The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [227]
Because they know they aren't married. If I had a girl like that, a lot I'd care what some old bags were saying!" "But why is he settling down here? Doesn't he have that magazine y to take care of in New York?" 'S "He runs it from Mexico," said Iggy. Moulton said, "Bushwah! He's here because he's in dutch." i I "You think he embezzled money?" said Iggy, astonished, j Moulton looked as though he knew much more than he judged fit 'I to tell. Satchel ass. His portly hard middle hung over with a shirt il- | lustrated with pineapples. He even had a faint shame of the apparition he made in the sunlight. His lids were as dark in stain as his smoker's fingers, and he had the blinking habit. "Jepson says he heard he wants to throw a big party on account of Stella in the villa, to show those old bitches at the Carlos," said ^gy"He's going to show everyone, and knock people down with his success. Whoever thought he was nothing but an international bum, and that's everybody in the world who ever laid eyes on him, now's going to be shown. Boy! People are right where he left them, and he's going to come back and wow them. He has been around the world too, but he didn't know it because he was drunk." As he said this, Oliver appeared to my thought in a shack of Outer Mongolia, where soldiers in quilted coats saw him lying in his vomit in a stupor. Moulton liked to show that ill, miserable things and rubbish supplied the unity of the world. Only amusement supposedly made this tolerable, and so he specialized in amusement. All these people, the whole colony, did that. Well, they visited me at the villa. Then after half an hour Mouiton ran out of talk. They had stamped out a dozen butts, and Moulton began to look terribly bored. He had exhausted this particular corner where we sat and so looked sick that he had to stay. "Bolingbroke," he said, "you don't have to stick around the house because you wear that turban. Come down to the zocalo. We'll meet folks there or play on the fribble machine. Come along, Boling. To horse." "Yes, come on, Boling." "Not you, Iggy. Go home. Eunice raises hell with me because I keep you away from work." "But I thought you were divorced, Iggy?" I said. "He is, but his wife keeps him on a chain. She makes him stay with the kid while she and the new husband go out." Down at Hilario's we sat amid the flowers of the porch, over the square. They were the simpler flowers of cooler weather. Except the red poinsettia, star of Christmas, with velvet thrust-out peaks, the leader in splendor. It said a lot to me th^t these flowers should have no power over their place of appearance, nor over the time, and yet be such a success of beauty and plaster the insignificant wall. I saw also the little kinkajou who roved over his square of cage in every dimension, upside down, backwards. In the depth of accident, you be supple--never sleepy but at sleeping time. And Moulton sat and continued his satire on Iggy. Eunice took the checks from New York and kept Iggy on a budget. But Iggy didn't know how to handle dough. He'd only go to the foco rojo with it, and the girls would take it away. Iggy with his bloodshot green eyes and froggy kindly mouth felt praised, sort of, pictured among the whores of the foco rojo. "Eunice needs the money for the kid. Or I'd lose it to you in poker. That's what gets Wiley, he can't win real jack off me." "Hell, what would I care if I didn't see Jepson lush in here with your money, the money he gets out of Eunice?" "Why, you're nuts! He's got his own. His grandfather had an expedition to Africa. No bunk." To be near his daughter, an overpetted dark little kid, Iggy lived in the same villa as his ex-wife. It was mostly in order to protect her and the kid from Jepson. I think Iggy probably still loved Eunice. I went around with him and with Moulton now. As the house was void, as there were more snakes on the porch, as I wasn't strong enough to go with Thea but wasn't too weak to be restless, as I was horse-shy and hunt-shy, as I was in reality in a fork about my course of life, I stalled and delayed. Besides,