U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [125]
"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 Ben's didn't come off so wel . J. Ward Moorehouse didn't make up to the girls as Ben had hoped. He brought his secretary, a tired blond girl, and they both looked scared to death. They had a dinner Mexican style and champagne and a great deal of cognac and a victrola played records by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin and a little itinerant band attracted by the crowd played Mexican airs on the street outside. After dinner things were getting a little noisy inside so Ben and Moore-house took chairs out on the balcony and had a long talk about the oil situation over their cigars. J. Ward Moore-house explained that he had come down in a purely un-official capacity you understand to make contacts, to find out what the situation was and just what there was behind Carranza's stubborn opposition to American investors and that the big businessmen he was in touch with in the States desired only fair play and that he felt that if their point of view could be thoroughly understood through some information bureau or the friendly coöperation of Mexi-can newspapermen.
-318-Ben went back in the diningroom and brought out Enrique Salvador and Mac. They al talked over the
situation and J. Ward Moorehouse said that speaking as an old newspaperman himself he thoroughly understood the situation of the press, probably not so different in Mexico City from that in Chicago or Pittsburgh and that al the newspaperman wanted was to give each fresh angle of the situation its proper significance in a spirit of fair play and friendly coöperation, but that he felt that the Mexican papers had been misinformed about the aims of American business in Mexico just as the American press was misinformed about the aims of Mexican politics. If Mr. Enrique would cal by the Regis he'd be delighted to talk to him more ful y, or to any one of you gentlemen and if he wasn't in, due to the great press of appointments and the very few days he had to spend in the Mexican capital, his secretary, Miss Wil iams, would be only too wil ing to give them any information they wanted and a few special y prepared strictly confidential notes on the attitude of the big American corporations with which he was purely informal y in touch. After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him, and Miss Wil iams, his secretary, home in the chief of police's automobile.