Chapter 6
Thursday Lee went to the races, on the recommendation of Tom Weston. Weston was an amateur astrologer, and he assured Lee the signs were right. Lee lost five races, and took a taxi back to the Ship Ahoy.
Mary and Allerton were sitting at a table with the Peruvian chess player. Allerton asked Lee to come over and sit down at the table.
'Where's that phony whore caster?' Lee said, looking around.
'Tom give you a bum steer?' asked Allerton.
'He did that.'
Mary left with the Peruvian. Lee finished his third drink and turned to Allerton. 'I figure to go down to South America soon,' he said. 'Why don't you come along? Won't cost you a cent.'
'Perhaps not in money.'
'I'm not a difficult man to get along with. We could reach a satisfactory arrangement. What you got to lose?'
'Independence.'
'So who's going to cut in on your independence? You can lay all the women in South America if you want to. All I ask is be nice to Papa, say twice a week. That isn't excessive, is it? Besides, I will buy you a round-trip ticket so you can leave at your discretion.'
Allerton shrugged. 'I'll think it over,' he said. 'This job runs ten days more. I'll give you a definite answer when the job folds.'
'Your job. . . .' Lee was about to say, 'I'll give you ten days' salary.' He said, 'All right.'
Allerton's newspaper job was temporary, and he was too lazy to hold a job in any case.
Consequently his answer meant 'No.' Lee figured to talk him over in ten days. 'Better not force the issue now,' he thought.
Allerton planned a three-day trip to Morelia with his co-workers in the newspaper office. The night before he left, Lee was in a state of manic excitement. He collected a noisy table full of people.
Allerton was playing chess with Mary, and Lee made all the noise he could. He kept his table laughing, but they all looked vaguely uneasy, as if they would prefer to be someplace else. They thought Lee was a little crazy. But just when he seemed on the point of some scandalous excess of speech or behavior, he would check himself and say something completely banal.
Lee leaped up to embrace a new arrival. 'Ricardo! Amigo mio!' he said. 'Haven't seen you in a dog's age. Where you been? Having a baby? Sit down on your ass, or what's left of it after four years in the Navy. What's troubling you, Richard? Is it women? I'm glad you came to me instead of those quacks on the top floor.'
At this point Allerton and Mary left, after consulting for a moment in low tones. Lee looked after them in silence. 'I'm playing to an empty house now,' he thought. He ordered another rum and swallowed four Benzedrine tablets. Then he went into the head and smoked a roach of tea. 'Now I will ravish my public,' he thought.
The busboy had caught a mouse and was holding it up by the tail. Lee pulled out an old-fashioned .22 revolver he sometimes carried. 'Hold the son of a bitch out and I'll blast it,' he said, striking a Napoleonic pose. The boy tied a string to the mouse's tail and held it out at arm's length. Lee fired from a distance of three feet. His bullet tore the mouse's head off.
'If you'd got any closer the mouse would have clogged the muzzle,' said Richard.
Tom Weston came in. 'Here comes the old whore caster,' Lee said. 'That retrograde Saturn dragging your ass, man?'
'My ass is dragging because I need a beer,' said Weston.
'Well, you've come to the right place. A beer for my astrologizing friend. . . . What's that? I'm sorry, old man,' Lee said, turning to Weston, 'but the bartender say the signs aren't right to serve you a beer. You see, Venus is in the sixty-ninth house with a randy Neptune and he couldn't let you have a beer under such auspices.' Lee washed down a small piece of opium with black coffee.
Horace walked in and gave Lee his brief, cold nod. Lee rushed over and embraced him. 'This thing is bigger than both of us, Horace,' he said. 'Why hide our love?'
Horace thrust out his arms rigidly. 'Knock it off,' he said. 'Knock it off.'
'Just a Mexican abrazo, Horace. Custom of the country. Everyone does it down here.'
'I don't care what the custom is. Just keep away from me.'
'Horace! Why are you so cold?'
Horace said, 'Knock it off, will you?' and walked out. A little later he came back and stood at the end of the bar drinking a beer.
Weston and Al and Richard came over and stood with Lee. 'We're with you, Bill,' Weston said. 'If he lays a finger on you I'll break a beer bottle over his head.'
Lee did not want to push the routine past a joking stage. He said, 'Oh, Horace is okay, I guess.
But there's a limit to what I can stand still for. Two years he hands me these curt nods. Two years he walks into Lola's and looks around—'Nothing in here but fags,' he says and goes out on the street to drink his beer. Like I say, there is a limit.'
Allerton came back from his trip to Morelia sullen and irritable. When Lee asked if he had a good trip, he muttered, 'Oh, all right,' and went in the other room to play chess with Mary. Lee felt a charge of anger pass through his body. 'I'll make him pay for this somehow,' he thought.
Lee considered buying a half-interest in the Ship Ahoy. Allerton existed on credit at the Ship Ahoy,
