The Rit
J.T. Ledbetter
Across town, in a mid-upscale hotel, a lady with jewels around her neck sits in a cashmere-type chair looking out at the East River. The man, her husband it turns out, watches her. He is smoking but puts the cigarette out in a conch shell, a gift to the hotel from a shopkeeper in New Zealand. After three martinis the man is talkative. She is not. She had a rather poor dinner and hasn't got the energy to drink. Their conversation ended a minute before the maid knocked at the door to ask if there was anything wanted before she left for the ball game where her intended said he would show her what a shortstop was. She almost curtsied, but instead bowed her head and walked out backward.
The woman, in her long yellowish dress, starts to rise, then settles back into the arms of the chair with some book or other. Her husband notices her at once. "Get you a drink now?" He lights another cigarette and pours himself two fingers of scotch. A storm is brewing outside. "Why don't we just go to bed, dearest?" His voice, while honest, carries little of the passion she found in her book. It is a panacea she thinks he thinks. Something to do on a stormy evening away from home. After considering how long it will take to divest herself of the dress, and glancing quickly at the TV guide, she decides she will. It is the last night at the hotel. It is raining. It will be good fun, he muses, already loosening his tie. The cigarette is snuffed out. Looking at his reflection in the full-length mirror he fancies he looks like Cary Grant. One quick glance at the TV guide before nimbly hopping over his brown suitcase, he dances through the large white doors, past the complimentary bouquet of foreign-looking flowers to, what, he muses again... bliss? Let's just see, he says, with a wink at the fellow undressing in the window. Let's just see, shall we?
Two blocks away, but still in the shadow of the hotel, a young man in a sweatshirt with the name Jeter on the back, fields ground balls in the light from his car. The maid watches and thinks of the couple in their fine clothes. In Dubuque, the Editor of Dou-blewide Digest waits for his man to return from holiday to lay out the new catalogue. On a fridge in Nebraska a magnet holds a picture of a woman in a white evening dress standing in front of a policeman on a horse standing in front of an old hotel. A letter has gone out on the sign. The woman watches it in the moonlight and wonders which letter it is. Tomorrow she will ask her neighbors to guess.
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