“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 at 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.