Moor was putting down his sincere act. "My God," Lee thought, "he really believes it."
Lee ordered another double tequila. Moor stood up. "Well, I have to get going," he said. "I have a lot of things to do."
"Well, listen," said Lee. "How about dinner tonight?"
Moor said, "Well, all right."
"At six in the K.C. Steak House."
"All right. "Moor left.
Lee drank half the tequila the waiter put in front of him. He had known Moor off and on in N.Y. for several years and never liked him. Moor disliked Lee, but then Moor didn't like anybody. Lee told himself, "You must be crazy, making passes in that direction, when you know what a bitch he is.
These borderline characters can out-bitch any fag."
When Lee arrived at the K.C. Steak House, Moor was already there. With him he had Tom Williams, another Salt Lake City boy. Lee thought, "He brought along a chaperone."
"... I like the guy, Tom, but I can't stand to be alone with him. He keeps trying to go to bed with me. That's what I don't like about queers. You can't keep it on a basis of friendship. ..." Yes, Lee could hear that conversation.
During dinner Moor and Williams talked about a boat they planned to build at Ziuhuatenejo. Lee thought this was a silly project. "Boat building is a job for a professional, isn't it?" Lee asked. Moor pretended not to hear.
After dinner Lee walked back to Moor's rooming house with Moor and Williams. At the door Lee asked, "Would you gentlemen care for a drink? I'll get a bottle. . . ."He looked from one to the other.
Moor said, "Well, no. You see we want to work on the plans for this boat we are going to build."
"Oh," said Lee. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow. How about meeting me for a drink in the Rathskeller?
Say around five."
"Well, I expect I'll be busy tomorrow."
"Yes, but you have to eat and drink."
"Well, you see, this boat is more important to me than anything right now. It will take up all my time."
Lee said, "Suit yourself," and walked away.
Lee was deeply hurt. He could hear Moor saying, "Thanks for running interference, Tom. Well, I hope he got the idea. Of course Lee is an interesting guy and all that . . . but this queer situation is just more than I can take." Tolerant, looking at both sides of the question, sympathetic up to a point, finally forced to draw a tactful but firm line. "And he really believes that," Lee thought. "Like that crap about building up his wife's ego. He can revel in the satisfactions of virulent bitchiness and simultaneously see himself as a saint. Quite a trick."
Actually Moor's brush-off was calculated to inflict the maximum hurt possible under the circumstances. It put Lee in the position of a detestably insistent queer, too stupid and too insensitive to realize that his attentions were not wanted, forcing Moor to tbe distasteful necessity of drawing a diagram.
Lee leaned against a lamppost for several minutes. The shock had sobered him, drained away his drunken euphoria. He realized how tired he was, and how weak, but he was not ready yet to go home.
Chapter 2
Everything made in this country falls apart," Lee thought. He was examining the blade of his stainless-steel pocketknife. The chrome plating was peeling off like silver paper. "Wouldn't surprise me if I picked up a boy in the Alameda and his. . . . Here comes honest Joe."
Joe Guidry sat down at the table with Lee, dropping bundles on the table and in the empty chair.
He wiped off the top of a beer bottle with his sleeve and drank half the beer in a long gulp. He was a large man with a politician's red Irish face.
"What you know?" Lee asked.
"Not much, Lee. Except someone stole my typewriter. And I know who took it. It was that Brazilian, or whatever he is. You know him. Maurice."
"Maurice? Is that the one you had last week? The wrestler?"
"You mean Louie, the gym instructor. No, this is another one. Louie has decided all that sort of thing is very wrong and he tells me that I am going to burn in hell, but he is going to heaven."
"Serious?"
"Oh, yes. Well, Maurice is as queer as I am." Joe belched. "Excuse me. If not queerer. But he won't accept it. I think stealing my typewriter is a way he takes to demonstrate to me and to himself that he is just in it for all he can get. As a matter of fact, he's so queer I've lost interest in him. Not completely though. When I see the little bastard I'll most likely invite him back to my apartment, instead of beating the shit out of him like I should."
Lee tipped his chair back against the wall and looked around the room. Someone was writing a letter at the next table. If he had overheard the conversation, he gave no sign. The proprietor was reading the bullfight section of the paper, spread out on the counter in front of him. A silence peculiar to Mexico seeped into the room, a vibrating, soundless hum.
Joe finished his beer, wiped his mouth with the hack of his hand, and stared at the wall with watery, bloodshot blue eyes. The silence seeped into Lee's body, and his face went slack and blank. The effect was curiously spectral, as though you could see through his face. The face was ravaged and vicious and old, but the clear, green eyes were dreamy and innocent. His light-brown hair was extremely fine and would not stay combed. Generally it fell down across his forehead, and on occasion brushed the food he was eating or got in his drink.
"Well, I have to be going," said Joe. He gathered up his bundles and nodded to Lee, bestowing on him one of his sweet politician smiles, and walked out, his fuzzy, half-bald head outlined for a moment in the sunlight before he disappeared from view.
Lee yawned and picked up a comic section from the next table. It was two days old. He put it down and yawned again. He got up and paid for his drink and walked out into the late afternoon sun. He had no place to go, so he went over to Sears' magazine counter and read the new magazines for free.
He cut back past the K.C. Steak House. Moor beckoned to him from inside the restaurant. Lee went in and sat down at his table. "You look terrible," he said. He knew that was what Moor wanted to hear. As a matter of fact, Moor did look worse than usual. He had always been pale; now he was yellowish.
The boat project had fallen through. Moor and
Williams and Williams' wife, Lil, were back from Ziuhuatenejo. Moor was not on speaking terms with the Williamses.
Lee ordered a pot of tea. Moor started talking about Lil. "You know, Lil ate the cheese down there. She ate everything and she never got sick. She won't go to a doctor. One morning she woke up blind in one eye and she could barely see out the other. But she wouldn't have a doctor.
In a few days she could see again, good as ever. I was hoping she'd go blind."
Lee realized Moor was perfectly serious. "He's insane," Lee thought.
Moor went on about Lil. She had made advances to him, of course. He had paid more than his share of the rent and food. She was a terrible cook. They had left him there sick. He shifted to the subject of his health. "Just let me show you my urine test," Moor said with boyish enthusiasm. He spread the piece of paper out on the table. Lee looked at it without interest.
"Look here." Moor pointed. "Urea thirteen. Normal is fifteen to twenty-two. Is that serious, do you think?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"And traces of sugar. What does the whole picture mean?" Moor obviously considered the question of intense interest.
"Why don't you take it to a doctor?" "I did. He said he would have to take a twenty-four-hour test, that is, samples of urine over a twenty-four-hour period, before he could express any opinion. . . .