'Hello, Horace,' in a clear voice. Horace nodded without speaking and sat down as far from Lee as he could get in the small restaurant. Lee smiled. His food arrived and he ate quickly, like an animal, cramming bread and steak into his mouth and washing it down with gulps of milk. He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
'Un cafe solo,' he called to the waitress as she walked by, carrying a pineapple soda to two young Mexicans in double-breasted pinstripe suits. One of the Mexicans had moist brown pop-eyes and a scraggly moustache of greasy black hairs. He looked pointedly at Lee, and Lee looked away. 'Careful,' he thought, 'or he will be over here asking me how I like Mexico.' He dropped his half-smoked cigarette into half an inch of cold coffee, walked over to the counter, paid the bill, and was out of the restaurant before the Mexican could formulate an opening sentence. When Lee decided to leave some place, his departure was abrupt.
The Ship Ahoy had a few phony hurricane lamps by way of a nautical atmosphere. Two small rooms with tables, the bar in one room, and four high, precarious stools. The place was always dimly lit and sinister- looking. The patrons were tolerant, but in no way bohemian. The bearded set never frequented the Ship Ahoy. The place existed on borrowed time, without a liquor license, under many changes of management. At this time it was run by an American named Tom Weston and an American-born Mexican.
Lee walked directly to the bar and ordered a drink. He drank it and ordered a second one before looking around the room to see if Allerton was there. Allerton was alone at a table, tipped back in a chair with one leg crossed over the other, holding a bottle of beer on his knee. He nodded to Lee. Lee tried to achieve a greeting at once friendly and casual, designed to show interest without pushing their short acquaintance. The result was ghastly.
As Lee stood aside to bow in his dignified old-world greeting, there emerged instead a leer of naked lust, wrenched in the pain and hate of his deprived body and, in simultaneous double exposure, a sweet child's smile of liking and trust, shockingly out of time and out of place, mutilated and hopeless.
Allerton was appalled. 'Perhaps he has some sort of tic,' he thought. He decided to remove himself from contact with Lee before the man did something even more distasteful. The effect was like a broken connection. Allerton was not cold or hostile; Lee simply wasn't there so far as he was concerned. Lee looked at him helplessly for a moment, then turned back to the bar, defeated and shaken.
Lee finished his second drink. When he looked around again, Allerton was playing chess with Mary, an American girl with dyed red hair and carefully applied makeup, who had come into the bar in the meantime. 'Why waste time here?' Lee thought. He paid for the two drinks and walked out.
He took a cab to the Chimu Bar, which was a fag bar frequented by Mexicans, and spent the night with a young boy he met there.
At that time the G.I. students patronized Lola's during the daytime and the Ship Ahoy at night.
Lola's was not exactly a bar. It was a small beer-and-soda joint. There was a Coca-Cola box full of beer and soda and ice at the left of the door as you came in. A counter with tube-metal stools covered in yellow glazed leather ran down one side of the room as far as the juke box. Tables were lined along the wall opposite the counter. The stools had long since lost the rubber caps for the legs, and made horrible screeching noises when the maid pushed them around to sweep.
There was a kitchen in back, where a slovenly cook fried everything in rancid fat. There was neither past nor future in Lola's. The place was a waiting room, where certain people checked in at certain times.
Several days after his pick-up in the Chimu, Lee was sitting in Lola's, reading aloud from Ultimas Noticias to Jim Cochan. There was a story about a man who murdered his wife and children, Cochan looked about for a means to escape, but every time he made a move to go, Lee pinned him down with: 'Get a load of this. . . . 'When his wife came home from the market, her husband, already drunk, was brandishing his .45.' Why do they always have to brandish it?'
Lee read to himself for a moment. Cochan stirred uneasily. 'Jesus Christ,' said Lee, looking up.
'After he killed his wife and three children he takes a razor and puts on a suicide act.' He returned to the paper: ''But resulted only with scratches that did not require medical attention.'
What a slobbish performance!' He turned the page and began reading the leads half-aloud:
'They're cutting the butter with Vaseline. Fine thing. Lobster with drawn K.Y. . . . Here's a man was surprised in his taco stand with a dressed-down dog ... a great long skinny hound dog at that.
There's a picture of him posing in front of his taco stand with the dog. . , . One citizen asked another for a light. The party in second part don't have a match so first part pulls an ice pick and kills him. Murder is the national neurosis of Mexico.'
Cochan stood up. Lee was on his feet instantly. 'Sit down on your ass, or what's left of it after four years in the Navy,' he said.
'I got to go.'
'What are you, henpecked?'
'No kidding. I been out too much lately. My old lady. . . .'
Lee wasn't listening. He had just seen Allerton stroll by outside the door and look in. Allerton had not greeted Lee, but walked on after a momentary pause. 'I was in the shadow,' Lee thought.
'He couldn't see me from the door.' Lee did not notice Cochan's departure.
On a sudden impulse he rushed out the door. Allerton was half a block away. Lee overtook him.
Allerton turned, raising his eyebrows, which were straight and black as a pen stroke. He looked surprised and a bit alarmed, since he was dubious of Lee's sanity. Lee improvised desperately.
'I just wanted to tell you Mary was in Lola's a little while ago. She asked me to tell you she would be in the Ship Ahoy later on, around five.' This was partly true. Mary had been in and had asked Lee if he had seen Allerton.
Allerton was relieved. 'Oh, thank you,' he said, quite cordial now. 'Will you be around tonight?'
'Yes, I think so.' Lee nodded and smiled, and turned away quickly.
