"Ah yes," said the senator, a dapper little ruddy man, with a full head of white hair. "I've been wondering what that was. It looks like fairyland. Mrs. Tramm, I'm delighted." He sized up Iris with appetite. She wore black and a pearl choker, and her eyes had a wild sparkle. "Do you live in Amerigo?"
"Right now, yes."
"I have a feeling I've met you. You're not from Nebraska, are you?"
"As it happens, Senator, I was born in Omaha. My folks took me to San Diego when I was three."
"Now I know what's been missing in the state of Nebraska," said the senator, waggling his heavy eyebrows.
"Gosh, a whole live senator," Iris said as Paperman led her to the bar. "I had it wrong. We don't usually get senators till February. It must be damned cold in Washington. I'll have bourbon and water, please, Norm."
A chilly damp breeze was blowing up the white cloth of the long table arranged as a bar, showing the sawhorses underneath. The crowd at the table was two deep; it took Norman a while to get the drinks.
"Ah, thank you," Iris said. "The main job of my escort, dear, besides giving me some face as an honest woman, is to knock all drinks out of my hand after the second one. Cheers." She took a deep swallow.
"Are you kidding?"
"No, I'm not. I'm apt to get very ugly about it, too. Just slap me down, and if necessary, walk out on me. I'll come trotting along, using some dirty words you may not have heard." Paperman looked her in the eyes, still not certain she was serious. She said, "I mean it, Norm. Usually I'm all right. I know my limits. It's just that Government House, sort of gives me the hoo-ha's."
"Well, it's an odd crowd," said Paperman, glancing around. There must have been two hundred people on the lawn, making a deafening volume of talk in the dim light of swaying paper lanterns. Most of them were Negroes, dressed in good current fashion, and the taste of the women for color enlivened the scene with many bright splashes. The clothes of some older Negroes were dated and dowdy. One bent grayhead wore a yellow pith helmet and a double-breasted blue suit. Iris told Norman that this man's family owned three thousand acres of the best land in Amerigo, including four white sand beaches, and that he lived in an unpainted two-room cinder-block house with a privy out in back. There were strange-looking whites, too, remnants of British colonial families; and here and there hill-crowd people, men in loud jackets and women in last year's New York styles.
A handsome, tall young Negro, in a silk Italian suit not much different from Norman's, went by holding drinks. "Hello dah, Mistuh Papuh."
"Hello," Norman said vaguely.
"You don' rekonize me?" The young man disclosed many gold teeth in a grin. "I'm Anatone. De fifteen loads all delivered. I did give Lorna de bill. She say you asleep."
"I'll take care of it."
Anatone glanced at the sky, and laughed. "Funny ting, de customers dey does get mad at me when dis happen. One fellow up on de hill las' year he ask me pump de water back out of his cistern." Anatone laughed very happily. "I do believe we fixin' to get a big rain tonight. De party finish inside."
Paperman looked upward in exasperation as Anatone walked off. Iris said, "I didn't want to spoil your evening, dear, but feel that wind? And there isn't a star in sight."
Paperman said, "You know what? I'll sue God."
Iris burst out laughing, and took his arm. "Let's get me another drink. Why aren't you drinking yours?"
"I am," said Paperman, a little nervous at the speed with which Iris had downed a large rich bourbon and water.
"I'll tell you," Iris said when Paperman brought her the drink, "let's go inside. Or does the sociology of a Government House lawn party interest you? If it does rain, the panic will be a nuisance. I react badly to being shoved and jostled by Kinjans."
"Okay."
"They mean no harm, they do it to each other and think nothing of it, but-" Iris led him through the crowd to the wide stairway into Government House. "I know a nook where we can drink in peace."
The first floor of the old stone building was thoroughly Americanized -white fluorescent lighting, soundproof partitions, rows of shiny steel cabinets, and even at this hour ringing telephones and one banging mimeograph-in strong contrast to the state rooms on the floor above. Here were grand salons full of gleaming old English furniture, their walls a-clutter with obsolete weapons, and faded prints of sea battles or West Indian scenery. The museum elegance of these antique rooms was crowned by a sweeping view, through tall French windows, of the Georgetown hills and the lamplit harbor. Iris showed Paperman the semicircular council chamber built in 1740, all dark mahogany and green leather, where the legislature still met. They passed down a long high mirrored hall.
"Here we are," Iris said, opening a tall door covered by a mirror.
"Speak of the devil!" said Chunky Collins, when Paperman came in. "Norman, do you always show up on cue like this?"
He and Tom Tilson sat with their drinks in a startling replica of the drawing room of an old London house. The arched creamy wood molding, the green damask on the walls, the spindly furniture, the Adam fireplace with a red light glowing behind glass coals, the china and silver pieces, the leather-bound books in rows, all blended in an illusion as instant and convincing as that of a fine Broadway stage set.
Tilson said, "Sit down. Hello, Iris. This is the only bearable spot in Government House, Paperman. The last British governor loathed the tropics, and he fixed up this room so he'd feel at home. He sat in here day and night, they say, drinking gin and bitters and nursing his gout, until the Yanks came."
"It's charming," Norman said.
The large smile on the large face of Collins faded to a mask of sorrow. "Oh, say, Norman, I want you to know how awful I feel about Tex Akers. It was inevitable, I know, but still it's a shock. What a tragedy! If you want me to line up some bids from other contractors-"
"What about Akers?" said Paperman, alarmed. "Did he kill himself?"
"Him? Oh, no! He blew the island. Said he was going to Fort Lauderdale for a week, but he'll never be back. When he sent off his family last Saturday I knew it was coming. That's always the sign."
Tilson said, "Let's see, that makes five contractors who have blown Kinja this year, doesn't it?"
"Four or five. They come and they go. I lose count," said Collins. "Tex was something special, though. He's gone bankrupt to the tune of about a hundred forty thousand."
Tilson said, "It had to happen, Crab Cove did him in."
"Strange," said Iris. "I thought those houses were lovely. I never know anything."
"They're fine houses," Tilson said. "Not at all the usual Kinja thing of crossed-up plumbing, and electric wires that buzz and spark and catch fire, and tiles that pop loose in a month. Still, they don't have jade walls and platinum plumbing. At seventy-five dollars a square foot, they should."
Collins sighed. "I'm afraid Tex was sort of a child about money. He'd already gone bankrupt twice, in Acapulco and Hawaii. He had long stories about dishonest partners."
"Oh, sure," Tilson said. "Who goes out to these Godforsaken fringe places to try and scratch a living? With the biggest boom of the century going on in the States? Freaks, frauds, fools, and failures." He gave Paperman a snarling grin. "Present company excluded, to be sure. I've lived on tropical islands most of my life. Ninety per cent of the mainlanders who come in are loonies of one kind or another, and they nearly all blow sooner or later-if they don't die of the booze."
"How about yourself?" Iris said.
Tilson held up a corded, freckled red hand. "International Nickel saw fit to post me in New Caledonia for twenty-one years. I got used to the tropics. At my age I'm not going back to snow and crowds. That's different."
Paperman was thinking, with a sick heart, of the demolished wall, of the great load of building materials, of his debts, of the ugly tarpaulin bellying across his lobby. "And there you were, only this morning," he said angrily to Collins, "urging me to give Akers another thousand dollars!"
"Well, you know, he was my client," said Collins, "I had to do what I could for him. He probably would have blown with your thousand. But then again, Tex was such a screwball that he might actually have gone ahead and put up your rooms. Of course, you did the only sensible thing, paying no attention to me."
"You were well-advised," said Tilson, with a straight face, "singularly well-advised."
"I figured you had your instructions from New York," said Collins. "That's why I didn't mind urging you. There are no flies on Mr. Atlas."
"I never talked to Atlas about it."
"Of course you didn't," said Collins, with the glassy grin that came on his face at these moments. "Of course not. Still, if I can size up people, and that's my business, you're much too softhearted to have turned Tex down yourself." There was a heavy rattling on the windows facing the lawn, and dismayed shouting and running outside. "Here we go. I said it would rain, Tom."
"We sure need it," said Tilson.
"I don't need it," said Paperman. "I've just bought seven hundred fifty dollars' worth of water."
The old man's jaw dropped and he stared at Paperman. "Are you serious? Seven-fifty? You could float your hotel for that."
"It does seem high," said Collins. "Was that Anatone?"
"Anatone and the garbage boat."
Collins nodded wisely, "Well, in a way it's an investment. You'll find Senator Pullman very cordial to you."
"Paperman, I have a suggestion for you," Tilson said. "Go home. Whatever you have invested here, forget it. Leave. Blow, like Akers. Pretend you had a nightmare and woke up. No matter how much you've already lost, you'll be money ahead, I promise you."
The tall door opened, and Governor Sanders came in with the senator from Nebraska. "Well," he said, waving his drink, "we do have a little company in here, Senator. But it's choice." He carefully shut the door.
"Let's leave, Norman." Iris stood. "Official business about to be transacted."
The senator trotted to her elbow, and eased her down on a couch beside him. "Not on your life, Iris. You and I are the only two Nebraskans in Amerigo. Don't you desert me."
Sanders slouched in an armchair and lit a cigarette. "What's this about that Crab Cove fellow, Chunky? Is it true?"
"Bye-bye," said Collins.
The governor shook his head. "That's the place we drove by after lunch, Senator. Those houses with the yellow pagoda roofs."
"Why, they looked excellent. I've never seen a better site than that cove."
"Well, I'm afraid the builders here suffer from a peculiar ailment," Sanders said, "the disappearing sickness."
"The defaulting trots," Tom Tilson said.
Senator Finchley smiled. "Big ideas and small bankrolls. It's the second wave in a growth area that gets rich. Somebody will pick up those unfinished houses cheap and make a bundle."
Sanders said to Collins, "True enough. I suppose the bank will auction the Cove right away for the mortgage money."
"As soon as we can get a judgment," Collins said. "I'll probably go to court on it tomorrow." He added to Paperman, "I represent the bank."
"I see," Paperman said. "Tell me, are you the undertaker here, too)"
Collins peered at him. "Pardon me? No, that's Hollis. Hollis, not Collins. My law practice is really all I can handle. But Ralph Hollis is one hell of a good undertaker."
Iris uttered a short gasping laugh, but when the men all looked at her, her face was solemn. "Norman, I think I'd like maybe one more small drink. Sort of half."
As Paperman hesitated, Governor Sanders said to him, "By the way, Crab Cove might interest your friend Atlas. He told me he intended to acquire substantial properties here."
"That's true," Paperman said, trying to talk past Iris's request for more liquor. "I'll write him about the auction."
"It's a golden opportunity," Collins said.
Tilson said, "Crab Cove has to soak up another hundred fifty thousand dollars before people can move in. If your friend's got that kind of money, and if he can send down a good builder to finish off, he can make a killing. Once those houses are finished they'll sell like hot cakes, and for twice what they'd cost in the States. That's what's so tempting about-" Tilson stopped talking, and glanced at the ceiling and at his watch. A low roar, like a far-off flight of many jet planes, was vibrating the air in the room.
Governor Sanders said in a flat calm voice to Norman, "Just sit where you are."
"What is it?"
"Earthquake," Iris said, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.
"First one in almost a year," said Sanders.
