Islands in the Stream полностью

“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 the screwy old bastard?”

“Just as screwy.”

“He beats the shit out of me,” Willie said. “He does.”

“He certainly sweats things out.”

“Doesn’t he, though? • If I suffered like that cat does I’d be nuts. What are you drinking, Thomas?”

“Another one of those.”

Willie put his arm around Honest Lil’s ample waist. “Listen, Lilly,” he said. “You’re a good girl. I didn’t mean to get you sore. It was my fault. I was feeling emotional.”

“You won’t talk that way any more?”

“No. Not unless I get emotional.”

“Here’s yours,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Here’s to you, you son of a bitch.”

“Now you’re talking,” Willie said. “Now you’ve got the old pecker pointed north. We ought to have that cat Boise here. He’d be proud of you. See what I meant by sharing it?”

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “I see.”

“All right,” Willie said. “We’ll drop it. Put out your can, here comes the garbage man. Look at that damn Henry. Get a load of him. What do you suppose makes him sweat like that on a cold day like today?”

“Girls,” Honest Lil said. “He is obsessed with them.”

“Obsessed,” Willie said. “You bore a hole in his head anywhere you want with a half-inch bit and women would run out. Obsessed. Why don’t you get a word that would fit it?”

“Obsessed is a strong word in Spanish anyway.”

“Obsessed? Obsessed is nothing. If I get time this afternoon I’ll think up the word.”

“Tom, come down to the other end of the bar where we can talk and I can be comfortable. Will you buy me a sandwich? I’ve been out all morning with Henry.”

“I’m going to the Basque Bar,” Willie said. “Bring him over there, Lil.”

“All right,” Honest Lil said. “Or I’ll send him.”

She made her stately progress to the far end of the bar, speaking to many of the men she passed and smiling at others. Everyone treated her with respect. Nearly everyone she spoke to had loved her at some time in the last twenty-five years. Thomas Hudson went down to the far end of the bar, taking his bar checks with him, as soon as Honest Lil had seated herself and smiled at him. She had a beautiful smile and wonderful dark eyes and lovely black hair. When it would begin to show white at the roots along the line of her forehead and along the line of her part, she would ask Thomas Hudson for money to have it fixed and when she came back from having it dyed it was as glossy and natural-looking and lovely as a young girl’s hair. She had a skin that was as smooth as olive-colored ivory, if there were olive-covered ivory, with a slightly smoky roselike cast. Actually, the color always reminded Thomas Hudson of well-seasoned mahagua lumber when it is freshly cut, then simply sanded smooth and waxed lightly. Nowhere else had he ever seen that smoky almost greenish color. But the mahagua did not have the rose tint. The rose tint was just the color that she used but it was almost as smooth as a Chinese girl’s. There was this lovely face looking down the bar at him, lovelier all the time as he came closer. Then he was beside her and there was the big body and the rose color was artificial now and there was no mystery about any of it, although it was still a lovely face.

“You look beautiful, Honest,” he said to her.

“Oh, Tom, I am so big now. I am ashamed.”

He put his hand on her great haunches and said, “You’re a nice big.”

“I’m ashamed to walk down the bar.”

“You do it beautifully. Like a ship.”

“How is our friend?”

“He’s fine.”

“When am I going to see him?”

“Any time. Now?”

“Oh no. Tom, what was Willie talking about? The part I couldn’t understand?”

“He was just being crazy.”

“No, he wasn’t. It was about you and a sorrow Was it about you and your señora.”

“No. Fuck my señora.”

“I wish you could. But you can’t when she is away.”

“Yeah. I found that out.”

“What is the sorrow, then?”

“Nothing. Just a sorrow.”

“Tell me about it. Please.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“You can tell me, you know. Henry tells me about his sorrows and cries in the night. Willie tells me dreadful things. They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things. You can tell me. Everyone tells me. Only you don’t tell me.”

“Telling never did me any good. Telling is worse for me than not telling.”

“Tom, Willie says such bad things. Doesn’t he know it hurts me to hear such words? Doesn’t he know I’ve never used those words and have never done a piglike thing nor a perverted thing?”