"No."
"You've never done a mean thing in your life, right?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"You know karate, or whatever it is, but I'd bet you never really beat anybody up."
"You'd lose."
"No kidding. Who'd you mess up?"
"My brother."
"Okay. That's not too hard to figure out. Like he beat up on you for years, so you went out and learned how to fight, then one day he picked on you and pow! Right?"
"Something like that. Pretty close."
"But you never went out on the street and kicked ass. You're not that kind of guy. You're a good boy. You believe in peace, love, all that shit."
"I don't have to prove that I can break a few bones, if that's what you mean."
"How about a few Russian bones, Fogarty? Would you break them if you had to?"
"I hope I don't have to."
"So do I, kid, and don't forget it. But the question is, what are you going to do if and when the shit comes down? Maybe deep down you didn't really want to join the navy. Maybe you wanted to stay in school. Maybe you wanted to be an electrical engineer. Am I getting through to you?"
Fogarty nodded.
"What happened? You run out of money? You flunk out, what?"
"It was the money, partly."
"Yeah, I thought so."
"I joined the navy to see the world."
"There's lots of ways to see the world, and the Submarine Service is at the bottom of the list." Sorensen smiled, pleased at his turn of phrase.
Fogarty shrugged.
"Fogarty, I'd say you're all fucked up."
"That's what I like about you, Sorensen, your delicate way of putting things… But I guess you're right. Sure, I'm all fucked up. Ditto the navy, and the world, for that matter…"
"Hey, belay that shit. You're not drunk enough yet. It'll look a lot better later. Whoa, what's this?"
Cakes Colby was headed for their table. Thumbs in his belt, hat tipped down low on his forehead, he planted himself in front of Sorensen. "There's nucs and there's pukes, and then there's you, Jack. You want some reefer?"
"What would an old Tom like you know about reefer?"
"Son, how do you think I made it through twenty-five years of fixing coffee for snotnosed officers? Everybody has to get over one way or another."
18
The decrepit Hotel Pennsylvania was built around a covered central patio with three floors stacked like doughnuts. The single sofa in the lobby was threadbare; the green tile on the floor was chipped. Dirty windows looked onto the narrow Calle de Pescaderos, a side street off the Avenida de Sevilla.
A boyish red-haired clerk stood behind the front desk, which was cluttered with dictionaries and notepads, the paraphernalia of self-taught English.
"Welcome, Americans sailors. Bery welcome to you and you and you." The clerk nodded to Sorensen, Fogarty and Cakes in turn, exposing a set of gold teeth behind a fixed grin.
"You are wanting three rooms, jes? For the privation. We are very accommodate you here at El Hotel Pennsylbania. I am Rodrigo to help you in all things."
"How much are the rooms?"
"Ten dollars Americans in advance and three nights the liberation. Is bery resonant, no?"
"This guy has got beri-beri," Sorensen said.
"One night, Rodrigo," Cakes told the clerk.
"Four dollares the singular night."
He asked for their military IDs, copied the numbers and gave them keys to adjoining rooms on the third floor. As they were signing the registration forms he asked, "You want girls? Muchachas? Nice girls. Clean. Speaking English girls from Hibraltar. Liquores? Booze, you say? This is the correct idiot? I got Him Beam."
"You got him beer?"
"Sure. What kind you like? I got Herman, Dutch? It is the next door a bar for all drinkings."
"I don't care as long as it's cold. Two six packs."
"Para servirle, senor." Rodrigo went through a curtain into the bar and returned with a dozen bottles of San Miguel and stuffed them in a paper bag.
They went up to Sorensen's room. It was plain and clean with cheap prints of bullfighters on the walls. Sorensen opened beers, threw open the windows and stepped out on the balcony. Fogarty flopped on the bed, commenced guzzling beer. Cakes rolled a joint, twirling it under his nose, lit it and sucked mightily, then passed it to Sorensen, who took a hit.
"This is good shit, Cakes. You always have the best dope." Sorensen passed the joint to Fogarty.
"Ain't you got no sounds, man?" asked Cakes.
Sorensen shoved a Miles Davis tape into his recorder and turned it on.
"This is your last cruise, Cakes?"
"Yep. This is it."
"What're you gonna do?"
"I got me a lunch counter in Harlem. I've had it for years. My boys run it. I'm gonna sit in the backroom and watch the dough roll in."
"Sounds like you're set up pretty good."
"I make out."
Cakes rolled another joint. Fogarty said, "I can't get used to the idea I'm in Spain. It's like a foreign movie with no subtitles."
"This isn't Spain," Sorensen told him. "This is Rota. This is just a pit stop for horny sailors. Spain is over there across the bay."
Through the balcony doors they could see over the rooftops and across the water to Cádiz, shimmering like a fantasy five miles away.
"Why can't we go to Cádiz?" Fogarty asked.
"Ever hear of Palomares?"
"Palomares? No."
Cakes said, "It's where the Air Force lost an H-bomb."
"That's right," Sorensen said, "it's about a hundred miles from here. One day a couple of years ago a B-52 loaded with hydrogen bombs collided with the tanker that was refueling it and dropped its load on this diddlysquat village named Palomares. One of the bombs fell in the ocean, and the Air Force couldn't find it—"
"Yeah," Cakes put in, "it took the Navy to save their ass. We found it with Trieste."
"Right," Sorensen said. "Before Palomares nobody in Spain ever heard of a hydrogen bomb. When six of them fell on a village and scattered hot plutonium all over the school, the marketplace, the church, the cows and the chickens they got educated. Their country had been turned into a nuclear arsenal. There were bombs all over the place, including Rota, on the boomers. Vallejo, tied up to the dock down there on the waterfront, has sixteen Polaris missiles. Tick off the sixteen largest cities in the Soviet Union and that's what that one ship can do. The Spanish don't want any part of it. The Andalusians are not like the Neapolitans, who don't give a shit about anything. These people don't like being a target, and they don't like us. Over in Cádiz there've been demonstrations and a few scuffles. A white hat in Cádiz is an invitation to a fight. So it goes, so it goes. See, Fogarty, not everybody is like us, fearless nuclear warriors."
"I think I'm getting high."
"It's decent weed."
"Nuclear warriors," Fogarty repeated with a bland smile.
"Fearless nuclear warriors."
"Bum ba bum bum. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all nukes are created equal. Boom ba boom boom. Ain't that right, Cakes?"
Cakes stood up, swaying to the music, holding the joint with all his fingers like a big stogie.
"I," he said, drawing out the word in a deep baritone, "I am the nigger of the apocalypse. I am death in the deep. I am the end. I am your worst nightmare. I am General… Electric!"
Fogarty looked amazed. Sorensen whooped and hollered and rolled on the floor. Cakes sat down with a big chuckle and sipped his beer. They listened to Miles wail into the night.