The Boulevardier

By Joe Kilgore

 

 

Twenty minutes later, the portly matron’s passion was spent.  Thank God for small favors, he thought, as he rose from the fleshy folds and wiped his wet brow with the back of his arm.

 

“That was glorious,” she said, “glorious.  I didn’t think I could ever feel that way again.”

 

“Nor I,” he responded.  Then kissing the purple varicose veins on her inner thigh, and speaking with such well-crafted sincerity it literally brought a tear to her eye, he added “You were wonderful.”  Sensing the moment was right, he asked respectfully, “Darling, do you mind if I freshen up a bit?”

 

“Of course not, my precious.  I’ll just lie here and think of us still intertwined.”

 

While I try not to, he said to himself, gently pulling the comforter over her glistening pink bulk.  He watched her heavy lids close slowly and noted, without emotion, the smile that crept across her lips.  Then he quietly gathered his clothes from the back of a chair and stepped silently into the bathroom.

 

Closing the door behind him, he hung his things on the rack and stood naked and motionless on the tiled marble floor. This was the moment he always waited for.  The moment he knew that, at least for the next little while, he would have the lavish hotel bath all to himself.  Solitude, he thought, particularly solitude surrounded by stainless steel , mirrored glass, polished stone, hand-carved soap and plush, soft towels, was wasted on those who experienced it frequently. Only the infrequent recipient of such luxuriousness could appreciate it fully, intensely, completely.  And that was exactly what he planned to do.

He turned and faced the mirror.  The image he saw in the glass didn’t reflect the one he saw in his head.  The mirror revealed a sunken chest, thin pale arms and veins that stood out like a relief map on the back of his hands and wrists, a manhood that hung limp and low and led to shapeless thighs, bony knees and meatless, almost non-existent calves.  The image in his head however, compensated for what time, hunger and waste had taken away.  He was older, yes, but still the bon vivant.  A self deception reinforced mostly by what was above his shoulders.  There the features were still chiseled and gaunt.   The shoulder-length hair and moustache that turned down on the ends still black.  Kept that way by dye, of course.  Glancing down, he realized it was time for a touch-up there as well.  Symmetry was important to the illusion.  His, as well as the women who chose to see only that which they wished to see.

 

He selected the tub rather than the shower because he so loved not just the hot, healing water that would surround him, but also the soothing silence that would come with it.  Silence he seemed to find nowhere else. Certainly not in his own apartment.  A seedy fourth-floor walkup reminiscent of Van Gogh’s Bedroom.  Spartan as only a bare bulb, table, chair and bed can be.  But later, lying in the heated water made bubbly by the ocher bath gel he found on the vanity, the act of pouring the viscous liquid into his palm somehow put him in mind  of the oily rope hanging from the shade that covered the window in his own  flat.  The shade that half-heartedly kept out the sun, but provided no respite from the street’s never ending serenade.  The clanging of dumpsters.  The clatter of scurrying rodents.  The screamed profanities of the wild-eyed man who lived in the alley and had no one to curse but himself. 

 

It always happened that way.  Reality would creep back into his reverie and he would grasp that his temporary fantasy was over.  It was time to move on. Pulling the stopper from the tub, he let the water drain out fully. Fastidiousness was his way of thanking her.  After drying off, he got back into the clothes that  had become his uniform of both choice and necessity.  Wrinkled chinos, a v-cut T-shirt, a brown leather belt that came close to matching his faux Italian loafers.  All topped off with a well-worn blue worsted blazer. The bohemian incarnate. 

 

He could still pull it off, he thought to himself, taking one last look in the mirror. Repetition had enabled him to become extremely adept at opening and closing doors silently.  Stepping from the bathroom, he made as much noise as a cat crossing the room, all the while keeping his eyes on the slumbering mound in the bed.  Had she been awake, he would have told her that he had stupidly left his wallet at home, then asked if there were any way he might borrow cab fare. She’d have no way of knowing he never took cabs.  No way of discovering that was a luxury he couldn’t afford.  They might have quibbled over the amount.  Him saying a ten would be fine.  Her replying that she only had twenties and he should just take one of those.  Him eventually acquiescing.  Her secretly glad to be rid of him. 

 

But since she wasn’t awake, and her purse was on the desk, he felt the better part of valor was to simply save them both the embarrassment. So, finding the side compartment with the cash, he pocketed two twenties from the five or six which nestled there.  Something extra he rationalized, for sparing them both an awkward moment.

 

The degree of stealth with which he managed to cross the room, exit the door and silently slip away surprised even him.  Or perhaps, she had simply been complicit, he wondered, leaving via the stairwell.

 

Back on the avenue, flush with the feel of folding money clutched in his fist anchored rakishly in his pocket, he strode north.  It was his routine to leave the immediate vicinity quickly.  Never dawdling over a smoke or a coffee.  Best to put some blocks between them, he knew.  One could never anticipate when a wellspring of guilt, recriminations or misplaced outrage might be close on his heels.  Such occupational hazards were to be avoided at all costs.

 

Reaching the boulevard, he strolled slowly past the window shoppers and the office workers and the Japanese tour groups with their shutters snapping noisily like cicadas on a summer’s night.  He took a seat at a sparsely filled sidewalk café where he tapped a Camel from his Gitane pack while ordering a double espresso from the waitress.  When she brought it, he sipped slowly and took long, deep drags off his cigarette, blowing smoke up and into the shadows that fell across him from the fading afternoon light.  Passersby paid him little or no attention as they went about the end of their day.  Just someone killing time they might have thought, if they thought of him at all.  But he hadn’t stopped there for the passersby.

 

Two tables, but only a few feet away, an emaciated, silver-haired woman with facial makeup that, even charitably, could best be described as grotesque, sat with a guidebook held close to her bifocals in arthritically twisted, liver-spotted hands.

 

Two shopping bags were tucked securely beside her frail knees which protruded skeletal-like from the hem of her Chanel suit.   No more than a minute or two passed, along with three or four furtive glances in his direction, before she spoke.

 

“Pardon me, sir.  I don’t mean to bother you.  But, are you a painter?”

 

With a subtle world-weariness almost no longer feigned, he answered, “Is it that obvious?”

 

“Oh, no.  It’s just sort of a little thing I do, you know. Guess peoples’ occupations.  The girls in the book club tell me I’m quite good at it.”

 

“I have no doubt,” he said, rising from his chair and pulling it to her table.

 

“New in town?” he began, not really hearing her reply, his mind already drifting into a consciousness that the days were getting shorter, and soon it would be winter.

 

 

         Author’s Bio: Joe Kilgore is an advertising veteran with more than 40 years experience working for some of the world’s largest corporations. His commercials and advertisements have been honored with local, regional, national and international awards. Recently retired, Kilgore is pursuing a new career as a novelist. His first book, The Blunder, is a modern cautionary tale that encourages others to question whether they are captives or architects of their own fate.

 

Kilgore currently divides his time between Chicago, Ill., Sedona, Ariz., and Austin, Texas. He and his wife, an accomplished artist, are the proud parents of three grown children, two cats and an African gray parrot. For more information, please visit www.joekilgore.com