“More beautiful than I was when you first knew me twenty-five years ago?”
“No, Lil. No puede ser. They were Chinese girls and you know how beautiful a Chinese girl can be. And I loved Chinese girls anyway.”
“No es pervertido.”
“No, it certainly isn’t a perversion.”
“But three.”
“Three is several. And love was made to be made with one, I grant you.”
“Anyway, I’m glad you had them. Don’t think I’m jealous. You didn’t seek it out and besides it was a present. I hate the police dog woman who wouldn’t go to bed. But, Tom, didn’t you feel hollow in the morning?”
“Of such hollowness you can’t imagine. Really hollow. And I felt debauched from the top of my head to between my toes and my back was dead and the root of my spine ached.”
“So you had a drink.”
“So I had a drink and I felt a little better and very happy.”
“So what did you do?”
“I looked at them all asleep and I wished I could take a picture of them. They would have made a wonderful picture asleep and I was so damned hungry and hollow feeling and I looked out through the curtains at the weather outside. It was raining. So I thought that was fine and we would stay in bed all day. But I had to have some breakfast and I had to figure out about breakfast for them. So I took a shower with the door shut and then dressed very quietly and went out, closing the door so it made no noise at all.
Downstairs I had breakfast in the early morning dining room of the hotel and I had a big breakfast of kippers, rolls and marmalade, and some mushrooms and bacon. All very good. I drank a big pot of tea and had a double whisky and soda with breakfast and still felt hollow inside. I read the Hong Kong morning English paper and wondered how late they slept. Finally I went out to the front door of the hotel and looked outside and it was still raining hard. I went to the bar but it was not yet open. They had brought me my drink at breakfast from the service bar. Then I couldn’t wait any longer and I went back up to the room and unlocked the door. They were all gone.”
“How terrible.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“So what did you do? You had a drink I suppose.”
“Yes. I had a drink and then I went in and washed myself again very good with much soap and water and then I commenced to have double remorse.”
“¿Un doble remordimiento?”
“No. Two remorses. Remorse because I had slept with three girls. And remorse because they were gone.”
“I remember when you used to have remorse after you stayed with me. But you got over it.”
“I know. I always get over everything. I was always a man of big remorses. But this morning in the hotel was gigantic double remorse.”
“So you took another drink.”
“How did you guess it? And I called up my millionaire. But he wasn’t at his home. Nor in his office.”
“He must have been in his Sin House.”
“Undoubtedly. Where the girls had gone to join him and to tell him about the night.”
“But where did they get three such beautiful girls? You couldn’t get three really beautiful girls in all of Havana now. I know the trouble I had trying to get something even decent for Henry and Willie this morning. Though, naturally, it is a bad time of day.”
“Oh, in Hong Kong the millionaires had scouts all through the country. All over China. It was just like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ baseball team looking for ballplayers. As soon as a beautiful girl was located in any town or village their agents bought her and she was shipped in and trained and groomed and cared for.”
“But how did they look so beautiful in the morning if they had coiffures muy estilizado such as Chinese women wear? The more estilizado the hairdress, the worse they would look in the morning after a night like that.”
“They didn’t have such coiffures. They wore their hair shoulder length the way American girls did that year and the way many still do. It was curled, too, very softly. That was the way C.W. liked them. He had been in America and, naturally, he had seen the cinema.”
“Did you never have them again?”
“Only one at a time. C.W. would send me over one at a time as a present. But he never sent all three. They were new and naturally he wanted them for himself. And, too, he said he did not want to do anything that was bad for my morals.”
“He sounds like a fine man. What happened to him?”
“I believe he was shot.”
“Poor man. That was a nice story though and very delicate for a story like that. You seem more cheerful, too.”
I guess I am, Thomas Hudson thought. Well, that is what I set out to be. Or was it?
“Look, Lil,” he said. “Don’t you think we’ve drunk maybe just about enough of these?”
“How do you feel?”
“Better.”
“Make Tomás another double frozen without sugar. I’m getting a little drunk. I don’t want anything.”
I do feel better, Thomas Hudson thought. That is the funny part. You always feel better and you always get over your remorse. There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death.
“You ever been dead?” he said to Lil.
“Of course not.”
“Yo tampoco.”
“Why did you say that? You scare me when you talk like that.”
“I don’t mean to scare you, honey. I don’t want to scare anybody ever.”
“I like it when you call me honey.”
This isn’t getting anywhere, Thomas Hudson thought. Isn’t there anything else you could do that would produce the same effect rather than sit with beat-up old Honest Lil in La Floridita at the old tarts’ end of the bar and get drunk? If you only have four days couldn’t you employ them better? Where?, he thought. At Alfred’s Sin House? You’re doing all right where you are.
The drinking couldn’t be any better, nor as good, anywhere in the world and you’re down to the drinking now, kid, and you better get just as far in it as you can. That’s what you’ve got now and you better like it and like it on all frequencies. You know you always liked it and you loved it and it’s what you have now, so you better love it.
“I love it,” he said out loud.
“What?”
“Drinking. Not just drinking. Drinking these double frozens without sugar. If you drank that many with sugar it would make you sick.”
“Ya lo creo. And if anybody else drank that many without sugar they’d be dead.”
“Maybe I’ll be dead.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll just break the record and then we’ll go to my place and you’ll go to sleep and the worst thing that will happen is if you snore.”
“Did I snore last time?”
“Horrores. And you called me by about ten different names in the night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I thought it was funny. I learned two or three things I didn’t know. Don’t your other girls ever get upset when you call them by so many different names?”
“I haven’t any other girls. Just a wife.”
“I try hard to like her and think well of her but it is very difficult. Naturally I never let anyone speak against her.”
“I’ll speak against her.”
“No. Don’t. That is vulgar. I hate two things. Men when they cry. I know they have to cry. But I don’t like it. And I hate to hear them speak against their wives. Yet they nearly all do. So don’t you do it, because we are having such a lovely time.”
“Good. The hell with her. We won’t speak about her.”
“Please, Tom. You know I think she is very beautiful. She is. Really. Pero no es mujer para ti. But let us not speak against her.”
“Right.”
“Tell me another happy story. It doesn’t even have to have love in it if it makes you happy to tell it.”
“I don’t think I know any happy stories.”
“Don’t be like that. You know thousands. Take another drink and tell me a happy story.”
“Why don’t you do some of the work?”
“What work?”
“The goddamned morale building.”
“Tú tienes la moral muy baja.”
“Sure. I’m well aware of it. But why don’t you tell a few stories to build it up?”
“You have to do it yourself. You know that. I’ll do anything else you want me to. You know that.”
“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “You really want another happy story?”
“Please. There’s your drink. One more happy story and one more drink and you’ll feel good.”
“You guarantee it?”
“No,” she said and she began to cry again as she looked up at him, crying easily and naturally as water wells up in a spring. “Tom, why can’t you tell me what’s the matter? I’m afraid to ask now. Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Thomas Hudson
