"The wind can't hurt any of that stuff, sir," Church said. "Just shuffle it around a bit, maybe."
"But our party's going to be ruined," Norman said, "with this gruesome thing bulging half across the room like an elephant's backside."
Church pulled at this and that rope of the tarpaulin. "It just needs to be secured, sir. Please don't worry about it. One thing I can do is handle canvas." He hauled on a rope, and the flapping stopped. "I'll fix this up right now."
"Good lad."
Sheila sent out excellent steaks to the governor's table. Paperman ordered one bottle and then another of Beaune, the best wine he had, and resumed his tale. He was in good form; the governor and his wife were entranced. Sanders even remarked once, between high-pitched guffaws, that Paperman ought to keep notes, and one day write a book.
At what seemed to be the right moment-just after signing the check for the dinners with a flourish, over Sanders' protest, and ordering brandy and coffee-Norman told them about Miss Buckley and Esm,. He was hoping, of course, that the governor would offer to intervene. This had been the point of his whole effort to charm. His picture of Miss Buckley's habit of ignoring him, while writing and groaning for minutes on end, convulsed the governor's wife. "Oh, mercy, a puffed-up little bureaucrat and a Kinjan, rolled into one," she said. "What a combination! Sheer Frankenstein."
"You'd be amazed," said Sanders, "how nice Christophine Buckley can be. Just laughing, pleasant, and obliging all the time. A real sweetheart, whenever I've had anything to do with her."
Reena Sanders put a cigarette in a long ivory holder and Paperman swooped a flaming lighter to it. "Thank you, dear. -Of course she's nice to you, Alton."
Norman said that once dinner was over and the champagne party had started, he was going to borrow a raincoat and spend the night hunting down the pregnant fugitive in the jungle of the Thousand Steps.
"In this?" Mrs. Sanders made an abrupt gesture at the lashing rain. "On the Thousand Steps? With your heart condition? You'll drop dead and nobody will ever take notice. The dogs and the rats will eat you."
"I don't know what my alternative is. If I lose my chambermaids and gardeners, I fold and go back to New York. It's the end."
"Alton, surely you can do something. I mean, to me this is ridiculous, I mean, even for the Caribbean! Mercy! Make Buckley take a literacy test, and get rid of her. Just threaten it and she'll cave in."
"She's federal," the governor said with a shrug. "Nothing to do with the local government."
"Oh please. I mean. Who're you kidding?" Mrs. Sanders blinked at her husband with a dangerous, exasperated look in her wine-brightened eyes, "This is what I hate about Kinja, Norman. It's all low-grade vaudeville and burlesque, it sickens me, and in other words I'm afraid Alton is going to become just like them if he stays here much longer, and to me I'm being a good wife by staying in Washington and keeping the children out of this" She flung a hand at the island of Amerigo, and Norman noticed that the charm dangling from her gold bracelet was a Phi Beta Kappa key.
The governor was slouching more and more, glancing about and dragging continually and deeply at a cigarette, drumming fingers of one thin hand on the table. "Ordinarily I'd be glad to put in a word to Buckley," he said in a low voice. "This is a sticky time, that's all. I'm trying to get along with Orrin Easter, and Buckley is his pet. That's why my predecessor got her a federal appointment, out of the way, out of the local civil service. Reena, maybe we'd better go back to Government House."
Mrs. Sanders gave a short barking laugh. "Hah! Civil service! Alton, it doesn't take the guts of a rabbit to slap down such types, and I think you should do something."
Paperman quickly stood. "I have to see to my water-shortage party, please stay and have a glass of champagne or two with us."
"I will if he won't," said Reena Sanders. "To me that should be fun. Thank you for a splendid dinner."
The governor said, "Yes, thank you very much," smiled mechanically, and lapsed into slouching silence. As Norman walked away, the governor's wife started to talk again in cutting tones.
2
Champagne, Si-Agua, No.
Church had somehow found the time to cut out this motto in red cardboard letters a foot high, and to string it across the straining tarpaulin. The canvas hardly bulged any more. It hummed powerfully, like a close-hauled mainsail, but Paperman could see that it was secure. The party was already under way; the lobby furniture had been pushed to the walls and the straw rugs rolled back, leaving a broad bare red-tiled floor for the dancing couples. The steel-drum music, which outdoors had a mournful thin quality, thundered and reverberated in the lobby like musical tom-toms, with doubled excitement. Church and two waitresses, standing between a pair of tables lined with wineglasses in the center of the lobby, were dispensing pink champagne punch from huge bowls, and the dancers swirled around these tables, many of them drinking as they danced. Because of the rain, not many outsiders had come to the Reef tonight. There was the usual sprinkling of young Kinjans who liked to dance to the Gull Reef music, and a small, self-conscious knot of sailors in whites from a submarine staying overnight in Amerigo. Norman had ordered Church to give the free champagne to everybody present, hotel guests or not. If noise, movement, and laughter all through the lobby, and crowds around the champagne tables, were an indication, the party was off to a good start. Norman took a glass of punch from each of the two bowls, in the line of duty, and found the drink sweet but passable. It was being drunk in large quantities, and that was what mattered. Again in the line of duty, he picked out the least attractive guest he could see, a fat, young schoolteacher from Yonkers with a terrible double chin, and asked her to dance. He was determined to make this party a success.
The governor and his wife soon came strolling in. Paperman hurried to them, dragging along the Yonkers girl, and took a glass of punch with them. The governor agreeably toasted the success of the Gull Reef Club, and an end to water shortages. Most of the guests knew who the skinny grizzled Negro in the black suit was, but few had met him. Paperman began introducing the governor, a handshaking line formed, and Sanders responded with the affable grace of any politician. This novelty put the party into high gear. Stragglers came crowding in from the bar and the dining terrace to shake hands with the governor of Amerigo. He sealed his little triumph by asking the Yonkers girl to dance, and wobbling off in a stiff rickety meringue to loud applause. This put Mrs. Sanders into Paperman's arms. She danced clumsily, her eyes darting about in amused curiosity at the guests, the poster, and the tarpaulin. "This place has a real nutty charm, you know? I gave friend husband holy hell about your pregnant chambermaid," she said. "I mean I pointed out in other words that if the best hotel on the island gets closed down by an idiotic female bureaucrat who just feels like making trouble, that won't look too good either when Interior finds out. I guess maybe that penetrated."
She saw the sailors, standing in a corner by themselves. She said it awakened her old USO hostess blood, and she went over and asked one of them, a tall, powerful Negro boy, to dance with her. He hung back, grinning in embarrassment, but his friends, thrilled by this gesture of the governor's lady, pushed him into her arms. Later Paperman saw Mrs. Sanders dancing one by one with the other sailors, to all appearances having a fine time. Sanders himself made a shadowy withdrawal. After a while he just wasn't there.
Norman asked various lady guests to dance, and in time the one truly good-looking girl at the Reef, a tall skinny blonde, with slanting brown eyes ringed in black paint, was in his arms. She had been posing on the Club grounds and in scenic spots of the island in breath-stopping bikinis and sun clothes, for a bald gnome of a fashion photographer. The man was clearly indifferent to her, except as an object to put on film; he emerged from under the black drape of his camera to push her naked limbs here and there like a dummy's, while men gathered to gape and envy. This girl at work, striking her angular poses, was as solemn as though she were doing algebra. Norman had noticed her, of course, but in his driven state he had never even bothered to find out her name. He now learned that it was Delphine. She had drunk a lot of punch, and she treated Norman with instant marked warmth. She knew of his friendship with Dan Freed. Obviously she thought him a man of glamour, and Norman perceived almost at once that something was doing here. In the Broadway argot of the moment, Delphine was a "swinging chick"; that is, an unfettered sort, reasonably available for fornication.
This discovery delighted him less than it might have some years earlier. Nowadays he found swinging chicks a bit oppressive. There was little excitement in conquering an easy girl; at his age it was a stale small chore. With the onset of middle-aged health problems, moreover, the question as to who his dirty or diseased predecessors might have been loomed large. Most of all-though this was not the point he dwelled on-Norman no longer had quite the energy to service a swinging chick.
The effect Delphine had on him was to make him think of Iris. Why wasn't she at the party? Norman thought he would just go and have a look in the Pink Cottage. He turned Delphine over to a hot-handed bachelor with a peeling red nose, who had been following her around the dance floor like a bloodhound. He borrowed Church's raincoat, swallowed another glass of punch, and ran out into the heavy rain.
The Pink Cottage was dark. As Paperman came to the door he heard growling and snarling; and the hurled thuds of the dog's body against the door indicated that he was unchained. It was a stout door, but Paperman reversed his steps and was leaving hastily when Iris's sleepy voice called, "Anybody out there:1 -Meadows, for Christ's sake, shut your big face. -Who's there? -See stupid, it's nobody. You were dreaming. Shut up! I'm trying to sleep."
Paperman shouted, "Iris, it's me, it's Norman."
"Norm? Are you out of your mind, wandering around in this Weather?"
"I want you to come to the party. I miss you."
"You sound drunk. Go away, will you? I look unspeakable."
"Have you got on your bat ears?"
He heard her laugh. "Just about. Wait a second, Norman. I can't go yelling through a door in a storm."
Paperman huddled under the streaming overhang, listening to the rich pleasing gurgle of water down the spouts. The entrance light snapped on and the door opened a crack.
"Still here? Come in for just a second and be cured of me for good. Shock treatment."
She wore her green silk robe, her hair was close-tied in a net, her face was pink and oily, and her eyes seemed smaller and less brilliant without cosmetics, but she looked desirable enough, Norman thought. Only one red-shaded floor lamp was lit. Meadows crouched in the cone of light, ears cocked, tongue flickering over his nose, curses rumbling in his throat.
"My God," she said. "You're half-drowned."
Norman dashed the rain from his face. "Listen, come on to the party."
Iris yawned. "Are you crazy? It would take me two hours of hard labor to make myself fit to be seen. And for what?"
"Don't be difficult. Put on lipstick and some powder and a dress. We're having fun up there."
She shook her head, yawning and yawning. "I just took two sleeping pills. You trot yourself back up there and dance some more with Reena Sanders." She grinned at him and wagged a finger in front of her nose. "Spies. I've got spies. Surprised you, didn't I? Heh heh."
"Were you having dinner on the terrace? I didn't see you."
"Oh, no, you were too busy convulsing His Excellency and the first lady. Cute, isn't she?" Iris yawned again. "I'm about to pile up on this floor in a heap of old bones. Anything I can do for you first? Wanna drink?"
Norman buttoned up the raincoat. "Well, if you're full of happy pills, it's no use arguing. I'm off to the Thousand Steps."
"You're off where?" Iris's heavy dimming eyes opened wide and glistened at him.
He told her about Miss Buckley and Esm,. She shook her head groggily. "You're cuckoo, I swear. How much champagne have you had? Don't you dare go sloshing around on those steps tonight, do you hear! Don't you dare! Go back up to the hotel and get stoned-It'll do you good."
"Iris, if Immigration doesn't renew those bonds-"
She shook a fist at him. "You're not going up to the Thousand Steps, Norman Paperberg! I mean Paperman. Jesus, what a name. Listen, Arnaranthe does sewing for me. We talk. We're real old pals. I'll track down your Esm, myself, first thing in the morning. Leave it to me." Her voice was becoming thick and trailing off. She put her arms around his neck. "Promise? No Thousand Steps?"
He embraced her soft body in the smooth silk robe. Iris was no photographer's object like Delphine; she had the blurred used figure of thirty-nine; but she was an attractive woman, not a swinging chick. She yielded against him, inert, sagging, heavy. "Don't you go raping me now, you unprincipled cad," she murmured. "I'm dead to the world. It'll be-it'll be-necrophilia."
The cover was off the divan, the pillow was crumpled, and the thin blanket was thrown back. He had to lead her only a few steps. The crouched dog did not interfere, but the bright brown eyes never left him. She let Norman take off the robe, moving her arms with drowsy limpness, like Hazel in her baby years. Iris's gauzy, peach-colored short nightgown made him regret her remark about necrophilia. It had put him on his honor. He tucked her into bed, turned out the light, and when she reached a hand toward him with a meaningless mutter, he leaned over and kissed her once. Then he went out into the whipping rain.
