retied his tie,
picked up his jacket from the back of a chair, and felt around in
the inside pocket for the street map he had taken from a rack at
the front desk.
On the way up he had noticed there was a side
entrance—apparently the hotel wasn’t very worried about their
guests shooting the moon. At that hour, with some luck, he should
be able to get clear without anyone seeing him. After all, even if
someone was watching, they would hardly be so crass as to post a
guard.
He slipped his arms into the sleeves of his
jacket, took a last look around to make sure everything appeared
properly untidy, and stole out, closing the door behind himself as
quietly as possible. He had an appointment, it seemed.
6
You wondered how many innocent American
tourists, after unpacking their bags and filling out handfuls of
postcards for all the relatives back home in Sioux Falls, after a
nice heavy dinner in the hotel restaurant, after tasting for
perhaps the first time in their lives wine that hadn’t been bottled
in California, how many of these had taken the wife out for a
little evening stroll through all those interesting looking side
streets behind the Voorbrugwal Canal, which, perhaps, if they
happened to have been given a room in the rear, they had seen from
their window. Probably thousands of such happy couples had crossed
over the quaint wooden bridges and admired the beautiful,
efficient, peculiarly Dutch architecture, some of it dating quite
clearly from the boom years of the Seventeenth Century, when
Holland had controlled trade with the treasure laden East and her
navy had been the envy of Europe.
Many of the buildings, as it happened, had
large plate glass windows on the ground floor—presumably installed
sometime after the days of Rembrandt and De Ruyter—and behind any
one of these, seated on a bar stool, with her legs crossed
provocatively and her skirt hiked up past the tops of her nylons,
was a lady whose lewd smile the car salesman from Indiana would
feel all the way down to his elasticized socks.
But there were no errant husbands flitting
about at a quarter to five in the morning—all of those were safely
asleep long ago, having left the field clear for more hardened
lechers of which, even at this hour, there was no discernible
shortage. Like conspirators assembling to plan acts of desperate
terrorism, they slipped furtively in and out of the doorway to a
dark little basement from which issued the sound of pinball
machines and the dull thud of rock music, a sign on the outside
advising you in Dutch, English, and German that for five florins
were available within the widest selection of pornographic films in
the city, which apparently was saying something.
Guinness checked his map and tried to locate
a street number, and discovered himself under the eyes of a pretty
negress whose rouged nipples were clearly visible over the top of
her pink babydoll nightie. She had just taken up her position,
pushing aside the curtain that had covered the plate glass window
and climbing up on her stool, and she looked at him as if he had
come to answer her most impassioned yearnings.
But he had already been through that phase,
in San Francisco, after the death of his second wife, when he had
imagined himself to be wearing the mark of Cain and felt sometimes
he might die of loneliness. The whores chattering among themselves
in Vietnamese as you lay on a mattress in a tiny room, waiting. No,
he had discovered soon enough that that sort of thing wasn’t at all
to his taste, so he smiled and shook his head and moved away. In
any case, she wasn’t the one he was looking for.
On the front stoop, just about at eye level,
a little congregation of teenaged waifs, no more than children
really, were lounging back against their rolled up sleeping bags
and passing around a briar pipe that certainly was filled with
something besides shag. One of the girls stared at Guinness
vacantly as he walked past—her long blonde hair had gone so
picked up his jacket from the back of a chair, and felt around in
the inside pocket for the street map he had taken from a rack at
the front desk.
On the way up he had noticed there was a side
entrance—apparently the hotel wasn’t very worried about their
guests shooting the moon. At that hour, with some luck, he should
be able to get clear without anyone seeing him. After all, even if
someone was watching, they would hardly be so crass as to post a
guard.
He slipped his arms into the sleeves of his
jacket, took a last look around to make sure everything appeared
properly untidy, and stole out, closing the door behind himself as
quietly as possible. He had an appointment, it seemed.
6
You wondered how many innocent American
tourists, after unpacking their bags and filling out handfuls of
postcards for all the relatives back home in Sioux Falls, after a
nice heavy dinner in the hotel restaurant, after tasting for
perhaps the first time in their lives wine that hadn’t been bottled
in California, how many of these had taken the wife out for a
little evening stroll through all those interesting looking side
streets behind the Voorbrugwal Canal, which, perhaps, if they
happened to have been given a room in the rear, they had seen from
their window. Probably thousands of such happy couples had crossed
over the quaint wooden bridges and admired the beautiful,
efficient, peculiarly Dutch architecture, some of it dating quite
clearly from the boom years of the Seventeenth Century, when
Holland had controlled trade with the treasure laden East and her
navy had been the envy of Europe.
Many of the buildings, as it happened, had
large plate glass windows on the ground floor—presumably installed
sometime after the days of Rembrandt and De Ruyter—and behind any
one of these, seated on a bar stool, with her legs crossed
provocatively and her skirt hiked up past the tops of her nylons,
was a lady whose lewd smile the car salesman from Indiana would
feel all the way down to his elasticized socks.
But there were no errant husbands flitting
about at a quarter to five in the morning—all of those were safely
asleep long ago, having left the field clear for more hardened
lechers of which, even at this hour, there was no discernible
shortage. Like conspirators assembling to plan acts of desperate
terrorism, they slipped furtively in and out of the doorway to a
dark little basement from which issued the sound of pinball
machines and the dull thud of rock music, a sign on the outside
advising you in Dutch, English, and German that for five florins
were available within the widest selection of pornographic films in
the city, which apparently was saying something.
Guinness checked his map and tried to locate
a street number, and discovered himself under the eyes of a pretty
negress whose rouged nipples were clearly visible over the top of
her pink babydoll nightie. She had just taken up her position,
pushing aside the curtain that had covered the plate glass window
and climbing up on her stool, and she looked at him as if he had
come to answer her most impassioned yearnings.
But he had already been through that phase,
in San Francisco, after the death of his second wife, when he had
imagined himself to be wearing the mark of Cain and felt sometimes
he might die of loneliness. The whores chattering among themselves
in Vietnamese as you lay on a mattress in a tiny room, waiting. No,
he had discovered soon enough that that sort of thing wasn’t at all
to his taste, so he smiled and shook his head and moved away. In
any case, she wasn’t the one he was looking for.
On the front stoop, just about at eye level,
a little congregation of teenaged waifs, no more than children
really, were lounging back against their rolled up sleeping bags
and passing around a briar pipe that certainly was filled with
something besides shag. One of the girls stared at Guinness
vacantly as he walked past—her long blonde hair had gone so
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