“Well, I never killed anybody,” Bee-lips told him.
“Nor you never will. Come on, let’s get out of here. Just being with you makes me feel crummy.”
“Maybe you are crummy.”
“Can you get them from talking?”
“If you don’t paper your mouth.”
“Paper yours then.”
“I’m going to get a drink,” Harry said.
Out in front the three tourists sat on their high stools. As Harry came up to the bar the woman looked away from him to register disgust.
“What will you have?” asked Freddy.
“What’s the lady drinking,” Harry asked.
“A Cuba Libre.”
“Then give me a straight whiskey.”
The tall tourist with the little sandy mustache and the thick-lensed glasses leaned his large, straight-nosed face over toward Harry and said, “Say, what’s the idea of talking that way to my wife?”
Harry looked him up and down and said to Freddy, “What kind of a place you running?”
“What about it?” the tall one said.
“Take it easy,” Harry said to him.
“You can’t pull that with me.”
“Listen,” Harry said. “You came down here to get well and strong, didn’t you? Take it easy.” And he went out.
“I should have hit him, I guess,” the tall tourist said. “What do you think, dear?”
“I wish I was a man,” his wife said.
“You’d go a long way with that build,” the green-visored man said into his beer.
“What did you say,” the tall one asked.
“I said you could find out his name and address and write him a letter telling him what you think of him.”
“Say, what’s your name, anyway? What are you doing, kidding ,me?”
“Just call me Professor MacWalsey.”
“My name’s Laughton,” the tall one said. “I’m a writer.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” Professor MacWalsey said. “Do you write often?”
The tall man looked around him. “Let’s get out of here, dear,” he said. “Everybody is either insulting or nuts.”
“It’s a strange place,” said Professor MacWalsey. “Fascinating, really. They call it the Gibraltar of America and it’s three hundred and seventy-five miles south of Cairo, Egypt. But this place is the only part of it I’ve had time to see yet. It’s a fine place though.”
“I see you’re a professor all right,” the wife said. “You know, I like you.”
“I like you too, darling,” Professor MacWalsey said. “But I have to go now.”
He got up and went out to look for his bicycle.
“Everybody is nuts here,” the tall man said. “Should we have another drink, dear?”
“I liked the professor,” the wife said. “He had a sweet manner.”
“That other fellow—”
“Oh, he had a beautiful face,” the wife said. “Like a Tartar or something. I wish he hadn’t been insulting. He looked kind of like Ghengis Khan in the face. Gee, he was big.”
“He had only one arm,” her husband said.
“I didn’t notice,” the wife said. “Should we have another drink? I wonder who’ll come in next!”
“Maybe Tamerlane,” the husband said.
“Gee, you’re educated,” the wife said. “But that Ghengis Khan one would do me. Why did the Professor like to hear me say nerts?”
“I don’t know, dear,” Laughton, the writer, said. “I never did.”
“He seemed to like me for what I really am,” the wife said. “My, he was nice.”
“You’ll probably see him again.”
“Any time you come in here you’ll see
“Who’s the other one who speaks so rude?”
“Him? Oh, he’s a fellow from around here.”
“What does he do?”
“Oh, a little of everything,” Freddy told her.
“He’s a fisherman.”
“How did he lose his arm?”
“I don’t know. He got it hurt some way.”
“Gee, he’s beautiful,” the wife said.
Freddy laughed. “I heard him called a lot of things but I never heard him called that.”
“Don’t you think he has a beautiful face?”
“Take it easy, lady,” Freddy told her. “He’s got a face like a ham with a broken nose on it.”
“My, men are stupid,” the wife said. “He’s my dream man.”
“He’s a bad-dream man,” Freddy said.
All this time the writer sat there with a sort of stupid look on his face except when he’d look at his wife admiringly. Anyone would have to be a writer or a F.E.R.A. man to have a wife look like that, Freddy thought. God, isn’t she awful?
Just then in came Albert.
“Where’s Harry?”
“Down at the dock.”
“Thanks,” said Albert.
He went out and the wife and the writer kept on sitting there and Freddy stood there worrying about the boat and thinking how his legs hurt from standing up all day. He had put a grating over the cement but it didn’t seem to do much good. His legs ached all the time. Still he was doing a good business, as good as anybody in town and with less overhead. That woman was goofy all right. And what kind of a man was it would pick out a woman like that to live with? Not even with your eyes shut, thought Freddy. Not with a borrowed. Still they were drinking mixed drinks. Expensive drinks. That was something.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Right away.”
A tanned-faced, sandy-haired, well-built man wearing a striped fisherman’s shirt and khaki shorts came in with a very pretty dark girl who wore a thin, white wool sweater and dark blue slacks.
“If it isn’t Richard Gordon,” said Laughton, standing up, “with the lovely Miss Helen.”