accounts, is probably the weakest link in the chain, Quinn was thinking, and the nicest. I could like Whitfield a lot and don’t care to know why. But I won’t badger him any more. Besides, I might look elsewhere.
Old habits were stirring in him, rising like snakes uncoiling. Quinn felt relaxed, confident and no longer pressed. And if feeling friendly was not one of his old habits, it had always been an old wish. He let it show, not feeling worried about Whitfield.
God help me, thought Whitfield, he has either gone simple again or that smile is genuine.
“Back to business,” said Whitfield, as if he were somebody else.
“Okay.”
“You can sell me the bleedin’ cans for eight dollars the lot, an outrageous price as I told you, a love price, Quinn. But then I don’t love anyone anyway and so can afford it. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Preserve me. Let’s go home.” Whitfield turned on his heel and walked to the door.
First they drove to the garden wall of Beatrice’s house, where the servant stood by the gate, waiting for the car. No, he told them, Missus Rutledge wasn’t in, and Whitfield said they could say goodbye to chances for a normal dinner. Home then.
They walked away from Beatrice’s house and smelled the night smell coming out of the garden. Between two houses, they took stone steps which went up to another street, and on that street they came to a corner where a strong odor of roasted coffee hung in the dark air, a warm smell lying there like a pool.
“It’s always here,” said Whitfield, “because of that roasting house at the corner.”
Quinn saw no roasting house-only dark walls and the sky overhead, like a gray upside-down street.
“Which means,” said Whitfield, “day or night, drunk or sober, I can always find my way home by the odor cloud at this corner. Doesn’t that make you feel weird? Makes me feel like a dog, Quinn, going home by scent, and that does make me feel weird.”
“I don’t like to feel like a dog. They get eaten around here, you said.”
“Well,” said Whitfield. “Well! I thought I was being weird.”
At Whitfield’s apartment Quinn saw the two rooms, the two ceiling fans paddling around and around with an oily motion, and the tub in the room where the bed stood. There was water in the tub and in the water swam a label which said GIN. While Whitfield changed his shirt Quinn looked at the balcony through the French doors. Then he opened the doors and looked at all the cartons out there. He saw all the regulation gin bottles there, not cans, not odd bottles, and each of them the same brand. True, the labels of some were missing, but Quinn knew how that had come about. He closed the balcony doors again and thought, if there is no sweet racket here, smuggling this and that, then there sure as hell ought to be.
He sat down on top of the books on the couch and watched Whitfield come back with a handful of bills.
“I’ll have to give you your money,” said Whitfield, “in local currency. It’s a pile, like I told you,” and he put it on the table. “Now, watch this. Bottle of wine? A dollar to you, I should think. Here, fifteen cents. A meal. Dollar- fifty or more? Here, ten cents and up, to maybe fifty cents, figuring your kind of money You follow?”
“Yes. Cheap spot here.”
“There is an additional point: carry no more than one of these bills on you, which is about fifty cents. You don’t need more to get through a day or so. This way it won’t be too likely that you’ll get robbed.”
“All right,” said Quinn and got up. He absently stuffed all the bills in his pocket and then he hitched his pants.
“You can sleep here tonight,” said Whitfield. “I forgot to mention it.”
“All right,” said Quinn and walked to the door.
“I say, you do sound absent-minded, Quinn.”
Quinn stopped at the door and opened it. He hadn’t been listening.
“And I say, are you going out?”
“Yes. I’ll be back in a while. Got to go out and think.”
“But you mustn’t!” and Whitfield ran to the door. He touched the door and then he took his hand away. He blinked at Quinn but did not quite understand the expression he saw on his face.
“And of course Remal will be over shortly. To find out how it went with the consul, to arrange for your accommodations…”
“And to tell me I’m confined to quarters after dark?”
Whitfield raised his hand once more to touch the door, but then he just dropped it. He said, “Oh, hell,” and stepped back. What’s happened to my baby from the box, he thought, and why the hell should I try to handle it Quinn walked out and down the stairs. He stood in the hall downstairs for a moment and wondered why he hadn’t heard Whitfield close the door all this time, but he didn’t dwell on it. He walked out, found the roasting odor, made his turn in the dark. He walked in the dark, except when crossing the main street. In the darkness again he occasionally watched the sky street overhead, and sometimes the blind walls of the houses. He felt alone and liked it. He felt he was growing up again, old habits, new habits, no matter what, and this feeling was like a tonic, the way recklessness can be.
At the end of a street was the long quay with the sky now very big overhead. The Mediterranean was black. It was here only a licking sound and a wet smell, but not an ocean.
The warehouse was dark and Quinn went there. At both ends of the building a fence closed off the company dock, a wire mesh fence, where Quinn hooked his fingers into the loops and stood looking. He saw a junk with a light swinging somewhere inside and he saw a motor yacht tied to the pier. Then the wire mesh moved under his hands, a give and a sway, making Quinn think of a net.
“Yes?” said the man.
Quinn saw that the man stood by the fence the same way he himself was doing it, hanging his hands there from hooked fingers. Big, white teeth showed in the man’s very dark face and Quinn wondered if this was a smile.
“Yes? Yes?” said the man, always showing the smile.
“Yes what?” said Quinn.
“Yes, Yes?”
It’s the only English he knows, thought Quinn, and he is a beggar.
“Yes?” said the man again and this time he laughed. He swayed the fence a little and laughed.
“I don’t know what you want,” said Quinn and turned away.
He looked through the fence and wished that the man, who might also be an idiot, would stop swaying the wire mesh. The mesh swayed more and suddenly gave a wild jerk, hitting Quinn in the face.
“Yes? Yes?”
The man laughed again even though Quinn turned with a sharp motion, full of anger.
“Yes!”
What to say. How talk to an idiot who knows one word and laughs all the time. And then Quinn saw that there was another man.
Then he realized why he had not heard either of them. One of them was barefooted and the other, the grinning one by the fence, had rags wound around his feet, giving them the shape of soft loaves.
The barefooted one came from the water side and the grinning one also came closer. Then the barefooted one leaped.
Quinn smelled a terrible stink from the man, and for that first moment Quinn struggled only because of that. But then the grinning one hurt him. He had his arms around Quinn’s middle and his hands dug Quinn in the spine. For some strange reason, Quinn could suddenly hear nothing. The man let go, stepped back, hit Quinn in the face. Quinn felt confused and therefore weak. Even the slap in the face did not arouse him. He found no anger, no strength, no clear-cut emotion. He wanted to say “Why?”, and he wanted to ask this for most of the time that he was still conscious.
It was a strange fight and it did not last very long. Quinn hit back and saw the man laugh. He could hear again in a moment and heard the dry skin sound of bare feet, the lick sound of the water, cough sound of the idiot laugh, twang sound of the fence, which gave like a net when the three men rolled against it. Quinn did not hurt much while they fought nor did he enjoy much what he was doing. Then he tasted blood and then his head jarred and he went out.
When he woke up he thought that he was on the junk with the light inside. He saw the light swaying and felt
