Podunk Peggy

I lost track of time after that. We never did order dinner from room service, although I wish now we had. I picture her, wrapped in a bedsheet, eating one of those little crustless sandwiches, smiling; then later, playing with her naked body and some array of fruits and desserts, whipped cream, strawberries, chocolate pudding, and her velvet skin. It never happened. We made love. Yeah, it was making love; it wasn't just fucking. I realize that now. Then we slept together in the big bed in my suite, waking up at various times in the night to discover our limbs twined together, once in a while making out again, once making love again; we drifted in and out of sleep and ecstasy all night and half the next morning, until well after noon, when the sun streamed in through the curtains and shined on her flawless skin. I didn't realize then how happy I was.

So then something awful happened. Not awful like Dar es Salaam; a different awful. Peggy got out of bed and started to dress.

"Say, Peggy," I said, putting my arms up behind my head, a relaxed posture designed to disguise the nasty cold feeling in my gut. "You free for the next two, three years? 'Cause I can arrange to have my tires slashed. Over and over."

She continued getting dressed.

"And over," I said.

"I can't stay," she told me as she twisted her hair back into its neat bun. "I work today. I have to get home and take a shower, change clothes."

"Don't go. Come on, Peggy. Whatever money you're not making for today, I can give you."

"That's okay. I wouldn't want that."

"Quit, then. Call in and quit, and come work for me instead. Be on my staff."

She shook her head, no longer smiling. "Come on. That would be too much like, you know, getting paid for it." She put her jacket on. "I'm not a whore."

That stung me. So I stung her back. "I paid a thousand dollars to get you here yesterday. What did you think that was about?"

Her head snapped around toward me, her face angry. "Hey, you bought my manager, you didn't buy me."

I didn't say anything. I tried to keep the hurt off my face; it didn't seem manly.

"Listen, S*****, I've been genuine with you this entire time. I have not told you one single lie." She sighed. "I genuinely had fun. I had a great time. And I'm flattered that you want to see me again. I'll leave you my number, you can call me if you ever come back through town, maybe I can get the day off, or even a whole weekend. But for now, you have to let me go." She gave me a steady look. "Don't ruin this memory for us. Don't spoil it."

I couldn't think of anything to say. Stupidly, I watched her gather together the contents of her purse and stuff them back inside. She headed out of the suite's bedroom. I heard her lingering in the sitting room, the scratch of a pen on paper huge in the roaring silence.

"Goodbye," she called. Then she went out the door and, presumably, down the hallway to the elevator.

I got up out of bed, meaning to chase her down the hall, catch her, drag her back into the room with me. The effort was halfhearted. I knew I wouldn't go charging down the hallway of the top floor of the Grand bare-assed, and I knew she wouldn't come back even if I did. But I was too far into getting up to not get up, and so clumsy in my motions, that I knocked into the bedside table lamp pretty hard; hard enough to knock it against the wall and break it.

It was an accident. That one was. I broke the other bedside lamp on purpose. Then all the other lamps in the suite, and all the dishes in the dishwasher, and the TV screen. I tried to break the bedroom window, but the chaise I picked up glanced off the glass and smashed the air conditioner instead. And then I stepped on a piece of broken ceramic and cut the shit out of my foot, and had to have stitches, and I got arrested and had to pay for the damages to the suite. It was my first-ever movie star tantrum. My first-ever a lot of things.

It was on the news. I'm sure Peggy saw it. I was too embarrassed ever to call her again.