II: Grotesques
When I came home one night, there was a big party at Serena’s, the club in the basement of the Chelsea. Serena’s had only been open for a few weeks, and so it was still a novelty with the hotel residents. Several people from the hotel, including the guys who worked at the front desk, were hanging around outside to see what celebrities had come to the party. They mentioned a couple of names: Juliette Lewis was one, but I can’t remember what the others were anymore. When a big white limo pulled up to the curb they all became really excited—though it turned out to be nobody recognizable.
There was only one person sitting in the lobby, as it seemed everyone else had gone outside to check out the action. Erica Crandle was an older lady, perhaps early sixties, her frizzy black hair, streaked with gray, pulled back in a pony tail. She had once been pretty, and you could see the outline of her features, still finely chiseled, through the leathery skin of her face. She had put on weight, not evenly, but in her belly mostly, and her thighs.
I plopped down in the chair next to her, and was going to ask her if she’d seen any celebrities, but then I noticed that something about the whole scene seemed to be getting on her nerves. She spoke before I could:
“What is wrong with them? Are they retarded?” she said crossly, wrinkling her long, aristocratic nose. (Erica was often irritable like this—she had that irascible sort of personality that would be annoying if it weren’t also sort of charming—at least in small doses.) “Why would they want to see people like that? What could they possibly get out of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just to tell everybody they saw them,” I suggested.
“But who would care? Certainly not me. If they told me I’d think they were idiots.”
“Yeah, I can see your point,” I said. “I guess I’m more interested in the club itself. I’d kind of like to go down there and have a drink or something just to see what’s going on.”
“I wouldn’t. It’s just a bunch of kids going down there. Why should I care what they do? I have nothing in common with them.”
“Still, I would like to see what the place looks like. They say it’s pretty fancy.”
Erica rolled her eyes at me. “Well, here’s a clue: it’s in the basement. It probably looks like a basement.”
When he had got safely out of earshot, Erica said, “At his age you’d think the man would have more sense.”
She looked to me for some kind of a response, but I didn’t say anything.
“To get stinking drunk like that at his age,” she went on. “Falling down drunk.” She took a draw on her cigarette. “Have a little bit of dignity, I say. And he had good reputation, too, in his field.” She shook her head in dismay. “To throw it all away like that. I think he’s burned out his brain on alcohol, and is just wallowing in his sorrows.”
“Ah, he probably only had a couple,” I said.
“A couple too many!”
And then I told her about how Maxwell felt that someone was stealing his ideas--my point being, I guess, that Maxwell was already rather addled.
It surprised me when she came to his defense: “Well, you can’t really blame him for that, now can you? He’s worked all his life on his art, and now he’s old and without much to show for it. He sees these young people doing work similar to his and getting lots of attention for it, and it just doesn’t seem fair.”
That made me laugh. “I wonder if they’d let me in tonight,” I said, jokingly.
Erica lit up a cigarette, despite the fact that they weren’t allowed in the lobby. The way she did it, with her brows knit, indicated defiance of the rules. I realized that she had probably wanted to go outside to smoke, but felt that she wouldn’t be comfortable due to all the commotion.
As she reached over and flicked her ashes into a coke can on the table, Maxwell, the old photographer, walked into the lobby. Staggering, visibly drunk, he had apparently been to the party in Serena’s. “Well, there’s your answer right there,” Erica said. If they’d let him in, they’d let anyone in.
I didn’t think that was quite true. Maxwell had probably got an invitation on the strength of his old connections. Either that or he had stumbled down there and they hadn’t the heart to turn him away. Maxwell looked at us and slurred some kind of greeting on his way to the elevator.
When he had got safely out of earshot, Erica said, “At his age you’d think the man would have more sense.”
She looked to me for some kind of a response, but I didn’t say anything.
“To get stinking drunk like that at his age,” she went on. “Falling down drunk.” She took a draw on her cigarette. “Have a little bit of dignity, I say. And he had good reputation, too, in his field.” She shook her head in dismay. “To throw it all away like that. I think he’s burned out his brain on alcohol, and is just wallowing in his sorrows.”
“Ah, he probably only had a couple,” I said.
“A couple too many!”
And then I told her about how Maxwell felt that someone was stealing his ideas--my point being, I guess, that Maxwell was already rather addled.
It surprised me when she came to his defense: “Well, you can’t really blame him for that, now can you? He’s worked all his life on his art, and now he’s old and without much to show for it. He sees these young people doing work similar to his and getting lots of attention for it, and it just doesn’t seem fair.”
I was struggling to get a handle on her apparent about-face, as Erica went on: “I hardly call that evidence of derangement,” she said crossly, “Or whatever it is you’re trying to claim.”
Then I told about the more embarrassing parts of our conversation—which I had withheld before--about the gassing and injecting, and people breaking into his room.
But she didn’t want to hear it. She shook her head and flipped her hand at me dismissively. She must have thought I was making fun of Maxwell. “You can’t really talk until you’ve been there yourself,” she said.
Feeling like a jerk, I was about to get up and leave, and in fact had half risen from my chair, when Ethan Hawke walked in the door. He, too, had apparently been to the party. He was dressed in trucker drag, wearing a Dietsch hat and a red vintage Adidas jacket, and with a dark haired, heavily tattooed girl on his arm. Our conversation stopped short; I plopped back in my chair and we watched as he and his date walked past us—drunk, cheerful, oblivious to our presence—on their way to the elevator.
“You see that little shit there,” Erica said loudly, while he was still within earshot.
“You mean Ethan?” I asked, speaking softly.
“Yes, the one who made that movie. That petty, insipid, little movie.” She said it bitterly.
“Chelsea Walls, you mean?”
She nodded her assent. “That has got to be the absolute worst movie ever made. The cardboard characters, the wooden dialog: a screenplay written, I suspect, by someone not of this earth. The tedious repetition, and the pompous droning of the narration! How can you mess up a movie like that? With all the material this hotel has to offer, all the history! It boggles the mind.”
She was taking it all too seriously, I thought. But I had run into this attitude before among residents: a possessiveness, an almost pathological identification with the hotel. “Yeah, it wasn’t too good,” I agreed. “It almost made me want to move,” I added, jokingly, trying to lighten the mood.
“Don’t go that far,” Erica cautioned, dead serious. “It’s not worth it.”
Ethan and his date had thankfully gone up on the elevator by this point. I breathed a sigh of relief. “At least I thought the cinematography was good,” I said. “Kind of dark and grainy. Appropriate for the Hotel.”
Erica wasn’t going to give him even that. She shook her head in exasperation and disgust. She said, “You know, don’t you, that he interviewed people from the hotel for the movie, to get material.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“He couldn’t have done it otherwise. He knows nothing of this hotel. I’m surprised he didn’t talk to you.”
I didn’t consider it too surprising. I was thinking, well, that’s good that he did some research. And I felt certain that Erica would have liked the attention.
“He got a lot of that material from me,” Erica went on. “You know that scene where the girl is dancing in the stairwell?”
“Uh, yeah.” There was a scene in the movie—actually it was several scenes, all roughly the same--shot from above to capture the filigreed rails of the famous cast iron staircase, where a young girl, in a billowing white dress if I remember correctly, was twirling ecstatically at the bottom of the stairwell.
“That character is based on me,” Erica said.
“Oh really? I didn’t know you were a dancer.”
This seemed to incense her: “Everyone knows I’m a dancer. I danced with Martha Graham and many other important companies. I knew Balanchine, and Maria Tallchief.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah, wow,” she said, sarcastically.
“So you originated dancing in stairwells,” I said, stupidly.
“Of course not!” she said. “People have been dancing in stairwells from time immemorial.
I’m just saying that I was the first to dance in the Chelsea stairwell.
Or, if not the first, then at least I did it. And way back in the sixties too. And that’s where he got the idea.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. “Well, it was a crappy movie anyway.”
“I’m talking about the principle of the matter,” Erica pointed out. “He used my idea, and do you think he gave me credit? Well, do you?”
I didn’t reply.
“Well?”
“No,” I ventured.
“Hell, no!”
We didn’t speak for awhile. I was about to take the opportunity to leave. There was a commotion outside as some star or other came out and got into a limousine.
Erica used this opportunity to relax, and to consider my words. “However,” she said, “Yes, as you point out, I suppose I should be glad not to be associated with such a piece of trash. If I had known what that movie was going to be like I would never have helped him.”
To differing degrees, Maxwell and Erica are both a little bit crazy. There’s a lot of people like them wandering these halls. Even if you’re not that way when you get here, all those years of living in the Chelsea Hotel, of laboring in obscurity for the sake of art, will do that to you. So it’s hard to take their claims seriously. Nevertheless, in a way, they’re right, and I believe them. There’s rarely any artistic work that’s strictly original, and if you’re young and attractive and well connected, it would seem fairly easy to get by on derivative work. As long as it’s reasonably competent, nobody’s going to call you on it. But then again, and Erica seems to intuit as much, the older artists most likely did the same thing themselves when they were young. Realizing this, however, probably doesn’t make it any easier to take. (Copyright Ed Hamilton 2006)
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