“Take it easy.”
“Are you staying out in the country?”
“Yes. But I’m going to be in town today and tonight.”
“He won’t be back today or tonight. I’ll call you out in the country when he comes in.”
“You’re sure he’s not plugged at me?”
“I know he’s not plugged at you. What’s the matter? Have you got a bad conscience?”
“No. Is anybody else plugged at me?”
“As far as I know not even the Admiral is plugged at you. Go on out and get drunk for me.”
“I’m going to get drunk for myself first.”
“Get drunk for me, too.”
“What’s the matter? You’re drunk every night, aren’t you?”
“That’s not enough. How did Henderson do?”
“All right. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“Nothing. I just asked you. You have any complaints?”
“We don’t make complaints.”
“What a man. What a leader.”
“We formulate charges.”
“You can’t. You’re a civilian.”
“Go to hell.”
“I don’t have to. I’m there now.”
“You call me as soon as he gets in. And make my compliments to the Colonel and tell the Colonel I checked in.”
“Yes sir.”
“What’s the sir for?”
“Politeness.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Hollins.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Hudson. Listen. Keep your people where you can find them in a hurry.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Hollins.”
Down the hall a Lieutenant Commander that he knew came out of the code room. His face was brown from golf and from the beach at Jaimanitas. He looked healthy and his unhappiness did not show. He was young and a very good Far East man. Thomas Hudson had known him when he had had the motor car agency in Manila and a branch agency in Hong Kong. He spoke Tagalog and good Cantonese. Naturally he also spoke Spanish. So he was in Havana.
“Hi, Tommy,” he said. “When did you get into town?”
“Last night.”
“How were the roads?”
“Moderately dusty.”
“You’ll turn the goddamned car over some time.”
“I’m a careful driver.”
“You always were,” the Lieutenant Commander, whose name was Fred Archer, said. He put his arm around Thomas Hudson’s shoulders. “Let me feel of you.”
“Why?”
“You cheer me up. It cheers me up when I feel of you.”
“Have you been over to eat at the Pacífico?”
“Not for a couple of weeks. Should we go?”
“Anytime.”
“I can’t make lunch but we can eat there tonight. Do you have anything for tonight?”
“No. Just afterwards.”
“Me afterwards, too. Where shall I meet you? The Floridita?”
“Come on up there when the shop shuts.”
“Good. I have to come back here afterwards. So we can’t get too drunk.”
“Don’t tell me you bastards work nights now.”
“I do,” Archer said. “It isn’t a popular move.”
“I’m awfully glad to see you, Mr. Freddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “You make me feel cheerful, too.”
“You don’t have to feel cheerful,” Fred Archer said. “You’ve got it.”
“You mean I’ve had it.”
“You’ve had it. And you’ve rehad it. And you’ve rehad it doubled.”
“Not in spades.”
“Spades won’t be any use to you, brother. And you’ve still got it.”
“Write it out for me sometime, Freddy. I’d like to be able to read it early in the mornings.”
“You got a head in her yet?”
“No. Where the head was is about thirty-five thousand dollars worth of junk I signed for.”
“I know. I saw it in the safe. What you signed.”
“They’re goddamned careless then.”
“You can say that again.”
“Is everybody careless?”
“No. And things are a lot better. Really, Tommy.”
“Good,” said Thomas Hudson. “That’s the thought for today.”
“Don’t you want to come in? There’s some new guys you’d like. Two really nice guys. One of them really beat up.”
“No. Do they know anything about the business?”
“No. Of course not. They just know you’re out there and they’d like to meet you. You’d like them. Nice guys.”
“Let’s meet them another time,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Okay, chief,” Archer said. “I’ll come up to your place when the joint closes.”
“The Floridita.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“I’m getting stupid.”
“It’s just sheepherder’s madness,” Archer said. “Do you want me to bring any of these characters?”
“No. Not unless you want to very much. Some of my mob may be around.”
“I should think you bastards wouldn’t want to see each other ashore.”
“Sometimes they get sort of lonesome.”
“What they ought to do is net them all and lock them up.”
“They’d get out.”
“Go on,” Archer said. “You’re late at the place.”
Fred Archer went in the door opposite the code room and Thomas Hudson walked down the hall and walked down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Outside it was so bright the glare hurt his eyes and it was still blowing heavily from the north-northwest.
He got into the car and told the chauffeur to go up O’Reilly to the Floridita. Before the car circled the Plaza in front of the Embassy building and the Ayuntamiento and turned into O’Reilly he saw the size of the waves in the mouth of the harbor and the heavy rise and fall of the channel buoy. In the mouth of the harbor the sea was very wild and confused and clear green water was breaking over the rock at the base of the Morro, the tops of the seas blowing white in the sun.
It looks wonderful, he said to himself. It not only looks wonderful; it is wonderful. I’m going to have a drink on it. Christ, he thought, I wish I were as solid as Freddy Archer thinks I am. Hell, I am as solid. I always go and I always want to go. What the hell more do they want? For you to eat Torpex for breakfast? Or stick it under your armpits like tobacco? That would be a hell of a good way to get jaundice, he thought. What do you suppose made you think of that? Are you getting spooky, Hudson? I am not, he said. I have certain unavoidable reactions. Many of them have not been classified. Especially not by me. I would just like to be as solid as Freddy thinks instead of being human. I think you have more fun as a human being even though it is much more painful. It is goddamned painful right about now. It would be nice to be like they think, though. All right now. Don’t think about that either. If you don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist. The hell it doesn’t. But that’s the system I’m going on, he thought.
The Floridita was open now and he bought the two papers that were out, Crisol and Alerta, and took them to the bar with him. He took his seat on a tall bar stool at the extreme left of the bar. His back was against the wall toward the street and his left was covered by the wall behind the bar. He ordered a double frozen daiquiri with no sugar from Pedrico, who smiled his smile which was almost like the rictus on a dead man who has died from a suddenly broken back, and yet was a true and legitimate smile, and started to read Crisol. The fighting was in Italy now. He did not know the country where the Fifth Army was fighting but he knew the country on the other side where the Eighth Army was and he was thinking about it when Ignacio Natera Revello came into the bar and stood beside him.
Pedrico set out a bottle of Victoria Vat, a glass with large chunks of ice in it, and a bottle of Canada Dry soda in front of Ignacio Natera Revello and he made a highball hurriedly and then turned toward Thomas Hudson, looking a
t him through his green-tinted, hornrimmed glasses and feigning to have just seen him.
Ignacio Natera Revello was tall and thin, dressed in a white linen countryman’s shirt, white trousers, black silk socks, well-shined, old brown English brogues, and he had a red face, a yellow, toothbrushy moustache and nearsighted, bloodshot eyes that the green glasses protected. His hair was sandy and brushed stiffly down. Seeing his eagerness for the highball, you might think it was his first of the day. It was not.
“Your ambassador is making an ass of himself,” he said to Thomas Hudson.
“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” Thomas Hudson said.
“No. No. Be serious. Let me tell you. Now this is absolutely between you and me.”
“Drink up. I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Well, you should hear about it. And you should do something about it.”
“Aren’t you cold?” Thomas Hudson asked him. “In that shirt and the light trousers?”
“I’m never cold.”
You’re never sober either, Thomas Hudson thought. You start to drink in that little bar by the house and by the time you come here for the first one of the day you’re potted. You probably didn’t even notice the weather when you dressed. Yes, he thought. And what about yourself? What time of day did you take your first drink this morning and how many have you had before this first one? Don’t you cast the first stone at any rummies. It’s not rummies, he thought. I don’t mind him being a rummy. It is just that he is a damned bore. You don’t have to pity bores and you do not have to be kind to them. Come on, he said. You’re going to have fun today. Relax and enjoy it.
“I’ll roll you for this one,” he said.
“Very well,” said Ignacio. “You roll.”
He rolled three kings in one, stood on them, naturally, and won.
That was pleasant. It couldn’t make the drink taste any better. But it was a pleasant feeling to roll three kings in one and he enjoyed winning from Ignacio Natera Revello because he was a snob and a bore and winning from him gave him some useful significance.
“Now we’ll roll for this one,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. He’s the type of snob and bore, that you always think of by all his three names, Thomas Hudson thought, just as you think of him as a snob and a bore. It’s probably like people who put III after their names. Thomas Hudson the third. Thomas Hudson the turd.
“You’re not Ignacio Natera Revello the third are you by any chance?”
“Of course not. You know my father’s name very well.”
“That’s right. Of course I do.”
“You know both my brothers’ names. You know my grandfather’s name. Don’t be silly.”
“I’ll try not to be,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll try quite hard.”
“Do,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “It will be good for you.”
Concentrating, working the leather cup in his best form, doing his hardest and best work of the morning, he rolled four jacks all day.
“My poor dear friend,” Thomas Hudson said. He shook the dice in the heavy leather cup and loved the sound of them. “Such kind good dice. Such rich-feeling and laudable dice,” he said.
“Go on and throw them and don’t be silly.”
Thomas Hudson rolled out three kings and a pair of tens on the slightly dampened bar.
“Want to bet?”
“We have a bet,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “The second round of drinks.”
Thomas Hudson shook the dice lovingly again and rolled a queen and a jack.
“Want to bet now?”
“The odds are still greatly in your favor.”
“OK. I’ll just take the drinks then.”
He rolled a king and an ace, feeling them come out of the shaker solidly and proudly.
“You lucky sod.”
“Another double frozen daiquiri without sugar and whatever Ignacio wants,” Thomas Hudson said. He was beginning to feel fond of Ignacio.
“Look, Ignacio,” he said. “I never heard of anyone looking at the world through green-colored glasses. Rose colored, yes. Green colored, no. Doesn’t it give everything a sort of grassy look? Don’t you feel as though you were on the turf? Do you never feel as though you had been turned out to pasture?”
“This is the most restful tint for the eyes. It’s been proven by the greatest optometrists.”
“Do you run around much with the greatest optometrists? They must be a pretty wild bunch.”
“I don’t know any optometrists personally except my own. But he is familiar with the findings of the others. He is the best in New York.”
“I want to know the best in London.”
“I know the best optometrist in London. But the very best is in New York. I’ll be glad to give you a card to him.”
“Let’s roll for this one.”
“Very well. You roll back to me.”
Thomas Hudson picked up the leather cup and felt the heavy confident weight of the big Floridita dice. He barely stirred them in order not to irritate their kindness and generosity and rolled out three kings, a ten, and a queen.
“Three kings in one. The clásico.”
“You are a bastard,” Ignacio Natera Revello said and rolled an ace, two queens, and two jacks.
“Another double frozen daiquiri absolutely without sugar and whatever Don Ignacio wishes,” Thomas Hudson said to Pedrico. Pedrico made his smile and the drink. He set down the mixer before Thomas Hudson with at least another full daiquiri in the bottom of it.
“I could do that to you all day,” Thomas Hudson said to Ignacio.
“The horrible thing is that I’m afraid you could.”
“The dice love me.”
“It’s good something does.”
Thomas Hudson felt the faint prickle go over his scalp that he had felt many times in the last month.
“How do you mean that, Ignacio?” he asked very politely.
“I mean that I certainly don’t, with you taking all my money.”
“Oh,” said Thomas Hudson. “Here’s to your good health.”
“I hope you die,” Ignacio Natera Revello said.
Thomas Hudson felt the prickle go over his scalp again. He reached his left hand against the bar where Ignacio Natera Revello could not see it and tapped softly three times with the ends of his fingers.
“That’s nice of you,” he said. “Do you want to roll for another round?”
“No,” the other said. “I’ve lost quite enough money to you for one day.”
“You haven’t lost any money. Only drinks.”
“I pay my bar bill here.”
“Ignacio,” Thomas Hudson said. “That’s the third slightly edgy thing you’ve said.”
“Well, I am edgy. If you’d had someone be as damned rude to you as your bloody ambassador was to me.”
“I still don’t want to hear about it.”
“There you are. And you call me edgy. Look, Thomas. We’re good friends. I’ve known you and your boy Tom for years. By the way how is he?”
“He’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“That’s all right,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I’m so very sorry. Please know how terribly sorry I am. How was he killed?”
“I don’t know yet,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll let you know when I know.”
“Where was it?”
“I don’t know that. I know where he was flying but I don’t know anything else.”
“Did he get into London and see any of our friends?”
“Oh yes. He’d been in town several times and to White’s each time and he’d seen whoever was around.”
“Well, that’s a comfort in a way.”
“A what?”
“I mean it’s nice to know he saw our friends.”
“Certainly. I’m sure he had a good time. He always had an awfully good time.”
“Should we drink to him?”
&nbs
p; “Shit, no,” Thomas Hudson said. He could feel it all coming up; everything he had not thought about; all the grief he had put away and walled out and never even thought of on the trip nor all this morning. “Let’s not.”
“I think it is the thing to do,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “I think it is eminently proper and the thing to do. But I must buy the drink.”
“All right. We’ll drink to him.”
“What was his rank?”
“Flight lieutenant.”
“He’d probably have been a wing commander by now or at least squadron leader.”
“Let’s skip his rank.”
“Just as you wish,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “To my dear friend and your son Tom Hudson. Dulce es moriré pro patria.”
“In the pig’s asshole,” Thomas Hudson said.
“What’s the matter. Was my Latin faulty?”
“I wouldn’t know, Ignacio.”
“But your Latin was excellent. I know from people who were at school with you.”
“My Latin is very beat up,” Thomas Hudson said. “Along with my Greek, my English, my head, and my heart. All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri. ¿Tú hablas frozen daiquiri tú?”
“I think we might show a little more respect to Tom.”
“Tom was a pretty good joker.”
“He certainly was. He had one of the finest and most delicate senses of humor I’ve ever known. And he was one of the best-looking boys and with the most beautiful manners. And a damned fine athlete. He was tops as an athlete.”
“That’s right. He threw the discus 142 feet. He played fullback on offense and left tackle on defense. He played a good game of tennis and he was a first-rate wing shot and a good fly fisherman.”
“He was a splendid athlete and a fine sportsman. I think of him as one of the very finest.”
“There’s only one thing really wrong with him.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s dead.”
“Now don’t be morbid, Tommy. You must think of Tom as he was. Of his gaiety and his radiance and his wonderful promise. There’s no sense being morbid.”
“None at all,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s not be morbid.”
“I’m glad you agree. It’s been splendid to have a chance to talk about him. It’s been terrible to have the news. But I know you will bear up just as I will, even though it is a thousand times worse for you being his father. What was he flying?”