made a point of saying as
little as possible. In the beginning this suited me well enough, even though Sanderson
explained that as long as Segarra had the nix on me I was doomed to social oblivion.
But I had no social ambitions in those days. I had a license to wander. I was a working
journalist and I had easy access to anything I needed, including the finest cotillions
and the Governor's house and secret coves where debutantes swam naked at night.
After a while, however, Segarra began to bother me. I had a feeling that I was being cut
out of things and that he was the reason for it. When I was not invited to parties that I
would not have gone to in the first place, or when I called some government official on
the phone and was brushed off by his secretary, I began to feel like a social leper. This
wouldn't have bothered me at all had I felt it was my own doing, but the fact that Segarra
was exercising some sinister control over me began to get on my nerves. Whatever he might
have denied me was unimportant; it was the fact that he could deny me anything at all,
even what I didn't want
At first I was tempted to laugh it off, to give him as hard a time as I could and let him
do his worst. But I didn't, because I was not quite ready to pack up and move on again. I
was getting a little too old to make powerful enemies when I held no cards at all, and I
had lost some of my old zeal that had led me, in the past, to do what I damn well felt
like doing, with the certain knowledge that I could always flee the consequences. I was
tired of fleeing, and tired of having no cards. It occurred to me one evening, as I sat by
myself in Al's patio, that a man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. I'd
been doing it for ten years and I had a feeling that my reserve was running low.
Segarra and Sanderson were good friends, and, oddly enough, although Segarra considered
me a boor, Sanderson went out of his way to be decent. A few weeks after I met him I had
to call Adelante about a story I was doing, and I thought I might as well talk to
Sanderson as anyone else.
He greeted me like an old buddy, and after giving me all the information I needed, he
invited me out to his house for dinner that night. I was so surprised that I accepted
without a thought. The tone of his voice made it seem so natural that I should eat dinner
at his house that I had already hung up before I realized that it was not natural at all.
After work I took a cab out to his house. When I got there I found Sanderson on his porch
with a man and a woman who had just come in from New York. They were on their way to St.
Lucia to meet their yacht, which the crew had brought back from Lisbon. A mutual friend
had told them to look up Sanderson when they stopped in San Juan and they had taken him
completely by surprise.
“I've sent out for some lobster,” he told us. “We have no choice but to drink until it
arrives.”
It turned out to be an excellent evening. The couple from New York reminded me of
something I had not seen in a long time. We talked of yachts, which I knew because I had
worked on them in Europe, and which they knew because they came from a world where
everyone seemed to own one. We drank white rum, which Sanderson said was much better than
gin, and by midnight we were all drunk enough to go down to the beach for a naked swim.
After that night I spent almost as much time at Sanderson's as I spent at Al's. His
apartment looked like it had been designed in Hollywood for a Caribbean movie set. It was
the bottom half of an old stucco house, right on the beach near the edge of town. The
living room had a domed ceiling, with a fan hanging down and a wide door that opened on a
screen porch. In front of the porch was a garden full of palms, with a gate leading down
to the beach. The porch was higher than the garden, and at night you could
little as possible. In the beginning this suited me well enough, even though Sanderson
explained that as long as Segarra had the nix on me I was doomed to social oblivion.
But I had no social ambitions in those days. I had a license to wander. I was a working
journalist and I had easy access to anything I needed, including the finest cotillions
and the Governor's house and secret coves where debutantes swam naked at night.
After a while, however, Segarra began to bother me. I had a feeling that I was being cut
out of things and that he was the reason for it. When I was not invited to parties that I
would not have gone to in the first place, or when I called some government official on
the phone and was brushed off by his secretary, I began to feel like a social leper. This
wouldn't have bothered me at all had I felt it was my own doing, but the fact that Segarra
was exercising some sinister control over me began to get on my nerves. Whatever he might
have denied me was unimportant; it was the fact that he could deny me anything at all,
even what I didn't want
At first I was tempted to laugh it off, to give him as hard a time as I could and let him
do his worst. But I didn't, because I was not quite ready to pack up and move on again. I
was getting a little too old to make powerful enemies when I held no cards at all, and I
had lost some of my old zeal that had led me, in the past, to do what I damn well felt
like doing, with the certain knowledge that I could always flee the consequences. I was
tired of fleeing, and tired of having no cards. It occurred to me one evening, as I sat by
myself in Al's patio, that a man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. I'd
been doing it for ten years and I had a feeling that my reserve was running low.
Segarra and Sanderson were good friends, and, oddly enough, although Segarra considered
me a boor, Sanderson went out of his way to be decent. A few weeks after I met him I had
to call Adelante about a story I was doing, and I thought I might as well talk to
Sanderson as anyone else.
He greeted me like an old buddy, and after giving me all the information I needed, he
invited me out to his house for dinner that night. I was so surprised that I accepted
without a thought. The tone of his voice made it seem so natural that I should eat dinner
at his house that I had already hung up before I realized that it was not natural at all.
After work I took a cab out to his house. When I got there I found Sanderson on his porch
with a man and a woman who had just come in from New York. They were on their way to St.
Lucia to meet their yacht, which the crew had brought back from Lisbon. A mutual friend
had told them to look up Sanderson when they stopped in San Juan and they had taken him
completely by surprise.
“I've sent out for some lobster,” he told us. “We have no choice but to drink until it
arrives.”
It turned out to be an excellent evening. The couple from New York reminded me of
something I had not seen in a long time. We talked of yachts, which I knew because I had
worked on them in Europe, and which they knew because they came from a world where
everyone seemed to own one. We drank white rum, which Sanderson said was much better than
gin, and by midnight we were all drunk enough to go down to the beach for a naked swim.
After that night I spent almost as much time at Sanderson's as I spent at Al's. His
apartment looked like it had been designed in Hollywood for a Caribbean movie set. It was
the bottom half of an old stucco house, right on the beach near the edge of town. The
living room had a domed ceiling, with a fan hanging down and a wide door that opened on a
screen porch. In front of the porch was a garden full of palms, with a gate leading down
to the beach. The porch was higher than the garden, and at night you could
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