Between you and me, I think Al would’ve let her stay. If she begged. He likes monkeys begging. Never gets tired of that song. Ollie stayed. A few others. Ask Persephone. All you gotta do is open up a tab at the bar. Who wants to go back to being unseen and unseeable? Besides, hell has the best theater.
But Zelda didn’t even ask. Why?
Because Frankie has her stash.
There was a moment there when people just keeled over faint for what Zelda had. Not her face, not her hand, not to get between her legs. But for her Goodies. For her Good. And she won’t ever be able to live without that now. Without rum and love and Good. Frankie’s got the last of it. He thinks he’s smuggled it without her seeing. He can feel it warming him up already. Zelda followed him up that long staircase, through the door in her own room—seems like forever ago she tried to have Harold bust it open. As if you could break into a place that always wanted you. She follows him and he’s better than Orpheus I guess. He never once looks back to see if she’s there.
They come out onto the roof in time for him to start collecting eggs for the morning delivery.
“Hey there, Dido,” he calls to the five hundred white chickens all together, all one name, all one queen. “Time to give it up.”
The sun, the real sun, is starting to peek up over the rooftops of New York. The goats mew and moan, full of milk and attitude, chewing the real ballroom grass growing up on top of the Artemisia, her green, green hair, her crown of living things. The bees yawn noisily. The Jersey cows snuff their wet noses at the puffs of light. Rutherford roars softly, if a fella can roar softly, and Zelda’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound like I love you after all.
Frankie stops for a second. Thinks hard. Zelda knows what boys look like when they think hard. He looks around like Josie did before he proposed for the first time. He turns to her and takes her hand in his. His pockets are so stuffed with his winnings he looks like a horse with saddlebags. He says he loves her—sure. He says Al gave them a life together—sure, fine. Let’s take it and run. Whatever you say, just give it back, Zelda begs silently. Just give it back and we’ll do it all. Paris, the kid, the books, the everything. Everything in me and you and five hundred chickens and a talking bear on top.
“If we’re gonna get married, we gotta share everything,” he says softly. She doesn’t want to, but she sure as hell wants to share.
Frankie Key gives it back.
Zelda lunges for it, for her own darling green-bright heart—but it’s not her rum Frankie’s handing over. It’s her matchstick. Her death by fire. He thinks he’s being kind. Generous. He puts her coat around her shoulders, her black fur like her own skin. Sure, fine. Matchstick, coat. Third time’s a charm. Give it back, give it back.
He offers her a cigarette from Al’s silver case. And that’s all.
Zelda wonders if he knows that she’ll follow him anywhere for it. All the rest of her days. That he’ll lose her if she puts her hands on it, like a selkie skin. She’ll take it and run. Run forever.
“It’s mine,” she whispers. “It’s the best part of me and you took it.”
“I won it.”
“It’s not yours.”
Frankie won’t meet her eyes. “We’ll share it,” he says. Zelda breathes a little. Better than nothing. Better than empty.
Frankie Key tends to the five hundred Didos. The five hundred eggs on top of the world. He holds the bottle tight in his trousers, hiding it from her with his turned back. He will drink it all and he will remember and he will write it all. Write something big. Zelda will understand. She owes him. She let him see what he could make and then took it away. It’s only right. It’s restitution. She will forgive him by Paris. She will read it and see how good he is and know how it had to be. He’ll make it up to her.
Don’t do it, boy. You can’t make up this kind of thing.
But he won’t listen. Up there on top of the Artemisia, in the dawn like shots firing madly, fire in the barrel and holes opening in the dark, secret and furtive behind the bear’s belly, Frankie Key sucks down the rumglory of the underworld, the hurtling life of the hotel stuck like a pin all the way through the world, Zelda’s pin, her bullets, her Goodies, her.
The light glitters off the bottle like sequins on a green, green dress.
Check-Out
Not much left, kittens. Just you and me and the rest of the miserable bastards left over at the end of this story.
Who am I?
Well. I told you it wasn’t a good book. I have such trouble with that trick of cutting up what really happens and stitching it together with what didn’t or couldn’t or shouldn’t happen. I just can’t help telling you what happened, in the order it happened. No art to it. I could have made myself nicer, a better mother, a saint with a soul of marzipan. But it seemed like too much work. Maybe you’ve heard it told different by somebody you liked better and believed it—that’s fine by me. I just told you what I know. The inside of a hotel the size of the world. On the outside, I suppose it just looked like a bunch of assholes drinking themselves stupid and putting on airs.
Now when I threw the dice in a man’s tie? That was better. That was what I wanted to say. But you try telling everybody your dream five years after you dreamt it, and with a nasty cough, too.
I guess I only know one more thing, my little ducks. Then it’s good night and good riddance and every other good thing and bus your own tables if you know what’s good for you. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. That old rag.
Frankie and Zelda lit out pretty soon after that morning on the rooftop. She stayed long enough to tell me about it. I made her tea. You talk to the people who’ve hurt like you’ve hurt, and there weren’t so many of us at that table. Nobody ever asked those dancing princesses how they liked life once that fella kicked them out of the magic downtown club where they could be infinite together. I bet they didn’t care for it. I bet they talked about it, even ninety years on, twelve old queens who can buy their own damn shoes. I bet they made each other tea. It’s the least you can do.
So Zelda sat and sipped told me she helped take the eggs down that morning. She liked it. It was methodical. Basket, door, basket, door. And she said that once or twice, just once or twice, before she knocked on a door in her fur with nothing underneath, she thought one of the eggs shook itself. Like a dog trying to get the water off its back. It shook and stretched and turned every color all at once—and then nothing, white as cake again.
She told me that like it might worry me. But I told you about Al and his people. How rarely they nest. How rarely they make any more of themselves. And I figure a nest, for a fella like Al, isn’t some little mess of twigs up in a tree. It’s gotta be big. It’s gotta be grand. It’s gotta go all the way up to the clouds and all the way down to hell.
I figure it might look like a hotel.
Catherynne M. Valente, Speak Easy
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