"Yes, that's wonderful, it's all for Bob Lee, but it involves some kind of helling around and there'll be more shooting and in your heart of hearts that's what you love. You're an old dog so used to blood sport you still go all slobbery at the thought. I know you, Earl, but I also know that as big a hero as you are, you will run dry on luck one time out. Maybe the next time out. That boy doesn't need a hero, he needs a father. No boy can live up to a hero. He'll die trying and you'll already have died being one."
"Junie, I have to take this chance. I'd be no good to myself if I didn't, honey. I won't wait so long to call the next time."
"Oh, Earl," she said, "you never change. Not a bit, not in all these years. I love you."
"I love you too, Junie."
She hung up and the click sounded loud and far-off at once.
He looked around, trying to chase the black dogs that nipped at him and made him hunger for a drink, because that was the sure thing that would chase them off. Only then they'd come back, meaner than ever. He knew he couldn't stay in the room, since it was still early and he could feel Havana somehow happening outside the walls.
So he told himself he needed some air. He took the elevator down, just a big crewcut American in an old khaki suit and a white shirt and old Marine Corps brogues, and walked through the lobby, filled up with louder duplicates of himself, and out into the streets. Across the way, the Parque Central was jammed up with people who mingled this way and that or argued baseball or drank beer. They sure seemed happy. The Cubans loved to talk and drink and hug and smoke. He never saw a people that knew how to have a better time. He wandered a bit through the crowds and under the trees, thinking he might mosey over there to that Hotel Inglaterra where a party seemed to be going on, but then the crowd seemed to push him in a different direction, he left the park, he wandered down busy streets drawn by the sound of the jivey, fast-stepping Cuban music. Who could deny the magic of that stuff? All kinds of little bars and clubs seemed jammed up and swinging hard, full of revelers, and he tried to pick a one that he'd feel comfortable in. He wandered along cobblestones and didn't feel like going as far as the Bodeguita del Medio, and after a while he found a clean, well-lighted place called La Floridita that looked less Cuban than the other places, more big-city America.
In he went, finding himself in a dark hall that was all bar at one side and all people everywhere else, while a mambo crew wandered about, paying out that blood rhythm of the Cubano music. Earl took a reading and divined that he liked the place, that it was too crowded for problems and that there were enough Americans here so he would feel pretty much at home. He slipped through crowds of merrymakers until he found space at the bar. Some kind of party was going on and the place was full of action; he could feel whatever it was pounding in the air, loud as the music, a hum of drama. It was as if ballplayers were here, but they couldn't be, because it was the end of June, the season had been running near to three full months. Maybe movie people, but Earl didn't know anything about movie people, so none of the faces were recognizable to him. He turned his back on it, and when the barkeeper came up, in his red jacket and black tie, so fancy, Earl tried out his brothel Spanish to get a gin and tonic with no gin, but plenty of tonic. The cooling of the liquid helped some, and he had another pretend-drink, just minding his own business. Everyone seemed to be drinking milkshakes in cocktail glasses and behind the curved bar there was some kind of highly idealized view of the harbor as it must have looked from a conqueror's ship heading inward. It was somewhere along in here when he became aware that a new person was next to him, and that she was staring at him.
He looked over.
Well, sometimes it happens. She was what the boys would call a knockout. She was dark and brown, and he saw not Cuban, but some sort of Asian-Filipina, maybe. But she had white in her too, and something fierce in her eyes that he'd only seen in Japanese field-grade officers, a kind of bravado and swagger that just drew you in.
"You're a big one," she said.
"I happen to be, yes, ma'am."
"Are you tough?"
"What?"
"I said, are you tough?"
"Not really."
"Damn."
"What's the problem."
"I've got this big guy pawing me. He won't take no for an answer. Coming here was a big mistake, but I can't seem to get away."
"Ma'am, I can't fight him for you. It doesn't work that way. I don't need the trouble and people get hurt bad in fights. Best bet is call a cab and walk fast for it and he's probably too drunk to come after. Or have the barkeep call the cops."
"You're a cop yourself, I can tell."
"That's true. But I'm not on any kind of duty here. I'm just telling you what I think would work for you."
"Yes, that would work in Manhattan. But this is Havana and this guy's a god around here. These cops and the barkeepers all love him."
"Well, I could walk you out and get you a cab a block away. Don't want no trouble."
But trouble, alas, was already there.
Earl felt a hand on his arm, and he was spun around with just enough force to imply the possibility of violence, and he found himself staring into the square, handsome face of a large American male. The fellow looked like some kind of Viking, bronze and broad and incredibly alive with hostility, a gristle of white beard clinging to but not quite obscuring his pugnacious jaw.
"Say, bub," the man said to him, "what the hell is going on here? Is he bothering you, Jean-Marie?"
"No, he is not bothering me. You are bothering me. Please, I just want to get out of here."
"You hear that, mister?" the man said. "You've upset the gal and she wants to leave. Who do you think you are, anyway?"
Earl was aware immediately that this was a strange situation. Everybody was staring at him. A semicircle had formed around them, the music had stopped, even the clink of the glasses landing on the marble tabletops had stopped.
"Sir, the lady asked me to call her a cab, that's all. I think I'll just go ahead and do that, if you don't mind."
"Well, pal, it seems I do mind. Hmmm, don't we have a problem here though. It's called face. I'm bracing you so I can't back down, and you don't look like you've got much back-down in you either."
"Sir, I don't want any trouble."
A broad grin spread across the man's face, as if he'd just drawn better cards against good cards.
"Do you know who I am?"
"No, sir."
"Sure you don't. You know, this happens to me all the time. Guys get lit up when they see me and they get all scratchy because they want to be the lion. So they come up to me. Oh, and when I don't back down, then all of a sudden they don't want to be the lion anymore. That's all right. I'm going to go easy on you. I'll just walk away with my female friend here and you go back to your little soda pop and it'll be―"
"That'd be fine, sir, if that's what she wants."
"I don't want to go away with you, Mr. Hemingway," said the Asian woman, Jean-Marie. "I want to stay here."
"Well," said Earl, "there you have it."
The big man looked Earl up and down.
"I'm a boxer," he said.
"Done some of that myself," said Earl.
"I could flatten you in two seconds."
"I don't think so."
"Oh, well, I guess you showed me. Look, pal, let's part friends, okay?"
And with that the man threw his punch. It was absurdly telegraphed, as he pivoted just a bit, cocked his right shoulder, cocked his arm, and set his right foot before launch. The big fist flew at Earl like some sort of softball pitch from a woman, and as it swept toward him, Earl almost cracked a smile.
He ducked under it easily enough, then slipped an equally slow and oafish thing thrown with the left, where the man was not nearly as coordinated, and then Earl kicked hard, and both the man's legs flew out from under him and he hit the tiles with a crash. His arms and legs flew akimbo as he rolled, breathing hard, then he drew himself together as if to make another rush at Earl.