Now when I say fucked them at the hotel, I don't mean I fucked them at the hotel. Not that I couldn't have. With all of the businessmen passing through, I could have spent the night in every damned room of the place three times over. I'd walk them to their tables at the restaurant (that's where I worked as the hostess—all the stress of being a waiter but with no tips) and out would come their business cards. Management consultant, architect, lawyer, even the deputy mayor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
They'd press those cards into my hand soaked with their sweat and anticipation. I got so many that I stole the spike next to the register where we stuck the receipts and started impaling the cards on it. In a month, I got 40 or 50 of them, easy. I guess it's like Gabriel says, "Mari, there's nothing like sleeping in a strange room in a strange city to make a man horny."
I had people tell me I should have fucked at least one of those guys, it would have been good for a nice restaurant dinner and maybe even a show. But I'm funny about who I'll sleep with. Those were businessmen, you know? I just couldn't see it. Plus I don't like screwing in hotel rooms. Too impersonal. They make them so you feel comfortable but not settled. And if I'm fucking, I want to feel settled, even if it's just for one night.
So who were the guys I did hook up with? Mostly they worked at the hotel or were friends of people at the hotel. And given that there were 12 in one year, you probably think I did every concierge, bell boy and waiter in the place. But really, I'm funny about who I'll sleep with. It's not about their looks, or about how much money they make. It's just that some guys, they have a way of doing something, some little quirk that only I notice, like using their shirts to wipe the sweat off their foreheads or rubbing their eyes like little boys half asleep. With Gabriel it was the way he held his pen when he wrote, that bit of silver in his huge hand so that it looked like he was trying to write with a needle. But Gabriel wasn't connected to the hotel, so I guess I shouldn't be talking about him. He wasn't one of the dozen, not really.
Frank was the first one. It's a corny cliché that you always remember your first. Though it would be hard to forget the thing he did that caught my attention. It was enough to get the attention of the whole kitchen and it almost got him fired. Plus it happened just when I started working at the hotel, a couple of months after I left school.
Frank was a cook and it was a Wednesday night, and the reason I remember is that that was the night we served pizza soup, which is tomato soup with croutons and mozzarella cheese melted over the top. Not exactly fine dining, but it was a big hit with the pre-theater crowd who went to the Academy of Music.
Dwight was a real snotty asshole waiter and an art student who thought he was going to be the next Picasso or something even though he could barely draw a goddamn straight line. He came into the kitchen and started bitching that Frank had burned the cheese and how he'd done that all night and that his tips were sucky because of it. That's when Frank got a crazy look in his eyes, which were sort of crazy-looking anyway because they were so pale green he seemed almost blind. He punched his fist into the soup bowl and pulled the cheese out in a gloppy ball and yelled, "If you don't get the hell out of my face you'll look like this too."
Dwight ran and got Tony the manager and whined about it like the little prick he was. Tony sent Frank home for the night and he probably would have fired him except that Won Lee never showed up for work the next day and they had to have someone in the kitchen.
I followed Frank when he went to clock out, kicking the walls and cursing as he walked down the hall. I reached toward his arm and I felt the heat of him before I actually touched him. He flinched but I stood there quiet, not smiling, waiting to see what he would do. He stared at me with his pale green eyes and I got that hollow feeling between my legs, like something was missing and too much there at the same time. And that's when I knew I'd go home with him and that we'd fuck, and that it would be weird afterwards. Gabriel says that when a guy has a one-night stand, he wishes the woman would turn into a pizza when they're done, because then he could kill the munchies and not have to make conversation. But that's one thing I can't go along with him on. No matter how weird it might be the next morning, I never want the guy to just go away.
Not that it mattered to Frank. He might as well have been a pizza for how long things lasted. Just one night, a true one-night stand. We both went back to work the next day and I don't think we ever spoke to each other again. But even though it only lasted one night, I still felt like I knew him. That's because whenever I fucked a guy I made sure to wake up before he did. It gave me a little time alone and it also gave me a chance to learn about a guy in a way that you can't if you just fuck him or even become his girlfriend.
I'd pad through their rooms as the night sky dissolved into gray light and look for clues. Was the floor gritty or clean? Were there books or comic books or no books at all? Nunchuks hung on the wall or a print from the Museum of Art? Food in the fridge or a pile of duck sauce-soy sauce-hot sauce packets from Chinese takeout? Once you get to know a man that way, it doesn't matter how weird he is the next day.
That was one thing that was different with Gabriel. He always managed to wake up before me. When I tried to slip out of bed he'd croon, "Mari, Mari," pull me gently against his torso and envelope me in a cocoon of warm, velvet skin. I wonder if it was like that for his other girls, if they made a tent of the blankets and breathed in his smell and wished it would last forever.
Goddamn it.