3:AM Magazine

By Jonathan Woods.

Havana, 1959.

Mary was AWOL. Flown to New York to go shopping. “I need some new dresses,” she said. “I can’t always go around looking like the great white huntress. Besides, if I wear something slinky and low cut, you might take your eyes off the maid for a few minutes.”

Ernest rolled his eyes. Guilt haunted their depths.

He stood in the doorway watching her pack. Her movements were clipped and mechanical. She snapped the twin suitcase latches closed and turned to face him.

“Don’t go, Mary. I’ll cut back on my drinking. I’ll even go to see Dr. Lamprey for the cure.”

“Get the fuck out of my way.”

She’d been gone for 48 hours without word. Neither a phone call nor telegram confirming her safe arrival at Idlewild. Ernest was thinking about calling a guy he knew in Hackensack who did part time P.I. work.

Instead, he told the cook, who was drinking sherry while she haphazardly dissected three fryers for dinner, to call the Hotel Ambos Mundos and get a hold of Graham, who was in town making a movie from his most recent novel. Movie stars galore: Alec Guinness, Maureen O’Hara and that lunatic Kovaks. Though he had to admit Edie Adams was one great looking doll, so Kovaks must have something going for him. Brains and wit, he thought. Then changed his mind. More likely a big dick to go with that dark complexion.

“Senior Greene is on the line,” said Ramona. She handed Ernest the receiver.

“Graham, you son of a bitch. How’re the old cojones hanging?”

“They could use a workout. Been cooped up on airplanes for two days flying in from LA.”

“That’s why I called. I’ll send my driver and car to pick you up; bring you out to the finca. Damn quiet with Mary gone to New York.”

“What gives, Hem? She got a young stud stabled in some Sutton Place pad with a view? Or a little lesbo cooze holed up in a dank dyke club down Greenwich Avenue way?”

“Not that I know of, pal. But you best keep your lip shut about my wife’s predilections, real or imaged. Otherwise I might have to divest those cojones of yours.”

“Hem, you sound like a Dashiell Hammett novel. Cool down. They all fuck like bunnies.”

“You’re probably right. But I don’t need to know about it.”

“You always were a prude. Oh, the earth is shaking. Oh. Oh. Oh.”

“Shut your face, Graham.”

“Trouble with you, Hem. You never got buggered in public school like us Brits. Gives you a whole different outlook on what’s socially acceptable.”

“Let’s skip the rest of this conversation. My driver’ll pick you up at eleven. When you get here we’ll have a swim. Then lunch.”

“Whoa, mate. Hold on. I’m not coming all the way out there just to drink a pitcher of daiquiris and eat cream cheese and olive sandwiches. How about getting a couple pairs of chichis to join us.”

“Well, damn, Graham. I see you’ve been studying up on the local lingo. But Finca Vigia ain’t no bordello.”

“I need to get something going, Hem. I haven’t written a sentence in weeks.”

“Tell you what. I’ll come into town and we’ll get you some fine literary pussy.”

An hour later Ernest, hair slicked back with Vitalis, nose hairs clipped, Acqua di Parma colonia sprinkled liberally amid chest hairs and under armpits, stepped from the passenger side of a blue and white two-tone Olds 88 onto the sidewalk outside the Ambos Mundos Hotel. He wore khakis from chin to ankles. The shirt had a special pocket that held four cigars. He bought his cigars from a guy in Cojimar who hand rolled them. The doorman tipped him a smart salute and swung open the brass and glass doorway. Ernest slipped the doorman a tip.

“Good to see you again, Papa,” he said.

“And you, mi amigo.”

When he stepped inside the lobby, the staff went wild, offering handshakes, wild backslapping and a stream of jokes fraught with obscure Spanish sexual innuendoes. It was like the old days when he first came to Havana. Ernest suddenly realized that he hadn’t been in town in weeks. I’m getting old and reclusive, he thought. But it had been a good year, the writing flowing like the torrents of spring.

A bottle of rum anejo materialized from thin air and shots were tossed back. The manager offered cigarettes all around. A blue haze enveloped the lobby.

A call was made to Senor Greene’s suite. The antique elevator in its wire cage chugged upwards and then down again, to disgorge Graham, dapper as a pimp in a brown seersucker suit, Brandy Alexander colored tie and pointy snakeskin shoes. His arrival precipitated another round of drinks.

“You’d think you were a famous fucking bullfighter,” was his comment at all the hoopla. “You can’t possibly be a writer. Writer’s labor in total obscurity. Wherever I go, no one gives a shit.”

“It’s all in the mind,” Ernest confided, tapping the side of his skull. Grime dis-illuminated his fingernails. One nail was completely black, caught in a slammed door the week before in the midst of a domestic scuffle. Then he said: “I need to take a leak.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Graham.

Graham took the second urinal; Ernest the third. They unzipped in unison. Ernest sighed with relief. He was pissing without pain. The clap was history. Graham gazed at the wall, lost in some wild sex fantasy. Or perhaps thinking of nothing at all.

“How’s the movie going?”

Graham blinked twice; then:

“I wrote the screenplay, so I’m not complaining. But it’s so f-ing boring hanging around the set. I’m there just in case they need some extra dialogue. In a week I’ve changed one merde to a shit. Or was it the other way around?”

“It’s mierda.”

Graham shook his royal British peepee and stuffed it back into his pants.

“I’m totally blocked. It’s been weeks since I’ve written anything longer than my name.”

“You need to get away.”

“I need to get fucked.”

They returned to the lobby. The party was over. Staff were heading back to work. The bellboy busily emptied the ashtrays. Behind closed doors the manager and the new maid Yvette were in consultation. The free booze had dried up. No mas.

“Let’s get out of here,” Graham said.

Walking side by side on the shady side of Calle Obispo, Graham leaned close puffing on a pissant cheroot. “Ever hear of a dive called El Club Blanco y Negro? “ he asked in a low voice. “Cab driver said they offer some interesting specialty items.”

“Whips and chains, isn’t it?”

“That. And something new called water boarding. Simulated drowning. You haven’t lived until you’ve shot your wad just as you’re going under for the last time.”

“Whatever gets your rocks off, pal.”

A young man with a discrete gaze and a club foot followed behind them. When they turned down Calle Aguiar, he turned down Calle Aguiar. When they made a right onto Lamparilla, he made a right at the same corner.

A dog raised its leg and pissed in a doorway. A lost soul raised his hand:

“Por amor de Dios.”

Graham dug for a coin. Ernest glanced sideways, catching a glimpse of the shadower’s shadow.

“I think we’ve got company,” Ernest said.

“What?”

Ernest flicked his eyes sideways.

“What! What?”

“There’s someone following us.” Ernest spat a gob of phlegm to cover his words. Graham glanced down at his shirt to see where it might have landed. The spittle was a wet spot on the pavement. It could have been a crushed cockroach.

At that same moment the cripple broke into a run, his club foot resounding on the pavement like a one legged horse.

Ernest pushed Graham sideways into an alley, turned and, raising his fists, planted a right and a left into the face and chest of the assassin. It was the same one two combination that Canadian prick Callaghan had used on him so effectively that long ago summer in Paris. But no one remembered who the hell Callaghan was.

“Die, gringos! Cuba libre!” shouted the would-be assassin.

Then he hit the brick wall of Ernest’s fists. Graham and Ernest stared at the unconscious youth where he lay like a crumpled lottery ticket in the gutter, his eyes porcelain zombie orbs. Blood trickled down his hairless chin. A filleting knife lay close at hand.

“Cuba libre. Isn’t that the name of a drink?” asked Graham. “Maybe he’s part of an advertising campaign.”

“It’s the Communists,” said Ernest, kicking the knife into a drain.

“Well, yeah. You read my book didn’t you? The Quiet American? About the domino effect.”

“Yes, yes. I’ve read you’re damn book.”

“Did you buy it new?”

“It was a gift.”

“From the publisher or a friend.”

“Who the hell cares?”

“I want to know whether I earned a royalty off you.”

Ernest fumbled for his wallet.

“Here’s fifty pesos.”

“Devalued to nothing by tomorrow.”

“Just take the money!”

A pair of prostitutes came out on the nearest balcony and stood listening with nihilistic disinterest to the gringo conversation. Both were raven haired, their lush body parts draped in gaudy rayon robes.

As Ernest and Graham stared upward, the robes conveniently unraveled revealing pomegranate breasts ripe for the plucking, tattooed thighs, buns to make the full moon jealous.

“Come up for a drink,” one said.

“Maybe we should go up for a drink,” Graham said.

“Just one,” Ernest said.

The youth in the gutter groaned and began to stir. Ernest’s steel-toed shit kickers applied repeatedly to ribs and nads put a stop to that.

“Easy, Hem. You’ll kill him.”

A final glancing blow to the chin sent blood spattering and teeth flying.

“Hah.”

Isabel and Sofia were identical twins. What a rush that was. They served cheap white rum that burned the gullet like liquid habaneras.

In the narrow, high-ceilinged sitting room they formed a cozy foursome. Graham lolled on the day bed, cock flagrantly exposed to the ministrations of Isabel’s pink cat’s tongue. Sitting erect as a Sergeant Major in one of the rickety rattan chairs, Ernest, stripped to his skivvies and sipping rum from a lipstick-stained glass, fought off the attempts by Sofia to manhandle his polla through the narrow crevasse of his fly.

“Now, now,” he said. “Let’s talk this over. We haven’t even agreed on a price. Or the details of what’s included and what’s extra.”

“Jesus, Hem. Give us a break. They want to fuck. Strike while the iron is hot.”

“I know. I know. But there’s a protocol to these things.”

Frustrated, Sofia lolled back in her chair and began languorously rubbing her muff. Ernest’s eyes traveled around the room. The trestle table strewn with dirty glasses and an overflowing ashtray. In one corner a portable record player covered in salmon-pink Naugahyde and a stack of 45s. A scuffed movie magazine sprawled across the floor like a domestic violence victim. On view atop a bookcase a dildo in a velvet-lined case like a miniature coffin. The wall decorations: a poster of the Virgin, a chipped gesso rendering of Christ crucified and a pair of humping geckos.

He relived the agony of pissing through a gonorrhea-infested swizzle stick. Fine and literary seemed distant adjectives to apply to Sofia and Isabel. What were the chances, he wondered, of catching another dose? He’d been hoping he and Graham would hook up with a couple of female stringers for the Herald Tribune and the Times down to cover the revolution and hanging out at the floridita.

“Why don’t you go in the bedroom,” Graham urged. “A little privacy and you’ll be hard as a clarinet. I used to have the same problem at orgies. Limp as an overcooked parsnip.”

Reluctantly Ernest followed Sofia into the bedroom. The bead curtain clicked and clattered behind them like a waterfall of teeth.

She pushed him back on the bed and skimmed off his skivvies. His cock was as wrinkly and mottled as an endangered species of newt. Sofia made a face. Then dove for it.

Isabel’s howls of fake passion echoed from the sitting room.

Ernest thought about a certain afternoon he’d spent with Ava Gardner at her pied-a-terre overlooking the Seine. Then he thought of Martha G. that first week at the Hotel Florida in Madrid. Pale and nimble as a ghost monkey. He skipped over the Tijuana hooker in riding pants wielding a leather crop and considered instead the architectural attributes of Henrietta, the maid at Finca Vigia. But nothing worked.

Sofia sucked, slurped, licked, gobbled, jerked, nibbled, lapped, cajoled, whispered sweet nothings, nuzzled, rubbed, performed CPR, guzzled, stoked, stroked and devoured. All to no avail.

Ernest’s mind was the burned out shell of a car set ablaze in a race riot; his cock a miniature Greek tragedy. He watched Sofia’s yeoman service but his thoughts were elsewhere. He wondered what Mary was up to in New York. Was she seeing a lawyer about a trial separation?

“Forget about it,” he said.

Sofia flounced into a sitting position, stuck a pillow behind her head and pursed her lips into a pulchritudinous pout. Together they listened to Graham’s orgasmic moans and stammers, both penultimate and ultimate. “Fa-fa-fa-fa-fan…tastic!”

Back in his skivvies Ernest swished through the bead curtain into the sitting room. Graham lay like a giant skinned rabbit carcass amid the disheveled sheets of the daybed. Isabel stood on the balcony squeezing a vaginal bulb syringe between her legs.

Quickly dressed, Ernest gave Graham a backhanded slap across the buttocks.

“Ready to hit the road, kemo sabe?” he said.

Graham groaned and, turning his head, opened one leaden eye.

“Give it a break, Hem.”

“I need a drink. Something other than this rubbing alcohol.” He took a swig of the white rum and grimaced.

Graham sighed. Leaned up on an elbow.

“This is the first time I’ve felt relaxed in months. I even feel a story coming on. You need to get with the program, Ernest.”

“For real, let’s go down to the floridita. Have a few banana daiquiris, smoke a cigar. I’m sure there’ll be some nice skirts.”

“I hate to mess with a good thing.”

Just at that moment Isabel walked by in the altogether. A walking candy store. She picked up a glass from the table, blew some cigarette ash out of the bottom and used a random pair of panties to buff a lipstick stain off the rim. Leaning past Ernest, she handed Graham the glass with two fingers of white lightning rum at the bottom. Her nipple grazed Ernest’s face.

“See what I mean?” asked Graham.

“Drink that all night your insides’ll peel off.”

Isabel lit a spliff. Sofia came out of the bedroom and put Buddy Holly on the phonograph singing: It Doesn’t Matter Any More. She began to dance, her partner herself gyrating in the tarnished cheval mirror.

“Cool,” said Graham.

Ernest stood and tucked in his safari shirt.

“I’ll see you at the floridita.”

“Cool.”

Ernest went into a small cantina where no one knew him and ordered a pilsner. There was a payphone in the back. He called the finca and told Juan to come and pick him up. He gave the address of the cantina.

In New York Mary would be drinking her first gin martini. Who was she boffing? He felt weightless, a piece of Styrofoam.

But there was always his work.

He fell asleep on the way back to the finca. Outside the tinted windows of the Olds, the summer thunderheads rolled in.

It was late afternoon when Ernest got back to Finca Vigia. He glanced through the mail lying on the table by the front door. Still no telegram from Mary. Jeanne d’Arc nuzzled his leg. He leaned down and scratched behind the grey tabby’s ears. She was pregnant again, her belly almost dragging on the tile floor. Puta, he thought. He wasn’t sure whether he meant the cat or Mary. Or himself.

Going into the kitchen, he fixed an Old Overholt and soda. Then realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Ramona made him a ham sandwich on crusty bread with coarse French mustard.

“You look depressed, Papa,” she said.

“What are you? My shrink?”

He carried his sandwich and a fresh drink out to the veranda. You could cut the humidity with a chain saw.

“Tee-he-he-he-he.”

Unmistakably the laugh belonged to Henrietta. It came from the gardener’s hovel on the far side of the lawn. Through the shack’s open window Ernest could see the massive torso and shoulders of Ric the gardener. Again Henrietta’s laugh broke the stillness. Followed by the cry of a peacock.

Henrietta and Ric!

She’s been playing me, Ernest thought.

On his knees he retched bile, rum and rye whisky into the hibiscus bushes. Leaving his drink and untouched sandwich, Papa climbed the steps of the tower to his top floor writing room.

A blank page was already rolled into his Royal portable. He walked to the open window and looked down at the pool. Naked, Ramona the cook crossed and re-crossed the pool in a series of butterfly strokes. Ernest marveled at the cigar wrapper color of her skin, her broad hips. When she stood up, her breasts were vast, the areolas black as pitch.

He sat down at his desk and looked at the sheet of white paper.

“Well, shit,” he said. “I feel a dry spell comin on.”

He got up and returned to the window.

Lightning flashed at the horizon. Facing the tower Ramona lay like a plump nude question mark across the white canvas of a chaise lounge. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses.

As he watched, she raised her hand in a wave and spread her legs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Woods is a full-time writer living in Dallas, Texas. In addition to stories, he is working on a novel, a sequel to Jean Rhys’ After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. When not writing he works part-time in a small art gallery in Dallas: Dahlia Woods Gallery.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Monday, September 22nd, 2008.