From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [137]
“I cant picture it neither,” Maggio said. “Except he’s got a lot of shoulder for our boy to cry on. When Bloom seen me and I seen how he looked at me I begun to lookin around for a good big heavy chair.”
“You meant he wasnt glad to see you?” Prew said.
Maggio laughed. “He got a patch of tape as big as my mouth on that flat head. My boy Hal knows this Tommy well,” he said. “Thats what he said, first time he seen him with Bloom, he said: ‘Alas, poor Tommy, I knew him well.’”
“Thats from Shakespeare,” Sandra said. “A corruption. From Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.’”
“Yeah?” Angelo said. “Well what do you know. My boy Hal is plenty educated, baby. Very poetic, Hal is.”
“I bet he is,” Sandra grinned. “I bet he’s very poetic. They’re all poetic. I got a couple odd ones that come up to see me every now and then.”
“Well,” Maggio mimed. “Whatever for?”
“You guess,” Sandra grinned.
“I dont have to guess,” Maggio said. “Old Hal,” he said to Prew, “says this Tommy borrows his car to take Bloom out with, ever time old Hal will let him have it. He says Tommy hardly makes enough to live on, says he works someplace downtown and writes stories for magazines on the side. Old Hal says he dont make near enough to spend money on our chum Bloom, says he cant hardly buy our chum Bloom drinks even. Frankly, I am getting so I am wondering who is laying whom.”
“Sure,” Prew said, trying to think of something to say. “I wouldnt doubt it,” he added, finally.
“I had dinner down at Lau Yee Chai’s tonight,” Maggio bragged to Sandra. “Feature that.”
“Lau Yee Chai’s?” Sandra said indifferently. “Thats my favorite hangout. Its a highclass place. I eat there all the time.”
“Will they let you in?”
“Sure,” Sandra said. “Why not?”
“I thought The Law said you gals had to live out of town.”
“It does,” Sandra said. “But at Lau Yee Chai’s they think I’m a rich tourist lady.”
“You ever eat any of this pa-pa-ya?” Maggio asked her.
“Papaya,” Sandra said. “Eat it all the time. I love it.”
“Tonight was a first time I ever had some,” Angelo said. “Looks like mushmelon, kind of, but it tastes like nothin. They got to put lemon juice on it to make it taste at all.”
“Its like olives,” Sandra said. “You have to acquire a taste for it.”
“Same thing as avocado,” Stark said, with authority, “or snails. You got to learn to like it.”
“To me,” Angelo said, “with lemon on it, it smells just like vomit. I am not acquiring any tastes for vomit.” He laughed uproariously half-drunkenly, so hard he almost fell off Sandra’s lap. Sandra looked at him inquiringly.
“God damn,” Stark said, “if you two dont look like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.”
“We had a gook waiter tonight,” Angelo explained, laughing. “This gook waiter stood around behint me all a time like he was scared I’d pick up the wrong fork and shock the customers. So when he brought this pa-pa-ya with a slice of lemon I whispered to him what this was? and he says, ‘Why, thats papaya, Sir.’ So I whispered to him, ‘Angelo Maggio tries anything once,’ and ast him was this how you did it? and squeezed the lemon on it.
“‘Oh, yes, Sir,’ he whispers back.
“‘Odd,’ I whispered to him back, ‘but when you put lemon juice on this pa-pa-ya it smells just like vomit, dont it?’ He just stares at me without a word and I whispers, ‘Its a good thing I’m crazy about vomit, aint it?’”
All of them, excepting Prew, laughed, even Billy laughed, and Angelo seated on his perch grinned as smugly as the parrot who has just four-letter-worded the old maid out of the room in the cartoon.
“I thought old Hal would bust his gut from laughin,” Angelo grinned. “This old waiter dint hover at this elbow no more, after that.”
Little Billy got up from Stark’s lap suddenly, as if the laughter had released her from a hypnotism. She stretched her small voluptuous body feverishly, the firm small uptilted breasts that many a virtuous woman would have envied and considered a rank malfeasance of her office leaping tautly into prominence, their nipples darkly visible under the thin material, almost in Stark’s face.
“Well, how about it, Maylon?” she whispered huskily. “There wont be no more stragglers now, and if there was its too near two o’clock for an all night job like me to take them on.” She arched her back toward him thirstily, proud