After a moment of confusion I remembered that we had left his car on the road near Casa Cabrones. The Puerto Ricans take a real interest in abandoned cars -- they set upon them like hungry animals and tear them apart. First go the hubcaps, then the wheels, then the bumpers and doors, and finally they haul away the carcass -- twenty or thirty of them, like ants dragging a dead beetle, hauling it off to some junk dealer for ten yanqui dollars, then fighting with knives and broken bottles for shares of the money.
Yeamon woke up slowly, groaning with pain. Around his mouth was a crust of dried blood. He sat up on the mattress and stared at us.
“Wake up,” I said. “Your scooter's out there too.”
Sala swung his legs over the edge of the cot. “It's too late. They've had twelve hours -- Christ, they can strip a car in twelve minutes. We'll be lucky to find an oil spot.”
“Gone?” said Yeamon. He was still staring at us, not quite awake.
I nodded. “Probably.”
“Well by God let's get out there!” he exclaimed, leaping off the mattress. “Catch 'em and smash a few teeth!”
“No hurry,” said Sala. “It's all over by now.” He stood up and flexed his back. “Jesus, it feels like I've been stabbed.” He came over to me. “What's wrong with my shoulder -- is that a knife hole back there?”
“No,” I told him. “Just a scrape -- maybe a fingernail.”
He cursed and went into the bathroom for a shower.
Yeamon had already washed his face and was hurriedly getting dressed. “Let's hustle,” he said. “We'll take a cab.” He opened one of the windows and let in some light
Reluctantly, I began to dress. There were bruises all over my body and it was painful to move. I wanted to go back to bed and sleep all day, but I could see there was no hope for it.
We walked several blocks down to the Plaza Colon and got a cab. Yeamon told the driver where to go.
I had never seen the city on a Sunday morning. Usually I got up about noon and went to Al's for a long breakfast. Now the streets were almost empty. There was no sign of the weekday chaos, the screech and roar of an army of salesmen careening through town in uninsured cars. The waterfront was nearly deserted, the stores were closed, and only the churches seemed to be doing any business. We passed several of them, and in front of each one was a colorful knot of people -- tan-skinned men and boys in freshly pressed suits, flowery women with veils, little girls in white dresses, and here and there a priest in a black robe and a tall black hat
Then we sped across the long causeway to Condado. Things were different here. I saw no churches and the sidewalks were full of tourists in sandals and bright bermuda shorts. They streamed in and out of the big hotels, chattering, reading papers, carrying satchels, all wearing sunglasses and looking very busy.
Yeamon mopped his face with a handkerchief. “Man,” he said, “I don't think I can stand to lose that scooter. Jesus -- fired, beaten, arrested. . .”
I nodded and Sala said nothing. He was leaning over the driver's shoulder, as if he expected at any moment to catch sight of a mob dismantling his car.
After what seemed like hours we turned off the airport road and onto the narrow lane to Casa Cabrones. We were still several hundred yards away when I saw Sala's car. “There it is,” I said, pointing up the road.
“Christ,” he muttered. “A miracle.”
As we pulled up to it I realized it was sitting on two coconut logs, instead of its wheels. They were gone, and so was Yeamon's scooter.
Sala took it calmly. “Well -- better than I thought.” He got into the car and checked around. “Nothing gone but the wheels -- damn lucky.”
Yeamon was in a rage. “I'll recognize that thing!” he shouted. “One of these days I'll catch somebody riding it.”
I was sure we were due for more trouble if we hung around Casa Cabrones. The thought of another beating made me nervous. I walked a few hundred feet toward the bar, looking to see if anyone was coming. It was closed and the parking lot was empty.
On the way back to the car, I saw something red in the bushes beside the driveway. It was Yeamon's scooter, covered with a layer of palm fronds. Someone had hidden it, intending to pick it up later.
I called him and he dragged it out. Nothing was missing. He kicked it over and it started perfectly. “Damn,” he said. “I should sit here and wait for that punk to come back for it -- give him a little surprise.”
“Sure,” I said. “Then spend the summer in La Princesa. Come on -- let's get out of here.”
Back at the car, Sala was figuring up the cost of four new tires and wheels. He looked very depressed.
“Let's get some breakfast,” said Yeamon. “I've got to have food.”
“Are you nuts?” Sala replied. “I can't leave this car -- they'll finish it off!” He reached into his wallet. “Here,” he said to Yeamon. “Go down to that gas station and call the Fiat dealer and tell him to send four wheels. Here's his home phone -- tell him it's for Mr. Lotterman.”
Yeamon took the card and clattered off down the road. In a few minutes we heard him coming back. Then we sat for an hour until the wrecker arrived. To my surprise, the man had sent four wheels. We put them on, Sala signed Lotterman's name to a ticket, and then we drove in to the Long Beach Hotel for breakfast Yeamon followed on his scooter.
The patio was crowded, so we sat inside at the snack bar. All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding -- shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren't satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs.
I glared at them, trying to eat the rotten breakfast the waitress had put in front of me -- slimy eggs, fat bacon and weak American coffee.
“Goddamnit,” I said. “This isn't Nedick's -- don't you have Puerto Rican coffee?”
She shook her head.
Sala went out and bought a Miami Herald. “I like this place,” he said with a grin. “I like to sit up here and look down at the beach and think of all the good things I could do with a Luger.”
I put two dollars on the table and got up.
“Where are you going?” Yeamon asked, looking up from a part of the paper he had taken from Sala.
“I don't know,” I said. “Probably Sanderson's. Anyplace where I can get away from these people.”
Sala looked up. “You and Sanderson are pretty good buddies,” he said with a smile.
I was too intent on leaving to pay any attention to him, but after I got out in the street I realized that he'd meant to be insulting. I guessed he was bitter because my bail was so much smaller than his. Hell with him, I thought. Sanderson had nothing to do with it.
Several blocks up the street I stopped at an outdoor restaurant for some Puerto Rican coffee. I bought a New York Times for seventy cents. It made me feel better, reminding me that a big familiar world was going about its business just over the horizon. I had another cup of coffee and took the Times with me when I left, lugging it along the street like a precious bundle of wisdom, a weighty assurance that I was not yet cut off from that part of the world that was real.
It took me a half hour to get to Sanderson's, but the walk was along the beach and I enjoyed it. When I got there I found him stretched out in his garden on a plastic sun pad. He looked thinner than he did when he was dressed.
“Hello, slugger,” he said. “How was jail?”
“Horrible,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “next time it will be worse. You will be a marked man.”
I stared at him, wondering what sort of twisted humor he was practicing on me.
Sanderson propped himself up on his elbows and lit a cigarette. “What started it?” he asked.
I told him, deleting a few minor
points here and there, categorically denying what little I knew of the official version.
I leaned back in the chair, looking out at the white beach and the sea and the palms all around us, and thinking how strange it was to be worried about jail in a place like this. It seemed almost impossible that a man could go to the Caribbean and be put in jail for some silly misdemeanor. Puerto Rican jails were for Puerto Ricans -- not Americans who wore paisley ties and button-down shirts.
“Why was your bail so much lower,” he asked, “did they start the trouble?”
Here it was again. I was beginning to wish they had charged me with something brutal, like “violent assault,” or “mauling an officer.”
“Hell, I don't know,” I said.
“You're lucky,” he said. “You can get a year in jail for resisting arrest.”
“Well,” I said, trying to change the subject, “I think your speech saved the day -- they didn't seem very impressed when we said we worked for the News.”
He lit another cigarette. “No, that wouldn't impress anybody.” He looked up again. “But don't think I lied for you. The Times is looking for a travel stringer down here and they asked me to find somebody. As of tomorrow, you're it.”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
I went inside for another drink. While I was in the kitchen I heard a car drive up. It was Segarra, dressed like some gigolo on the Italian Riviera. He nodded stiffly as he came through the door. “Good afternoon, Paul. What was all the trouble last night?”
“I don't remember,” I said, pouring my drink down the sink. “Get Hal to tell you. I have to go.”
He gave me a disapproving glance, then went through the house to the garden. I went to the door to tell Sanderson I was leaving.
“Come by the office tomorrow,” he said. “We'll talk about your new job.”
Segarra looked puzzled.
Sanderson smiled at him. “Stealing another one of your boys,” he said.
Segarra frowned and sat down. “Fine. Take all of them.”
I left and walked out to Calle Modesto, wondering how to kill the rest of the day. It was always a problem. Sunday was my day off and usually I had Saturday too. But I was getting tired of riding around with Sala or sitting at Al's, and there was nothing else to do. I wanted to get out on the island, look at some of the other towns, but for that I needed a car.
Not just a car, I thought, I need an apartment too. It was a hot afternoon and I was tired and sore. I wanted to sleep, or at least rest, but there was no place to go. I walked for several blocks, ambling along in the shade of the big flamboyan trees, thinking of all the things I might be doing in New York or London, cursing the warped impulse that had brought me to this dull and steaming rock, and finally I stopped at a native bar to get a beer. I paid for the bottle and took it with me, sipping it as I walked along the street I wondered where I could sleep. Sala's apartment was out of the question. It was hot and noisy and depressing as a tomb. Maybe Yeamon's, I thought, but it was too far out and there was no way to get there. When I finally faced the fact that I had no choice but to walk the streets, I decided to start looking for my own apartment -- a place where I could relax by myself and have my own refrigerator and make my own drinks and maybe even take a girl once in a while. The idea of having my own bed in my own apartment cheered me so much that I felt anxious to be rid of this day and get on to the next, so I could begin looking.
I realized that to tie myself down with an apartment and perhaps a car was more of a commitment than I wanted to make right now -- especially since I might be hauled off to jail at any moment, or the paper might fold, or I might get a letter from some old friend about a job in Buenos Aires. Just yesterday, for that matter, I'd been ready to go to Mexico City.
But I knew I was coming to a point where I would have to make up my mind about Puerto Rico. I had been here three months and it seemed like three weeks. So far, there was nothing to get hold of, none of the real pros and cons I had found in other places. All the while I had been in San Juan I'd condemned it without really disliking it I felt that sooner or later I would see that third dimension, that depth that makes a city real and that you never see until you've been there awhile. But the longer I stayed, the more I came to suspect that for the first time in my life I had come to a place where this vital dimension didn't exist, or was too nebulous to make any difference. Maybe, God forbid, the place was what it appeared to be -- a melange of Okies and thieves and bewildered jibaros.
I walked for more than a mile, thinking, smoking, sweating, peering over tall hedges and into low windows on the street, listening to the roar of the buses and the constant barking of stray dogs, seeing almost no one but the people who passed me in crowded autos, heading for God knows where -- whole families jammed in cars, just driving around the city, honking, yelling, stopping now and then to buy pastillos and a shot of coco frio, then getting back in the car and moving on, forever looking, wondering, marveling at all the fine things the yanquis were doing to the city: Here was an office building going up, ten stories tall -- here was a new highway, leading nowhere -- and of course there were always the new hotels to look at, or you could watch the yanqui women on the beach -- and at night, if you arrived early enough to get a good seat, there was television in the public squares.
I kept walking, more frustrated with every step. Finally, in desperation, I hailed a cab and went to the Caribe Hilton, where they were staging an international tennis tournament. I used my press card to get in and sat in the stands the rest of the afternoon.
The sun didn't bother me here. It seemed to belong with the clay courts and the gin and the white ball zipping back and forth. I remembered other tennis courts and long-gone days full of sun and gin and people I would never see again because we could no longer talk to each other without sounding dull and disappointed. I sat there in the grandstand, hearing the swack of the furry ball and knowing it would never sound like it did on those days when I knew who was playing, and cared.
The match was over at dusk and I took a cab up to Al's. Sala was there, sitting alone at a corner table. I saw Sweep on the way to the patio and told him to bring two rums and three hamburgers. Sala looked up as I approached.
“You have that fugitive look,” he said. “A man on the run.”
“I talked to Sanderson,” I said. “He thinks it may not come to court -- or if it does it might take three years.”
The moment I said this I regretted it. Now we would get into the subject of my bail again. Before he could reply I held up my hands. “Forget it,” I said. “Let's talk about something else.”
He shrugged. “Christ, I can't think of anything that isn't depressing or threatening. I feel hemmed in by disaster.”
“Where's Yeamon?” I asked.
“He went home,” he replied. “Right after you left he remembered Chenault was still locked in the hut.”
Sweep arrived with our drinks and food and I took them off the tray.
“I think he's crazy as a loon,” Sala exclaimed.
“You're right,” I replied. “God knows how he'll end up. You can't just go through life like that -- never giving an inch, anytime, anywhere.”
Just then Bill Donovan, the sports editor, came howling up to the table.
“Here they are!” he shouted. “The gentlemen of the press -- sneak drinkers!” He laughed happily. “You fuckers really tied one on last night, eh? Man, you're lucky Lotterman went to Ponce!” He sat down at the table. “What happened? I hear you had it out with the cops.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Beat the piss out of 'em -- real laughs.”
“Goddamnit,” he said, “Sorry I missed it. I love a good fight -- especially with cops.”
We talked for a while. I liked Donovan, but he was forever talking about getting back to San Francisco, “where things are happening.” He made it sound so good on the Coast that I knew he had to be lying, but I could never tell just where the truth ended and the lies began. If even half of what he said was
true, then I wanted to go there immediately; but with Donovan I couldn't even count on that necessary half, and listening to him was always frustrating.
We left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. The night was muggy, and all around me I felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. Whenever I thought of time in Puerto Rico, I was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. Every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if I watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three or four notches would startle me when it came.
The Rum Diary
Ten
Sanderson's office was on the top floor of the tallest building in the Old City. I sat in a leather lounge chair, and below me I could see the entire waterfront, the Caribe Hilton and most of Condado. There was a definite feeling of being in a control tower.
Sanderson had his feet on the window sill. “Two things,” he was saying. “This business with the Times won't amount to much -- a few articles a year -- but Zimburger's project is a big one.”
“Zimburger?” I said.
He nodded. “I didn't want to mention it yesterday because he might have dropped in.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are we talking about the same Zimburger -- the General?”
He looked annoyed. “That's right, he's one of our clients.”
“Damn,” I said. “Business must be falling off. The man's a jackass.”
He rolled a pencil in his fingers. “Kemp,” he said slowly, “Mister Zimburger is building a marina -- a damn big one.” He paused. “He's also going to build one of the finest hotels on the island.”
I laughed and fell back in the chair.
“Look,” he said sharply, “you've been here long enough to begin learning a few things, and one of the first things you should learn is that money comes in odd packages.” He tapped his pencil on the desk. “Zimburger -- known to you as 'the jackass' -- could buy and sell you thirty times. If you insist on going by appearances you'd be better off in some place like Texas.”