Manila Gambit. John Zeugner

at some Indian restaurant in Georgetown, we didn’t go. I pretended to be sick, I think.”

      “A pattern,” I say, but she ignores it.

      “And so we went to an Italian place and drank a lot of red wine and we got very drunk, I remember, and then the strangest thing happened. We ran up Washington Monument. All the way to the top. Forty-eight stories. Forty-eight series of stairs. It’s very tiny up there, do you know that? Barely room for four people to look out the tiny windows. My legs felt like . . . like jelly, aching jelly.”

      “I don’t think we’ll do it.”

      “Why not?” she sighs, closing her eyes.

      “I just don’t think we’ll have the time or the energy,” I answer.

      “He would,” Pam says, pointing to the vague rabbit in the ceiling.

      But it seems such an observation invites no comment, deserves none, so we slump in the late afternoon silence. The sunlight sparks off the dust particles above the window sill. I think about cranking the jalousies open, wonder whether a certain cleaner might work on the heavy steel mesh. The last time we fell into such silence I discovered, after a while, that Pam actually was asleep. But such is not the case now. Eventually she says, “Rah Mah Dah,” giving equal emphasis to each syllable. The repeats, “Rah Mah Dah.”

      “A new mantra?”

      “Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. You see it is significant how our minds work in similar ways, isn’t it? I was thinking it would make a wonderful mantra, wonderful chant. And you said it before I could, as if you heard me think it. Isn’t that something? Doesn’t that say something about us?”

      “Spen Dip,” I answer.

      “Spen Dip,” she replies, “Spend Dip. Spen Dip. I’m just not getting anything else, are you? Rah Mah Dah was a whole lot better, a whole lot better.”

      Chapter 9

      But the Ramada is hardly better than its surroundings. Litter Kingdom. About one block back from Logan Circle on Rhode Island, the hotel sits like a market at the end of the restored neighborhood. Below it, toward the White House, little town houses have been restored and re-bricked, pottery shops and boutiques have been refurbished, but above it, going toward the Circle there are only burned out shells of buildings, second hand television repair shops, window-smashed liquor stores, unpainted grocery markets, as if the flotsam of 14 Street had simply washed down to the Inn which served as a kind of dam.

      Logan Circle is huge, open, and filthy. The statue of the General stands amid beer bottles, and pop top lids, mounds of broken glass and benches flocked with sleeping drunks. The buildings facing the Circle betray 1890s circularities and aspirations, mounting higher and above their narrow foundations like gothic thrusts of would-be elegance, but their interiors are burned out, boarded up, broken through. A glimpse of plumbing pipes here, an empty fireplace there, stripped of its best marble and bricks, naked studs and beams, thick eight by twelve’s are clearly visible through the gapping exteriors.

      “This must be the shabbiest Ramada Inn of the whole chain,” Pam says as we settle into the “Honeymoon” double, a mammoth chocolate carpeted room with a small dining alcove and linoleum-topped dining table, vinyl chairs. There is a small kitchenette complete with dishwasher and refrigerator and stove.

      The ceilings are a trifle too low, the lighting highly diffuse from hidden bulbs mounted in a valence above the twin double beds that watch the dining alcove. Did someone imagine a foursome Honeymoon? Light beige drapes. There is a residue film from cleaning rags raked over the Formica night stands.

      “Talk about tacky,” Pam says, pulling out a chair and sitting at the dining table. “I find this very discouraging.”

      “We could request another room,” I offer.

      “I don’t think that would help.”

      “Yes, another life somewhere else. Perhaps on the coast of North Carolina, or . . . or. But what does it matter? I feel better already. I used to think climate and surroundings made a big difference. But of course they don’t. You carry into them whatever, isn’t that so?”

      “If Dr. Coffee says so.”

      “He does, I think. Although I’m never very clear on what he is saying. Always asking me, did I mean this or that? Was I feeling this or that? Am I clear on this or that? This or that . . ..This or that.”

      I unpack the two suitcases we had brought. There is a fifth of Jack Daniels wrapped by my undershirts. I pour about an inch into the glass on the nightstand, careful to avoid the strip of paper across the top of the glass. Does the paper signal germ-free sanitation?

      “I want some too,” Pam says.

      “Not a wise idea. This stuff doesn’t mix with Librium or Lithium or whatever it is, those little yellow and red things you’re taking.”

      “I know all that, but all the same, I want some.” She comes over and takes the glass up, flicking away the paper strap. “I thought they only wrapped toilet seats with these.”

      I pour another glass. “To Dr. Coffee and his wonderful open-mindedness on this.”

      “This drink?” she asks.

      “This trip. This being together.”

      She smiles a wide, vacant grin. Her eyes glaze a bit. “Being together,” she says slowly.

      The track of a vacuum cleaner spreads out at our feet. I can trace the motions of the maid, the parts she skipped, the parts she did twice. I wonder what is underneath the bed, for surely the old wheeled Hoover beater she evidently used could not fit under the edge of these Honeymoon beauties.

      “Do you think we should be together now?” I say quietly to Pam, brushing away the thick black hair that shields her wonderfully vulnerable ear.

      “Oh, I think so,” she answers, setting down the drink.

      Down comes the thick corduroy spread, folded five times in a neat, narrow band at the end of bed. Back comes the thick polyester brown blanket. Down comes the tired, evidently worn sheet. The thick, crisp pillows, beneath their slips encased in some sort of crinkly cold material, get stacked up under Pam’s head.

      “Talk dreamy to me,” Pam says, as I undo her clothes and underwear. She has a lovely peach colored and coolly soft skin.

      “Dreamy, kid?”

      “Yes. You know, real Don Ameche stuff.”

      “Your breasts are like melons or sea dunes, that kind of stuff?”

      “Yes. That’s good. Yes. That’s it. Very good.”

      The delicate scallop sculpture of her stomach is fiercely exciting as always.

      “Cover me. It’s cold in here.”

      After I am undressed and on top of her, I pull the blanket up, then the corduroy spread. Brown dark warmth surrounds us. I pull it over our heads.

      “Now talk dreamy to me.”

      I begin a slow moaning in her left ear. A slower, rocking exploration.

      “Dreamy stuff,” I say to her.

      “Yea, really dreamy stuff. Oh, dreamy, dreamy.”

      “A chocolate shag sea,” I whisper in her ear and then watch her vacant, grinning face as she brings her legs around my back. Her hands do a tattoo on my back, delicate palpitation that finds the most erogenous zones, taut niches of flesh above my kidneys. Then her fingers go rubbery, slip off and flop back on the sheet. Her legs settle in as if consciousness has gone somewhere else. Has she passed out? I push a bit of the brown spread back. Track light creeps in from the kitchen. She is smiling, face sideways on the sheet, a little curl of saliva coming out of the top of her mouth.

      “Are you all right?” I ask.

      “Is