“That’s why we call you Honest Lil.”
“If I could be rich doing perverted things and be poor doing normal things, I would be poor.”
“I know. What about the sandwich?”
“I’m not hungry just yet.”
“Do you want another drink?”
“Yes. Please, Tom. Tell me. Willie said there was a cat in love with you. That isn’t true, is it?”
“Yes. It’s true.”
“I think it’s dreadful.”
“No. It’s not. I’m in love with the cat, too.”
“That’s terrible to say. Don’t tease me, Tom, please, Willie teased me and made me cry.”
“I love the cat,” Thomas Hudson said.
“I don’t want to hear about it. Tom, when will you take me out to the bar of the crazies?”
“One of these days.”
“Do the crazies really come there just like ordinary people come here to meet and have drinks?”
“That’s right. The only difference is they wear shirts and trousers made out of sugar sacks.”
“Did you really play on the ball team of the crazies against the lepers?”
“Sure. I was the best knuckle-ball pitcher the crazies ever had.”
“How did you get to know them?”
“I just stopped there one time on the way back from Rancho Boyeros and liked the place.”
“Will you really take me out to the bar of the crazies?”
“Sure. If you won’t be scared.”
“I’ll be scared. But I won’t be too scared if I’m with you. That’s why I want to go out there. To be scared.”
“There’s some wonderful crazies out there. You’ll like them.”
“My first husband was a crazy. But he was the difficult kind.”
“Do you think Willie is crazy?”
“Oh no. He just has a difficult character.”
“He’s suffered very much.”
“Who hasn’t? Willie presumes on his suffering.”
“I don’t think so. I know about it. I promise you.”
“Let’s talk about something else, then. Do you see that man down there at the bar talking to Henry?”
“Yes.”
“All he likes in bed are piglike things.”
“Poor man.”
“He’s not poor. He’s rich. But all he cares for is
“Didn’t you ever like
“Never. You can ask anyone. And I’ve never done anything with girls in my life.”
“Honest Lil,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Wouldn’t you rather have me that way? You don’t like
“
“No, they don’t. They have all sorts of different ideas about you. But I know you.”
He was drinking another of the frozen daiquiris with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the trapped top and it reminded him of the sea. The frappéd part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.
“I wish they had a drink the color of sea water when you have a depth of eight hundred fathoms and there is a dead calm with the sun straight up and down and the sea full of plankton,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s drink this shallow water drink.”
“Tom, what’s the matter? Do you have some problem?”
“No.”
“You’re awfully sad and you’re a little bit old today.”
“It’s the norther.”
“But you always used to say a norther gave you pep and cheered you up. How many times have we made love because there was a norther?”
“Plenty.”
“You always liked a norther and you bought me this coat to wear when we have them.”
“It’s a pretty coat, too.”
“I could have sold it half a dozen times,” Honest Lil said. “More people were crazy for this coat than you can imagine.”
“This is a fine norther for it.”
“Be happy, Tom. You always get happy when you drink. Drink that drink and have another one.”
“If I drink it too fast it hurts across the front of my forehead.”
“Well just drink slow and steady, then. I’m going to have another
She made it herself from the bottle Serafín had left in front of her on the bar and Thomas Hudson looked at it and said, “That’s a fresh water drink. That is the color of the water in the Firehole River before it joins the Gibbon to become the Madison. If you put a little more whisky in it you could make it the color of a stream that comes out of a cedar swamp to flow into the Bear River at a place called Wab-Me-Me.”
“Wab-Me-Me is funny,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It is an Indian place-name. I ought to know what it means but I’ve forgotten. It’s Ojibway.”
“Tell me about Indians,” Honest Lil said. “I like to hear about the Indians even more than about the crazies.”
“There are quite a few Indians down the coast. They are sea Indians and they fish and dry the fish and are charcoal burners.”
“I don’t want to hear about Cuban Indians. They’re all
“No, they’re not. Some are real Indians. But they may have captured them in the early days and brought them over from Yucatan.”
“I don’t like
“I do. Very much.”
“Tell me about Wabmimi. Is it in the Far West?”
“No, it’s up north. In the part that’s near Canada.”