It was amusing to see how they handled it, because if they thought about it at all there was only one way out — to praise the ends and ignore the means, a time-honored custom that justifies almost anything except shrinking profits.
To go to a cocktail party in San Juan was to see all that was cheap and greedy in human nature. What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and clowns and philistines with gimp mentalities. It was a new wave of Okies, heading south instead of west, and in San Juan they were kingfish because they had literally taken over.
They formed clubs and staged huge social events, and finally one of them began publishing a merciless scandal sheet that terrified and intimidated everyone whose past was not politically pure. This took in half the gang, including poor Lotterman, who suffered some vicious libel almost every week.
There was no shortage of free liquor for the press, because all hustlers crave publicity. No occasion was too small for them to give what they called a press party in its honor. Each time Woolworth’s or the Chase Manhattan Bank opened a new branch, they celebrated with an orgy of rum. Not a month went by without the opening of a new bowling alley; they were building them on every vacant lot, so many bowling alleys that it was horrible to ponder the meaning of it.
From the new San Juan Chamber of Commerce came a stream of statements and proclamations that made Jehovah’s Witnesses seem pale and pessimistic — long breast-beating screeds, announcing one victory after another in the crusade for Big Money. And on top of all this, there was a never-ending round of private parties for visiting celebrities. Here again, no half-wit Riwanian was too insignificant for a blow-out in his honor.
I usually went to these things with Sala. At the sight of his camera the guests would turn to jelly. Some of them would act like trained pigs and others would mill around like sheep, all waiting for the man from the paper to push his magic button and make their lavish hospitality pay off.
We tried to go early, and while Sala was herding them around for a series of meaningless photos that would probably never even be developed, I would steal as many bottles of rum as I could carry. If there was a bartender I would tell him I wanted a bit of drink for the press, and if he protested I would take them anyway. No matter what kind of outrage I committed, I knew they would never complain.
Then we would head for Al’s, dropping the rum at the apartment on the way. We put all the bottles on an empty bookshelf and sometimes there were as many as twenty or thirty. In a good week we would hit three parties and average three or four bottles for each half hour of painful socializing. It was a good feeling to have a stock of rum that would never run out, but after a while I could no longer stand even a few minutes at each party, and I had to give it up.
Seven
One Saturday in late March, when the tourist season was almost over and the merchants were bracing themselves for the muggy low-profit summer, Sala had an assignment to go down to Fajardo, on the eastern tip of the island, and take some pictures of a new hotel that was going up on a hill overlooking the harbor. Lotterman thought the News could strike a cheerful note by pointing out that things were going to be even better next season.
I decided to go along for the ride. Ever since I’d come to San Juan I’d been meaning to get out on the island, but without a car it was impossible. My furthest penetration had been to Yeamon’s, about twenty miles out, and Fajardo was twice as far in the same direction. We decided to get some rum and stop by his place on the way back, hoping to get there just as he paddled in from the reef with a bulging sack of lobsters. He’s probably damn good at it by now, I said. God knows what he’s living on — they must have a steady diet of lobster and chicken.