Chenault was there, sitting alone in the patio and reading a secondhand copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. She looked very young and pretty, wearing a white dress and sandals, with her hair falling loose down her back. She smiled as I went over to the table and sat down.
What brings you in so early? I asked.
She closed her book. Oh, Fritz had to go somewhere and finish that story he’s been working on. I have to cash some traveler’s checks and I’m waiting for the bank to open.
Who’s Fritz? I said. . .
She looked at me as if I were not quite awake.
Yeamon? I asked quickly.
She laughed. I call him Fritz. That’s his middle name — Addison Fritz Yeamon. Isn’t that fine?
I agreed that it was. I had never thought of him as anything but Yeamon. As a matter of fact I knew almost nothing about him at all. During the course of those evenings at Al’s I had heard the life story of almost every man on the paper, but Yeamon invariably went straight home after work and I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a future so vague that there was no sense talking about it. Nonetheless, I felt that I knew him well enough so that we did not have to do much talking. From the very beginning I had felt a definite contact with Yeamon, a kind of tenuous understanding that talk is pretty cheap in this league and that a man who knew what he was after had damn little time to find it, much less to sit back and explain himself.
Nor did I know anything about Chenault, except that she had undergone a tremendous change since my first sight of her at the airport. She was tan and happy now, not nearly so tense with that nervous energy that had been so obvious when she wore her secretary suit. But not all of it was gone. Somewhere beneath that loose blonde hair and that friendly, little-girl smile I sensed a thing that was moving hard and fast toward some long-awaited opening. It made me a little nervous; and on top of that I remembered my initial lust for her and the sight of her locked with Yeamon that morning in the water. I also remembered those two immodest strips of white cloth around her ripe little body on the patio. All this was very much on my mind as I sat with her there at Al’s and ate my breakfast.
It was hamburger with eggs. When I came to San Juan Al’s menu consisted of beer, rum and hamburgers. It was a pretty volatile breakfast, and several times I was drunk by the time I got to work. One day I asked him to get some eggs and coffee. At first he refused, but when I asked him again he said he would. Now, for breakfast, you could have an egg on your hamburger, and coffee instead of rum.
Are you here for good? I said, looking up at Chenault.
She smiled. I don’t know. I quit my job in New York. She looked up at the sky. I just want to be happy. I’m happy with Fritz — so I’m here.
I nodded thoughtfully. Yeah, that seems reasonable.
She laughed. It won’t last. Nothing lasts. But I’m happy now.
Happy, I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception — especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
I was not ready to put any labels on Chenault, so I tried to change the subject.
What story is he working on? I asked, offering her a cigarette.