumed Iris was back at school. She’s got her own little place just off campus — she said she wanted her independence so I set her up out there at never mind the cost. I’ve always done what I could to please my children, and for what return! Anyhow it wasn’t easy on Iris living here with Margaret the way she’s been. Right now, for the last month or so, Margaret’s being treated in a very good rest home, the Suite Eyre, here in Beverly Hills. I came back to an empty house, except for the housekeeper, and I won’t deny that I deliberately keep this woman as blind as a bat — I don’t need a servant to snoop into my family’s comings and goings. I sacked the last one when she started asking why Margaret sleeps so much in the afternoons. Of course I can’t let Margaret know about Iris, at least not right now,I’m afraid she’d just slip over the edge. She’s always had her nerves, but what’s made her sicker than usual is Julian’s disappearance. That’s how she says it, Julian’s disappearance. As if he’s gone up in a puff of smoke, as if something horrible’s been done to him. And now Iris! So I ask you, why did you let this happen? Why did you let my daughter do this? What’s this crazy business about her not coming back? Why in God’s name didn’t you STOP her? You shit, you never stopped her! My kids are running from me, and why? What have I done? What haven’t I done? Did I neglect them, did I hurt them? Sometimes I feel it’s a curse, but for what? I don’t know, I don’t know. All I know is that I want my son to come home. He doesn’t belong there, it’s the wrong place for him, they’ve swallowed him up over there. You tell me Iris will get him back. But what if whatever it is over there swallows her up the same as Julian? I’m a dead man, I’m dead, for God’s sake, Bea, can’t you understand what I’m going through?
Marvin
You shit
.
This pile of shit
. Marvin back in street mode. Marvin undone.
10
T HE NEW HOTEL was surprisingly full for September, and though it was less expensive than the last one, it was also, for the money, surprisingly shabby. But on short notice she was lucky to find a room at all, and she could afford nothing better — what foolishness, a second trip two months after the first! Summer was officially over, the tourists were still swarming, and the better-off Parisians who habitually escape the city in August were trickling back. The taxi from the airport had dropped her in front of a narrow pair of steps at an ordinary wooden door, when she had expected a marquee and a man in uniform. She was obliged to prop the door open with one foot while struggling to swing her suitcase over the threshold and into the tiny lobby. The young clerk at the reception counter made no move to help.
The room turned out to be stifling. Its single window, partly blocked by a battered wardrobe, looked out on a dirty alley. A wide bed with a gully in the middle of its belly consumed nearly all the space there was, and a narrow pathway at its flank led to what had been advertised as “Spacious Private Bath with Shower.” The toilet and the washbasin were jammed together catty-corner, almost obstructed by a huge tub in which a serpentine hose lay coiled.
But in the morning she found the lobby transformed by a circle of little breakfast tables
Marvin
You shit
.
This pile of shit
. Marvin back in street mode. Marvin undone.
10
T HE NEW HOTEL was surprisingly full for September, and though it was less expensive than the last one, it was also, for the money, surprisingly shabby. But on short notice she was lucky to find a room at all, and she could afford nothing better — what foolishness, a second trip two months after the first! Summer was officially over, the tourists were still swarming, and the better-off Parisians who habitually escape the city in August were trickling back. The taxi from the airport had dropped her in front of a narrow pair of steps at an ordinary wooden door, when she had expected a marquee and a man in uniform. She was obliged to prop the door open with one foot while struggling to swing her suitcase over the threshold and into the tiny lobby. The young clerk at the reception counter made no move to help.
The room turned out to be stifling. Its single window, partly blocked by a battered wardrobe, looked out on a dirty alley. A wide bed with a gully in the middle of its belly consumed nearly all the space there was, and a narrow pathway at its flank led to what had been advertised as “Spacious Private Bath with Shower.” The toilet and the washbasin were jammed together catty-corner, almost obstructed by a huge tub in which a serpentine hose lay coiled.
But in the morning she found the lobby transformed by a circle of little breakfast tables
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