I realized that to tie myself down with an apartment and perhaps a car was more of a commitment than I wanted to make right now — especially since I might be hauled off to jail at any moment, or the paper might fold, or I might get a letter from some old friend about a job in Buenos Aires. Just yesterday, for that matter, I’d been ready to go to Mexico City.
But I knew I was coming to a point where I would have to make up my mind about Puerto Rico. I had been here three months and it seemed like three weeks. So far, there was nothing to get hold of, none of the real pros and cons I had found in other places. All the while I had been in San Juan I’d condemned it without really disliking it I felt that sooner or later I would see that third dimension, that depth that makes a city real and that you never see until you’ve been there awhile. But the longer I stayed, the more I came to suspect that for the first time in my life I had come to a place where this vital dimension didn’t exist, or was too nebulous to make any difference. Maybe, God forbid, the place was what it appeared to be — a melange of Okies and thieves and bewildered jibaros.
I walked for more than a mile, thinking, smoking, sweating, peering over tall hedges and into low windows on the street, listening to the roar of the buses and the constant barking of stray dogs, seeing almost no one but the people who passed me in crowded autos, heading for God knows where — whole families jammed in cars, just driving around the city, honking, yelling, stopping now and then to buy pastillos and a shot of coco frio, then getting back in the car and moving on, forever looking, wondering, marveling at all the fine things the yanquis were doing to the city: Here was an office building going up, ten stories tall — here was a new highway, leading nowhere — and of course there were always the new hotels to look at, or you could watch the yanqui women on the beach — and at night, if you arrived early enough to get a good seat, there was television in the public squares.
I kept walking, more frustrated with every step. Finally, in desperation, I hailed a cab and went to the Caribe Hilton, where they were staging an international tennis tournament. I used my press card to get in and sat in the stands the rest of the afternoon.
The sun didn’t bother me here. It seemed to belong with the clay courts and the gin and the white ball zipping back and forth. I remembered other tennis courts and long-gone days full of sun and gin and people I would never see again because we could no longer talk to each other without sounding dull and disappointed. I sat there in the grandstand, hearing the swack of the furry ball and knowing it would never sound like it did on those days when I knew who was playing, and cared.
The match was over at dusk and I took a cab up to Al’s. Sala was there, sitting alone at a corner table. I saw Sweep on the way to the patio and told him to bring two rums and three hamburgers. Sala looked up as I approached.
You have that fugitive look, he said. A man on the run.
I talked to Sanderson, I said. He thinks it may not come to court — or if it does it might take three years.
The moment I said this I regretted it. Now we would get into the subject of my bail again. Before he could reply I held up my hands. Forget it, I said. Let’s talk about something else.
He shrugged. Christ, I can’t think of anything that isn’t depressing or threatening. I feel hemmed in by disaster.
Where’s Yeamon? I asked.
He went home, he replied. Right after you left he remembered Chenault was still locked in the hut.
Sweep arrived with our drinks and food and I took them off the tray.