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It was cool out but the air was enveloped in warmth; here was the first taste of spring, which brought me a satisfaction, a sense of rightness and organization. I crossed the room to check on Charlie’s progress against the day, which I found to be poorer than my own.
    ‘I was feeling shaky myself,’ I told him, ‘though I am better all the while. I believe there is some healing element to that tooth powder.’
    ‘Call me a bath,’ he croaked, hidden in quilts and sheets. ‘Tell the woman I want it scorching.’
    ‘A bath cost twenty-five cents,’ I said. I knew this because I had seen the sign in the lobby; I mentioned it because back home a bath cost a nickel. But Charlie was not concerned with the price: ‘If it costs twenty-five dollars, I don’t care. It will save my life, if it’s possible to save my life. I want the water hot enough to cook a bird. And I will ask you to fetch me medicine from the chemist’s.’
    I said, ‘I wonder what the Commodore would think of a lead man so frequently sick from alcohol.’
    ‘No more talking,’ he pleaded. ‘Go and find the woman. Scorching, tell her.’
    ‘I will be back after the chemist’s.’
    ‘Hurry, please.’
    I found the woman downstairs in the lobby, sitting behind her counter, mending a pillowcase with a long needle and thread. I had noticed her only perfunctorily when we checked in, but now I could see she was somewhat pretty, young and pale and plump and firm. Her hair was sweat-pasted to her forehead and her arm worked speedily, extending to its limit as she pulled the needle back. I knocked on the countertop and her eyes landed upon me with undisguised annoyance.
    ‘My brother is brandy-sick and in need of a scorching hot bath.’
    ‘Thirty cents,’ she said monotonously. I looked at the sign above her, which still read twenty-five cents, but before I could speak she told me, ‘It was twenty-five yesterday. It is thirty, now. Someday soon it will be thirty-five.’
    ‘A boom time for the painters of signs,’ I said. But the woman only continued her sewing. Pushing on, then: ‘I had better pay immediately, before the prices get away from me.’ Not so much as a smile from the overworked hotel maiden. To irritate her further I paid with a twenty-dollar piece. She regarded the heavy coin for several long seconds before sweeping it into her filthy smock pocket and fishing out the change. She made no effort to camouflage her dislike of me and I thought it prudent to warn her, ‘My brother is not so patient as I am, ma’am, and he is in poor spirits this morning. He asks for a scorching hot bath and he had better get one. He is not one you will wish to upset, and you can take my word for it.’
    ‘It will be scorching,’ she said. Tucking the pillow under her arm, she turned to fulfill her duties. As she ducked behind the beaded curtain separating the lobby from the kitchen and boilers, I noticed a sliver of her dress was stuck between her buttocks. She removed this with a single dainty tug—a thoughtless, automatic action on her part, but I felt a great fortune to have witnessed it and began whistling a wild, snappy tune.
    I left the hotel, searching distractedly for a chemist’s or a doctor’s, but found myself focusing mainly on the subject of women, and love. I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness; and though it was unrealistic for a man in my position to be thinking such thoughts, I could not help myself: I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, When will that man there find himself to be loved?
    I located the chemist’s and purchased a small