He knew the reason for it. This was a foul triumph of the dollar. Broadway, with its strangling costs and shrinking audience, needed so much money to survive that it had no recourse left but to fall on its knees to the Lester Atlases. And Atlas would give money. The price was his public embrace, and his vulgar hee-hawing in your ear, at the number-one table in Sardi's.
In a flash like a waking vision, Paperman found himself picturing what the Gull Reef Club must be like at this instant: the glittering moon path across black water, the dancers, Negro and white, on the terrace, the hibiscus flowers scarlet in the flare of kerosene flames, the lights jewelling Queen's Row and the dark hills, the pure ocean breeze scented with frangipani.
Henny had not lived twenty years in wedlock with Paperman, and five years out of it, without becoming expert at reading his face. She said, "Norm, tell me, how serious are you about that hotel?"
He said with a sharp, almost guilty turn of his head, "I think I'm just waiting to die here in New York, Henny. There has to be something better to do with the time I've got left."
She played with her bracelet. "It's really Eden, and all that jazz? It really is?"
"Look, the natives live in shacks. It gets too hot. It's a pleasant place. Sweetheart, the point is I know sixty people in here tonight, and every one of them goes south in winter. Every one. Dan Freed would come to
Gull Reef. Half of them would. It's something different. It's making money now, and we'd make more. But that isn't the main thing. What I picture, for both of us, is a chance to-"
"HAW! HAW! HAW!" The violent bellow made them both jump. "NORMAN HILTON, I PRESUME? Haw haw! How's the old trade-winds king?"
They had been too absorbed in their conversation to see him bearing down on them. He loomed over them in evening dress, his pince-nez glasses perched on his sunburned nose, his bald head peeling in odd patches. He carried a fat cigar as usual and a dark brown highball. His frilled shirt was a light blue. This was the color for people going on television, and Paperman thought that Lester Atlas was likely to appear on television, if ever, only in a brief interview at the gates of Sing Sing. But it was like him to affect the blue shirt.
"Hi, Lester."
"How about our wandering boy, Henny? Two days in the tropics and he sheds ten years. Gone with the trade winds. Haw haw! Listen, I've been telling Larry about the hotel. You know, Sir Laurence Olivier. He's dying to meet you. He says you sound like the smartest man in New York."
Henny felt Norman's hand in a restraining grip on her knee. She said, "Thanks, Les, but we have to get home."
Atlas, however, was already hauling Norman out of his chair and telling the waiter to bring him the check at Olivier's table. Paperman's skin crawled at the thought of being introduced to the star by Lester Atlas, but the only alternative was a physical scuffle, which he would lose anyway. He came along.
The star was gracious; he did appear curious about Gull Reef, and mildly amused at Atlas. There were three columnists at the table, besides Dan Freed and his wife. All these people were old friends of the Papermans, and they made room quickly, while Mrs. Freed exclaimed over Henny's bracelet. The columnists at once asked Paperman probing questions about the Gull Reef Club. Norman began to perk up. He was an old columnist-charmer, and for once now he had something fresh to talk about. He warmed to a word picture of the island, well aware that he was giving everyone a welcome diversion from the grim wait for the notices. Little details came back to him-the plash of the pelicans in Pitt Bay, the "hill crowd," the Turkish homosexual, the free mingling of blacks and whites on the dance floor, the underwater lights on the rocks, the Chad diplomats, the eight-fingered bartender with a gold ring in his ear. All these he used with his old raconteur's flair. Even Henny was drawn in. She knew his tricks and half imitated them: the ingratiating hoarse little chuckles, the play of the eyebrows, the eyes humorously crinkled almost shut, the outward flinging of both curved palms, the spice of an occasional Yiddish word: but she was still his best audience. Her face was alight, her laugh quick and loud.
Part of Paperman's charm was his care never to weary his listeners. He knew that the notices would soon arrive. With the questions still lively, the laughter still high, he stood, taking his wife's hand, and said he had to go home. Olivier drew a laugh by saying that he wanted to reserve the cottage named Desire right now. One of the columnists said, "Norman, how does the thing actually stand? Have you and Mr. Atlas bought the hotel yet? Or are you going to buy it, or what?"
Norman was not at all ready for the final wrench; nor was his wife, judging by the amused uncertainty on her face. He said, "Well, Henny and I are going down there, anyway, probably next week."
"To look at it again? Or buy it?"
"To buy it," Atlas interposed, "to buy it, of course. It's all set."
Paperman took a deep breath, and pressed his wife's hand. "To buy it."
Chapter four
The Deal
Henny loved Amerigo, from the moment she first saw its green hills in the morning sun through the windows of the bouncing inter-islands airplane. And Paperman's fear that, on second look, the enchanted island would prove a tawdry, hot, stupid little backwoods; that his infatuation with it had been a dream of a night and a day, woven of rainbows, moonbeams, wine, frangipani, and the bright glances of Iris Tramm-this, too, proved groundless.
They drove with Mrs. Ball in her Land Rover on a narrow broken back road along the sea, with magnificent vistas of hills and water, and glimpses of the gray ruins of old plantation houses set back in wild valleys. The ruins were what conquered Henny, and beat her quite to the ground. She had a passion for ruins. In European countries she could wander for hours amid crumbling walls open to the sky, even in heavy rain. She inquired hopefully whether the Gull Reef Club was a ruin, and showed her first sign of disappointment when Mrs. Ball told her that the building was twenty-nine years old.
Norman said, "Look, Henny, dynamite doesn't cost much. We can blow the place up and you can restore it."
Mrs. Ball laughed through her teeth and said that was a lovely thought; then, her long face sobering, she added that she had some rather glum news for Norman. Another buyer for the Gull Reef Club had appeared; three partners, actually, from Chicago. The men had visited the place a week ago and had decided straight off to buy it. She had not notified Paperman because the deal hadn't yet been concluded. "I don't know why not, exactly," she said, her voice shaken by the bumping of the car. "I'm a complete nitwit about these things, but there seems to be some involved haggling over the financing. For all I know you can still buy the Reef. I rather hope it'll be you, because these were rather coarse fellows, but you'd better talk to my solicitor today."
Norman's glance at his wife showed his shock. If the deal fell through now, after the story had appeared in half a dozen columns in New York and Hollywood, what a fool he would seem!
"Will you drop me at your lawyer's office, then?" he said. "Henny can go on to the Reef with you."
"Nothing easier." Mrs. Ball drove into Georgetown and parked on Prince of Wales Street by an arcade of shops. "His office is on the second floor," she said. "Let me just dash up and see if he's free."
Prince of Wales Street lay parallel to the ocean front. No breeze penetrated its rows of two-story stone buildings. The morning sun beat down white and fierce. Paperman felt the sweat rolling under his worsted suit, and he expected Henny to start complaining. But she was taking in the pink plaster arcades, the quiet street almost empty of automobiles, the black natives strolling by, with lively pleasure. "My God, the peace," she said. "I'd either be the happiest woman on earth, or I'd go absolutely nuts. Say, there's Little Constantinople!" Henny climbed out of the car. "Got to see Little Constantinople. Got to tell the Turk how I love my bracelet."
The proprietor, whose name was Hassim, greeted them with great ogles, bounces, and smiles. He was a rotund bald man in a striped sport shirt and orange slacks, with a scraggy mustache, a complexion of shiny khaki, and a bottom sw
aying like a woman's. He produced strange baritone twitters about Paperman's fine taste and ruthless bargaining, making no mention of Mrs. Tramm, but rolling his large humid brown eyes slyly at Norman, and licking his lips. Henny said when he flounced away into the back of his shop, "Gawd, I do believe he has designs on you." Hassim returned and pressed a little gray-and-white porcelain cat on her. She was ashamed of herself, and reluctant to take it-it was a fine Danish piece-but Hassim was importunate and charming.
"It is pure selfishness. We want people like you and Norman on the island. I will cheat you of ten times the value of it in due course."
Henny said as they left the shop, "He's nice, after all. Like so many of them." Behind her back, Hassim bestowed on her husband an obscene grimace, wallow, and wink.
Mrs. Ball was at the wheel of the Land Rover. "Hi. He's waiting for you," she called. "Through the alley, straight up the stairs. The firm is Collins and Turnbull. You want Collins."
Paperman entered a sunny courtyard brilliant with flowers, and climbed old steps of cracking red cement. In a roasting-hot anteroom lined with brown law books, a man stood holding out a meaty hand. "Hello. I'm Collins." He had a big cheerful face, remarkable for a baby nose and a heroically large chin. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, a ribbon tie, and dark trousers. "Come on inside. Sorry I don't have an air-conditioner. Never saw a November this hot. My inside office is cooler, we get the sea breeze."
Norman did not notice any sea breeze in the small whitewashed stone room, but a clanking fan disturbed the air a bit. Feet on desk, head cradled on interlocked fingers, the lawyer disclosed that he was from Philadelphia, that he had played left tackle for Penn State, that a hack injury developing into arthritis had compelled him to seek a warm climate, and that this had been the luckiest thing in his life. He had been living in Amerigo for twelve years now, and loved it more every year.
"About the Reef, now. Here's the story." He tossed Paperman a four-page letter from the attorney of the Chicago men. Glancing at the pages, Norman couldn't understand all the verbiage, but it was obvious that the negotiation was real, and far along. An arrangement of bank loans was the only remaining problem.
"Suppose, for argument's sake, I offered you a check this minute?" Paperman said, handing the letter back, and concealing his dismay with, he hoped, a nonchalant air.
Collins, sucking on a cold pipe, narrowed his eyes at Paperman. "My dear sir, these people have done a lot of talking, cabling, and writing, but we haven't seen their money yet. My client can't let a sure sale go for a possible one."
"How large would the check have to be?"
"About ten per cent is the usual binder. If you give me a check for five thousand dollars before they do, Gull Reef will be yours."
"May I call New York? I'll reverse the charge." Paperman gestured at the old heavy telephone on the desk.
"Please."
Placing an overseas call in Amerigo was not simple. The local operator did not answer for several minutes, and the overseas operator didn't answer at all. Collins sent his secretary, a pretty Negro girl in a yellow cotton frock, to hunt for her. The girl flushed the operator out of a nearby ice-cream parlor, and she came on the line rather out of breath and surly. She took the call and reported back in a little while that the New York office of Mr. "Ot-loss" said he had gone to Butte, Montana. He would be at the Capitol Hotel about five in the afternoon, Amerigo time.
Collins said cheerfully, "Well, that's probably time enough. I don't see these Chicago fellows coming through with a binder by then. Why don't you just go along to the Reef, and have a swim and enjoy yourself?"
Norman placed the call to Montana, and told the operator he would be at the Gull Reef Club. Collins walked with him through the anteroom, and shook hands with Paperman in the sunshine at the top of the staircase, in a doorway festooned with a vine of yellow flowers. "You know, this island isn't for everybody. I don't know about those Chicago fellows, but you strike me as a real Kinjan."
"Oh? Why?"
"It's a question of human quality." Collins squinted at him through the blue smoke of the pipe clenched in his oversize jaw. "Of course, if those Chicago fellows do come through today, there are other properties here. Hogan's Fancy just came on the market. Tell you what. Why don't you and your bride have a drink tonight with me at Hogan's Fancy? Say sixish? The sunset is out of this world up at Hogan's Fancy."
2
Henny waved a tall red drink at him; not her first, to judge by her furtively gay grin. She sat at a table in the bar with Mrs. Ball and a lean, tanned man who badly needed a shave. Architects' sketches lay scattered on the table. Everything about Gull Reef and the bar was the same-the peace, the dusty sea fans, the dazzling beach, the azure water, the frangipani-and more charming, with Lester Atlas out of the picture. "Hi, dear," Henny said. "We're having our elevenses. Old tropical custom. I think I'm going to like the tropics. Meet Tex Akers. He's a builder. Tex, this is Norman."
The man arose, with ramshackle unfolding motions, until he stood six and a half feet high. He had unkempt fringes of graying hair, an engaging smile, and hollow tapering jaws like a nutcracker. He held out a long brown arm streaked with yellow paint; there was also a dab of the paint on his cheek. Akers looked even taller than he was, because of his costume: a khaki shirt, paint-stained khaki shorts stopping well above the knee, and bare brown legs all the way down to little white sweat socks and mud-caked work shoes. "Hi, there, Mr. Paperman. Your little lady here sure does know construction."
Henny laughed. "Amateur stuff."
They plunged back into their talk, and Norman saw that she was showing off. Henny helped all her friends in decorating or remodeling their apartments. During a couple of Norman's leanest years-a period now seldom referred to-she had brought into the house what money there was by working for a decorator, while Norman lay around the house sunk in gloom, or tried to write short stories for the New Yorker, or went out and made a quick conquest of some Village slut to keep up his self-esteem.
"Do have a beer, Norman." Mrs. Ball waved at the bartender, who sat at the bar with the fat little Negro accountant, working over ledgers. The ragged Viking gave Norman a friendly smile, and brought the beer at once. "Welcome back, Mr. Paperman."
Mrs. Ball had told Tex Akers about Lester's ideas for adding rooms to the Club, it turned out, and Tex had worked up the sketches. Henny was volubly delighted with the Club, with Akers, with the sketches, with the island. Norman was not sure this rum-flavored approval would survive a solid lunch, but meantime she was rapping out ideas for colors, materials, and space-saving tricks, and reveling in the admiration of Mrs. Ball and the builder.
"By the way, how did you get on with Collins?" said Mrs. Ball.
"Very well. I've got a call in to Atlas."
"Oh, have you? Fine. Decent chap, Chunky. Best lawyer on the island. He didn't try to unload Hogan's Fancy on you, did he?"
"Well-he did invite us up there for a drink this evening."
Mrs. Ball laughed. "Poor Chunky. He bought Hogan's Fancy when he came here. He's never been able to get rid of it. But do go for the drink, the sunset is divine. Don't wear wooden clogs or anything, the termites will chew them right off your feet."
Paperman said to the builder, "How much would this job cost?"
"Hard to say. Your missus here is knocking off dollars by the minute."
"Well-ten thousand dollars?"
"Why, Mr. Paperman, I had it roughed out for five. I think your girl friend's got it down to three and a half, easy."
Henny beamed.
"See here," said Mrs. Ball, "if you're going to dig into these grubby details, why don't you join Thor and Neville over there? They're totting up last month's accounts. You can get a fair idea of how we run this silly place."
"Good idea."
The accountant and the bartender cordially took him into their conversation. Between the Scandinavian and Calypso accents, Paperman couldn't follow the arithmetic, but he soon perceived that Thor was
the real manager of the Club. All money was collected right here at the bar, where Thor had his small business desk set up beside the cash register. Departing guests came here to pay their bills; outsiders who wanted to dine at the club bought dinner chits from the bartender. It was a simple system, and obviously easy to control. Thor knew to a dollar the receipts week by week from the hotel guests, the bar, and the outside diners. He kept account books, bought the liquor, and supervised the cook's food purchases. Mrs. Ball's work, Norman gathered, was answering the letters and wires for reservations, keeping track of the reservation board, and spreading charm and sympathy. Norman was sure he could fill that role well, if in a different style.
"Tell me, Thor," he said, "how long have you been working here?"
Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival Page 9
