Allerton tasted the brandy. 'Good Lord,' he said. 'Napoleon must have pissed in this one.'
'I was afraid of that. An untutored palate. Your generation has never learned the pleasures that a trained palate confers on the disciplined few.'
Lee took a long drink of the brandy. He attempted an ecstatic 'aah,' inhaled some of the brandy, and began to cough. 'It is god-awful,' he said when he could talk. 'Still, better than California brandy. It has a suggestion of cognac taste.'
There was a long silence. Allerton was sitting with his head leaning back against the couch. His eyes were half closed.
'Can I show you over the house?' said Lee, standing up. 'In here we have the bedroom.'
Allerton got to his feet slowly. They went into the bedroom, and Allerton lay down on the bed and lit a cigarette. Lee sat in the only chair.
'More brandy?' Lee asked. Allerton nodded. Lee sat down on the edge of the bed, and filled his glass and handed it to him. Lee touched his sweater. 'Sweet stuff, dearie,' he said. 'That wasn't made in Mexico.'
'I bought it in Scotland,' he said. He began to hiccough violently, and got up and rushed for the bathroom.
Lee stood in the doorway. 'Too bad,' he said.
'What could be the matter? You didn't drink much.' He filled a glass with water and handed it to Allerton. 'You all right now?' he asked.
'Yes, I think so.' Allerton lay down on the bed again.
Lee reached out a hand and touched Allerton's ear, and caressed the side of his face. Allerton reached up and covered one of Lee's hands and squeezed it.
'Let's get this sweater off.'
'O.K.,' said Allerton. He took off the sweater and then lay down again. Lee took off his own shoes and shirt. He opened Allerton's shirt and ran his hand down Allerton's ribs and stomach, which contracted beneath his fingers. 'God, you're skinny,' he said.
'I'm pretty small.'
Lee took off Allerton's shoes and socks. He loosened Allerton's belt and unbuttoned his trousers.
Allerton arched his body, and Lee pulled the trousers and drawers off. He dropped his own trousers and shorts and lay down beside him. Allerton responded without hostility or disgust, but in his eyes Lee saw a curious detachment, the impersonal calm of an animal or a child.
Later, when they lay side by side smoking, Lee said, 'Oh, by the way, you said you had a camera in pawn you were about to lose?' It occurred to Lee that to bring the matter up at this time was not tactful, but he decided the other was not the type to take offense.
'Yes. In for four hundred pesos. The ticket runs out next Wednesday.'
'Well, let's go down tomorrow and get it out.' Allerton raised one bare shoulder off the sheet.
'O.K.,'he said.
Chapter 4
Friday night Allerton went to work. He was taking his roommate's place proofreading for an English newspaper.
Saturday night Lee met Allerton in the Cuba, a bar with an interior like the set for a surrealist ballet. The walls were covered with murals depicting underwater scenes. Mermaids and mermen in elaborate arrangements with huge goldfish stared at the customers with fixed, identical expressions of pathic dismay. Even the fish were invested with an air of ineffectual alarm. The effect was disquieting, as though these androgynous beings were frightened by something behind or to one side of the customers, who were made uneasy by this inferred presence. Most of them took their business someplace else.
Allerton was somewhat sullen, and Lee felt depressed and ill at ease until he had put down two martinis. 'You know, Allerton . . . ,' he said after a long silence. Allerton was humming to himself, drumming on the table and looking around restlessly. Now he stopped humming, and raised an eyebrow.
'This punk is getting too smart,' Lee thought. He knew he had no way of punishing him for indifference or insolence.
'They have the most incompetent tailors in Mexico I have encountered in all my experience as a traveller. Have you had any work done?' Lee looked pointedly at Allerton's shabby clothes. He was as careless of his clothes as Lee was. 'Apparently not. Take this tailor I'm hung up with.
Simple job. I bought a pair of ready-made trousers. Never took time for a fitting. Both of us could get in those pants.'
'It wouldn't look right,' said Allerton.
'People would think we were Siamese twins. Did I ever tell you about the Siamese twin who turned his brother in to the law to get him off the junk? But to get back to this tailor. I took the pants in with another pair. These pants is too voluminous,' I told him. 'I want them sewed down to the same size as this other pair here.' He promised to do the job in two days. That was more than two months ago. 'Manana,' 'mas tarde,' 'ahora,' 'ahorita,' and every time I come to pick up the pants it's 'todavia no'—not yet. Yesterday I had all the 'ahora' routine I can stand still for. So I told him, 'Ready or no, give me my pants.' The pants was all cut down the seams. I told him, Two months and all you have done is disembowel my trousers.' I took them to another tailor and told him, 'Sew them up.' Are you hungry?'
'I am, as a matter of fact.'
'How about Pat's Steak House?'
'Good idea.'
Pat's served excellent steaks. Lee liked the place because it was never crowded. At Pat's he ordered
