wearing steel-rimmed eyeglasses, looking somewhat mathematical. A cipher.
The coal black machine the German used for counting looked as if it had somehow survived the Weimar Republic. In addition to the machine, there were red-and-blue-edged letter envelopes scattered all over the inn manager's desk: news from the Fatherland.
Resting on some of the papers was a big foamy mug of W@burger dark.
Peter stood in the doorway, reluctant to announce himself to the huffy young German. Then the pecking on the adding machine stopped.
'Peter, what do you want? Can't you see I'm too busy with all of these fools checking out of the hotel?'
Looking slightly dizzy, the white-blond man eyed him with distaste over his wire rims. 'Macdonald, what is it you want! ' The strident voice came once again. I want to beam myself right back out of your office, Peter was thinking. You're so full of yourself, hot shit and vinegar, that it turns my stomach.
'I have to ask a personal favor,' Peter said softly, wincing inside at the toady way the words came out. Playing Heinrich Himmler to Max's Hitler. 'I need to borrow your BMW.'
The inn manager huffed out a small nose laugh. 'Borrow my motorcycle? Have you gone mad? Leave me alone. Get out of here.'
'Yeah, well, in a minute.... You see, I've got to talk to somebody else about the man I saw on the Shore Highway yesterday. It's bothering me, Max. I've got to find out why the hell they-'
'You talked to me, Macdonald,' Westerhuis cut in. 'I talked to the stupid newspaper people. You talked to the policeman last night. People know about your man up on the hill, night wahr? Now I tell you, leave. You don't ever call me Max, by the way. '
Peter suddenly cut off all pretense of diplomacy. 'I want to talk to the American ambassador in Coastown!... Lives could be at issue here, Westerhuis. I need your fucking BMW for two or three hours. That's it, you know. Be a human being, huh? Pretend. '
The inn manager began to use one side of his metal office desk like a brass drum. 'Absolutely not!' he pounded. 'I thought it over for five seconds, and the answer is no! Now get out of here. One more word and I fire you as bartender Johnny on the spot.'
Peter turned away and started out of the claustrophobic office. 'Peter on the spot,' he mumbled. 'Screw you, you Nazi- love child.'
'What is that I hear?' Westerhuis called out the door after him.
Then, chik, chik, chik, he was operating the antique tabulator again, thinking: Poor damn fool Peter Macdonald. Poor fool bartender. Should have stayed in the army for your entire life. Outside, an expensive-looking silver key was turning the ignition of the shiny black BMW motorcycle-Peter Macdonald and Jane Cooke had taken big steps in the wrong crazy direction. Both of them were about to jump in way over their heads.
Peter said, 'Sure. Max said it was okay.... Hang on tight, here we go!'
Which was, perhaps, the understatement of the decade.
CHAPTER NINE
I believed that Damian could be happy in Europe on $10 a day. I could be content, I think, on Jacqueline Onassis's $ 1 0,000 a week. Sometimes I find myself reading Cosmopolitan and identifying with Jackie. Weird fantasy lifel I've even plotted out how I could get to marry one (or more) of the world's richest men.... Damian could be wealthy if he cared primarily about money. Damian could be an international film star like Bronson or Clint Eastwood. or the still-life president of General Motors. Damian could be, Damian could be... sitting on rocks in Crete. Starting to repeat myself as I approach thirty. Scary thoughts for your basic hick out of Nebraska.
The Rose Diary
Coastown, San Dominica
In the middle of a world of hack-arounds-fruit and straw vendors, fruits, package-rate tourists, cabdrivers by the gross, beeping double-decker buses-Carrie Rose looked around Politician Square and tried to single out one poor bugger who had to be sacrificed that morning.
She concentrated on ten or so long-haired dopers grazing near the entrance to Wahoo Public Beach.
Here pure white trash floated down from the United States... seniiacceptable bums in tie-dyed REGGAE T- shirts. In LOVE RASTAFARI T-shirts. Drinking out of Blue Label beer cans. Chewing gum to a man. Eatin fresh coconut.
Beyond choosing the comatose group, it was all too disturbingly arbitrary, Carrie couldn't help thinking. Depressing. Darnian's sort of game.
Finally she settled on a short, skinny one. A freak's freak among the idle young Americans. Carrie named him the Loner.
The Loner appeared to be nineteen or twenty. Dirty jeans and a buckskin vest over his bare, sunken chest. Long, stringy blond hair. Wide moon eyes.
The Loner was also smoking island marijuana like a morning's first cup of Maxwell House coffee.
Carrie Rose stopped a schoolboy walking on her side of the triangular street section. A pretty brown boy of eight or nine. Books all neat and nice, held together in a red rubber sling. She asked him if he had time to earn fifty cents before his classes started that morning.
When the boy said that he did, Carrie pointed through the crowds. She directed his eyes until he saw the long-haired white man in the gold vest.
The Loner had moved up against the wall of a paint-scabbing boathouse. 'Holding up the walls,' they used to say back in her hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska.
'All you have to do,' Carrie explained to the schoolboy, 'is take this letter to that man. Give him this five dollars here. Tell him he has to deliver my letter to Fifty Bath Street. Fifty Bath Street....
