cabins of split bamboo. Two old rusty battleships were moored in the middle of the river—the Ecuadoran Navy. Lee sat there a full hour, then got up and walked back to the hotel. It was three o'clock. Allerton was still in bed. Lee sat down on the edge of the bed. 'It's three o'clock, Gene. Time to get up.'
'What for?'
'You want to spend your life in bed? Come on out and dig the town with me. I saw some beautiful boys on the waterfront. The real uncut boy stuff. Such teeth, such smiles. Young boys vibrating with life.'
'All right. Stop drooling.'
'What have they got that I want, Gene? Do you know?'
'No.'
'They have maleness, of course. So have I. I want myself the same way I want others. I'm disembodied. I can't use my own body for some reason.' He put out his hand. Allerton dodged away.
'What's the matter?'
'I thought you were going to run your hand down my ribs.'
'I wouldn't do that. Think I'm queer or something?'
'Frankly, yes.'
'You do have nice ribs. Show me the broken one. Is that it there?' Lee ran his hand halfway down Allerton's ribs. 'Or is it further down?'
'Oh, go away.'
'But, Gene ... I am due, you know.'
'Yes, I suppose you are.'
'Of course, if you'd rather wait until tonight. These tropical nights are so romantic. That way we could take twelve hours or so and do the thing right.' Lee ran his hands down over Allerton's stomach. He could see that Allerton was a little excited.
Allerton said, 'Maybe it would be better now. You know I like to sleep alone.'
'Yes, I know. Too bad. If I had my way we'd sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes.'
Lee was taking off his clothes. He lay down beside Allerton. 'Wouldn't it be booful if we should juth run together into one gweat big blob,' he said in baby talk. 'Am I giving you the horrors?'
'Indeed you are.'
Allerton surprised Lee by an unusual intensity of response. At the climax he squeezed Lee hard around the ribs. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
Lee smoothed his eyebrows with his thumbs. 'Do you mind that?' he asked.
'Not terribly.'
'But you do enjoy it sometimes? The whole deal, I mean.'
'Oh, yes.'
Lee lay on his back with one cheek against Allerton's shoulder, and went to sleep.
Lee decided to apply for a passport before leaving Guayaquil. He was changing clothes to visit the embassy, and talking to Allerton. 'Wouldn't do to wear high shoes. The Consul is probably an elegant pansy. . . . 'My dear, can you believe it? High shoes. I mean real old button-hooky shoes.
I simply couldn't take my eyes off those shoes. I'm afraid I have no idea what he wanted.'
'I hear they are purging the State Department of queers. If they do, they will be operating with a skeleton staff , . . ah, here they are.'Lee was putting on a pair of low shoes. 'Imagine walking in on the Consul and asking him right out for money to eat on. ... He rears back and claps a scented handkerchief over his mouth, as if you had dropped a dead lobster on his desk: 'You're broke!
Really, I don't know why you come to me with this revolting disclosure. You might show a modicum of consideration. You must realize how distasteful this sort of thing is. Have you no pride?''
Lee turned to Allerton. 'How do I look? Don't want to look too good, or he will be trying to get in my pants. Maybe you'd better go. That way we'll get our passports by tomorrow.'
Listen to this.' Lee was reading from a
Guayaquil paper. 'It seems that the Peruvian delegates at the anti-tuberculosis congress in Salinas appeared at the meeting carrying huge maps on which were shown the parts of Ecuador appropriated by Peru in the 1939 war. The Ecuadoran doctors might go to the meeting twirling shrunken heads of Peruvian soldiers on their watch chains.'
Allerton had found an article about the heroic fight put up by Ecuador's wolves of the sea.
'Their what?'
'That's what it says: Lobos del Mar. It seems that one officer stuck by his gun, even though the mechanism was no longer operating.'
'Sounds simpleminded to me.'
They decided to look for a boat in Las Playas. Las Playas was cold and the water was rough and muddy, a dreary middle-class resort. The food was terrible, but the room without meals was almost the same as full pension. They tried one lunch. A plate of rice without sauce, without anything. Allerton said, 'I am hurt.' A tasteless soup with some fibrous material floating in it that looked like soft, white wood. The main course was a
