Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Say,” Pablo said after several despairing moments, “you want to go somewhere and have some fun?”

Bobbick looked up from his paper and shuddered visibly.

“It’s been a long time since anybody asked that one,” he said. “I think I must have been eleven.”

Pablo took a deep breath and sat down in the chair opposite Tony’s.

“That’s what you asked me last night, man. Do I look like I’m fucking eleven?”

Tony Bobbick rubbed his eyebrows and took another swallow of water.

“If you say I said it maybe I did. But see, Pablo — I’ve got a friend with me now from the States. We’re leaving for the ruins after breakfast.”

“Aw shit,” Pablo said earnestly.

“You sound really disappointed,” Tony said.

“I am,” Pablo told him. “You better believe it.”

As they spoke, a young American walked into the coffee shop and headed for Tony’s table. The American was tall and muscular with thinning blond hair and a broken nose like a fighter’s. He nodded stiffly to Bobbick and stood awkwardly beside the table since there were only two chairs. Tony stood up and pulled a chair from another table for him to sit in.

“Bill,” Tony said, as the third man sat down, “this is Pablo.”

“Pablo?” the man asked Tony in an amused voice. He did not look at Tabor.

“Hi, there,” Pablo said. He watched the two of them across the plastic tabletop. He felt angry and sick but also faintly relieved. The hustle was off; instead of one maricón , there were two maricones.

“Been having a good time?” Bill asked his friend.

“In a manner of speaking,” Tony said. “We had a little drinking party last night. And now we have Pablo who proposes to go somewhere and have some fun.”

“Really?” Bill said. He turned slowly and looked at Pablo for the first time. “What kind of fun would that be?”

Tabor’s desperate bonhommie was disintegrating like an expended spantial. He blew his last pop on a happy smile.

“Any kind you like.”

Bill did a stylized double take.

“This man is a complete asshole, am I right? A hustler?”

“Well,” Tony said shyly, “I guess so.”

“I guess so ,” Bill said. “Take a walk,” he told Pablo.

Pablo swallowed. He stared at Bill for a moment and suddenly the confidence, the assurance in the man’s face struck him as comical. A dry laugh rose in his throat. Bill smiled patiently back at him.

“You know there’s about twenty locals that want a piece of your friend Tony? I already got me a deal to ice him and take his money. That’s how he’s been coming on since he got here.”

Bill gave Tony a quick sidelong glance. Tony sulked in his newspaper.

“Like I don’t want to kill nobody,” Pablo told them. “I’m broke and I need some money.”

“Not from him, good buddy,” Bill said. “And certainly not from me. Take a walk.”

Pablo leaned forward over the table and spoke in a low voice, meeting Bill’s quiet stare.

“This ain’t Coconut Grove, faggot. Where you think you gonna get protection from down here?”

“I know all about down here,” Bill said.

“He’s in the travel business,” Tony informed Pablo earnestly.

“I know all about it,” Bill went on. “I’m down here a lot and I do a lot of business here. So I’ll give you the choice of hitting the street pronto or going straight from that chair to the penal colony. You won’t like it there.”

“You queer son of a bitch,” Pablo said.

Bill raised his eyebrows casually and turned toward the cashier’s counter with his hand in the air. Tony touched his arm gently.

“Wait a minute,” Tony said, “wait a minute, let it go.” Tabor saw that Tony had a bill in his hand. “The poor guy’s all fucked up. I’m going to give him something.” He slid a U.S. twenty along the tabletop. Tabor looked down at it.

“Don’t you give him a thing,” Bill said. “A punk like this?”

“Here,” Tony said kindly, “here you go, Pablo. Take it.”

“No, you don’t, baby,” Bill said. He snatched up the bill from under Pablo’s eyes and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

“Look,” Tony said. “Maybe I did come on to him. The poor guy’s a mess. Let him have it.”

Bill sighed, took the twenty out of his pocket and threw it on the floor.

“This is a hell of a way to start out,” he said to Tony crossly. He watched Pablo start toward the money on the tile floor. “Pick it up and get out, Pablo. We intend to eat here.”

Pablo crouched over the bill.

This is it, he thought. I’m gonna have to kill these fuckers.

Bill crossed his bare legs while Pablo reached for the bill. The tip of his expensive hiking boot swung casually in front of Tabor’s face.

He pocketed the bill and looked up; Bill was looking down at him with an expression of mild disgust.

“You really wouldn’t like the penal colony, Tex.”

“He wouldn’t,” Tony said. “The wind comes howling off the lake and God knows if they ever heard of lobster Newburg.”

Tabor stood up and staggered toward the door without turning around.

O.K., he told himself when he was outside, with the shoeshine boys clustered around him. Twenty bills is twenty bills. If I’d have killed them I’d be sorry.

Cursing his way through the beggars and shoeshine boys, he decided on a drink. There was a place by the docks called the Paris where he sometimes stopped by in the vague hope of finding a billet. Wearily he took his hard-earned twenty down there and settled himself at the bar. The place was empty except for a few Compostelan Navy sailors crowded about the new pinball machine. Freddy Fender was on the jukebox, singing “El Rancho Grande.” Pablo was on conversational terms with the bartender, a big Belizean, who liked Hawaiian shirts and platform shoes and wore a crucifix around his neck.

“How you doin’, mon?” the Belizean asked him.

“I think I’m on a trapeze,” Pablo said.

“De darin’ young mon,” the Belizean said. Pablo ordered a margarita, the one he got came in a little ready-mix bottle, appropriated from the national airline.

“How you mate today? Mister Tony?”

“He ain’t my mate. He was buyin’ drinks is all. I was drinkin’ em.

“Nothin’ wrong wi’ dat. But now he fren’ come.”

“Yeah,” Tabor said. “His friend come. A couple of cocksuckers.”

“Dat put it harshly,” the Belizean said. “But he’s a bounder, dat Tony. Pretty boys all de time. Mon got no shame.”

“He’s a fool,” Tabor said.

“Dass true, dass true. But he fren’ look out for him now.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Tabor demanded. “Everybody knows everything in this fucking place.”

“Well,” the Belizean said, “das de entertainment, you know. Got to take it like you fin’ it, bruddah.”

“Shit,” Pablo said.

“Hey, bruddah — you a sailin’ mon?”

“I do a little of everything,” Pablo said cautiously.

“I know where you get a billet, if you de right fella. Mon wid a boat lookin’ for crew.”

“Yeah?”

Cecil brought him another bottled margarita.

“But he nobody’s mark, dis chap. He in business.”

“Shit,” Tabor said, “send him my way.”

“Lemme ask you somethin’ di-rectly, bruddah. You a black or a white mon?”

Tabor nearly fell off his stool. He had been asked the same question once before and it had gone badly for everyone.

“What do I look like?”

Cecil kept his easygoing smile.

“I ain’t no Yankee, mon. People all de same to me. But dis boat chap, he might see somethin’ I wouldn’t notice.”

“I’m a white man,” Pablo said evenly. “Anybody can see that.”