"Norman is about to fall on his face," Atlas said. Paperman did have a drained look, and he was weaving a little. "We'll grab a nap and then talk some more."
5
In the cottage named Desire, Papennan collapsed on a bed. The bed cover irritated his sweaty, salty skin, but he felt that he could sleep on red coals.
Not Atlas, though. Atlas poured himself half a tumbler of bourbon and walked up and down the room.
"Norm, I look on you and Henny as a couple of kid cousins or something, you know that. How serious are you about this thing? Has it all been a pipe dream? Is it for real? Now that you've seen it, you'd better decide fast."
Paperman rolled on his side, with a small groan. He didn't want to talk business; his body was crying for sleep. But Atlas was doing this out of kindness to his wife and himself, and if the old thug felt like talking, Norman had to oblige.
Henrietta Paperman had been Atlas's secretary long ago. A sort of friendship had continued, based mainly on Atlas's greedy interest in meeting Broadway people. He was a lonely man, separated from his wife and detested by his two grown children, and he liked to take the Papermans to dinner now and then and tell them his troubles. What he enjoyed most was going to an opening night with them and then sitting at a table in Sardi's, staring at the celebrities, sometimes collaring one who happened to greet Norman or Henny, forcing him to join them, and pressing big dollar cigars and champagne on him.
Norman said in a small, tired voice, "Well, Lester, it's about what I expected. It's what I want to do. I don't know about the money part, but-"
"Oh, the money part could work, Norm. I'd see to that. I've said many times I'd like to put you into something better than that fly-by-night publicity racket. I mean it's a small situation, but this dame's pulling fifteen thousand a year out of the place. Six more rooms and you could clear twenty-five easy. Your overhead would stay the same, maybe one more cleaning girl. The cost of improvement is nothing, just partition walls. The only real cost is the plumbing. I'm a nut on giving everybody their own can. You ought to get Henny down here right away, if you're actually serious."
Paperman raised himself heavily on an elbow. "You'd go ahead with this, Lester?"
"You're the one who'll be going ahead with it."
"I have no money to invest. That's the whole problem."
"That's no problem." Atlas sighed and sat on the bed next to Paperman's. "It's as hot as hell in this cottage. This island is hot. I don't care what anybody says."
Indeed it was choking and damp in the large white plastered room, though the porch was open to the sea. Norman said, "November is the worst. The trade winds die down. Then in December-"
"Trade winds! For Christ's sake stop with the trade winds. It's hot. Hot! In the winter people want to be hot, so you're in business. You got merchandise." Atlas drank off his bourbon and poured more. "Now about the deal. You don't really think you can buy a piece of real estate like Gull Reef, with the hotel and these beaches and all, for fifty-five grand, do you? This thing has got to be worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars right now and at that it would be a steal."
"Lester, the ad said fifty-five thousand."
Atlas shook his head with tolerant patience. "It belongs to some native family. It's been handed down for generations. You'd have to round up about seventy-five people to even talk about a deal, and some of them can't hardly read and write, and some are in England, and some are God knows where. This banker says that back in 1928 some Englishman did round them up and he got a fifty-year lease and built this place for the American trade. Then 1929 came along and he went bust. The place went back to the goats and the rats and the lizards for twenty years and more. That's why it's got this crappy look. About eight years ago two fags came down from California and bought the lease, and fixed the joint up like it is now. That gondola and all the rest. Well, then, one of them fell in love with this Turk who opened a gift shop here, and the other California fruit got mad and stabbed the Turk-that banker told me all this-and the Turk survived and the two fags got reconciled, only they had to blow the island because this one was up for attempted murder, and that's when Mrs. Ball bought it. The upshot of it is, you're not buying anything but the last nineteen years of the lease. You got to get your dough out in that time."
Despite his fatigue, Paperman was laughing. "What happened to the Turk?"
"That's what I asked. He's still here, he's one of their leading citizens. He runs the Community Chest drive."
Paperman laughed harder.
"Norm, this thing has angles. Suppose you're sitting here on this reef with a nineteen-year lease, and a Sheraton or a Hilton comes along and wants in? This is the best site for a new tropical hotel I've ever seen. Those guys don't give a good god damn. They'll sink a hundred thousand in legal fees just to clear the title. They're apt to pay you anything you name for the lease, I mean a quarter of a million, three hundred thousand, who knows? Those bastards, they don't fool around.
"The other thing is, Norm, the Caribbean is a growth area. The smart money, I mean like the Rockefellers and some of the big Europeans, they're buying thousands and thousands of acres on some of these islands you never even heard of. They're looking fifty years ahead. That's how they operate, they think of the family two generations from now. In Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the boom's hit already, prices are sky high. Amerigo's on the edge. You can still pick up the choice stuff reasonably, and when you get into the big wild patches over on the north side, from what old Llewellyn said there's some real bargains. But you got to be here. You got to be on hand when some old poop dies up in the hills and the stuff comes on the market. I like the idea of you and Henny being down here, keeping an eye out for things I might buy. Anything like that, I'd cut you both in, of course. A finder's fee."
Paperman was wide awake now, sitting up and hugging his naked knees. "Les, I don't know anything about real estate."
"Nothing to it. All you'd have to do is keep your ears open, and holler for me if something good turned up. No, this can be a good thing all around." Lester Atlas yawned and threw his cigar out over the porch. You've got to face up to it now. Do you really want to give up New York and come to the Caribbean? It won't be easy, you know." He pulled the cover off the bed and settled down on the sheets, yawning and moaning with pleasure. "Jesus, I'm tired. Say, how about that green bikini?"
"She has a face," Paperman said.
"Isn't it hell?" said Atlas. "Those goddam bikinis always cover the wrong part. Norm, this is fun. Maybe we'll both end up beachcombers."
He was snoring in a minute, his naked gray-furred chest perspiring in running streams. Paperman sat hugging his knees, staring straight ahead.
6
The bar was jammed. The talk and laughter were loud; it was almost eight; a low brilliant evening star cast a narrow silver path on the still sea. Negroes and whites were roosting on the terrace rail or sitting on the steps. Paperman's immediate concern was whether he was properly dressed. He had longed to wear his new custom-tailored white dinner jacket, but overdressing was abhorrent to him. He had settled on black Bermuda shorts and knee socks, a madras jacket, and a maroon bow tie. He saw at once that it hardly mattered. There were men dressed like himself, and men in light shirts and slacks; girls in cocktail dresses, in toreador pants, and in shorts. A party in evening dress sat around the big low circular table in the center: Negroes, whites, a naval officer in a beribboned white uniform, and two ebony Africans in red-and-gold robes and crimson skullcaps. Mrs. Ball sat with them.
Lester was not in sight. He had disappeared while Norman slept.
"Hey, Norman!"
Bob Cohn, dressed in an olive gabardine suit, was waving at him from the bar. Muffled in a shirt and tie, the frogman looked insignificant, an ugly little young man with an outsize nose. Sitting beside him, her back to Paperman, was a tall blond woman in white.
"Hi, Bob. I'm paying for those drinks," Paperman said, approaching them. The woman turned her head. Before he saw her face, Paperman knew that it would not be disappointing. Ugly women did not carry their heads or turn them in this way.
"Sure thing. Mrs. Tramm, meet my new swim buddy, Norm Paperman from New York."
"Hello there," said the woman, with a slow blink of large alert hazel eyes.
Cohn started to slip off his stool. "Come on, join us. Sit here."
Paperman put a hand on his shoulder. "What's this? Respect for gray hairs? Get back on your chair. Martini, please," he said to the bartender. "Bombay gin. Boissiere vermouth, two to one. Lemon peel. Chill the glass, please."
"Bless my soul," said the woman in white. "That's precisely how I like a martini. Cold, and tasting like a martini. This idiocy of waving the vermouth bottle at a glass of plain vodka!" She tinkled her glass at him. "But I gave up on the chilling long ago. I drink them with ice."
"Wrong, wrong," said Paperman. "Lumps in the oatmeal. The coward's compromise. You have to fight for the things you believe in. The martini before dinner is a sacrament. A chilled glass. To those who believe, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."
Mrs. Tramm burst out laughing. "The Song of Bernadette! Ye gods. Somebody else remembers." She pushed her glass at the bartender. "Thor, please make me one exactly like Mr. Paperman's."
"Yes, ma'am."
"My name's Norman."
"Mine's Iris."
Paperman held out his hand, and Mrs. Tramm shook it, still laughing. She had a cool bony hand. There were no rings on her unusually long fingers. Earrings swayed and sparkled with each motion of her head; to Paperman's practiced eye, platinum and diamonds. It was obvious to Paperman that he had had a very wrong idea about "this babe." For some reason it had amused her to accept a dinner invitation from the young swimmer, but she was not the kind to bother with Cohn. She was a powerful woman on the loose.
Iris Tramm was-on a quick inventory of what was visible-a divorcee in her thirties; a woman with a lovely face of English or Scandinavian cast, with strong sloping bones, a small tilted nose, and fine teeth. There was a curl to one side of her lips, a flattening, a touch of unbalance to the mouth, and her eyes were strikingly brilliant. She was the kind of woman Norman found most appetizing, though he still admired, with wry regret, the pretty Broadway girls whom he had played with for so many years. Now he knew they preferred the dark-headed boys, and in truth he was embarrassed by their callow ways, which more and more reminded him of his own growing daughter. Norman was an almost habitual philanderer; but since his heart attack he had behaved himself, mainly for medical reasons.
Cohn said, "Listen, Norm, I took another look at that fish. It's a hefty beast. Have dinner with us."
Paperman shook his head. "Three's a crowd. Thanks."
The slight curl in Mrs. Tramm's mouth deepened. She said in a theatrically sexy voice, "Bob, don't you want to be alone with me?"
Cohn grinned. "It's a good fish. Why should the waitresses get most of it?"
"He's afraid of me," Mrs. Tramm said to Paperman. "Imagine. An undersea warrior like that."
The bartender put two frosty glasses before them, and poured. Paperman picked up his glass. "Let's toast the undersea warrior. I might be under the sea right now if he hadn't come along and pulled me out this morning."
"Oh hell, Norm, you were just having a little trouble with your mask."
Mrs. Tramm lifted her glass. "Fortunate encounters."
"Fortunate encounters," said Cohn and Paperman. The glance Mrs. Tramm gave Paperman over the rim of her glass shook him, though it only showed appraising curiosity.
She said, "So help me, a real martini. Lovely. Look, why don't you help us eat that fish? Since Bob seems to fear I might eat him."
Paperman looked at the frogman, and said, "Well, Mrs. Tramm, I don't know-the inducement, you both understand, would be the fish."
Mrs. Tramm did a startling thing. She popped her eyes, sucked in her cheeks, and gave a couple of goggling gasps, in a very fair imitation of a fish. It went by in a moment, her face resumed its peculiar curling smile, and both men were laughing hard.
"I believe this is one evening," said Mrs. Tramm, "when I will step off what passes with me for a wagon, and have two martinis. We won't count that lumpy oatmeal I was drinking when Norman arrived."
"We're having wine, too, Iris," Cohn said.
"Sweetie, we're having something wet, nasty, and furry in a bottle.
There isn't a wine in the world that can travel to this island." She turned to Paperman. "It's a scientific mystery. Guadeloupe's just over the horizon. You can see it from Government House. The wine there's excellent. The Caribbean's not 'to blame. What is it?"
"I know about that. It's like thunderstorms and milk," Paperman said. "It happens in all latitudes and climates, and there's no accounting for it. The American flag turns wine sour."
