"Suh, I does have to make my soup." Sheila was looking at him curiously, and he realized that he had been staring with unseeing eyes at her list. "All right, Sheila," he said. "We go ahead. We're going to do this thing, cookout on Lovers' Beach and all."
"Yas, suh." She handed him another sheet from the clip board. "De cook over to de Francis Drake she did give me dis address. She say de best ting you must cable dem. Dat de New York place dat send de stuff."
"Sheila-Sheila, it'll be a nice party, won't it? It'll all work out?"
Sheila exploded with laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair, and stood. "I do believe it be not too bad, Mistuh Papuhman."
As she opened the door he said, "How about this Hippolyte, now? Won't you try to find him? We can't operate on a quarter of a cistern very long, Sheila."
Her jollity disappeared. "Hippolyte fonny," she said with an ugly frown, and she walked out.
3
Lionel ambled into the bar just after sundown, dressed in a dust-pink jacket and light blue linen trousers, which made him blend subtly into the sunset. His green face, especially on the nose and forehead, now had a streaky sunburn. It made a queer effect, somewhat like a half-ripe apple.
"Hi, Norm," he said, "you look mighty relaxed, for a man with all those headaches!" He dropped into a chair beside Paperman, who sat at a small table near the frangipani tree, gazing out to sea and fingering the stem of his martini glass.
"Hello, Lionel. Any luck?"
"Well, Janet did show me one pretty little place over on the north side. Lots of mango and banana trees, and an unbelievable view. It's all tumble-down, and overgrown, and full of fags at the moment-"
"Casa Encantada," Norman said.
"That's it. You could do things with that one." He signaled to Church and ordered a planter's punch. "Ah, Norman, Norman, I tell you, this island is cloud nine. Cloud nine! Look at me! Only three hours in an open convertible, and look at the color I've got! A week in Miami wouldn't do it. And how about that sunset? Fabulous!"
"I know the place has its points," Norman said. "I did move here."
"Its points! You've got it made, Norm," Lionel said. "You're a gosh-darned genius. What an inspiration! I don't know ten fellows in New York who wouldn't change places with you. Why, you even look happy. You look absolutely marvelous."
Norman smiled. The fact was, he felt better than he had at any time since his arrival. He had had a bake in the sun, a good swim, and a long nap. The very cold martini in his hand had been mixed to his precise taste by Church. All the crises seemed to have simmered down; at least nobody had awakened him with pounding and a bulletin of horrible news. It was pleasant to be envied by Lionel. The big generator that fed electricity to the pump was broadcasting its Mack-truck groans behind the hotel. The pump itself was sending healthy rhythmic thuds through the bar floor. The soles of Norman's feet had become almost a second pair of ears or eyes for him. He could sense a halt in the pump, or the menacing drain of water from a faulty toilet, at once; and his soles reported all well. The bar was doing a rushing business. So was the front desk; seven people had checked in today, and nobody had checked out.
"Say, Norm," Lionel went on, "why is Janet West, of all people, holed up here in Amerigo at your hotel? Isn't that a funny one?"
Norman shrugged. "Ask her."
"I did. She sort of laughed and gave me some phonus bolonus story about getting material for a book. Ha! Iris is no writer. Is there some rich fellow up in one of those houses on the hill? Maybe keeping her, or waiting for his divorce to come through?"
Norman shook his head. He had been obtuse about Iris, perhaps, or at least too driven to think of these questions, for in the grueling days since his arrival, he had regarded her only as a comforting presence. His fuzzy idea was that she had "retired" to Kinja, like the Tilsons, and merely talked about writing, as so many idle people did. But of course she was a puzzling woman. There were her frequent-and never explained-absences, especially at dinner and in the evenings. He said thoughtfully, "The only guy I've seen her with is a navy frogman, Lionel. He introduced me to her, in fact. But he's a youngster; why, he's sort of romancing my own daughter."
"Well, maybe he's the answer. I've learned one thing in the theatre," Lionel said, "and that is, that nothing is impossible when it comes to the old push-push. Absolutely nothing, Norman. I can't be surprised, where the old push-push is involved. Especially with a wild woman like Janet -or Iris, as you call her."
Lionel had the usual backstage relish for gossip, and he began to talk about Iris's three husbands, and her bizarre escapades, including two suicide attempts. Much of it was new to Norman. In recent years, Lionel said, Iris had tried hard with Herbert Tramm, a stuffy real estate operator in San Francisco, to live a conventional life. But her failure to have children had driven her back on the bottle, and she had completely dropped from sight. Now here she was in the Caribbean. Darn strange!
Paperman put a hand on Lionel's arm as he talked. "There she comes, and he's with her."
"Who's with her?" Lionel adopted Norman's low tone, interest glinting in his pallid blue eyes.
"The frogman."
Lionel peeked over his shoulder. "Golly, he doesn't look like much, does he? But you never know, Norm. I swear you can't tell. Sometimes these scrawny little fellows are the real tigers for the old push-push."
Iris and Cohn went to a corner table and Iris began talking rather angrily, while Cohn, who wore his gabardine suit and an overbright blue tie, leaned forward on both elbows, taking puffs at a small cigar. Since Norman kept glancing at them, he caught their attention. Iris stopped frowning, waved, and smiled. The frogman came to their table, and invited Lionel and Norman to join them for dinner. The main course turned out to be a fish Cohn had shot, a superb grouper, baked whole. Lionel was so thrilled at eating a fish with a gaping spear wound in it, that Cohn asked him if he would like to come along in the morning when he and Iris were going spearfishing. Lionel almost shouted his assent. By then three bottles of wine had gone around, and they were all quite gay; and Norman was pressed into the spearfishing party. "You're coming, that's all," Iris said firmly, "and for one morning, to hell with this hotel."
Norman had all but forgotten the charm of underwater scenery, one of the things that had lured him to Amerigo. Cohn paddled them next morning far out to the middle of Pitt Bay, in a rubber raft full of masks and fins. Cockroach Rock, where he tied up the raft, was actually a reef that just broke the surface. By standing on the coral, they gave the comic impression of walking on water, far out in a deep wide bay. Beyond the reef the green water turned dark blue, and the ocean floor fell off in a cliff-so Cohn said-to a chasm a mile deep.
It was a magnificent reef, with grand twisting pillars and caverns of pink coral. Groupers, parrot fish, and oldwives cruised goggling through the arches, amid moving clouds of small bright-colored fish. Lionel wasn't satisfied with this spectacle. He insisted on swimming farther out, so that he could tell his Broadway friends he had been in water a mile deep. Norman didn't like venturing out into the blue choppy gulf, but he was unwilling to turn back, with Iris gliding gracefully beside him and Lionel floundering far ahead. The deep made Norman queasy; it was like looking down from the top of a skyscraper, except that there were no cars below, no people; no fish, either, no bottom, no rocks; nothing at all but darkening blue space shafted with greenish sun rays.
They had not been out five minutes when a silver-gray shape rose from the azure shadows, making for Lionel. Cohn's brown body thrust forward and down ahead of Lionel, his fins moving fast, and he made sharp signals at the others to retreat. Norman saw a pointed wrinkled snout on the fish as it drew near, and staring ugly eyes, and slanted vents on the side of the wide head. It made a lazy rolling pass within a few feet of Lionel, and Norman also saw the unmistakable crescent mouth crammed with teeth and turned down in perpetual disappointment. He and Iris fled for Cockroach Rock, and clambered out together gasping.
Cohn shepherded the wallowing Lionel back to the reef, patrolling behind him.
"Hey! What do you know?" Lionel ripped off his mask while still in the water, exulting. "A shark! That was a real shark. Did you see? Golly, Was I scared! That was marvelous. Did you see how close to me he came?" Cohn was scrambling out on the reef beside him. "Hey, why did you keep circling behind me like that?" Lionel said. "I heard you're supposed to punch a shark in the nose. Then it goes away."
"You're absolutely right," panted Cohn. "I forgot that. I have a lousy memory."
Norman said, trying to control the shakiness of his voice, "What's it doing so close to land? I thought sharks stay way out at sea."
"It's the legislature," Cohn said. "They used to bury the garbage on this island, the way I heard it. But when the Elephant Republicans last beat the Eagle Republicans, they voted along strict party lines to start dumping it at sea, and they bought that old landing craft. It's supposed to go out ten miles, but the fellow who runs it gets seasick, so he just turns in beyond Big Dog, out of sight of land, and shovels it off. We've seen him do it any number of times, and in fact I've done a lot of swimming through garbage. There's an easterly current at Big Dog that sweeps that stuff right down here past Pitt Bay."
"What they need," Lionel said, "is another captain for that landing craft."
"Our UDT commander once suggested that," said the frogman. "They told him Captain Pullman is irreplaceable."
After this Lionel was content to swim inside the reef. Cohn gave him a spear gun, and everybody stayed well clear while he made futile shots at the unperturbed groupers. Each time, Cohn retrieved the spear, stretched the rubber sling for Lionel, and got out of his way. A lot of joking went with this; but the stage manager turned the laugh at last by shooting at a parrot fish, and skewering an unfortunate grouper that collided with the spear. All the way back to the hotel, Lionel cuddled the bloody dead fish on his lap in the Land Rover, swearing he was going to pack it in dry ice and eat it that night at Sardi's, if the transportation cost him a hundred dollars.
4
". and so 1 say to you, fellow citizens, that at long last we have now unmasked Governor Alton Aloysius Sanders."
Norman could hear Senator Pullman's voice booming over the airport loudspeakers, as he drove up with Lionel in the Rover. This was not the only indication of something unusual afoot. There were perhaps fifty cars in the terminal parking space. Norman had noticed that the town streets seemed unusually quiet, but he had assumed it must be one or
Kinja's many obscure legal holidays-Candlemas, Transfer Day, Guy Fawkes Day, or something.
". under Alton Sanders' guise of a disinterested representative of our great President, we now know beyond a doubt there lurks a dictatorial, repressive, reactionary hypocrite who is in cahoots, lock stock and barrel, with the hill crowd!"
Applause pattered in the loudspeakers.
The lone porter of the airport, who worked on random days when the spirit moved him, wheeled his little truck to the Land Rover, and with a groan and a flourish unloaded Lionel's one small suitcase. Lionel insisted on hugging to himself the perspiring cardboard box containing his iced fish.
"What's up?" Norman said to the porter.
"Senatuh Pullman he goin' Florida."
"Florida? With the legislature in session?"
"Dey say de senator be extrydite."
Incredulous, Norman hurried into the terminal, and saw the senator standing on a bench, holding a round microphone. Clustered in front of him were sixty or seventy laughing, gossiping Kinjans, not paying much heed to his oratory. Most of them were eating ice cream or drinking soda pop. "I pledge to you," the senator shouted, his voice reverberating in the big wooden shed lined with bright advertisements, "that despite my temporary absence, the Elephant Republicans will go on fighting the people's fight, my friends-for honest and frugal government, for lower taxes, for higher wages for underpaid government workers, for jobs for everybody, for elimination of deadwood from government payrolls, for bigger hospitals and schools, for new highways and housing projects, for free medical care and mental therapy. The unholy alliance of Governor Alton Aloysius Sanders and the Eagle Republicans are fighting to keep the hill crowd in luxury up there on Signal Mountain, friends, while the people of Kinja are crowded below in unsanitary huts. But the Elephant Republicans will never falter or procrastinate in their grandiose struggle until the people are living up in the mansions, and the hill crowd are down in the huts!"
A few listeners-those whose hands were unencumbered by food and drink-interrupted their laughing gossip to give a laggard handclap 0 two. Senator Pullman took the moment to puff his cigar in his usual nursing fashion, and then waved and smiled. He wore his Palm Beach suit and a mainland straw hat with a tiny brim, and his round shrewd face was serene, even gay.
Norman saw Governor Sanders leaning against the tin newsstand booth, arms folded, listening to the speaker. He appeared so unperturbed by the denunciation, that Norman ventured to walk up and greet him.
