Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

“Everything all right?” Rudolph asked. “They giving you enough to eat?”

“The food’s great,” Billy said. There was no trace of the agony of the afternoon in his face.

“I do hope you like chocolate pudding for dessert, Billy,” the mother said, hardly looking up for a moment at Rudolph, standing at the door. “Martha makes the most delicious chocolate pudding.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “I really like it.”

“It was Rudolph’s favorite dessert, too. Wasn’t it, Rudolph?”

“Uhuh,” he said. He didn’t remember ever getting it more than once a year and he certainly didn’t remember ever remarking on it, but this was not the night to halt the flights of his mother’s fancy. She had even refrained from putting on rouge, the better to play the role of grandmother and she deserved some marks for that, too.

“Billy,” Rudolph said, “I spoke to your mother.”

Billy looked at him gravely, fearing a blow. “What did she say?”

“She’s waiting for you. I’m going to put you on a plane Tuesday or Wednesday. As soon as I can break away from the office here and take you down to New York.”

The boy’s lips trembled, but there was no fear that he was going to cry. “How did she sound?” he asked.

“Delighted that you’re coming out,” Rudolph said.

“That poor girl,” his mother said. “The life she’s led. The blows of fortune.”

Rudolph didn’t allow himself to look at her.

“Though it’s a shame, Billy,” she continued, “that now that we’ve found each other you can’t spend a little time with your old grandmother. Still, now that the ice has been broken, perhaps I can come out and visit you. Wouldn’t that be a nice idea, Rudolph?”

“Very nice.”

“California,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see it. The climate is kind to old bones. And from what I hear, it’s a virtual paradise. Before I die … Martha, I think Billy is ready for the chocolate pudding.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Martha said, rising from the table.

“Rudolph,” the mother said, “don’t you want a bite? Join the happy family circle?”

“No, thanks.” The last thing he wanted was to join the happy family circle. “I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I’m off to bed,” she said. She stood up heavily. “Must get my beauty sleep at my age, you know. But before you go upstairs to sleep you’ll come in and give your grandmother a great big good-night kiss, won’t you, Billy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said.

“Grandma.”

“Grandma,” Billy said obediently.

She swept out of the room. One last triumphant glare at Rudolph. Lady Macbeth, the blood behind her, undetected, now splendidly running a nursery for precocious children in a warmer country than Scotland.

Mothers should not be exposed, Rudolph thought, as he said, “Good night, Mom, sleep well.” They should be shot out of hand.

He left the house, ate dinner at a restaurant, tried to call Jean in New York to find out what night she could see him, Tuesday or Wednesday. There was no answer at her apartment.

Chapter 4

Draw the curtains at sunset. Do not sit in the evenings and look out at the lights of the city spread below you. Colin did so, with you at his side, because he said it was the view he liked most in the world, America at its best at night.

Do not wear black. Mourning is a private matter.

Do not write emotional letters in answer to letters of condolence from friends or from strangers using words like genius or unforgettable or generous or strength of character. Answer promptly and politely. No more.

Do not weep in front of your son.

Do not accept invitations to dinner from friends or colleagues of Colin who do not wish you to suffer alone.

When a problem comes up do not reach for the phone to call Colin’s office. The office is closed.

Resist the temptation to tell the people who are now in charge of finishing Colin’s last picture how Colin wanted it to be done.

Give no interviews, write no articles. Do not be a source of anecdote. Do not be a great man’s widow. Do not speculate on what he would have done had he lived.

Commemorate no birthdays or anniversaries.

Discourage retrospective showings, festivals, laudatory meetings to which you have been invited.

Attend no previews or opening nights.

When planes fly low overhead, leaving the airport, do not remember voyages you have taken together.

Do not drink alone or in company, whatever the temptation. Avoid sleeping pills. Bear in unassuaged silence.

Clear the desk in the living room of its pile of books and scripts. They are now a lie.

Refuse, politely, the folios of clippings, reviews of plays and films your husband has directed, which the studio has kindly had made up in tooled-leather covers. Do not read the eulogies of critics.

Leave only one hasty snapshot of husband on view in house. Pack all other photographs in a box and put them away in the cellar.

Do not, when thinking about preparing dinner, arrange a menu that would please husband. (Stone crabs, chili, piccata of veal pizzaiola.)

When dressing, do not look at the clothes hanging in the closet and say, “He likes me in that one.”

Be calm and ordinary with your son. Do not overreact when he gets into trouble at school, when he is robbed by a group of hoodlums or comes home with a bloody nose. Do not cling to him or allow him to cling to you. When he is invited with friends to go swimming or to a ball game or to a movie, tell him, “Of course. I have an awful lot of things to do about the house and I’ll get them done faster if I’m alone.”

Do not be a father. The things your son must do with men let him do with men. Do not try to entertain him, because you fear it must be dull for him living alone with a grieving woman on top of a hill far away from the centers where boys amuse themselves.

Do not think about sex. Do not be surprised that you do think about it.

Be incredulous when ex-husband calls and emotionally suggests that he would like to remarry you. If the marriage that was founded on love could not last, the marriage based on death would be a disaster.

Neither avoid nor seek out places where you have been happy together.

Garden, sunbathe, wash dishes, keep a neat house, help son with homework, do not show that you expect more of him than other parents expect of other sons. Be prompt to take him to the corner where he picks up the school bus, be prompt to meet the bus when it returns. Refrain from kissing him excessively.

Be understanding about your own mother, whom son now says he wishes to visit during the summer vacation. Say, “Summer is a long time off.”

Be careful about being caught alone with men whom you have admired or Colin has admired and who admire you and have been known to admire many other women in this town of excess women, and whose sympathy will skillfully turn into something else in three or four sessions and who will then try to lay you and will probably succeed. Be careful about being caught alone with men who have admired Colin or Colin had admired and whose sympathy is genuinely only that but who will eventually want to lay you, too. They, too, will probably succeed.

Do not build your life on your son. It is the most certain way to lose him.

Keep busy. But at what?

“Are you sure you’ve looked everywhere, Mrs. Burke?” Mr. Greenfield asked. He was the lawyer Colin’s agent had sent her to. Or rather, one of a huge battery of lawyers, all of whose names were on the door of the suite of offices in the elegant building in Beverly Hills. All of the names on the door seemed equally concerned with her problem, equally intelligent, equally well dressed, equally urbane, smiling, and sympathetic, equally costly, and equally helpless.

“I’ve turned the house upside down, Mr. Greenfield,” Gretchen said. “I’ve found hundreds of scripts, hundreds of bills, some of them unpaid, but no will.”

Mr. Greenfield almost sighed, but refrained. He was a youngish man in a button-down collar, to show that he had gone to law school in the East, and a bright bow tie, to show that he now lived in California. “Do you have any knowledge of any safety deposit boxes that your husband might have had?”

“No,” she said. “And I don’t believe he had any. He was careless about things like that.”

“I’m afraid he was careless about quite a few things,” Mr. Greenfield said. “Not leaving a will …”

“How did he know he was going to die?” she demanded. “He never had a sick day in his life.”

“It makes it easier if one thinks about all the possibilities,” Mr. Greenfield said. Gretchen was sure he had been drawing up wills for himself since he was twenty-one. Mr. Greenfield finally permitted himself the withheld sigh. “For our part, we’ve explored every avenue. Incredibly enough, your husband never employed any lawyer. He allowed his agent to draw up his contracts and from what his agent said, most of the time he hardly bothered to read them. And when he allowed the ex-Mrs. Burke to divorce him, he permitted her lawyer to write the divorce settlement.”

Gretchen had never met the ex-Mrs. Burke, but now, after Colin’s death, she was beginning to get to know her very well. She had been an airline hostess and a model. She had an abiding fondness for money and believed that to work for it was unfeminine and repugnant. She had been getting twenty thousand dollars a year as alimony and at the time of Colin’s death had been starting proceedings to get it raised to forty thousand dollars a year because Colin’s income had risen steeply since he had come to Hollywood. She was living with a young man, in places like New York, Palm Beach, and Sun Valley, when she wasn’t traveling abroad, but sensibly refused to marry the young man, since one of the clauses that Colin had managed to insert in the divorce settlement would cut off the alimony on her remarriage. She or her lawyers seemed to have a wide knowledge of the law, both State and Federal, and immediately after the funeral, which she had not attended, she had had Colin’s bank deposits impounded and had secured an injunction against the estate to prevent Gretchen from selling the house.

Since Gretchen had had no separate bank account and had merely asked Colin for money when she needed it and allowed his secretary at the office to pay the bills, she found herself without any cash and had to depend upon Rudolph to keep her going. Colin had left no insurance because he thought insurance companies were the biggest thieves in America, so there was no money there, either. As the accident had been his fault alone, with no one else involved (he had hit a tree and the County of Los Angeles was preparing to sue the estate for damage to the tree), there was nobody against whom Gretchen could press claims for compensation.

“I have to get out of that house, Mr. Greenfield,” Gretchen said. The evenings were the worst. Whispers in shadowy corners of rooms. Half expecting the door to open at any moment and Colin to come in, cursing an actor or a cameraman.

“I quite understand,” Mr. Greenfield said. He really was a decent man. “But if you don’t remain in possession, physical possession, Mr. Burke’s ex-wife might very possibly find legal grounds for moving in. Her lawyers are very good, very good indeed—” The professional admiration was ungrudging, all the names on one door of an elegant building paying sincere tribute to all the names on the door of another elegant building just a block away. “If there’s a loophole, they’ll find it. And in law, if one looks long enough, there is almost always a loophole.”

“Except for me,” Gretchen said despairingly.

“It’s a question of time, my dear Mrs. Burke.” Just the gentlest of rebukes at a layman’s impatience. “There’s nothing clear-cut about this case, I regret to say. The house was in your husband’s name, there is a mortgage on it, payments to be made. The size of the estate is undetermined and may remain undetermined for many years. Mr. Burke had a percentage, quite a large percentage of the three films he directed and a continuing interest in stock and foreign royalties and possible movie sales of quite a number of the plays he was connected with.” The enumeration of these splendid difficulties that remained to be dealt with before the file of Colin Burke could be marked “Closed” obviously brought Mr. Greenfield an elegiac pleasure. If the law were not as complicated as it was he would have sought another and more exigent profession. “There will have to be expert opinions, the testimony of studio officials, a certain amount of give and take between parties. To say nothing of the possibility of other claims against the estate. Relatives of the deceased, for example, who have a habit of cropping up in cases like this.”

“He only has one brother,” Gretchen said. “And he told me he didn’t want anything.” The brother had come to the cremation. He was a taut young colonel in the Air Force who had been a fighter pilot in Korea and who had crisply taken charge of everything, even putting Rudolph on the sidelines. It was he who had made sure there were no religious services and who had told her that when Colin and he had spoken about death, they had each promised the other unceremonious burning. The day after the cremation, Colin’s brother had hired a private plane, had flown out to sea and strewn Colin’s ashes over the Pacific Ocean. He had told Gretchen if there was anything she needed to call on him. But short of strafing the ex-Mrs. Burke or bombing her lawyer’s offices, what could a straightforward colonel in the Air Force do to help his brother’s widow, enmeshed in the law?

Gretchen stood up. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Greenfield,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve taken so much of your time.”

“Not at all.” Mr. Greenfield stood, legally courteous. “I’ll keep you informed, naturally, of all developments.”

He escorted her to the door of his office. Although his face showed nothing, she was sure he disapproved of the dress she was wearing, which was pale blue.

She went down a long aisle flanked by rows of desks at which secretaries typed rapidly, without looking up, deeds, wills, complaints, summonses, contracts, bankruptcy petitions, transfers, mortgages, briefs, enjoinders, writs of replevin.

They are typing away the memory of Colin Burke, she thought. Day after day after day.

Chapter 5

It was cold up in the bow of the ship, but Thomas liked it up there alone, staring out at the long, gray swells of the Atlantic. Even when it wasn’t his watch, he often went up forward and stood for hours, in all weathers, not saying anything to the man whose watch it happened to be, just standing there silently, watching the bow plunge and come up in a curl of white water, at peace with himself, not thinking consciously of anything, not wanting or needing to think about anything.

The ship flew the Liberian flag, but in two voyages he hadn’t come close to Liberia. The man called Pappy, the manager of the Aegean Hotel, had been as helpful as Schultzy had said he would be. He had fitted him out with the clothes and seabag of an old Norwegian seaman who had died in the hotel and had gotten him the berth on the Elga Andersen, Greek ownership, taking on cargo at Hoboken for Rotterdam, Algeciras, Genoa, Piraeus. Thomas had stayed in his room in the Aegean all the time he was in New York, eight days, and Pappy had brought him his meals personally, because Thomas had said he didn’t want any of the help to see him and start asking questions. The night before the Elga Andersen was due to sail Pappy had driven him over to the pier in Hoboken himself and watched while he signed on. The favor that Pappy owed Schultzy from Schultzy’s days in the Merchant Marine during the war must have been a big one.

The Elga Andersen had sailed at dawn the next day and anybody who was looking for Tommy Jordache was going to have a hard time finding him.

The Elga Andersen was a Liberty ship, ten thousand tons. It had been built in 1943 and had seen better days. It had gone from owner to owner, for quick profits, and nobody had done more to maintain it than was absolutely necessary to keep it afloat and moving. Its hull was barnacled, its engines wheezed, it hadn’t been painted in years, there was rust everywhere, the food was miserable, the captain an old religious maniac who knelt on the bridge during storms and who had been beached during the war for Nazi sympathies. The officers had papers from ten different countries and had been dismissed from other berths for drunkenness or incompetence or theft. The men in the crew were from almost every country with a coast on the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Norwegians, Italians, Moroccans, Mexicans, Americans, most of them with papers that could not stand inspection. There were fights almost every day in the mess room, where a poker game was always in progress, but the officers carefully refrained from interfering.

Thomas kept out of the poker game and the fights and spoke only when necessary and answered no questions and was at peace. He felt that he had found his place on the planet, plowing the wide waters of the world. No women, no worrying about weight, no pissing blood in the morning, no scrambling for money at the end of every month. Someday, he’d pay Schultzy back the one fifty he had given him in Las Vegas. With interest.

He heard steps behind him, but didn’t turn around.

“We’re in for a rough night,” said the man who had joined him in the bow. “We’re going right into a storm.”

Thomas grunted. He recognized the voice. A young guy named Dwyer, a kid from the Middle West who somehow managed to sound like a fag. He was rabbit-toothed and was nicknamed Bunny.

“It’s the skipper,” Dwyer went on. “Praying on the bridge. You know the saying—you have a minister on board, watch out for lousy weather.”

Thomas didn’t say anything.

“I just hope it’s not a big one,” Dwyer said. “Plenty of these Liberty ships have just broke in half in heavy seas. And the way we’re loaded. Did you notice the list to port we got?”

“No.”

“Well, we got it. This your first voyage?”

“Second.”

Dwyer had signed on in Savannah, where the Elga Andersen had put in after Thomas’s first return voyage on her.

“It’s a hell hole,” Dwyer said. “I’m only on it for the opportunity.”

Thomas knew Dwyer wanted him to ask what opportunity but just stood there staring out at the darkening horizon.

“You see,” Dwyer went on, when he realized Thomas wasn’t going to talk, “I’ve got my third mate’s papers. On American ships I might have to wait years before I move up top. But on a tub like this, with the kind of scum we got as officers, one of them’s likely to fall overboard drunk or get picked up by the police in port and then it’d be my opportunity, see?”

Thomas grunted. He had nothing against Dwyer, but he had nothing for him, either.

“You planning to try for mate’s papers, too?” Dwyer asked.

“Hadn’t thought about it.” Spray was coming over the bow now as the weather worsened and he huddled into his pea jacket. Under the jacket he had a heavy turtle-neck blue sweater. The old Norwegian who had died in the Hotel Aegean must have been a big man, because his clothes fit Thomas comfortably.

“The only thing to do,” Dwyer said. “I saw that the first day I set foot on the deck of my first ship. The ordinary seaman or even the A.B. winds up with nothing. Lives like a dog and winds up a broken old man at fifty. Even on American ships, with the union and everything and fresh fruit. Big deal. Fresh fruit. The thing is to plan ahead. Get some braid on you. The next time I’m back I’m going up to Boston and I’m going to take a shot at second mate’s papers.”

Thomas looked at him curiously. Dwyer was wearing a gob’s white hat, pulled down all around a yellow sou’wester and solid new rubber-soled, high, working shoes. He was a small man and he looked like a boy dressed up for a costume party, with the new, natty, sea-going clothes. The wind had reddened his face but not like an outdoor man’s face, rather like a girl’s who is not used to the cold and has suddenly been exposed to it. He had long, dark eyelashes over soft, black eyes and he seemed to be begging for something. His mouth was too large and too full and too busy. He kept moving his hands in and out of his pockets restlessly.

Christ, Thomas thought, is that why he’s come up here to talk to me and he always smiles at me when he passes me? I better put the bastard straight right now. “If you’re such an educated hotshot,” he said roughly, “with mate’s papers and all, what’re you doing down here with all of us poor folks? Why aren’t you dancing with some heiress on a cruise ship in your nice white officer’s suit?”

“I’m not trying to be superior, Jordache,” Dwyer said. “Honest I’m not. I like to talk to somebody once in awhile and you’re about my age and you’re American and you got dignity, I saw that right away, dignity. Everybody else on this ship—they’re animals. They’re always making fun of me, I’m not one of them, I’ve got ambition, I won’t play in their crooked poker games. You must’ve noticed.”

“I haven’t noticed anything,” Thomas said.

“They think I’m a fag or something,” Dwyer said. “You didn’t notice that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Except for meals, Thomas stayed out of the mess room.

“It’s my curse,” Dwyer said. “That’s what happens when I apply for third mate anywhere. They look at my papers, my recommendations, then they talk to me for awhile and look me over in that queer way and they tell me there’s no openings. Boy, I can see that look coming from a mile off. I’m no fag, I swear to God, Jordache.”

“You don’t have to swear anything for me,” Thomas said. The conversation made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be let in on anybody’s secrets or troubles. He wanted to do his job and go from one port to another and sail the seas in solitude.

“I’m engaged to be married, for Christ’s sake,” Dwyer cried. He dug into the back pocket of his pants and brought forth a wallet and took out a photograph. “Here, look at this.” He thrust the snapshot in front of Thomas’s nose. “That’s my girl and me. Last summer on Narragansett Beach.” A very pretty, full-bodied young girl, with curly blonde hair, in a bathing suit, and beside her, Dwyer, small but trim and well muscled, like a bantamweight, in a tightly fitting pair of swimming trunks. He looked in good enough shape to go into the ring, but of course that meant nothing. “Does that look like a fag?” Dwyer demanded. “Does that girl look as though she was the type to marry a fag?”

“No,” Thomas admitted.

The spray coming over the bow sprinkled the photograph. “You better put the picture away,” he said. “The water’ll ruin it.”

Dwyer took out a handkerchief and dried the snapshot and put it back in his wallet. “I just wanted you to know,” he said, “that if I like to talk to you from time to time it’s nothing like that.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “Now I know it.”

“As long as we have matters on a firm basis,” Dwyer said, almost belligerently. “That’s all.” Abruptly, he turned away and made his way along the temporary wooden cat track built over the oil drums stowed as deck cargo forward.

Thomas shook his head, feeling the sting of spray on his face. Everybody has his troubles. A boatload of troubles. If everybody on the whole goddamn ship came up and told you what was bothering him, you’d want to jump overboard there and then.

He crouched in the bow, to escape the direct blows of spray, only occasionally lifting his head to do his job, which was to see what was ahead of the Elga Andersen on his watch.

Mate’s papers, he thought. If you were going to make your living out of the sea, why not? He’d ask Dwyer, offhandedly, later, how you went about getting them. Fag or no fag.

They were in the Mediterranean, passing Gibraltar, but the weather, if anything, was worse. The captain no doubt was still praying to God and Adolf Hitler on the bridge. None of the officers had gotten drunk and fallen overboard and Dwyer still hadn’t moved up top. He and Thomas were in the old naval gun crew’s quarters at the stern, seated at the steel table riveted to the deck in the common room. The anti-aircraft guns had long since been dismounted, but nobody had bothered to dismantle the crew’s quarters. There were at least ten urinals in the head. The kids of the gun crew must have pissed like mad, Thomas thought, every time they heard a plane overhead.

The sea was so rough that on every plunge the screw came out of the water and the entire stern shuddered and roared and Dwyer and Thomas had to grab for the papers and books and charts spread on the table to keep them from sliding off. But the gun crew’s quarters was the only place they could get off alone and work together. They got in at least a couple of hours a day and Thomas, who had never paid any attention at school, was surprised to see how quickly he learned from Dwyer about navigation, sextant reading, star charts, loading, all the subjects he would have to have at his fingertips when he took the examination for third mate’s papers. He was also surprised how much he enjoyed the sessions. Thinking about it in his bunk, when he was off watch, listening to the other two men in the cabin with him snore away, he felt he knew why the change had come about. It wasn’t only age. He still didn’t read anything else, not even the newspapers, not even the sporting pages. The charts, the pamphlets, the drawings of engines, the formulas, were a way out. Finally, a way out.

Dwyer had worked in the engine rooms of ships, as well as on deck, and he had a rough but adequate grasp of engineering problems and Thomas’s experience around garages made it easier to understand what Dwyer was talking about.

Dwyer had grown up on the shores of Lake Superior and had sailed small boats ever since he was a kid and as soon as he had finished high school he had hitchhiked to New York, gone down to the Battery to see the ships passing in and out of port, and had got himself signed on a coastal oil tanker as a deckhand. Nothing that had happened to him since that day had diminished his enthusiasm for the sea.

He didn’t ask any questions about Thomas’s past and Thomas didn’t volunteer any information. Out of gratitude for what Dwyer was teaching him, Thomas was almost beginning to like the little man.

“Some day,” Dwyer said, grabbing for a chart that was sliding forward, “you and I will both have our own ships. Captain Jordache, Captain Dwyer presents his compliments and asks if you will honor him and come aboard.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I can just see it.”

“Especially if there’s a war,” Dwyer said. “I don’t mean a great big one, like World War II, where if you could sail a rowboat across Central Park Lake, you could get to be skipper of some kind of ship. I mean even a little one like Korea. You have no idea how much money guys come home with, with combat zone pay, stuff like that. And how many guys who didn’t know their ass from starboard came out masters of their own ships. Hell, the United States has got to be fighting somewhere soon and if we’re ready, there’s no telling how high we can go.”

“Save your dreams for the sack,” Thomas said. “Let’s get back to work.”

They bent over the chart.

It was in Marseilles that the idea hit Thomas. It was nearly midnight and he and Dwyer had had dinner together at a seafood place on the Vieux Port. Thomas remembered that this was the south coast of France and they had drunk three bottles of vin rosé between them because they were on the south coast of France, even though Marseilles hardly could be considered a tourist resort. The Elga Andersen was due to lift anchor at 5 A.M. and as long as they got back on board before that, they were okay.

After dinner they had walked around, stopping in several bars and now they were at what was going to be their last stop, a small dark bar off the Canebiere. A juke box was playing and a few fat whores at the bar were waiting to be asked if they wanted a drink. Thomas wouldn’t have minded having a girl, but the whores were sleazy and probably had the clap and didn’t go with his idea of the kind of lady you ought to have on the south coast of France.

Drinking, a little blearily, at a table along the wall, looking at the girls, fat legs showing under loud, imitation silk dresses, Thomas remembered ten of the best days in his life, the time in Cannes with the wild English girl who liked jewelry.

“Say,” he said to Dwyer, sitting across from him, drinking beer, “I got an idea.”

“What’s that?” Dwyer was keeping a wary eye on the girls, fearful that one of them would come over and sit down next to him and put her hand on his knee. He had offered earlier in the evening to pick up a prostitute to prove, once and for all, to Thomas that he wasn’t a fag, but Thomas had said it wasn’t necessary, he didn’t care whether he was a fag or not and anyway it wouldn’t prove anything because he knew plenty of fags who also screwed.

“What’s what?” Thomas asked.

“You said you had an idea.”

“An idea. Yeah. An idea. Let’s skip the fucking ship.”

“You’re crazy,” Dwyer said. “What the hell’ll we do in Marseilles without a ship? They’ll put us in jail.”

“Nobody’ll put us in jail,” Thomas said. “I didn’t say for good. Where’s the next port she puts into? Genoa. Am I right?”

“Okay. Genoa,” Dwyer said reluctantly.

“We pick her up in Genoa,” Thomas said. “We say we got drunk and we didn’t wake up until she was out of the harbor. Then we pick her up in Genoa. What can they do to us? Dock us a few days’ pay, that’s all. They’re short-handed as it is. After Genoa, the ship goes straight back to Hoboken, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So we don’t lose any shore time, them keeping us on board in a port. I don’t want to sail on that lousy tub any more, anyway. We can always pick up something better in New York.”

“But what’ll we do between now and Genoa?” Dwyer asked worriedly.

“We tour. We make the grand tour,” Thomas said, “We get on the train and we go to Cannes. Haunt of millionaires, like they say in the papers. I been there. Time of my life. We lay on the beach, we find ourselves some dames. We got our pay in our pocket …”

“I’m saving my money,” Dwyer said.

“Live a little, live a little,” Thomas said impatiently. By now it was inconceivable to him that he could go back to the gloom of the ship, stand watches, chip paint, eat the garbage they handed out, with Cannes so close by, available, waiting.