The Cool War

IX

When i was a ballsy boy like you,” said Yosper, swirling the whiskey around his glass as they waited for Hake’s plane, “I was as shit-stupid as you are, or, no, not that stupid, but stupid enough. I could’ve aced myself over any dumb, dirty pretty-puss that lifted a leg on my fireplug, same’s you. ‘Course, I didn’t. Even then, I had some smarts. But I could have, yes.” And it was as if they were playing the same scenes all over again. The sets were a little different; they were in the sky lounge at the Rome airport instead of a Vomero restaurant or Capri night club or the Munich pension. But the actors were the same, and playing the same parts. Only the one supporting actor who was Hake himself was made up in a different way: he had a compression bandage over his left ear to protect the new stitches that held it on. The rest—the black eyes, bruised jaws, the stiff and uneasy way he moved—they were the equivalent of the lettering on an easeled poster, Some Time Later, which he himself did enact. But the play was all reprise, Yosper’s monologue attended by the chorus, brave Mario, sweet Dieter, even laughing Carlos, who had just flown in from heaven knew where, to join Yosper for heaven knew what. “—of course, there are some brutes that I personally would not touch with a borrowed, ah, thing. Not now. Not even when I was a great deal younger than you, Hake, and almost as dumb. Were you balling her?”

Hake glared at him through swollen eyes. The old man waved a hand. “I guess you were, and you got your cojones misplaced to where your brains belong. Foul, foolish business, Hake, but it’s happened to better men than you, and I won’t hold it against you. Looks like you’re home free. Not counting a few aches and pains, of course. The cops dropped charges, fair enough; figured they got their jollies kicking you around on the way to the questura. So there’s nothing on the record, and won’t be unless you pissed the sheik off worse’n I think you did. But that I doubt, because he’s gone. So—no report, no problem. The boys and I won’t say anything. And, man! You’re some mean hand at a bar-room brawl, Hake, you know that? Seven against one, and you wade right in! Wouldn’t’ve thought it of you.”

“Stop now,” Hake said clearly.

Yosper was brought down, disconcerted, in full flow. “What?”

“I said stop for a minute. Please,” he added, pro forma. “I want to know what happened to Leota.”

“Why, she’s gone, Hake. The Sheik of Araby took off for his desert tent off in the Sahel or someplace, and naturally he took her along to give him what he wants. You know,” he said scientifically, “from what I hear, those sheiks want some freaky fixin’s when they go to it. Too bad you can’t ask her about it sometime, Hake. Be interesting to learn something, you know?”

“Yosper, God damn you—”

Around the table the three young men shifted position slightly, without either menace or anger, simply -entering the “ready” mode. Yosper raised his hand. “Hake here isn’t going to do anything, are you, Hake? No. You shouldn’t take the name of the Lord in vain. But He’s got as much sense as I have, and He knows you’re just pissed off.” He paused for a second, looking at Hake with sharp blue eyes that, for a wonder, had something in them Hake could only recognize as compassion. “Get over it, boy,” he said.

“You’ll never see her again. Listen. Likely as not she’ll come out of it smelling of roses. Old Sheik Hassabou gives his ladies emeralds and rubies—maybe a few little scars too, of course. Don’t get sore, boy.”

Hake said bitterly, “Of course I won’t get sore! Why should I? All you’ve done is get a girl’s life wrecked, and involve me in dope selling, and—”

“Shu, shu, boy. There’s important reasons for all this.”

“I can’t wait to hear what the important reason for addicting kids to dope is,” Hake snarled.

“Hake,” Yosper said kindly, “dope’s not that bad. I been there. You ever hear of Haight-Ashbury?”

Hake shrugged. “Some place in California? A long time ago?”

“I was there,” Yosper said proudly. “It was all love and sharing, and dope, and nobody got hurt. Much. ‘Course, it didn’t last. The rich ones went to Napoma. The rest of us tried the East Village, and the caves on Crete, and Khatmandu. I did every bit of it, boy, and I thank my Lord Savior I don’t have to do it again.” He stared into space, his lips working as though he were tasting something he liked. “Good dope in Nepal,” he said at last, “but it’s against God’s commandments. Now they’re all off around the Persian Gulf, old bastards like me that haven’t learned their lesson and kids that don’t know the score yet.”

Carlos grumbled, “Yosper, why do you waste your time with him?”

“It’s no waste,” Yosper said earnestly. “The boy’s got good stuff. He justa has a few wrong ideas, like about dope. Why, look at it the righta way, we’re doing those wop kids a favor.”

“Us too,” Dieter grinned. “We make even more from PCP than we made from selling Ku Klux Klan nightshirts in Germany.”

“But the kids get the most out of it,” Yosper insisted. “Dope separates the men from the boys, and it teaches you a lot about just plain living. Why,” he said earnestly, “wasn’t for my time in the Haight and Khatmandu I wouldn’t be half this honest and open and compassionate.”