“Oh, in Hong Kong the millionaires had scouts all through the country. All over China. It was just like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ baseball team looking for ballplayers. As soon as a beautiful girl was located in any town or village their agents bought her and she was shipped in and trained and groomed and cared for.”
“But how did they look so beautiful in the morning if they had coiffures muy estilizado such as Chinese women wear? The more estilizado the hairdress, the worse they would look in the morning after a night like that.”
“They didn’t have such coiffures. They wore their hair shoulder length the way American girls did that year and the way many still do. It was curled, too, very softly. That was the way C.W. liked them. He had been in America and, naturally, he had seen the cinema.”
“Did you never have them again?”
“Only one at a time. C.W. would send me over one at a time as a present. But he never sent all three. They were new and naturally he wanted them for himself. And, too, he said he did not want to do anything that was bad for my morals.”
“He sounds like a fine man. What happened to him?”
“I believe he was shot.”
“Poor man. That was a nice story though and very delicate for a story like that. You seem more cheerful, too.”
I guess I am, Thomas Hudson thought. Well, that is what I set out to be. Or was it?
“Look, Lil,” he said. “Don’t you think we’ve drunk maybe just about enough of these?”
“How do you feel?”
“Better.”
“Make Tomás another double frozen without sugar. I’m getting a little drunk. I don’t want anything.”
I do feel better, Thomas Hudson thought. That is the funny part. You always feel better and you always get over your remorse. There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death.
“You ever been dead?” he said to Lil.
“Of course not.”
“Yo tampoco.”
“Why did you say that? You scare me when you talk like that.”
“I don’t mean to scare you, honey. I don’t want to scare anybody ever.”
“I like it when you call me honey.”
This isn’t getting anywhere, Thomas Hudson thought. Isn’t there anything else you could do that would produce the same effect rather than sit with beat-up old Honest Lil in La Floridita at the old tarts’ end of the bar and get drunk? If you only have four days couldn’t you employ them better? Where?, he thought. At Alfred’s Sin House? You’re doing all right where you are. The drinking couldn’t be any better, nor as good, anywhere in the world and you’re down to the drinking now, kid, and you better get just as far in it as you can. That’s what you’ve got now and you better like it and like it on all frequencies. You know you always liked it and you loved it and it’s what you have now, so you better love it.
“I love it,” he said out loud.
“What?”
“Drinking. Not just drinking. Drinking these double frozens without sugar. If you drank that many with sugar it would make you sick.”
“Ya lo creo. And if anybody else drank that many without sugar they’d be dead.”
“Maybe I’ll be dead.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll just break the record and then we’ll go to my place and you’ll go to sleep and the worst thing that will happen is if you snore.”
“Did I snore last time?”
“Horrores. And you called me by about ten different names in the night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I thought it was funny. I learned two or three things I didn’t know. Don’t your other girls ever get upset when you call them by so many different names?”
“I haven’t any other girls. Just a wife.”
“I try hard to like her and think well of her but it is very difficult. Naturally I never let anyone speak against her.”
“I’ll speak against her.”
“No. Don’t. That is vulgar. I hate two things. Men when they cry. I know they have to cry. But I don’t like it. And I hate to hear them speak against their wives. Yet they nearly all do. So don’t you do it, because we are having such a lovely time.”