“Rumor, what rumor?”
“Rumor has it,” Clayton continued, his eyes moving along the stories in each paper, each day, “that Santo Domingo, long ago abandoned, is the hiding place of thieves, murderers, and escaped criminals. Drug trafficking is suspected. The government of Mexico will send an official party to investigate.”
“Thieves, murderers, escaped criminals!” said Gomez, with a great laugh, raising his arms up and then out to embrace himself. “Do I look like one who steals, kills, escapes, traffics in drugs? Where? From this plaza to the port where we throw cocaine to the fish? Where are my fields of marijuana? Lies!” Gomez crumpled one paper in his fist. “Bury this! Within a week it will grow more lies! The next paper! Read!”
Clayton read:
“Notices have been delivered. Warnings were dropped on the town on May ninth from the air. There was no life to be seen. The film company indicates that when Pancho! is finished they will use Santo Domingo for another film, Earthquake, to appear in ruins.”
“I saw no papers in the air,” said Gomez. “If they were dropped they fell into the sea to be read by sharks. Mexican aviators, yes. That is it!”
Sweeping the newspapers off the bar in one grand sweep, Gomez lurched out into the hot sun. Along the way he seized a rifle off the wall, found a sling of bullets. He loaded the weapon and sighted it at the plaza.
“Your camera, gringo,” he said. “¡Andale!”
Clayton, at his Jeep, brought forth the best Leica, snapping it once at Gomez, who looked at Clayton and the Leica, laughed, and held the rifle across his chest.
“How do I look?”
“Like the dictator of a village, no, a country!”
“And now?” Gomez stood at attention and stiffened his neck. “Yes?”
“Yes!” Clayton snapped the Leica, laughing.
“Now.” Gomez aimed at the sky. “Do you see the enemy arriving at, how do they say? Four o’clock?”
“Five.” said Clayton, and snap!
“Now lower! Now higher!” Gomez aimed the rifle. This time he fired. The shot knocked birds off the trees in bright explosions. A family of parrots protested. Gomez fired again, commenting, “This gives you many fine shots, liar with the camera? It is all lies, yes? Those California people, liars with cameras? They could not get war to stand still. Dead, they could photograph it. Here, now, let me aim this way.”
“Hold it, that’s good!” said Clayton. “Don’t make me laugh, I can’t hold still.”
“The only way to kill a man is to laugh. Now you, señor.” He aimed the rifle at Clayton.
“Hey!” said Clayton.
Click. The rifle fell on emptiness. “No ammunition,” said Gomez. “Have you enough pictures for your magazine? GENERAL GOMEZ IN ACTION. GOMEZ RETAKES SANTO DOMINGO. GOMEZ A MAN OF PEACE LOVES WAR!”
Click went the camera with a dull sound.
“Out of ammunition, that is, film,” Clayton said.
They both reloaded, bullets and film, film and bullets, laughing.
“Why are you doing this?” said the young man.
“Soon those sons of whores will fly back so fast you will not be able to trap me, I will move as quickly. We take the fine pictures now so you can put the lies together later. Besides, I might die before they return. The heart at this moment is saying bad things, like lie down, be quiet. But I will neither sit, die, nor be quiet. Thank God the plaza is empty. It is easy to run and fire, fire and run with the jets. How much ahead of them do I fire to kill one?”
“It can’t be done.”
Gomez swore and spat. “How much lead? Thirty feet? Forty out in front? Fifty?”
“Fifty, maybe,” said Clayton.
“Good. Watch! I will kill one.”
“If you do you will get two ears and a tail!” said Clayton.
“One thing must be certain,” said Gomez. “That I will never surrender and that I fought well and won the last battle even though I died. I should be buried in the middle of the ruins when the ruins come.”
“Agreed,” said Clayton.
“Now a final time, I will move more quickly, run, stop, aim, fire, run, stop, fire. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Gomez did all this and stopped, gasping.
“Bring the tequila,” he said, and Clayton brought it and they drank. “Well,” he said, “that was a good war, yes, plenty of lies, but no one will know and you, the best liar, will be sure I appear in at least three editions about the Santo Domingo War and Gomez, the great! Do you swear?”
“It is sworn. But—”
“What of you now? Do you stay? Will you wait for your enemies?”
“No,” said Clayton. “I have my story. They will not see what I have seen. Gomez triumphant in the noon plaza. Gomez the hero of Santo Domingo.”
“You lie in your teeth, but you have fine teeth,” Gomez said. “Now, a pose with dignity.” He dressed his rifle to one side and tucked his right hand within his blouse solemnly.
“Hold it.” Clayton snapped his Leica.
“Now.” Gomez eyed a shining path beyond the plaza. “Take me there.” He slung himself into the Jeep, his rifle across his knees, and Clayton drove across the plaza. Gomez jumped out to kneel by the iron rail tracks.
“Christ!” Clayton cried. “What’re you doing?”
Gomez smiled, head down to the rail. “I knew they would come this way. Not the sky, not the road, those are diversions. Here. Listen!”
Gomez smiled and pressed his ear to the burning-hot rail. “They did not fool me. Not jets or cars. The train as before! Sí! I can hear them!”
Clayton did not move.
“I order you, listen!” said Gomez, eyes shut.
Clayton glanced at the sky, and knelt in the dust.
“Good,” Gomez murmured, and motioned with his free hand. “Do you hear?”
Clayton, his ear burnt by the noon iron, said nothing.
“Now,” said Gomez quietly. “Far off, yes? But near.”
Clayton heard something or nothing, he could not say.
“There. Closer now,” murmured Gomez, greatly satisfied. “On time. After sixty years, sí. What year is that coming? What time is it, at last?”
Clayton’s face agonized.
“Speak,” said Gomez.
“July …”
He stopped.
“July what?”
“Thirteenth!”
“So it is the thirteenth. And …?”
Clayton forced himself. “Nineteen …”
“Nineteen what, señor?”
“Ninety-eight!”
“July thirteenth, 1998. It has already arrived. It is already over. This I hear in the rail. Yes?”
Clayton’s whole weight forced him to the track. It hammered, and if the blows came from the earth or sky, his heart could not tell. For it was hurrying, rushing, hurling itself in great thunders that racked his body or his chest. Eyes shut, he whispered: “July thirteenth, 1998.”
“Now,” said Gomez, head down, eyes tight, smiling. “Now I know what year I live in. Brave Gomez. Go, señor.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“I am not here,” said Gomez. “Your year arrives this day in July, I cannot stop it. But Gomez is where? Cinco de Mayo, 1932, a good year! They may come, but I am hidden where they will never think to look. Go. ¡Andale!”
Clayton stood up and looked at Gomez, whose head lay hard on the rail.
“Señor Gomez …”
“He has long departed. Go with God,” came the voice at his feet.
“I beg you,” said Clayton.
“Where all is emptiness,” said Gomez’s voice, “there is room to move. When you are gone, I will move swiftly.”
Clayton got in his Jeep and gunned the motor and began to drift away.
“Gomez,” he called quietly.
But there was just a body on the rail and much room. Seeking to hide in other years, Gomez had simply … moved.
Clayton drove out of town ahead of the thunders.
One-Woman Show
“How is it?” asked Levering. “Married to a woman who is all woman?”
“Pleasant,” said Mr. Thomas.
“You make it sound like a drink of water!”
Thomas glanced up at the critic, pouring black coffee. “I didn’t mean … Ellen’s wonderful, there’s no denying that.”
“Last night,” said Levering, “Lord, what a show. On stage, off, on, off, a blaze of beauty, roses dipped in flaming alcohol. Lilies of the morning. The entire theater leant forward to catch her bouquet. It was as if someone had opened a door on a spring garden.”
“Will you have coffee?” asked Mr. Thomas, the husband.
“Listen. Three or four times in life, if a man’s lucky, he goes utterly mad. Music, a painting, one or two women, can send him stark staring. I’m a critic, yes, but I’ve never been so thoroughly hooked before.”
“We’ll drive to the theater in half an hour.”
“Good! Do you pick her up every night?”
“Oh, yes, I absolutely must. You’ll see why.”
“I came here first, of course,” said Levering, “to see the husband of Ellen Thomas, to see the luckiest man in the world. Is this your routine, every night in this hotel, waiting?”
“Sometimes I circle Central Park, take the subway to Greenwich, or window-shop on Fifth Avenue.”
“How often do you watch her?”
“Why, I don’t think I’ve seen her onstage for over a year.”
“Her orders?”
“No, no.”
“Well, perhaps you’ve seen the act so many times.”
“Not that.” Thomas lit a cigarette from the butt of his previous one.
“Well, you see her every day, that’s the answer. An audience of one, you lucky dog, no need of a theater for you. I said to Atterson last night, what more could a man ask?
Married to a woman so talented that onstage, in an hour’s time, a pageant of femininity has passed, a French cocotte, an English tart, a Swedish seamstress, Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Maude Adams, the Empress of China. I think I hate you.”
Mr. Thomas sat quietly.
Levering went on, “The libidinous side, the philandering side, of every man envies you. Tempted to stray?
