The Pink Hotel by Patrick Dennis & Dorothy Erskine Read Free Book Online Page A

Gracia told herself, transcending with his garnet eyes the ephemera of sex. And he was so sweet when his food pleased him, his emasculated rumble echoing through the big rooms. Privately, Gracia admitted to herself that Chiang preferred her to Alicia. The way he rubbed his back against her leg. The way he huddled, mewing, against her for protection when a room-service boy entered the room could hardly be misinterpreted. It was all so plain that sometimes she felt a little sorry for Alicia.
    She fondled the deep scratches on her forearm tenderly, as a martyr might touch his wounds or a happy bride her bruised lips. “He wud a mudder’s booful boy,” she said. “Seewhat a ole mudder’s boy do to he mudder,” she patronized Alicia, exhibiting a recent gash with proud satisfaction. Alicia hardly had a mark on her! “He wud a baddy boy,” she admonished Chiang with a reproving forefinger.
    Chiang circled the room, pausing occasionally to sharpen his claws on petit-point chairs. “Come to he mudder,” she said. “A big, booful ole baby boy come to he mudder,” she purred. Chiang sprang, knocking over a lamp, and with a sheathed paw took little practice swings at the spotted breast of Gracia’s dressing gown.
    “I shink at shing what I always do shink about he,” she crooned. “I shink he wud a booflat. I shink he wud nicest most booful ole baby boy what I ever did see in whole nassy ole world.” Chiang acknowledged these blandishments. “I shink he wud a sweet ole babykins what he mudder could eat up,” Gracia said as she buried her face in his soft underbody, reveling in the sudden, swift slice of his claws, giving him a scarred thumb to chew.
    “Do you suppose we could get him to eat some salmon?” Alicia interjected anxiously. The sisters discussed it at length in conspiratorial whispers, friends again. It was true that Chiang sometimes ate salmon when he wouldn’t eat anything else. It was his one common taste, his one low habit. They regretted it, tempted him with smoked turkey, with boned chicken, with snaky little curls of anchovy, but Chiang was adamant. He sometimes preferred salmon. They accepted it between themselves as they had, perforce, accepted the Mellott label and other scapegrace family derelictions but they wouldn’t admit it, except to each other.
    “I could order a salmon sandwich,” Alicia said tentatively, anxiously. “No one would know. We could throw the bread to the birds. We could flush it down . . .”
    Gracia considered. “Did a mudder’s baby what she did love want nassy ole salmon samwich?” she asked. The answer, to her ears, was in the affirmative. Chiang mewed plaintively and Alicia crossed the room with an air of great resolution to the phone.
    “This is Miss Mellott in 801-2-3 and 4,” she told Room Service. “Send me a salmon sandwich. No pickle,” she added severely. “Did a mudder’s baby want nassy ole salmon sam-wich?” she asked Chiang indulgently. She seized the cat jealously from Gracia and draped him, clawing and spitting, around her neck. “I shink he wud a dreat big booful baby-doll cat-boy,” she chanted, quite mad in the benison ofGracia’s approval.
    “Alicia!” Gracia said with considerable dignity. “I’m the one who says shink to Chiang.” There was an uncomfortable silence and Chiang stole away from Alicia, posted himself bythe door.
    The sisters had hot words and Alicia was in the bathroom in tears when the room-service boy knocked. He wheeled the cart in, removed the cover from the sandwich with a flourish, and waited for his tip. Gracia couldn’t find her purse. It was certainly funny the way Alicia disappeared when there was tipping to be done. “Pay waiter ten cents, Gracia P. Mellott,” she wrote in a small, firm hand far down at the bottom onthe waiter’s stub.
    Miz Dukemer would give him fits, Ernie figured unhappily, havink to copy all that stuff off of the check and write him an OK. He hated to put Miz Dukemer to exter