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After di
Drinking, a little blearily, at a table along the wall, looking at the girls, fat legs showing under loud, imitation silk dresses, Thomas remembered ten of the best days in his life, the time in Ca
“Say,” he said to Dwyer, sitting across from him, drinking beer, “I got an idea.”
“What’s that?” Dwyer was keeping a wary eye on the girls, fearful that one of them would come over and sit down next to him and put her hand on his knee. He had offered earlier in the evening to pick up a prostitute to prove, once and for all, to Thomas that he wasn’t a fag, but Thomas had said it wasn’t necessary, he didn’t care whether he was a fag or not and anyway it wouldn’t prove anything because he knew plenty of fags who also screwed.
“What’s what?” Thomas asked.
“You said you had an idea.”
“An idea. Yeah. An idea. Let’s skip the fucking ship.”
“You’re crazy,” Dwyer said. “What the hell’ll we do in Marseilles without a ship? They’ll put us in jail.”
“Nobody’ll put us in jail,” Thomas said. “I didn’t say for good. Where’s the next port she puts into? Genoa. Am I right?”
“Okay. Genoa,” Dwyer said reluctantly.
“We pick her up in Genoa,” Thomas said. “We say we got drunk and we didn’t wake up until she was out of the harbor. Then we pick her up in Genoa. What can they do to us? Dock us a few days’ pay, that’s all. They’re short-handed as it is. After Genoa, the ship goes straight back to Hoboken, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So we don’t lose any shore time, them keeping us on board in a port. I don’t want to sail on that lousy tub any more, anyway. We can always pick up something better in New York.”
“But what’ll we do between now and Genoa?” Dwyer asked worriedly.
“We tour. We make the grand tour,” Thomas said, “We get on the train and we go to Ca
“I’m saving my money,” Dwyer said.
“Live a little, live a little,” Thomas said impatiently. By now it was inconceivable to him that he could go back to the gloom of the ship, stand watches, chip paint, eat the garbage they handed out, with Ca
“I don’t even have my toothbrush on me,” Dwyer said.
“I’ll buy you a toothbrush,” Thomas said. “Say, you’re always telling me what a great sailor you are, how you sailed a dory all over Lake Superior when you were a kid …”
“What’s Lake Superior got to do with Ca
“Sailor boy …” It was one of the whores from the bar, in a spangled dress showing most of her bosom. “Sailor boy, want to buy nize lady nize little drink, have good time, wiz ozzer lady later?” She smiled, showing gold teeth.
“Get outa here,” Thomas said.
“Salaud,” the woman said amiably, and spangled over to the juke box.
“What’s Lake Superior got to do with Ca
“Well, I …”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
“For Christ’s sake, Tommy,” Dwyer said, “I never said I was Christopher Columbus or anybody like that. I said I sailed a dory and some small power boats when I was a kid and …”
“You know how to handle boats. Am I right in supposing that or ain’t I right?”
“Sure, I can handle small boats,” Dwyer admitted. “I still don’t see …”
“On the beach at Ca
“Tommy!” Dwyer said, hurt.
“You can teach me,” Thomas said. “I want to learn from an expert. Ah—the hell with it—if you’re too yellow to come with me, I’ll do it myself. Go on back to the boat, like a nice little boy.”
“Okay,” Dwyer said. “I never did anything like this before. But I’ll do it. The hell with the ship.” He drained his beer.
“The grand tour,” Thomas said.
It wasn’t as good as he’d remembered it, because he had Dwyer with him, not that wild English girl. But it was good enough. And it certainly was a lot better than standing watches on the Elga Andersen and eating that slop and sleeping in the same stinking hole with two snoring Moroccans.
They found a cheap little hotel that wasn’t too bad behind the rue d’Antibes and went swimming off the beach, although it was only springtime and the water was so cold you could only stay in a little while. But the white buildings were the same, the pink wine was the same, the blue sky was the same, the great yachts lying in the harbor were the same. And he didn’t have to worry about his weight or fighting some murderous Frenchman when the holiday was over.
They rented a little sailboat by the hour and Dwyer hadn’t been lying, he really knew how to handle small boats. In two days he had taught Thomas a great deal and Thomas could slip a mooring and come up to it dead, with the sail rattling down, nine times out of ten.
But most of the time they spent around the harbor, walking slowly around the quays, silently admiring the sloops, the schooners, the big yachts, the motor cruisers, all still in the harbor and being sanded down and varnished and polished up for the season ahead.
“Christ,” Thomas said, “would you believe there’s so much money in the world and we don’t have any of it.”
They found a bar on the Quai St. Pierre frequented by the sailors and captains working on pleasure craft. Some of them were English and many of the others could speak a little and they got into conversations with them whenever they could. None of the men seemed to work very hard and the bar was almost always at least half full at all hours of the day. They learned to drink pastis because that was what everybody else drank and because it was cheap. They hadn’t found any girls and the ones who accosted them from cars on the Croisette or back behind the port asked too much money. But for once in his life Thomas didn’t mind going without a woman. The harbor was enough for him, the vision of the life based on it, of grown men living year in and year out on beautiful ships was enough for him. No boss to bother about nine months of the year, and then in the summer being a big shot at the wheel of a hundred-thousand-dollar craft, going to places like St. Tropez and Monte Carlo and Capri, coming into harbor with girls in bathing suits draped all over the decks. And they all seemed to have money. What they didn’t earn in salary they got in kickbacks from ship chandlers and boatyards and rigged expense accountts. They ate and drank like kings and some of the older ones weren’t sober from one day to the next.
“These guys,” Thomas said, after they had been in town for four days, “have solved the problems of the universe.”
He even thought of skipping the Elga Andersen for good and trying to get a job on one of the yachts for the summer, but it turned out that unless you were a skipper you most likely only got hired for three or four months, at lousy pay, and you were let go for the rest of the year. Much as he liked Ca