Out here, I yelled. Come on in.
She looked out at me and smiled, holding the raincoat between us like a veil. Then Yeamon woke up, looking puzzled and angry at whatever had broken his sleep.
Let’s go! I yelled. Up for the morning dip.
He stood up and ambled toward the water. Chenault called after him, waving his shorts. Here! she said sternly. Put these on!
I waited for them on the raft. Yeamon came first, thrashing across the bay like a crocodile. Then I saw Chenault swimming toward us, wearing her panties and bra. I began to feel uncomfortable. I waited until she got to the raft, then I slid off. I’m hungry as hell, I said, treading water. I’m going over to the airport for breakfast.
When I got to the beach I looked around for my bag. I remembered putting it in a tree the night before, but I couldn’t remember which one. Finally I found it, jammed into the crotch of two branches just above where I’d been sleeping. I put on some clean pants and a rumpled silk shirt.
Just before I left I glanced out at the raft and saw Yeamon jump naked into the water. Chenault laughed and tore off her bra and panties, then leaped in on top of him. I watched for a moment, then tossed my bag over the fence and climbed over after it.
I walked along a road that paralleled the runway, and after a half mile or so I came to the main hangar, a huge Quonset hut that bustled with activity. Planes landed every few minutes. Most of them were small Cessnas and Pipers, but every ten minutes or so a DC-3 would come in, bringing a fresh pack of revelers from San Juan.
I shaved in the men’s room, then pushed through the crowd to the restaurant. The people just off the planes were getting their free drinks, and in one corner of the hangar was a group of drunken Puerto Ricans, beating on their luggage to the tune of some chant I couldn’t understand. It sounded like a football cheer: Busha boomba, balla wa! Busha boomba, balla wa! I suspected they would never make it into town.
I bought a Miami Herald and had a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon. Yeamon arrived an hour or so later. Christ, I’m hungry, he said. I need a massive breakfast
Is Chenault still with us? I asked.
He nodded. She’s downstairs shaving her legs.
It was almost noon when we got a bus to town. It let us off at a public market and we started walking in the general direction of the Grand Hotel, stopping now and then to look in the few store windows that were not boarded up.
As we neared the middle of town the noise increased. But this was a different sound — not the roar of happy voices or the musical thump of drums, but the wild screams of a small group of people. It sounded like a gang war, punctuated by guttural cries and breaking glass.
We hurried toward it, cutting down a side street that led to the shopping district. When we turned the corner I saw a frenzied mob, jamming the street and blocking both sidewalks. We slowed down and approached cautiously.
About two hundred people had looted one of the big liquor stores. Most of them were Puerto Ricans. Cases of champagne and scotch lay broken in the street, and everyone I saw had a bottle.
They were screaming and dancing, and in the middle of the crowd a giant Swede wearing a blue jockstrap was blowing long blasts on a trumpet.
As we watched, a fat American woman raised two magnums of champagne above her head and smashed them together, laughing wildly as the glass and the booze rained down on her bare shoulders. A percussion corps of drunkards was beating with beer cans on empty scotch crates. It was the same chant I’d heard at the airport: Busha boomba, balla wa! Busha boomba, balla wa! All over the street people danced feverishly by themselves, jerking and yelling to the rhythm of the chant.
The liquor store was nothing but a shell, a bare room with broken windows in the front. People kept running in and out of it, grabbing stray bottles and drinking them as fast as they could before somebody else jerked them away. Empty bottles were tossed casually into the street, making it a sea of broken glass, studded with thousands of beer cans.