'At least try an answering service, Frank,' I suggested, which he would grudgingly accept -- one day. But that was after Father and I moved out.
In our first New York days, I was Frank's answering service.
'I want you terribly much,' Franny whispered to me, on the phone.
Franny was alone at the Stanhope. 'Lilly's out having a literary lunch,' Franny said. Maybe that would be one way Lilly would grow, I thought: having lots of literary lunches. 'Frank's wheeling and dealing,' Franny said. 'He's at lunch with her. They'll be tied up for hours. And you know where I am, kid?' Franny asked me. 'I'm in bed,' she said. 'I'm naked,' she added, 'and I'm fourteen fucking floors high -- I'm high on you,' Franny whispered to me. 'I want you,' Franny said. 'Get your ass over here. Kid, it's now or never,' Franny said. 'We won't know if we can live without it until we try it.' Then she hung up. One of Frank's other phones was ringing. I let it ring. Franny must have known I was dressed for running; I was ready to run out the door.
'I'm going to take a run,' I told Father. 'A long one.' One I might never come back from! I thought.
'I won't answer a single phone call,' Father said grouchily. He was having trouble, at the time, making up his mind what to do. He would sit in Frank's splendid apartment with the Louisville Slugger and the dressmaker's dummy and he'd think and think all day.
'Anything?' he kept asking Frank. 'I can absolutely -- in all sincerity -- do anything I want to do?' Father would ask Frank, about fifty times a week.
'Anything, Pop,' Frank told him. 'I'll set it up.'
Frank had already set up a three-book contract for Lilly. He had negotiated an initial first printing of Trying to Grow -- 100,000 copies. He had optioned the film rights to Warner Brothers and had made a separate deal with Columbia Pictures for an original screenplay of the events leading up to the bomb that went off in front of the second Hotel New Hampshire -- and the famous Opera bomb that didn't go off. Lilly was already working on the screenplay. And Frank had put through a contract for a television series to be based on life at the first Hotel New Hampshire (which Lilly was also authoring) -- the series was to be based on Trying to Grow, and was not to be released until after' the motion picture; the movie would be called Trying to Grow, the TV series would be called 'The First Hotel New Hampshire' (this, Frank pointed out, left room for future deals).
But who, I wondered, would ever dare to make a TV series out of the second Hotel New Hampshire? Who would want to? Franny wondered.
If Lilly had grown only a little (as the result of creating Trying to Grow), Frank had grown double time -- for all of us (as the result of selling Lilly's effort). It had been no little effort for Lilly, we knew. And we were worried about how hard she was working, how much she was writing -- how grimly she was trying to grow.
'Take it easy, Lilly,' Frank advised her. 'The cash flow is fast and furious -- you're terrifically liquid,' said Frank, the economics major, 'and the future looks rosy.'
'Just coast for a while, Lilly,' Franny advised her, but Lilly took literature seriously -- even if literature would never take Lilly quite seriously enough.
'I know I've been lucky,' Lilly said. 'Now I have to earn it,' she said -- trying harder.
But one day in the winter of 1964 -- it was just before Christmas -- Lilly was out at a literary lunch and Franny told me it was now or never. There were only about twenty blocks and a very small zoo between us. Any good middle-distance runner can get from Central Park South to Fifth Avenue and Eighty-first in a very short time. It was a winter day, brisk but gray. The New York City streets and sidewalks were cleared of snow -- good footing for a fast, wintry run. The snow in Central Park looked old and dead, but my heart was very much alive and pounding in my chest. The doorman at the Stanhope knew me -- the Berry family would be welcome at the Stanhope for years and years. The man at the reception desk -- the alert, cheerful man with the British accent -- said hello to me as I waited for the elevator (the elevators at the Stanhope are rather slow). I said hello back to him, scuffing my running shoes on the rug; over the years I would watch that man grow a little balder but no less cheerful. He would even deal cheerfully with the complainers (the European Lilly and I saw in a rage at the reception desk one morning, for example -- a portly man in a barber-pole-striped robe; he was beshitted, head to toe. No one had told him about one of the Stanhope's features: their famous upward-flushing toilets. You should beware of them if you ever stay at the Stanhope. After you've done your business in the toilet, it's advisable to close the lid and stand well out of the way -- I recommend kicking the flush handle with your foot. This portly European must have been standing directly over his mess -- he must have thought he'd observe it all going away, when it suddenly was flung up, all over him. And the ever-cheerful man with the British accent, behind the reception desk, looked up at the beshitted guest who was raging at him and said, 'Oh dear. A little air in the pipes?' It was what he always said. 'A little air in the pipes?' the portly European bellowed. 'A lot of shit in my hair!' he howled. But that was another day.).
The day I was there to make love to Franny, the elevator couldn't get there fast enough. I decided to run up to the fourteenth floor. I must have looked awfully eager when I arrived. Franny opened the door just a crack and peeked at me.
'Yuck,' she said. 'You'll have to take a shower!'
'Okay,' I said. She told me to hold the door open just a crack and give her time to get back to bed; she didn't want me to see her -- not yet. I heard her bound across the suite and leap back into bed.
'Okay!' she called, and I went in, putting the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door.
'Put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door!' Franny called to me.
'I already did,' I said, in the bedroom, looking at her; she was under the covers, looking just a little nervous.
'You don't have to take a shower,' she said. 'I like you all sweaty. At least I'm used to you that way.'
But I was nervous and I took a shower, anyway.
'Hurry up, you asshole!' Franny yelled at me. I took as fast a shower as I could and used the potentially upward-flushing toilet very cautiously. The Stanhope is a wonderful hotel, especially if you like to run in Central Park and enjoy watching the Met and its floods of visitors, but you have to watch out for the toilets. Coming from a family used to strange toilets -- those toilets fit for dwarfs in the first Hotel New Hampshire, those tiny toilets used by Fritz's midgets to this day -- I tend to be generous in my feelings toward the toilets at the Stanhope, although I know some people who say they'll never stay at the Stanhope again. But what's a little air in the pipes, or even a lot of shit in the hair, if you have good memories?
I came out of the bathroom, naked, and when Franny saw me, she covered her head with the sheet and said, 'Jesus God.' I slipped into bed beside her and she turned her back to me and began to giggle.
'Your balls are all wet,' she said.
'I dried myself!' I said.
'You missed your balls,' she sai
d.
'Nothing like wet balls,' I said, and Franny and I laughed as if we were crazy. We were.