U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [135]
Before Christmas Ben Stowel came back from a trip
to Tamaulipas feeling fine. Things were looking up for him. He'd made an arrangement with a local general near Tampico to run an oil wel on a fifty-fifty basis. Through Salvador he'd made friends with some members of Car-ranza's cabinet and was hoping to be able to turn over a deal with some of the big claimholders up in the States. He had plenty of cash and took a room at the Regis. One day he went round to the printing plant and asked Mac to step out in the al ey with him for a minute.
"Look here, Mac," he said, "I've got an offer for you
. . . You know old Worthington's bookstore? Wel , I got drunk last night and bought him out for two thousand pesos . . . He's pul ing up stakes and going home to blighty, he says."
"The hel you did!"
"Wel , I'm just as glad to have him out of the way."
-316-"Why, you old whoremaster, you're after Lisa."
"Wel , maybe she's just as glad to have him out of the way too."
"She's certainly a goodlooker."
"I got a lot a news I'l tel you later . . . Ain't goin'
to be so healthy round The Mexican Herald maybe . . . I've got a proposition for you, Mac . . . Christ knows I owe you a hel ova lot . . . You know that load of office furniture you have out back Concha made you buy that time?" Mac nodded. "Wel , I'l take it off your hands and give you a half interest in that bookstore. I'm opening an office. You know the book business . . . you told me yourself you did . . . the profits for the first year are yours and after that we split two ways, see? You certainly ought to make it pay. That old fool Worthington did, and kept Lisa into the bargain . . . Are you on?"
"Jez, lemme think it over, Ben . . . but I got to go back to the daily bunksheet." So Mac found himself running a bookstore on the Cal e Independencia with a line of stationery and a few type-writers. It felt good to be his own boss for the first time in his life. Concha, who was a storekeeper's daughter, was delighted. She kept the books and talked to the customers so that Mac didn't have much to do but sit in the back and read and talk to his friends. That Christmas Ben and Lisa, who was a tal Spanish girl said to have been a dancer in Malaga, with a white skin like a camel ia and ebony hair, gave al sorts of parties in an apartment with American-style bath and kitchen that Ben rented out in the new quarter towards Chapultepec. The day the Asociacion de Publicistas had its annual banquet, Ben stopped into the bookstore feeling fine and told Mac he wanted him and Concha to come up after supper and wouldn't Concha
bring a couple of friends, nice wel behaved girls not too choosy, like she knew. He was giving a party for G. H. Barrow who was back from Vera Cruz and a big contact
-317-man from New York who was wangling something, Ben didn't know just what. He'd seen Carranza yesterday and at the banquet everybody'd kowtowed to him.
"Jez, Mac, you oughta been at that banquet; they took one of the streetcars and had a table the whole length of it and an orchestra and rode us out to San Angel and back and then al round town."
"I saw 'em starting out," said Mac, "looked too much like a funeral to me."
"Jez, it was swel though. Salvador an' everybody was there and this guy Moorehouse, the big hombre from New York, jez, he looked like he didn't know if he was comin'
or goin'. Looked like he expected a bomb to go off under the seat any minute . . . hel ova good thing for Mexico if one had, when you come to think of it. Al the worst crooks in town were there."
The party at