James Chase - Get a Load of This

She had said, a little wildly, “Be kind to me—be kind to me,” and she remembered trying to find his mouth with hers.

She did not know how he undressed her. She was conscious of her clothes leaving her smoothly as he did everything. Then he suddenly lost all his smoothness, and treated her shamefully.

She lay staring at the rose-pink lanterns, feeling a sick loathing of herself. Her desires had gone away from her the moment he took her. It was all so sudden, so brutal, so unexpected—so filthily selfish. So she lay looking at the rose-pink lanterns until he stood away from her.

He had said, a little impatiently, “It’s getting late, we had better go back to the boat.”

She had said nothing. She couldn’t even cry.

“Don’t you hear?” he said. “It is nearly twelve.”

Without looking at him, she said: “Does it matter? Does anything ever matter to you? Go away. Go back to the boat. I’ve nothing else to give you. Why don’t you go away?”

He said impatiently, “For God’s sake stop talking and get dressed.”

She shut her eyes and said nothing, so he left her. He walked out of the room with his confident tread and left her there.

When he had gone she got up and dressed. She remembered that she couldn’t look herself in the face as she stood before the mirror. She remembered thinking that she had behaved like a bitch, and she was ashamed.

She went back to the restaurant. The waiter who had served them looked at her curiously when she sat down at the table they had previously occupied. She didn’t care what he thought. She didn’t care about anything. She just felt a cold fury with herself for being such a bitch. She didn’t even think of Lacey any more. All she could think was that because this was Havana, because of the great yellow moon, and because of the blue-black water, studded with thousands of lights from the waterfront, she had behaved like a bitch with a horribly smooth ship’s Romeo. She deserved to be treated as a whore. She hadn’t even the satisfaction of knowing that she had been as efficient as a whore—she hadn’t. She had just wanted to be very sick and to cry, but she had done absolutely nothing.

She had ordered a lot of drink from the waiter. She had to get tight. She could do that. There was nothing else she could do. She couldn’t sit in the restaurant, knowing the ship was sailing with all her clothes, leaving her in Havana, where something was going to happen, without getting good and tight. So she got good and tight, and she might have been still sitting there if the waiter hadn’t very tactfully put her in a taxi and told the driver to take her to a hotel. She would go back one day and thank the waiter. It was the first act of kindness she had received in Havana.

At the hotel they didn’t seem to notice how very tight she was. The manager seemed to have something on his mind. He wasn’t even sorry when he heard that she had lost the boat. He just raised his hands, saying, “That is a very grave misfortune for you, senorita,” and gave instructions for her to be taken to a room on the third floor overlooking the waterfront.

She sat up in bed and ran her fingers through her thick wavy hair. She must do something now. She couldn’t stay in bed nursing her cold hatred.

Reaching out, she rang the bell at her side violently.

It was hot. Too hot to stay in bed Quentin thought, pushing the sheet from him and sliding on to the coconut matting.

The sunlight came through the slots in the shutter and burnt his feet. He scratched his head, yawning, then reached under the bed for his heelless slippers. He sat there, staring at the wall, feeling lousy. It must have been the rum he’d belted the previous night. That guy Morecombre certainly could shift liquor. He might have known what kind of a party he was sitting down to. These press photographers spent most of their time on the booze. He pressed fingers tenderly to his head and then wandered over to the chest of drawers and found a bottle of Scotch. He put a little ice water in a glass and three fingers of Scotch to colour it, then he went back and sat on his bed.

The drink was swell, and he dawdled over it while he considered what he had to do that day. There wasn’t much he could do, he decided, except just sit around and wait. Well, he was used to that. He could do that fine.

He reached out with his foot and kicked the shutter open. From where he sat he could see the harbour and a little of the bay. By leaning forward he could see the old Morro Castle. He drew a deep breath. The place was pretty good, he decided. Very, very nice to look at. He got up and wandered to the open window. Below him the hotel grounds stretched away to the waterfront—flowers, trees, palms, everything that grew so richly in the tropical heat spread out before him. He hunched his muscles and yawned. Not bad, he thought, not bad at all. The Foreign Correspondent of the New York Post staying in the dump that millionaires condescend to be seen in. He finished the Scotch. All the same, he wouldn’t mind betting there was no one in the hotel except Morecombre and himself and the General. He grinned a little sourly. From where he stood he could see the waterfront, which looked ominously deserted. The hotel grounds were deserted too. “The word’s got round all right,” he thought; “rats leaving the sinking ship.”

He wandered over and rang the bell, then went on into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stood watching the water hiss down, still holding the empty glass in his hand. He eyed it thoughtfully, decided he wouldn’t have any more, put the glass down and slid out of his pyjamas.

The shower was fine. The water pricked and tingled on his skin. Raising his head, he began to sing, very low and rather mournfully.

When he came back to the bedroom he found Anita standing looking out of the window.

Anita was the maid in charge of the third floor. She was very dark, small, very well built. Her breasts rode high, firm… audacious breasts. They looked like they were proud of themselves, and Quentin himself thought they were pretty good.

“Hello,” he said, wrapping a towel round his waist, “don’t you ever knock?”

She smiled at him. She had a nice smile, glistening white teeth and sparkling eyes. “The water,” she said, lifting her hands, “it makes so much noise. You did not hear me knock, so I come in.”

“One of these days,” Quentin said, pulling on a silk dressing-gown and sliding the towel off, “you’re going to get an unpleasant shock when you walk in like that.”

She shook her head. “This morning I had it—it was not so bad.”

Quentin looked at her severely. “You’re not such a nice little girl as you look. You know too much.”

“It was Mr. Morecombre,” she said, her eyes opening. “He is a beautiful man—yes?”

“Suppose you get me some breakfast, and stop chattering,” Quentin said. “Get me a lotta food, I’m hungry.”

She made a little face. “There is nothing,” she said. “Coffee… yes, but the food … it is all gone.”

Quentin paused, his shaving-brush suspended halfway to his face. “I don’t get it, baby,” he said. “This is a hotel, ain’t it? This is the hotel, ain’t it?”

She smiled again. That smile certainly had a load of come-hither hanging to it. “But the strike,” she explained, “it is the strike. No food for four days. All out of the icebox. Now the ice-box is empty.”

Quentin resumed his shaving. “So I’m going to pay a small fortune to stay in this joint and starve—is that it?”

“But, senor, everyone has gone away. There is only you and Senor Morecombre left.”

“And the General,” Quentin reminded her. “Don’t forget the General.”