things like this. The important thing was his passport.
“Well, Larry, we are now in Switzerland,” she said. “You have no passport. What are you going to do?”
“I guess I’ve got to have a passport.” He fingered the peak of his cap, then he flushed. “Goddamn it! I’m still wearing this goddamn thing!” He tore the cap off his head and stuffed it under his thigh. “Excuse me, ma’am. I guess I’m a hick. I just don’t know when I’m wearing it.”
“How do you get another passport?” she asked. “What was this you said about… Ron?”
He shifted in his seat.
“Well, he gave me an address right here, ma’am. It costs, but I can get around to that.” He leaned forward, resting his big hands on the table and looked directly at her. “Look, ma’am, you’ve done enough for me. Thank you for everything. Thank you for getting me through the frontier. Thank you for this meal. You’ve been great! Now, I’m on my own. From now on, you don’t have to think of me. I’ll manage.”
She regarded him steadily.
“That was a very pretty speech, Larry, but I think you have been watching too much television. Your next line, set against a fading sunset should be, “And thanks for the memory, but this is goodbye”.”
He turned beetroot red as he gaped at her.
“What was that again, ma’am?”
She took from her bag her gold cigarette case and lit a cigarette with her gold Dunhill.
“I go so far, Larry, but don’t push it. I don’t kid easily. If you want to be on your own, then get up and go. If you want to manage on your own so bravely, I’m not stopping you, but don’t give me this corny dialogue… do I make myself clear?”
He reached for the peak of his cap, but not finding it, he ran his fingers through his hair.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t mean a come-on. Honest… I’m just a hick… excuse me.”
She sat still, her eyes cold and searching as she regarded him.
“If you want to be on your own, Larry, get up right now and get out of here!”
He flinched, then rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and she could see sweat beads forming on his forehead.
“I don’t want to go, ma’am… excuse me.”
“All right, but don’t ever try to con me again, Larry,” she said quietly. “I know it all. I’ve seen it all. While you were feeding the hens, I was in the middle of a jungle where men with fifty times your brain-power were cutting each other’s throat. The biggest throat cutter of them all was and still is my husband. Let’s get this straight. I like you… you’re a nice refreshing kid, but don’t try to con me.”
He nodded.
“I didn’t mean to… honest, ma’am.”
“All right. Now tell me what your friend told you about getting a passport.”
Unhappily and without much hope, he tried to reassert his manhood.
“It’s okay, ma’am. I can manage.”
She leaned forward.
“Isn’t it time you realized you can no more manage without me than you could have changed your nappy when you were three months old?”
He hung his head and she could see the depressed misery on his face.
“I guess you’re right, ma’am. That sure is laying it on the line. Yeah… I guess you’re right.”
“We don’t have to make a drama out of this,” she said. “What’s this about your passport?
“I can get a new passport in a new name. There’s a guy here in Basle who can fix it. I have his address right here,” and he tapped his shirt pocket.
“Why do you have to have a new name, Larry? Why can’t you go to the American Consul and tell them your passport has been stolen?”
He said nothing, but stared down at the table and the sweat beads on his forehead grew to drops and began to trickle down his face.
“Larry! I’m asking you a question!”
He looked up miserably.
“I guess the cops are looking for me.”
She felt a little jolt under her heart.
“Why?”
“It was this riot, ma’am. I told you it got rough. A guy right with me hit a cop with a brick, then he scrammed. Two other cops grabbed me. This cop had a bust nose. I told them I didn’t do it, but they didn’t believe me. They took my passport and started lugging me to the wagon when Ron turned up and rescued me. He told me to scram… so I scrammed.”
“So this tart didn’t steal your passport?”
“That’s right, ma’am, but she took everything else.”
She lit another cigarette while she thought.
“So the German police have your passport and they are looking for you… is that right?”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
She told herself: What I should do now is to pay the check, walk out and leave him. But because her body was yearning for him, she immediately dismissed this solution.
“You wouldn’t be lying to me, Larry?” she asked. “Be careful! I want the truth.”
He wiped his sweating face with the back of his hand, then looking at her, he shook his head.
“Swear to God, ma’am.”
She regarded him.
“Does God mean anything to you?”
He stiffened.
“Why, sure… God is God.”
She lifted her shoulders. She didn’t really care if he was lying or not. God is God… how simple it was to say that. Again she felt the hot blood move tormentingly down to her loins.
“Tell me about the passport. Who is this man?”
“I have his address right here.” He took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and pushed it across the table. “He’s a friend of Ron.” He hesitated, then went on, “It costs three thousand francs.”
Three thousand francs!
“You’re becoming a little expensive, aren’t you, Larry?” She looked at the typewritten address. The man’s name was Max Friedlander. The address meant nothing to her.
“Look, ma’am, I’ll manage. I’ll find a job…”
“Oh, stop it! We’ll go together and we’ll get the passport.”
He looked uneasily at her.
“I wouldn’t want you to get involved. You’ve already been too good for me. If you really mean to help, then give me the money and I’ll get it fixed.”
“If you imagine I am going to give you three thousand francs without being certain how you spend it, you need your head examined,” she said curtly.
She signalled to the waiter. As she was paying the check she asked him where the street was, written on the paper.
The waiter went away and returned with a street map and showed her exactly where to find the street. She slid him a tip that made his eyes widen, then she put on her wet mink coat and left the restaurant.
His shoulders hunched against the driving snow, Larry followed her.
Max Friedlander had a ground-floor apartment in a shabby block in a derelict-looking courtyard.
Plastered with snow and very cold, Helga looked at the name plate screwed to the door.
“This is it,” she said.
Larry took off his cap and shook the snow from it, replaced it and read the 39
name plate.
“Yeah. Look, ma’am, I don’t want you to get involved. I guess…”
“Oh, stop it! We’ve gone over that part of the script before,” Helga said impatiently and she rang the bell.
