The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway [24]
"Must clean myself."
"Oh, rot! Come on."
"Must bathe. He doesn't get in till nine."
"Come and have a drink, then, before you bathe."
"Might do that. Now you're not talking rot."
We got in the taxi. The driver looked around.
"Stop at the nearest bistro," I said.
"We might as well go to the Closerie," Brett said. "I can't drink these rotten brandies."
"Closerie des Lilas."
Brett turned to Bill.
"Have you been in this pestilential city long?"
"Just got in to-day from Budapest."
"How was Budapest?"
"Wonderful. Budapest was wonderful."
"Ask him about Vienna."
"Vienna," said Bill, "is a strange city."
"Very much like Paris," Brett smiled at him, wrinkling the corners of her eyes.
"Exactly," Bill said. "Very much like Paris at this moment."
"You have a good start."
Sitting out on the terraces of the Lilas Brett ordered a whiskey and soda, I took one, too, and Bill took another pernod.
"How are you, Jake?"
"Great," I said. "I've had a good time."
Brett looked at me. "I was a fool to go away," she said. "One's an ass to leave Paris."
"Did you have a good time?"
"Oh, all right. Interesting. Not frightfully amusing."
"See anybody?"
"No, hardly anybody. I never went out."
"Didn't you swim?"
"No. Didn't do a thing."
"Sounds like Vienna," Bill said.
Brett wrinkled up the corners of her eyes at him.
"So that's the way it was in Vienna."
"It was like everything in Vienna."
Brett smiled at him again.
"You've a nice friend, Jake."
"He's all right," I said. "He's a taxidermist."
"That was in another country," Bill said. "And besides all the animals were dead."
"One more," Brett said, "and I must run. Do send the waiter for a taxi."
"There's a line of them. Right out in front."
"Good."
We had the drink and put Brett into her taxi.
"Mind you're at the Select around ten. Make him come. Michael will be there."
"We'll be there," Bill said. The taxi started and Brett waved.
"Quite a girl," Bill said. "She's damned nice. Who's Michael?"
"The man she's going to marry."
"Well, well," Bill said. "That's always just the stage I meet anybody. What'll I send them? Think they'd like a couple of stuffed race-horses?"
"We better eat."
"Is she really Lady something or other?" Bill asked in the taxi on our way down to the Ile Saint Louis.
"Oh, yes. In the stud-book and everything."
"Well, well."
We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, and right after the armistice, and Madame Lecomte made a great fuss over seeing him.
"Doesn't get us a table, though," Bill said. "Grand woman, though."
We had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple-pie and cheese.
"You've got the world here all right," Bill said to Madame Lecomte. She raised her hand. "Oh, my God!"
"You'll be rich."
"I hope so."
After the coffee and a fine we got the bill, chalked up the same as ever on a slate, that was doubtless one of the "quaint" features, paid it, shook hands, and went out.
"You never come here any more, Monsieur Barnes," Madame Lecomte said.
"Too many compatriots."
"Come at lunch-time. It's not crowded then."
"Good. I'll be down soon."
We walked along under the trees that grew out over the river on the Quai d'Orléans side of the island. Across the river were the broken walls of old houses that were being torn down.
"They're going to cut a street through."
"They would," Bill said.
We walked on and circled the island. The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of the Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked