Don’t worry, I said. We’ll be there.
The mob was piling up now. A plane left for San Juan every half hour, but all the seats were reserved. The people waiting for vacancies were beginning to get drunk again, hauling out bottles of scotch and passing them around.
It was impossible to think. I wanted peace, the privacy of my own apartment, a glass instead of a paper cup, four walls between me and this stinking mob of drunks that pressed on us from all sides.
At four we went out to the runway and found the Apache warming up. The flight back took about thirty minutes. With us was a young couple from Atlanta; they had come over from San Juan earlier in the day and now they couldn’t get back soon enough. They were absolutely appalled by the wild and uppity nigras.
I was tempted to tell them about Chenault, giving them all the details and finishing up with a hideous vision of where she was now, and what she was doing. Instead, I sat quietly and stared down at the white clouds. I felt like I’d survived a long and perilous binge, and now I was going home.
My car was in the airport lot where I’d left it, and Yeamon’s scooter was chained to a railing by the attendant’s shack. He unlocked it and said he was going on out to his house, despite my advice that he stay at my place so he could pick her up if she came in sometime during the night.
Hell, I said. She might already be back for that matter. For all we know, she thought we abandoned her last night, so she went to the airport.
Yeah, he said, jerking the scooter off its stand. That must be what happened, Kemp. Maybe she’ll have dinner ready when I get back to the house.
I followed him out the long driveway and waved goodbye as I turned off on the highway toward San Juan. When I got back to the apartment I went to sleep immediately and didn’t wake up until noon the next day.
On my way down to the office I wondered if I should say anything about Chenault, but the moment I walked into the newsroom I forgot all about her. Sala called me over to his desk, where he was talking excitedly with Schwartz and Moberg. It’s all over, he yelled. You should have stayed in St Thomas. Segarra had quit and Lotterman had left the night before for Miami, presumably in a last-ditch effort to get new financing. Sala was convinced the paper was going under, but Moberg thought it was a false alarm. Lotterman has plenty, he assured us. He went to see his daughter — he told me right before he left.
Sala laughed bitterly. Wake up, Moberg — do you think Greasy Nick would have dumped a soft job like this if he didn’t have to? Face it, we’re unemployed.
Goddamnit, Schwartz exclaimed. I was just getting settled here — this is the first job I’ve had in ten years that I wanted to keep. Schwartz was about forty and although I didn’t see much of him except at work, I liked him. He did a good job on the desk, never bothered anybody, and spent his free time drinking in the most expensive bars he could find. He hated Al’s, he said; it was too clubby, and dirty besides. He liked the Marlin Club and the Caribe Lounge and the other hotel bars where a man could wear a tie and drink in peace and occasionally see a good floor show. He worked hard, and when he finished working he drank. After that he slept, and then he went back to work. Journalism to Schwartz was a jigsaw puzzle a simple process of putting a paper together so that everything fit. Nothing more. He considered it an honorable trade and he’d learned it well; he had it down to a formula and he was damn well going to keep it that way. Nothing annoyed him more than a screwball or a crank. They made his life difficult and caused him to brood endlessly.