The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo [57]
Eddie jumped up angrily and shouted, “You lousy butt hustler—” Mosca pulled him down to the chair. Some of the people at the other tables turned around. “Take it easy, Eddie, he's only kidding. You, too, Wolf. He's drunk. When he's drunk he hates everybody. And besides, his wife wrote him she's leaving England with the kid and coming here, and he can't stand giving up all his dames.” Eddie turned on Mosca with drunken reproachfulness and said, “That's not so, Walter, I really gave her some raw deals.” He shook his head dolefully.
Mosca, to cheer him up, said, “Tell Wolf about your gorilla.”
Wolf drank his whisky down, and some of his good humor returned. He grinned at Eddie Cassin.
Eddie said solemnly, almost reverently, “I'm screwing a gorilla.” He waited for Wolf's reaction.
“I'm not surprised.’ Wolf said and laughed with Mosca. “What's the deal?”
“I'm screwing a real honest-to-God gorilla,” Eddie insisted.
Wolf looked questioningly at Mosca. “It's a dame,” Mosca said, “he claims she looks just like a gorilla, she's that homely.”
Eddie looked down at the table and then turned earnestly to Mosca. “I got a confession to make, Walter, she's really a gorilla, I was ashamed to admit it. But she's a real gorilla. I lied to you. She lives right near the air base and she works for Military Government. She's an interpreter.” He smiled at them, and Wolf, his spirits completely restored, laughed so heartily that the people at the near-by tables turned around again.’
“How about bringing her around and giving us a break?” Wolf asked jokingly.
Eddie shuddered. “Christ, I never go out in the street with her even. I sneak into the house when it's dark.”
“It's time for us to leave, Walter,” Wolf said briskly; “this is the big night and itV going to be a long one.”
Mosca leaned over Eddie and asked, “You all right? Can you get home okay?” Eddie mumbled that he was and as they walked to the door they could hear him shouting to the waiter for another drink.
Wolf waited for Mosca to get ahead of him, noticing the unsteady walk. Going up the steps he could not help saying, “You picked a hell of a night to get stewed.”
The cold winter air sliced through MoscaV cheekbones, freezing the red pulp of his gums and palate, flesh already raw from too much alcohol and cigarettes. He lit a cigarette to warm his mouth and throat and thought, Screw you, Wolf, and thought, I'll this son of a bitch makes another crack Til rap him or walk away. He could feel the cold working through his coat and below it, freezing his knees and thighs, feeling his whole torso itch with the beginning chill as if it were glazed with frost, and he felt nausea as the frozen air hit the souring whisky in his belly, sending it spinning up to his brain. He wanted to vomit but knotted his stomach muscles, held it down, not wanting Wolf to see him so. Knowing that Wolf was right, it was a hell of a night to get stewed. But for the first time he'd had a quarrel with Hella, not the kind of an argument that made you mad or resentful but one in which neither could understand the other. Just depressing and sad.
The street Wolf and Mosca followed led down a hill from the Rathskellar, past the area of light shed by the Red Cross Club, the music from it trailing after them like a ghost through the ruins. Past the Police Building with its searchlight that imprisoned the jeeps in a white blinding pool of light cut from the surrounding darkness, and then descending the hill, steep as a well, they left the heart of the city and became part of the black night, and though they must have walked for some time it seemed almost a moment to Mosca before Wolf had knocked on a door, and they were inside some place, out of the cold.
In the room there was a large table, four chairs around it These were the only pieces of furniture. Against the walls were stacks of merchandise over which brown Army blankets had been hastily thrown. There were no windows, and the room was hazy with smoke.
Mosca could hear Wolf saying something, introducing him