Chapter 46
The hospital was different on Saturday mornings. There were more visitors but fewer staff. There were fewer doctors around and fewer call downs for testing. The doctors tended to make their rounds early in the day, before visiting hours began. Ron wondered if part of the reason was so that they could also avoid family members who not only wanted assurances and promises but firm timetables. The monitors alongside Marjorie’s bed were kept permanently covered now. When Doctor Gutberg came in he did not even look at them. He told Marjorie that if all went well that he would have her moved to a regular room on Monday morning. She had told him again that she did not think that she could go through with the test that he wanted to do and asked what other tests were available. He was disappointed but saw that she was stubborn about this and told her about an echocardiogram. After Marjorie was told that nothing was going to be stuck into her and that she would not have to be anesthetized, she agreed to have the test. The doctor scheduled it for Monday with the plan that if proved to be non-substantial that he would simply have her moved from the testing area to a regular room. He had figured out that this was a very nervous patient who had a history of emotional instability and now he tried to factor that into his decisions, but it annoyed him that such a silly thing was going to get in the way of him treating this patient in the way that he knew was best.
Ron spent the morning with her and they played gin rummy and watched TV and talked.
Ron asked, “Have you heard from George?”
“He sent a card,” she said. “He wrote that hopes that I get better soon and that he is staying away because he doesn’t want to upset me.”
“Why doesn’t he realize that his staying away is upsetting you?”
“I don’t love him,” said Marjorie. “I’m not sure that I ever loved him and I feel very guilty about that.”
Ron nodded.
“I just knew that I had to get you out of Newark. That’s why I married him.”
Ron winced. It wasn’t the first time that he’d been told that. “I don’t know Mom.”
Marjorie bit her lip. “I’m worried about health insurance now. What if he wants a divorce? What will I do? I’m not going to be able to work for a while and my kind of job does not come with healthcare. And I would never be able to afford the house without him and I just can’t imagine having to go back into an apartment.”
“Has he mentioned anything about wanting a divorce?”
“Not really, but you know George. I’ll find out when he files the papers.”
“The only thing that we should be thinking about right now is getting you well,” said Ron.
Marjorie put down the cards. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a little while,” she said. “I don’t sleep at night. I get too frightened when it’s dark.”
Ron read the newspaper that he’d brought for her and watched her sleep. After about an hour he saw Lois in the doorway and held his finger up to his lips, hoping that she would stay still but she had already began to talk.
“How is she feeling?” said Lois.
Marjorie’s eyes blinked open and Ron shot Lois a look that said why couldn’t you just be still? Lois ignored him. She moved to the bed and took his mother’s hand. Marjorie smiled and said, “I just had a wonderful nap.”
Ron said that he was going to go and his mother nodded.
“Will you come back tomorrow?”
Ron had planned on stopping back later that day but said that he would be there.
“Do you think that you could stop at the bakery and bring some jelly donuts?”
Ron said, “Mom, that isn’t a good idea.”
Lois opened the bag that she had brought with her and said, “Look what I have.” It was an old fashioned donut from Dunkin Donuts and a container of coffee.
Ron thought that it was good that she was hungry but was horrified that Lois had brought coffee and donuts to a woman who had just had a heart attack.
Marjorie’s face lit up and she sat up in bed. “I’m so hungry. The food that they bring me is terrible. I can’t smoke but to have a good cup of coffee. Did you get it with half and half?”
Lois smiled. “Just the way that you like it.”
Ron’s face tightened as he watched her open the donut bag and put the coffee down on the tray. He struggled to not say anything.
It was just then that one of the nurses walked in to take her temperature. She spied the coffee and donut. “I hope that you aren’t eating that, Mrs. Bombasco.”
Marjorie looked up with her hands outstretched and her face took on the appearance of a little girl who had been caught doing something wrong. “I was just going to have this coffee and donut.”
The nurse gave her a look that Ron was sure would have made Irene Emanuel proud. “You are on a strict diet and you know that. No coffee and no donuts. If you’re hungry I can get you some Jell-O.”
Almost involuntarily Marjorie stuck out her tongue both at the nurse and at the thought of Jell-O. “I’ll keep this at the desk,” said the nurse, gathering the bag and the container. Ron watched his mother’s face sink. “Your visitor can take it with her when she leaves.”
Ron drove down Valley Road towards Paterson. He knew the city from his visits to Quimpy, but he didn’t know a place called The Hitching Post there. As he drove, he conjured up images of Emerald and then right at the end of Valley Road as if by design there it was. When he got out of the car he realized that he already had an erection. He adjusted himself and walked into the bar.
This place was not at all like The French Maid. It looked a bit dingy. There was a bar that was pretty standard looking rectangular with stacks of glasses and bottle in the center island. Off to the left was an area that had a small gate around it. The area was square and about twelve feet by twelve feet. In front of the gate was a scattering of tables and chairs. Ron looked around while his eyes adjusted to the light. There were two bartenders and about fifteen customers at the bar. Seated at the tables were another eight men. The only women in the bar were the dancers. Ron watched as a guy walked passed him holding two drinks and camped out at one of the tables. He moved towards the bar, decided that was not a place to order white wine and asked for a bottle of beer. His change came back with the standard arrangement of three singles, a five and a ten. He moved to one of the vacant tables. It was in the second row and after a moment he casually slid closer to one of the empty tables that bordered the gate. He dancer was a chubby brunette whose act consisted of squeezing her breasts together and then shaking them back and forth against her arms.
Then he saw Emerald. She came out of the ladies room that also doubled as the dancers’ changing area and moved towards the side of the gate. She opened it and stepped in just as the other girl was gathering her boa and skirt and moving out. He thought that Emerald looked tired. She wasn’t wearing make-up and in the better light, Ron could see that she had freckles. He liked the scrubbed clean look on her. She also seemed a little thinner to him than she had the night before. When the next song began she moved with an easy glide. Ron tried to catch her eye but she still had not looked in his direction.
When he held up his first dollar bill, she looked towards him and flashed a smile that Ron took as recognition. He smiled back and extended his arm. She took the tip and folded it under the waistband of her G-string so that she was wearing it like a pelt at her belt. She turned and gave him a little wiggle and then resumed dancing. For the most part she was being ignored.
When he gave her the next dollar he said, “At least you don’t have to climb down from the stage.”
She didn’t respond at first as if she hadn’t heard him or his comment just hadn’t registered. Then he saw the recognition light up her face. “Oh, it’s you,” she said.
Ron wasn’t sure but after that she seemed to dance more and more for him than she did for the other guys. She got a single dollar here and there and for each one she turned and gave her ass that cute little wiggle. Ron grinned broadly as he watched her. When he gave her the fifth tip, this time two dollars, she turned away and bent over until her palms were flat on the floor and then carefully she raised one leg and hooked the heel into the top of the gate’s rail so that she was almost completely exposed to him. Then she bent her knee so that she started to slide herself back towards his face. When she stopped the thin fabric of the G-string was so close to him that he could see a label’s imprint on the other side. She moved herself forwards and back. Ron felt his face flush red hot. He stared at the line that her pussy made against the fabric. Then she straightened herself and moved back into her set.
When it was over, she stood close to him at the rail and said, “I’ll be at the other side of the bar.”
Ron’s beer was now gone. Normally he didn’t drink beer, but after what Emerald had done, he found himself very thirsty. He had gulped the rest of the bottle down like it was soda.
He got up and moved to the rear of the room and stood against the wall. He stayed there and hardly watched the brunette squeeze and shake her breasts. His eyes glued to the ladies room door. The sight of her crotch still throbbed in his brain.
She came out five minutes later, still wearing the same outfit that she had worn in, the white sparkly one from the night before. He moved to a chair at the empty side of the bar and sat down. When she came over, the bartender did as well.
She slid in next to him and Ron felt her brush her knees along his thigh. The fronts of his pants were tented out. She ordered a white wine and Ron asked for another beer.
“I’m happy to see you again,” he said.
She looked down and then back up at his face. “Yeah, you seem happy about it.”
Ron blushed. She watched him blush and thought it was cute. “I really didn’t expect you to show up here today,” she said.
“I told you that I would find the place. I didn’t know that it existed.”
Emerald looked into his eyes and then formed a smirk. “Yeah, if I believed every guy that said that he was going to come see me dance, I’d be even more of a fool than I am, wouldn’t I?”
Ron sat there smiling and said, “Do I look like every guy?”
She leaned close and whispered into his ear, “They mostly don’t get hard this fast.”
And then she reached between his legs and squeezed. Ron thought that he was going to explode right there. He had the beer bottle up to his lips and almost bit into it. Then she got up and said, “Time for me to dance.”
Ron sat there wondering what he should do. He didn’t have enough money to sit there all day. He didn’t have enough money to invite her out to dinner. He thought she would not appreciate a trip back to his three room cold water flat. His second beer was empty and now he was feeling the effects of them. There was only one thing to do and he resolved himself. He got up quietly and left.
He scolded himself on the way home. What was wrong with him? It was a world based on money and how could he have been so stupid to think that he could have the vices of that world. He didn’t like to drink and now he felt drunk. He didn’t have money to waste and now he had spent more in the last two days that he usually spent in a week.
Tutoring! The word blared in his mind like a trumpet. He had forgotten his tutoring appointments. “Fuck!” he screamed and hit the steering wheel. The car swerved and for a second he felt like he was losing control of it. Then it straightened out and he looked into each of his mirrors paranoid that he was going to see flashing lights. Two miles and a two turns later he felt himself settling down. He had intentionally turned off the road that he was on and then turned again to make sure that no one had seen anything in back of him. He was in Montclair, where he had not had the best luck with the cops.
“How could I forget tutoring?” he said aloud in the empty car. Technically his appointments had been in the morning and technically he had been with his mother while he was supposed to be tutoring. So technically he could call and use her heart attack as an excuse. That thought made him sick to his stomach. He would have remembered about the appointments if he hadn’t gone out on Friday night. It was the go-go bar, but he couldn’t tell anyone that. He was having a hard time telling himself that. Even he wanted to spit on himself for being such a cock driven asshole. What was he doing going to a go-go bar while his mother was in the hospital?
When Ron got home he called the Mooney Residence and explained what happened. Then he called the Devin residence. Mrs. Devin was curt when he apologized for missing the appointment.
“My son waited for you all day. After a while it was pathetic to see him keep going to the doorway and moving the curtain aside to look out.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ron. “I had an emergency.”
“I’d like to know what was so important that you could not find the time to call. I’d like to know so that when I call the school I can explain why I don’t wish to have you back here and why I think that you pumping my son up with confidence and then letting him down was mean and careless and hurtful.”
“I was at the hospital,” said Ron. “My mother has had a heart attack.”
He heard Mrs. Devin gasp on the other end of the line. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I do try to remember that my students are in a fragile way, Mrs. Devin, but I admit I was not thinking about James and it didn’t occur to me until I was driving home.” In his head he added, from the go-go bar.
Afterwards, he collapsed back down onto his bed and slept for hours.