Denis Johnson - The Stars at Noon

Considering the pace of his mindless lying, it was quite a trick that he got any food in his mouth at all.

He’d finished his breakfast by the time the cook came out from the kitchen, through a door behind the bar, and assembled himself before me. Defending his right to be a waiter, as it were. I pointed at the consultant’s empty plate. “The same. And coffee. And half a glass of rum.”

“It gets me,” the consultant said when the cook was gone, “how everybody down here seems so impolite. Like the way you just ordered your food.”

“Impolite?”

“Nobody says please or thank you.” Suddenly an aching homesickness shone out of his face.

Now we talked about every part of the United States of America we’d ever either of us set foot in.

“I believe I’ll have some rum and papaya juice,” he told the cook when I received my breakfast.

“Who are you consulting for down here? Why on earth would anybody want to do business with the Sandinistas?”

“It’s not the Sandinistas. Central America — this whole area is a gambler’s paradise. Everybody’s down here giving the odds a shake in whatever game they feel like playing, basically — in all seriousness, there are wheat conglomerates looking around down here, can you fathom that? Transportation people, resort people, oil interests, you get the picture. But anyway, I mention oil, my report happens to be about some aspects of the petroleum outlook, or the principal part of it concerns petroleum — matter of fact, your friend gets a little ink, even, I mean the guy you’re traveling with, if he’s the same person I’m thinking of. But — I’m not saying anybody wants to move their whole operation here, that’s not what I mean, but the local business people are serious and level-headed, we’ve got a strong administration up north, and we realize now that we can risk investments in the region because we already have a stake in Central America, we’re committed here, and so on and so on,” he said, giving the last few words a certain resonance by raising the glass and saying them into his drink.

The fact was, he couldn’t do anything to us. If he was an American, then he was just as lost as we were.

“What do you mean, about my friend?”

He wore a cheap watch and a class ring from someplace. He had that fair redhead’s skin — like the Englishman’s — permanently blushing with the heat, nicely mated to his blue summer sports shirt with the sweat bleeding through.

“He’s one of the characters,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed? All these entrepreneurs are kind of boiling around down here, and at the same time, you can’t fail to notice, there’s a strong and violent proletarian movement well launched in El Salvador, entrenched here in Nicaragua, brewing in Belize and also Guatemala. And in order to feel more secure, the most paranoid entity in the hemisphere, you know who I’m talking about, it must do everything in its power to mess up the balance around here.”

“You mean the U.S.”

He looked at me, quite obviously baffled. “God!” he laughed. “Why don’t you stop being ridiculous? I mean the Castro government in Cuba. They have to do whatever they can to fuel the proletarian movement. It’s the only way Castro can keep from sinking.”

“What’s this got to do with your report? And what do you mean by bringing up my friend?”

“All this has a lot to do with my report, because the report is about this region. And balance is what this region is all about.”

“But what has your report got to do with my friend?”

“There he is. He’s heading this way.”

The Englishman had just come into the restaurant and paused at the bar to get a drink.

“What has your report got to do with him, I asked you.”

“Like I say, I don’t even know if it’s the same guy.” He tried to disarm his next statement with a laugh: “He wandered through and received scrutiny.”

The Englishman probably heard this but didn’t know it referred to him as he pulled up a chair and sat down.

“The Central American countries go on searching,” my host resumed, “for their best way, not necessarily Castro’s, not necessarily ours, a series of political experiments conducted under military restraint. Always held in check by the military. That’s not our style, but it’s theirs, so why not?”

“Why not indeed?” the Englishman said just to be participating.

“But what do I know?” our consultant friend said.

“You probably know whether or not to recommend the food,” the Englishman suggested.

“If you’re hungry, get some — it’s pretty good, not bad at all.”

“Rather simple fare, I noticed.”

“You mean — on the menu?” the consultant said.

I said, “It’s the first gallo pinto I’ve seen. We’re getting closer to Costa Rica.”

“So, are you guys heading for C.R.? What goes on for you down there?”

“Nothing special, as I understand it,” the Englishman said.

“The menu gets better,” I said.

“But not the rum.” This was the consultant’s conjecture, as he looked down into his glass. Although he was the phoniest human I’d so far met in the flesh, he slugged back his liquor with a satisfaction that couldn’t have been faked. “What other good stuff can I expect up here?” he asked.

“Have you been around Managua much?”

“I’ve only been here one day, tell the truth.”

“Well, they don’t have anything up there. The cities can’t cope.”

“None of the stuff they have in Costa Rica? No coffee? No sopa negra?”

“Sopa negra!” I agreed. “I love it!”

“And what’s that made of?” the Englishman asked. “Sounds fascinating.” He hadn’t touched his drink.

“Black beans. Turtle beans,” the consultant told him. “Don’t they have it up here in Nicaragua? Black soup?”

“Only in the sense,” the Brit said, “that it seems to be all around us.”

“I’m not surprised.” The consultant was knowing. “Their socialism doesn’t work. They’ve got the biggest army going,” he announced, “and not one turtle bean.”

Now we had a stupid silence, the kind that always descends on people who are half in the bag.

“I’ve been down in San José for about the last — almost a month,” the consultant said.

“Do you ever get over to the Key Largo?” I asked him.

“That place? It’s a whorehouse.”

“It’s got a sort of entertaining ambience,” I submitted in its defense.

The Englishman took the wheel. “And have you ever been to England.”

The redhead answered, “My mother is from England.”

“Oh, what a coincidence. But then we’re all cousins, I suppose, if you seek back far enough in the history of things.”

“I’m sure we're very closely related,” the American said.

The Englishman’s breakfast came along, and he ate it, although he seemed to be suffering silently, especially when a reckless feeling came over me and I started talking about my trouble with the Central American money market.

I was onto the rum and papaya juice now, a grisly concoction, overly sweet.

They probably wondered, the both of them, what the hell I thought I was doing. I held forth bitterly on the subject of the war in the northern provinces and then got on to bad-mouthing the Vice-minister at Interturismo, the man who’d helped me find lodging for cordobas instead of dollars.

The redhead laughed a lot and kept interrupting with requests for more details, for clarification, for first and last names.

The Brit signalled me horribly with his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” I told him right in front of this alleged consultant, “he knows all about us anyway.”