“Make him eat,” Thomas Hudson said.
“You can’t make him do anything. You can. But I can’t. But I’ll beg him to eat. I’ll plead with him to eat. I’ll set him an example by eating.”
“Get Paco to make him eat.”
“Wouldn’t you think he would be hungry after that?”
“Wouldn’t you?’
Just then the biggest man that Thomas Hudson knew, and the most cheerful and with the widest shoulders and the best manners came in through the door of the bar with a smile on his face, which was beading with sweat even on the cold day. His hand was out in greeting. He was so big he made everyone at the bar look stunted and he had a lovely smile. He was dressed in old blue trousers, a Cuban countryman’s shirt, and rope-soled shoes. “Tom,” he said. “You bastard. We’ve been in search of the lovelies.”
His handsome face, as soon as he was out of the wind, sweated even more.
“Pedrico. I’ll have one of those, too. The double size. Or larger if you make them. Imagine seeing you here, Tom. And I’ve forgotten. Here’s Honest Lil. Come over here, my beauty.”
Honest Lil had come in the other door. She looked her best when sitting at the far end of the bar when you saw only her lovely dark face and the grossness that had come over her body was hidden by the polished wood of the bar. Now, coming toward the bar from the door, there was no hiding her body, so she propelled it, swaying, to the bar as rapidly as she could without visibly hurrying and got up onto the stool Thomas Hudson had occupied. This moved him one stool to the right and gave her the covered left flank.
“Hello, Tom,” she said and kissed Thomas Hudson. “Henry is terrible.”
“I’m not at all terrible, my beauty,” Henry told her.
“You’re terrible,” she told him. “Every time I see you, you are more terrible. Thomas, you protect me from him.”
“What’s he being terrible about?”
“He wants a little tiny girl that he is crazy for and the little tiny girl can’t go with him. But she wouldn’t go anyway because she is frightened of him because he is so big and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds.”
Henry Wood blushed, sweat visibly, and took a big sip of his drink.
“Two hundred and twenty-five,” he said.
“What did I tell you?” the dark boy said. “Isn’t that exactly what I told you?”
“Just what business is it of yours to be telling anyone anything?” Henry asked him.
“Two tramps. Two tomatoes. Two broken-down waterfront broads. Two cunts with but a single thought: the rent. We lay them. We trade cunts and re-lay them. It’s strictly from wet decks. I say one friendly understanding word now and I am not a gentleman.”
“They weren’t really awfully good, were they?” Henry said, blushing again.
“Awfully good? We ought to have poured gasoline on them and set them on fire.”
“How horrible,” Honest Lil said.
“Listen, lady,” the dark boy said. “I am horrible.”
“Willie,” Henry said. “Do you want the key to Sin House and go over and see if everything is all right?”
“I do not,” the dark boy said. “I have a key to Sin House as you have evidently forgotten and I do not want to go over there and see if everything is all right. The only way everything is all right there is whenever you or I kick those cunts into the street.”
“But suppose we can’t get anything else?”
“We have got to get something else. Lillian, why don’t you get off that stool and onto that telephone. Forget that little dwarf. Get that gnome out of your mind, Henry. You keep on with things like that and you’ll be psycho. I know. I’ve been psycho.”
“You’re psycho now,” Thomas Hudson told him.
“Maybe I am, Tom. You should know. But I don’t fuck gnomes.” (He pronounced the word Guhnomays.) “If Henry has to have a guhnomay that’s his business. But I don’t believe he has to have one any more than he has to have one-armed women or one-legged women. Let him forget the goddam guhnomay and get Lillian there onto the telephone.”
“I’ll take any good girls we can get,” Henry said. “I hope you’re not mixed up, Willie?”
“We don’t want good girls,” Willie said. “You start on that, right away you’ll get psycho in a different way. Am I right, Tommy? Good girls is the most dangerous thing of all. Besides they will get you either on a contributing to delinquency or on a rape or attempted rape. Out with that good girls stuff. We want whores. Nice, clean, attractive, interesting, inexpensive whores. That can fuck. Lillian, what is keeping you away from that telephone?”
“One thing is that a man is using it and another is waiting by the cigar counter for him to finish,” Honest Lil said. “You’re a bad boy, Willie.”
“I’m a horrible boy,” Willie said. “I’m the worst goddam boy you’ll ever know. But I’d like us to get better organized than we are now.”
“We’re going to have a drink or so,” Henry said. “Then I’m sure Lillian will find someone that she knows. Won’t you, my beauty?”
“Of course,” Honest Lil said in Spanish. “Why couldn’t I? But I want to telephone from a telephone in a booth. Not from here. It isn’t proper to call from here and it isn’t fitting.”
“A delay,” Willie said. “All right. I accept it. Just another delay. Let’s drink then.”
“What the hell have you been doing?” Thomas Hudson asked.
“Tommy, I love you,” Willie said. “What the hell have you been doing yourself?”
“I had a few with Ignacio Natera Revello.”
“That sounds like an Italian cruiser,” Willie said. “Wasn’t there an Italian cruiser named that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It sounds like it, anyway.”
“Let me see the tabs,” Henry said. “How many were there, Tom?”
“Ignacio took them. I won them from him rolling.”
“How many were there really?” Henry asked.
“I think four.”
“What did you drink before that?”
“A Tom Collins coming in.”
“And at home?”
“Plenty.”
“You’re just a damned rummy,” Willie said. “Pedrico, three more double frozen daiquiris and whatever the lady wants.”
“Un highbalito con agua mineral,” Honest Lil said. “Tommy, come and sit with me at the other end of the bar. They don’t like me to sit at this end of the bar.”
“The hell with them,” Willie said. “Great friends like us that never see each other and then we can’t have a drink with you at this end of the bar. The hell with that.”
“I’m sure you’re all right here, beauty,” Henry said. Then he saw two planter friends of his farther down the bar and went to speak to them without waiting for his drink.
“He’s off now,” Willie said. “He’ll forget about the guhnomay now.”
“He’s very distrait,” Honest Lil said. “He’s awfully distrait.”
“It’s the life we lead,” Willie said. “Just the ceaseless pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Goddammit, we ought to pursue pleasure seriously.”
“Tom’s not distrait,” Honest Lil said. “Tom is sad.”
“Cut out that shit,” Willie said to her. “What are you pissed off about? First somebody is distrait. Then somebody is sad. Before that I’m horrible. So what? Where does a cunt like you get off criticizing people all the time? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be gay?”
Honest Lil began to cry, real tears, bigger and wetter than any in the movies. She could always cry real tears any time she wanted to or needed to or was hurt.
“That cunt cries bigger tears than mother used to make,” Willie said.
“Willie, you shouldn’t call me that.”
“Cut it out, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Willie, you are a cruel wicked boy and I hate you,” Honest Lil said. “I don’t know why men like Thomas Hudson and Henry go around with you. You are wicked and you talk vile.”
“You’re a lady,” Willie said. “You shouldn’t says things like that. Vile is a bad word. It’s like spit on the end of your cigar.”
Thomas Hudson put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Drink up, Willie. Nobody’s feeling too good.”
“Henry’s feeling good. I could tell him what you told me and then he’d feel awful.”
“You asked me.”
“That isn’t what I mean. Why don’t you split your goddam grief? Why did you keep that by yourself the last two weeks?”
“Grief doesn’t split.”
“A grief hoarder,” Willie said. “I never thought you’d be a goddamned grief hoarder.”
“I don’t need any of this, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Thank you very much, though. You don’t have to work on me.”
“OK. Hoard it. But it’ll do you no damn good. I tell you I was brought up on the goddamned stuff.”
“So was I,” Thomas Hudson said. “No shit.”
“Were you really? Then maybe your own system’s best. You were getting to look pretty screwy, though.”
“That’s just from drinking and being tired and not relaxed yet.”
“You hear from your woman?”
“Sure. Three letters.”
“How’s that going?”
“Couldn’t be worse.”
“Well,” Willie said. “There we are. You might as well hoard it so as to have something.”
“I’ve got something.”
“Sure. Your cat Boise loves you. I know that. I’ve seen that. How is
