“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.”
“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
“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.”
“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.”