U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [481]
"Aw, hel , let's talk about somethin' else." The camp was
-322-al right but the mosquitoes were fierce. They spent a good day on the reef fishing for barracuda and grouper. They took a jug of bacardi out in the motorboat and fished and drank and ate sandwiches. Charley told Nat al about the crackup. "Honestly, I don't and drank and ate sandwiches. Charley told Nat al about the crackup. "Honestly, I don't think it was my fault. It was one of those damn things you can't help. . . . Now I feel as if I'd lost the last friend I had on earth. Honest, I'd a given anythin' I had in the world if that hadn't happened to Bil .""After al ," said Nat, "he was only a mechanic." One day when they got in from fishing, drunk and with their hands and pants fishy, and their faces burned by the sun and glare, and dizzy from the sound and smel of the motor and the choppy motion of the boat, they found wait-ing for them a wire from Benton's office. UNKNOWN UNLOADING TERN STOP
DROPS FOUR AND A
HALF POINTS STOP WIRE INSTRUCTIONS
"Instructions hel ," said Benton, jamming his stuff into his suitcase. "We'l go up and see. Suppose we charter a plane at Miami.""You take the plane," said Charley cool y. "I'm going to ride on the train." In New York he sat al day in the back room of Nat Benton's office smoking too many cigars, watching the ticker, fretting and fuming, riding up and down town in taxicabs, getting the lowdown from various sal owfaced friends of Nat's and Moe Frank's. By the end of the week he'd lost four hundred thousand dol ars and had let go every airplane stock he had in the world.
Al the time he was sitting there putting on a big show of business he was counting the minutes, the way he had when he was a kid in school, for the market to close so that he could go uptown to a speakeasy on Fiftysecond Street to meet a hennahaired girl named Sal y Hogan he'd met when he was out with Nat at the Club Dover. She was the first girl he'd picked up when he got to New York. He didn't give a damn about her but he had to have some kind
-323-of a girl. They were registered at the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. One morning when they were having breakfast in bed
there was a light knock on the door. "Come in," yel ed Charley, thinking it was the waiter. Two shabbylooking men rushed into the room, fol owed by O'Higgins, a shy-ster lawyer he'd met a couple of times back in Detroit. Sal y let out a shriek and covered her head with the pil ow.
"Howdy, Charley," said O'Higgins. "I'm sorry to do this but it's al in the line of duty. You don't deny that you are Charles Anderson, do you? Wel , I thought you'd rather hear it from me than just read the legal terms. Mrs. Anderson is suing you for divorce in Michigan. . . . That's al right, boys."
The shabby men bowed meekly and backed out the door.
"Of al the lousy stinkin' tricks . . ."
"Mrs. Anderson's had the detectives on your trail ever since you fired her chauffeur in Jacksonvil e." Charley had such a splitting headache and felt so weak from a hangover that he couldn't lift his head. He wanted to get up and sock that sonofabitch O'Higgins but al he could do was lie there and take' it. "But she never said anything about it in her letters. She's been writin' me right along. There's never been any trouble between us." O'Higgins shook his curly red head. "Too bad," he said. "Maybe if you can see her you can arrange it between you. You