I drove home and called Pan Am to book a seat on the morning plane. Then I packed my bags. I crammed everything — clothes, books, a big scrapbook of my stuff from the News — into two duffel bags. I laid them side by side, then I put my typewriter and my shaving kit on top of them. And that was it — my worldly goods, the meager fruits of a ten-year odyssey that was beginning to look like a lost cause. On my way out I remembered to take a bottle of Rum Superior for Chenault.
I still had three hours to kill and I needed to cash a check. They would do it at Al’s, I knew, but maybe the cops would be waiting for me there. I decided to risk it and drive very carefully through Condado, across the causeway and into the sleeping Old City.
Al’s was empty, except for Sala sitting alone in the patio. When I walked to the table Sala looked up. Kemp, he said, I feel a hundred years old.
How old are you? I said. Thirty? Thirty-one?
Thirty, he said quickly. I was just thirty last month.
Hell, I replied. Imagine how old I feel — I’m almost thirty-two.
He shook his head. I never thought I’d live to see thirty. I don’t know why, but for some reason I just didn’t.
I smiled. I don’t know if I did or not — I never gave it much thought.
Well, he said. I hope to God I never make forty — I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.
You might, I said. We’re over the hump, Robert. The ride gets pretty ugly from here on in.
He leaned back and said nothing. It was almost dawn, but Nelson Otto was still lingering at his piano. The song was Laura, and the sad notes floated out to the patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly. It was a hot night, with almost no breeze, but I was feeling cold sweat in my hair. For lack of anything better to do, I studied a cigarette burn in the sleeve of my blue oxford-cloth shirt.
Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship’s bell as it eased against the pier, and somewhere in the city a motorcycle roared through the narrow streets, sending its echo up the hill to Calle O’Leary. Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night.