Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 37 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

They had time for two bottles of champagne before they took off and Johnny Heath promised to call Gretchen and Rudolph’s mother and tell them the news once the plane was off the ground.

The days grew warmer. They lazed in the sun. They became dark brown and Jean’s hair turned almost blond, bleached by the sun and salt water. She gave him tennis lessons on the courts of the hotel and said that he had talent for the game. She was very serious about the lessons and spoke sharply to him when he didn’t hit out correctly. She taught him how to water ski. She kept amazing him with the number of things she could do well.

They had lunch brought to them at their cabana overlooking the speed-boat mooring. They ate cold langouste and drank white wine and after lunch they went up to their rooms to make love, with the windows shuttered against the afternoon sun.

He didn’t look at any of the girls lying almost naked around the hotel pool and on the rocks next to the diving board, although two or three of the girls well deserved to be looked at.

“You’re unnatural,” Jean said to him.

“Why am I unnatural?”

“Because you don’t ogle.”

“I ogle you.”

“Keep it up,” she said.

They found new restaurants and ate bouillabaisse on the terrasse of Chez Felix, where you could look through the arch of the rampart at the boats in the harbor of Antibes. When they made love later they both smelled of garlic and wine, but they didn’t mind.

They took excursions to the hill towns and visited the Matisse chapel and the pottery works at Vallauris and ate lunch on the terrace of the Colombe d’Or at St.-Paul-de-Vence, in the white flutter of doves’ wings. They learned with regret that the flock was kept white because the white doves drove off pigeons of any other color. When occasionally the doves did tolerate their impure fellows, the proprietor killed them off himself.

Wherever they went, Jean took her cameras along, and took innumerable pictures of him against backgrounds of masts, ramparts, palms, waves. “I am going to make you into the wallpaper for our bedroom in New York,” she said.

He no longer bothered to put on a shirt when he came out of the water. Jean said she liked the hair on his chest and the fuzz on his shoulders.

They planned a trip to Italy when they got tired of the Cap d’Antibes. They got out a map and circled the towns of Menton, San Remo, Milano for the Last Supper, Rap-pallo, Santa Margherita, Firenze, for Michelangelo and the Botticellis, Bologna, Siena, Assisi, Rome. The names were like little bells chiming in sunshine. Jean had been everywhere. Other summers. It would be a long time before he learned everything about her.

They didn’t get tired of the Cap d’Antibes.

One day, he took a set from her in tennis. She fought off set point three times, but he finally won. She was furious. For two minutes.

They sent a cable to Calderwood to say that they weren’t coming back for awhile.

They didn’t speak to anyone at the hotel except an Italian movie actress who was so beautiful that you had to speak to her. Jean spent a morning taking photographs of the Italian movie actress and sent them to Vogue in New York. Vogue cabled back that they were going to run a set in their September issue.

Nothing could go wrong that month.

Although they still were not tired of the Cap d’Antibes, they got into the car and started driving south to visit the towns they had circled on the map. They were disappointed nowhere.

They sat in the cobbled square of Portofino and ate chocolate ice cream, the best chocolate ice cream in the world. They watched the women selling postcards and lace and embroidered tablecloths from their stands to tourists and they eyed the yachts moored in the harbor.

There was one slender, white yacht, about fifty feet long, with racy, clean Italian lines and Rudolph said, “That’s what machinery is all about. When it comes out like that.”

“Would you like to own it?” Jean asked, scooping up her chocolate ice cream.

“Who wouldn’t like to own it?” he said.

“I’ll buy it for you,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. “And how about a Ferrari and a mink-lined overcoat and a forty-room house on the Cap d’Antibes, too, while you’re at it?”

“No,” she said, still eating her ice cream. “I really mean it. If you really want it.”

He examined her closely. She was calm and serious. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Vogue isn’t paying you that much for those pictures.”

“I don’t depend on Vogue,” she said. “I’m awfully rich. When my mother died she left me an obscene amount of stocks and bonds. Her father owned one of the biggest drug companies in the United States.”

“What’s the name of the company?” Rudolph asked suspiciously.

Jean told him the name of the company.

Rudolph whistled softly and put down his spoon.

“It’s all in a trust fund that my father and brother control until I’m twenty-five,” Jean said, “but even now my income is at least three times the size of yours. I hope I haven’t spoiled your day.”

Rudolph burst into a roar of laughter. “Christ,” he said. “What a honeymoon!”

She didn’t buy him a yacht that afternoon, but as a compromise, she bought him a shocking-pink shirt in a faggy shop alongside the harbor.

Later on, when he asked why she hadn’t told him before, she was evasive. “I hate talking about money,” she said. “That’s all they ever talked about in my family. By the time I was fifteen I came to the belief that money degrades the soul if you think about it all the time. I never went home a single summer after the age of fifteen. Since I got out of college I never used a cent of the money my mother left me. I let my father and brother put it back into the business. They want me to let them keep using the income when the trust expires, but they’re in for a big surprise. They’ll cheat me if they can and I’m not out to be cheated. Especially not by them.”

“Well, what are you going to do with it?”

“You’re going to handle it for me,” she said. “I’m sorry. For us. Do whatever you think best. Just don’t talk to me about it. And don’t use it to make us lead soggy, fancy, useless lives.”

“We’ve been leading pretty fancy lives these past few weeks,” Rudolph said.

“We’ve been spending your money and you worked for it,” Jean said. “Anyway, this is a honeymoon. It isn’t for real.”

When they got to the hotel in Rome there was a cable waiting for Rudolph. It was from Bradford Knight and it read, “Your mother in hospital Stop Doctor fears end is near Stop Believe you should return soonest.”

Rudolph handed the cable to Jean. They were still in the lobby and had just handed over their passports to the clerk at the desk. Jean read the cable silently, gave it back to him. “I suppose we ought to see if there’s a plane out tonight,” she said. It had been nearly five o’clock in the afternoon when they drove up to the hotel.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Rudolph said. He didn’t want to have to think about what to do about his mother’s dying in a crowded Roman hotel lobby.

They went up in the elevator and watched while the clerk who had accompanied them opened the shutters and let in the late sunlight and the roar of Rome.

“I hope you enjoy your stay,” the clerk said, and left.

They watched the porters come in and arrange their luggage. The porters went and they stared at the unopened bags. They had planned to stay in Rome at least two weeks.

“No,” Rudolph said. “We’re not going to see if there’s a plane tonight. The old lady is not going to do me out of Rome completely. We’ll leave tomorrow. I’ll take one day for you and me. She’ll be alive when I get there. She wouldn’t do herself out of the pleasure of dying before my eyes for anything in the world. Unpack.”

Chapter 7

I

As soon as he got back on board the Elga Andersen in Genoa, he knew he was in for trouble with Falconetti. Falconetti was the bully of the ship, a huge, ham-handed man, with a small turnip-shaped head, who had been in jail for armed robbery. He cheated at cards, but the one time he had been called on it by an oiler from the engine room he had nearly strangled the oiler before he was pulled away from the man’s throat by the rest of the men in the mess room. He was free and dangerous with his fists. At the beginning of each voyage he made a point of picking fights with four or five men and beating them up brutally, so that there would be no doubt about his position below decks. When he was in the mess room, no one else dared touch the radio there and everybody listened to the programs of Falconetti’s choice, whether they liked it or not. There was one Negro on board by the name of Renway, and when Falconetti came into the mess room he slipped away. “I don’t sit in any room with a nigger,” Falconetti had announced the first time he saw the man in the mess room. Renway hadn’t said anything, but he hadn’t moved, either.

“Nigger,” Falconetti said, “I guess you didn’t hear me.” He strode over to where the man was sitting at the table, grabbed him under the armpits, carried him to the door and hurled him against the bulkhead. Nobody said or did anything. You took care of yourself on the Elga Andersen, and the next man took care of himself.

Falconetti owed money to half the crew. Theoretically they were, loans, but nobody expected to see his money again. If you didn’t lend Falconetti a five– or ten-dollar bill when he asked for it, he wouldn’t do anything about it at the time, but two or three days later, he would pick a fight with you and there would be black eyes and broken noses and teeth to spit out.

Falconetti hadn’t tried anything with Thomas, although he was much larger than Thomas. Thomas was not looking for trouble and stayed out of Falconetti’s way, but even though he was taciturn and pacific and kept to himself, there was something about Thomas’s manner that made Falconetti pick on easier targets.

But the first night out of Genoa, Falconetti, who was dealing a poker hand in the mess room, said, when Thomas and Dwyer came in together, “Ah, here come the love-birds,” and made a wet, kissing noise. The men at the table laughed, because it was dangerous not to laugh at Falconetti’s jokes. Dwyer turned red, but Thomas calmly poured himself a cup of coffee and picked up a copy of the Rome Daily American that was lying there, and began to read it.

“I’ll tell you what, Dwyer,” Falconetti said, “I’ll be your agent. It’s a long way home and the boys could use a nice piece of ass to while away the lonely hours. Couldn’t you, boys?”

There were little embarrassed murmurs of assent from the men around the table.

Thomas read his paper and sipped his coffee. He knew that Dwyer was trying to catch his eye, pleading, but until it got much worse he wasn’t going to get into a brawl.

“What’s the sense in giving it away free like you do, Dwyer,” Falconetti said, “when you could make a fortune and distribute happiness at the same time just by setting yourself up in business with my help. What we have to do is fix a scale—say five bucks for buggering, ten bucks for sucking. I’ll just take my ten per cent, like a regular Hollywood agent. What do you say, Dwyer?”

Dwyer jumped up and fled. The men at the table laughed. Thomas read his paper, although his hands were trembling. He had to control himself. If he beat up on a big thug like Falconetti, who had terrorized whole shiploads of men for years, somebody would begin to wonder who the hell he was and what made him so tough and it wouldn’t take too long for somebody to recognize his name or remember that he had seen him fight somewhere. And there were mob members or hangers-on everywhere along the waterfront, just waiting to rush to some higher-up with the news that he’d been spotted.

Read your goddamn newspaper, Thomas said to himself, and keep your mouth shut.

“Hey, lover.” Falconetti made the wet kissing noise again. “You going to let your boy friend cry himself to sleep all by his little itsy-bitsy self?”

Methodically, Thomas folded the paper, put it down. He walked slowly across the room, carrying his coffee cup. Falconetti looked at him from across the table, grinning. Thomas threw the coffee into Falconetti’s face. Falconetti didn’t move. There was dead silence at the table.

“If you make that noise once more,” Thomas said, “I’ll slug you every time I pass you on this ship from here to Hoboken.”

Falconetti stood up. “You’re for me, lover,” he said. He made the kissing noise again.

“I’ll be waiting for you on deck,” Thomas said. “And come alone.”

“I don’t need no help,” Falconetti said.

Thomas wheeled and went out onto the stern deck. There would be room to move around there. He didn’t want to have to tangle with a man Falconetti’s size in close quarters.

The sea was calm, the night balmy, the stars bright. Thomas groaned. My goddamn fists, he thought, always my goddamn fists.

He wasn’t worried about Falconetti. That big fat gut hanging over his belt wasn’t made for punishment.

He saw the door open onto the deck, Falconetti’s shadow thrown on the deck by the light in the gangway. Falconetti stepped on deck. He was alone.

Maybe I’m going to get away with it, Thomas thought. Nobody’s going to see me take him.

“I’m over here, you fat slob,” Thomas called. He wanted Falconetti to rush him, not take the chance of going in on him and perhaps being grappled by those huge arms and wrestled down. It was a cinch Falconetti wasn’t going to fight under Boxing Commission rules. “Come on, Fatso,” Thomas called. “I haven’t got all night.”

“You asked for it, Jordache,” Falconetti said and rushed at him, flailing his fists, big round house swings. Thomas stepped to one side and put all his strength into the one right hand to the gut. Falconetti sounded as though he was strangling, teetered back. Thomas stepped in and hit him again in the gut. Falconetti went down and lay writhing on the deck, a gurgling noise bubbling up from his throat. He wasn’t knocked out and his eyes were glaring up at Thomas as Thomas stood over him, but he couldn’t say anything.

It had been neat and quick, Thomas thought with satisfaction, and there wasn’t a mark on the man and if he didn’t say anything none of the crew would ever know what happened out on the deck. It was a cinch Thomas wasn’t going to do any talking. Falconetti had learned his lesson and it wouldn’t do his reputation any good to pass the news around.

“All right, slob,” Thomas said. “Now you know what it’s all about. Now you’ll keep that toilet of a mouth of yours shut.”

Falconetti made a sudden move and Thomas felt the big hand gripping at his ankle, bringing him down. There was a gleam in Falconetti’s other hand and Thomas saw the knife there. He gave suddenly and dropped onto Falconetti’s face with his knees, hard, grabbing at the hand with the knife, twisting. Falconetti was still fighting for his breath and the fingers holding the knife handle weakened quickly. Thomas, now with his knees pinning Falconetti’s arms to the deck, reached the knife, pushed it away. Then he methodically chopped at Falconetti’s face for two minutes.

Finally, he stood up. Falconetti lay inert on the deck, the blood black on the starlit deck around his head. Thomas picked up the knife and threw it overboard.

With a last look at Falconetti, he went in. He was breathing hard, but it wasn’t from the exertion of the fight. It was exultation. Goddamn it, he thought, I enjoyed it. I’m going to wind up a crazy old man fighting orderlies in the Old Folks’ Home.

He went into the mess room. The poker game had stopped, but there were more men in there than before, as the players who had seen the clash between Thomas and Falconetti had gone to tell their bunkmates and bring them back to the mess room to get the dope on the action. The room had been alive with talk, but when Thomas came in, calmly, breathing normally now, no one said a word.

Thomas went over to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. “I wasted half the last cup,” he said to the men in the mess room.

He sat down and unfolded the paper again and continued reading.

He walked down the gangplank with his pay in his pocket and the dead Norwegian’s seabag over his shoulder. Dwyer followed him. Nobody had said good-bye. Ever since Falconetti had jumped overboard at night, in the middle of a storm, they had given him the silent treatment on the ship. The hell with them. Falconetti had it coming to him. He had stayed away from Thomas, but when his face had healed, he’d begun to take it out on Dwyer when Thomas wasn’t around. Dwyer reported that Falconetti made the kissing sound every time he saw him and then one night, just as he was coming off his watch, Thomas heard screams from Dwyer’s cabin. The door was unlocked and when Thomas went in, Dwyer was on the floor and Falconetti was pulling his pants off. Thomas slugged Falconetti across the nose and kicked him in the ass as he went through the door. “I warned you,” he said. “You better stay out of sight. Because you’re going to get more of the same every time I lay eyes on you on this ship.”

“Jesus, Tommy,” Dwyer said, his eyes wet, as he struggled back into his pants, “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. Not in a million years, Tommy.”

“Stop bawling,” Thomas said. “He won’t bother you any more.”

Falconetti didn’t bother anyone any more. He did his best to avoid Thomas, but at least once a day, they’d run across each other. And each time, Thomas would say, “Come over here, slob,” and Falconetti would shamble over, his whole face twitching, and Thomas would punch him hard in the gut. Thomas made a point of doing it when there were other crewmen around, although never in front of an officer. He had nothing to hide any more; after one look at what Thomas had done to Falconetti’s face that night on the deck, the men in the crew had caught on. In fact, a deckhand by the name of Spinelli had said to Thomas, “I been puzzling ever since I set eyes on you where I seen you before.”

“You never saw me before,” Thomas said, but he knew it was no use.

“Yeah, yeah,” Spinelli said. “I saw you knock out a nigger five, six years ago, one night in Queens.”

“I never been in Queens in my whole life,” Thomas said.

“Have it your own way.” Spinelli spread his hands pacifically. “It ain’t none of my business.”

Thomas knew that Spinelli would spread the news around that he was a pro and that you could look up his record in Ring Magazine, but while they were still at sea, there was nothing anybody could do about it. When they landed, he’d have to be careful. But meanwhile he had the pleasure of grinding Falconetti down to nothing. The curious thing, though, was that the men on the crew whom Falconetti had terrorized, and whom the crew now treated with contempt, hated Thomas for what he was doing. Somehow, it made them all seem ignoble in their own eyes, for having submitted to a big bag of wind who had been deflated in ten minutes by a man who was smaller than many of them and who hadn’t even raised his voice on two voyages.

Falconetti tried to stay out of the mess room when he knew Thomas would be there. The one time he got caught there, Thomas didn’t hit him but said, “Stay there, slob. I got company for you.”

He went down the gangway to Renway’s cabin. The Negro was sitting alone, on the edge of his bunk. “Renway,” Thomas said, “come on with me.”

Frightened, Renway had followed him back to the mess room. He had tried to pull back when he saw Falconetti sitting there, but Thomas pushed him into the room. “We’re just going to sit down like gentlemen,” Thomas said, “next to this gentleman here, and enjoy the music.” The radio was playing.

Thomas sat down on one side of Falconetti and Renway on the other. Falconetti didn’t move. He just sat with his eyes lowered, his big hands flat on the table in front of him.

When Thomas said, “Okay, that’s enough for tonight. You can go now, slob,” Falconetti had stood up, not looking at any of the men in the room who were watching him, and had gone out on deck and thrown himself overboard. The second mate, who was on deck at the time, had seen him, but was too far away to stop him. The ship had swung around and they had made a halfhearted search, but the seas were mountainous, the night black, and there wasn’t a chance.

The captain had ordered an inquiry, but not one of the crew had volunteered information. Suicide, causes unknown, the captain had put down in his report to the owners.

Thomas and Dwyer found a taxi near the pier and Thomas said, “Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street,” to the driver. He had said the first thing that came to his mind, but as they drove toward the tunnel, he realized that Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street was near where he had lived with Teresa and the kid. He didn’t care if he never saw Teresa again in his whole life, but the ache in him to see his son had subconsciously made him direct the driver to the old neighborhood, just on the chance.

As they drove up Broadway, Thomas remembered that Dwyer was going to stay at the Y.M.C.A. on Sixty-second Street, and to wait there for word from Thomas. Thomas had not told Dwyer about the Hotel Aegean.

The driver stopped the cab at Sixty-second Street and Thomas said to Dwyer, “Okay, you get out here.”

“I’ll be hearing from you soon, won’t I, Tommy?” Dwyer said anxiously, as he descended from the cab.

“That depends.” Thomas closed the cab door. He didn’t want to be bothered with Dwyer and his slobbering gratitude.

When they reached Ninety-sixth Street, Thomas asked the driver to wait. He got out of the cab to discover there were other children at Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street but no Wesley. Back in the cab, he ordered the driver to go to Ninety-sixth Street and Park.

At Ninety-sixth and Park, he got out of the cab, made sure the man drove off, then hailed another cab and told the driver, “Eighteenth Street and Fourth Avenue.” When they got there, he walked west one block, turned the corner and came back and walked to the Aegean Hotel.

Pappy was behind the desk, but didn’t say anything, just gave him a key. There were three seamen arguing in the lobby next to the one potted palm that was the sole adornment in what was really just a narrow hall, with a bulge in it for the desk. The seamen were talking in a language Thomas couldn’t understand. Thomas didn’t wait for them to get a good look at him. He walked quickly past them and up the two floors to the room whose number was on the key. He went in, threw the bag down, and lay down on the lumpy bed, with a mustard-colored spread, and stared up at the cracks of the ceiling. The shade had been down when he came into the room and he didn’t bother to pull it up.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Pappy’s knock. Thomas got off the bed and let him in.

“You hear anything?” Thomas demanded.

Pappy shrugged. You couldn’t tell what his expression was behind the dark glasses he wore night and day. “Somebody knows you’re here,” he said. “Or at least that when you’re in New York you’re here.”

They were closing in. His throat felt dry. “What’re you talking about, Pappy?” he said.

“A guy was in the hotel seven, eight days ago,” Pappy said, “wanting to know if you were registered.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I never heard of you.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he knew you came here. He said he was your brother.”

“What did he look like?”

“Taller than you, slim, maybe one-fifty-five, one-sixty, black hair cut short, greenish eyes, darkish complexion, sunburned, good suit, college-boy talk, manicured nails …”

“That’s my fucking brother,” Thomas said. “My mother must’ve given him the address. I made her swear not to tell anybody. Not anybody. I’m lucky it’s not all over town. What’d my brother want?”

“He wanted to talk to you. I said if anybody by your name happened in here, I’d pass on the message. He left a telephone number. In a place called Whitby.”

“That’s him. I’ll call him when I’m good and ready. I got other matters on my mind. I never heard any good news from him yet. There’re some things I want you to do for me, Pappy.”

Pappy nodded. At his prices he was happy to be of service.

“First—get me a bottle,” Thomas said. “Second—get me a gun. Third—get hold of Schultzy for me and find out if the heat is still on. And if he thinks I can take a chance seeing my kid. Fourth—get me a girl. In that order.”

“One hundred dollars,” Pappy said.

Thomas took out his wallet and gave Pappy two fifties, from his pay. Then he gave him the wallet. “Put it in the safe.” He didn’t want to have a pocket full of cash with him drunk and some strange broad in the room, going through his clothes.

Pappy took the wallet and went out of the room. He didn’t talk more than was necessary. He did all right, not talking. He had two diamond rings on his fingers and he wore alligator shoes. Thomas locked the door behind him and didn’t get up until Pappy came back with the bottle and three cans of beer, a plate of ham sandwiches, and a Smith and Wesson British army revolver, with the serial number filed off. “I happened to have it in the house,” Pappy said as he gave Thomas the gun. He had a lot of things in the house. “Don’t use it on the premises, that’s all.”

“I won’t use it on the premises.” Thomas opened the bottle of bourbon and offered it to Pappy. Pappy shook his head. “I don’t drink. I got a delicate stomach.”

“Me, too,” Thomas said and took a long gulp from the bottle.

“I bet,” Pappy said, as he went out.

What did Pappy know? What did anyone know?

The bourbon didn’t help, although he kept swigging at the bottle. He kept remembering the silent men standing along the rail watching him and Dwyer go down the gangplank, hating him. Maybe he didn’t blame them. Putting a loudmouth ex-con in his place was one thing. Putting the boots to him so hard that he killed himself was another. Somewhere, Thomas realized, a man who considered himself a human being should know where to stop, leave another man a place to live in. Sure, Falconetti was a pig and deserved a lesson, but the lesson should have ended somewhere else than in the middle of the Atlantic.

He drank some more whiskey to try to help him forget the look on Falconetti’s face when Thomas said, “You can go now, slob,” and Falconetti had got up from the table and walked out of the mess room with everybody watching him.

The whiskey didn’t help.

He had been bitter when Rudolph had called him a wild animal when they were kids, but would he have the right now to be bitter if somebody said it to him today? He really believed that if people would leave him alone he would leave them alone. He yearned for peace. He had felt that the sea had finally relieved him of his burden of violence; the future he and Dwyer hoped for for themselves was harmless and unobjectionable, on a mild sea, among mild men. And here he was, with a death on his conscience, hiding away with a gun in a crumbling hotel room, exiled in his own country. Christ, he wished he could cry.

Half the bottle was empty when Pappy knocked on the door again.

“I talked to Schultzy,” Pappy said. “The heat’s still on. You better ship out again as soon as you can.”

“Sure,” Thomas nodded, maudlin, bottle in hand. The heat was still on. The heat had been on all his life. There had to be people like that. If only for the sake of variety. “Did Schultzy say there was any chance of sneaking a look at my kid?”

“He advised against it,” Pappy said. “This trip.”

“He advised against it. Good old Schultzy. It’s not his kid. You hear anything else about me?”

“There’s a Greek from the Elga Andersen just checked in,” Pappy said. “He’s talking in the lobby. About how you killed a certain individual called Falconetti.”

“When they have it in for you,” Thomas said, “they don’t lose any time, do they?”

“He knows you fought as a pro. You better stick close to this room until I get you a berth.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Thomas said. “Where’s that dame I asked for?”

“She’ll be here in an hour,” Pappy said. “I told her your name was Bernard and she won’t ask any questions.”

“Why Bernard?” Thomas asked irritably.

“I had a friend once by that name.” Pappy left lightly, on his wary alligator feet.

Bernard, Thomas thought, what a name!

He hadn’t been out of the room all week. Pappy had brought him six bottles of whiskey. No more girls. He had lost his taste for whores. He had started to grow a moustache. The trouble was it came out red. With his blond hair it looked more like a disguise than a false moustache. He practiced loading and unloading the revolver. He tried not to think about the look on Falconetti’s face. He paced up and down all day like a prisoner. Dwyer had lent him one of his books on navigation and he managed a couple of hours a day on that. He felt he could plot a course from Boston to Johannesburg. But he didn’t dare go downstairs and buy himself a newspaper. He made his bed and cleaned his room himself, to keep out the chambermaid. He was paying Pappy ten bucks a day, everything included, except the booze, of course, and his money was running low. He yelled at Pappy because Pappy didn’t come up with a berth, but Pappy only shrugged and said it was a slack time and to have patience. Pappy came and went, a free man. It was easy for him to have patience.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when he heard Pappy’s knock. It was a strange hour for him to come up. Usually, he only came in three times a day, with the meals.

Thomas unlocked the door. Pappy came in, light on his feet, expressionless behind his dark glasses.

“You got something for me?” Thomas asked.

“Your brother was at the desk a few minutes ago,” Pappy said.

“What’d you tell him?”

“I said maybe I knew a place where I could get hold of you. He’s coming back in a half hour. You want to see him?”

Thomas thought for a moment. “Why not?” he said.. “If it’ll make the sonofabitch happy.”

Pappy nodded. “I’ll bring him up when he comes,” he said.

Thomas locked the door behind him. He felt the stubble of his moustache, decided to shave. He looked at his face in the peeling mirror in the grimy little bathroom. The moustache was ridiculous. His eyes were bloodshot. He lathered up, shaved. He needed a haircut. He was balding on the top of his head, but his hair hung halfway down over his ears and over the collar of his shirt in back. Pappy was useful in many ways but he didn’t give haircuts.