Don't Stop the Carnival Read Online Free PDF Page A

Atlas watched her jellied dancing behind, then his interest faded as he took in the large room full of tables. "What's this? You must have fifteen hundred square feet here."
     
     
"I've never measured it," Mrs. Ball said. "It was the dining room, but now everyone eats outside, so we made a game room of it. But-"
     
     
Atlas crouched and rapped the wooden floor with his knuckles. "Partitions and plumbing," he said to the banker. "Not much to it. The rooms would be small, but all anybody wants here is a place to fall down at night. Throw in a toilet of their own and you got luxury."
     
     
"On the ground floor," the banker said, glancing around the room with a sudden shrewd cast to his gentle face. "So convenient."
     
     
Mrs. Ball said, "The room's never been used enough, that's true-possibly this idea should have occurred to me. As I say, I'm no businesswoman."
     
     
"Norman is about to fall on his face," Atlas said. Paperman did have a drained look, and he was weaving a little. "We'll grab a nap and then talk some more."
     
     
5
     
     
In the cottage named Desire, Papennan collapsed on a bed. The bed cover irritated his sweaty, salty skin, but he felt that he could sleep on red coals.
     
     
Not Atlas, though. Atlas poured himself half a tumbler of bourbon and walked up and down the room.
     
     
"Norm, I look on you and Henny as a couple of kid cousins or something, you know that. How serious are you about this thing? Has it all been a pipe dream? Is it for real? Now that you've seen it, you'd better decide fast."
     
     
Paperman rolled on his side, with a small groan. He didn't want to talk business; his body was crying for sleep. But Atlas was doing this out of kindness to his wife and himself, and if the old thug felt like talking, Norman had to oblige.
     
     
Henrietta Paperman had been Atlas's secretary long ago. A sort of friendship had continued, based mainly on Atlas's greedy interest in meeting Broadway people. He was a lonely man, separated from his wife and detested by his two grown children, and he liked to take the Papermans to dinner now and then and tell them his troubles. What he enjoyed most was going to an opening night with them and then sitting at a table in Sardi's, staring at the celebrities, sometimes collaring one who happened to greet Norman or Henny, forcing him to join them, and pressing big dollar cigars and champagne on him.
     
     
Norman said in a small, tired voice, "Well, Lester, it's about what I expected. It's what I want to do. I don't know about the money part, but-"
     
     
"Oh, the money part could work, Norm. I'd see to that. I've said many times I'd like to put you into something better than that fly-by-night publicity racket. I mean it's a small situation, but this dame's pulling fifteen thousand a year out of the place. Six more rooms and you could clear twenty-five easy. Your overhead would stay the same, maybe one more cleaning girl. The cost of improvement is nothing, just partition walls. The only real cost is the plumbing. I'm a nut on giving everybody their own can. You ought to get Henny down here right away, if you're actually serious."
     
     
Paperman raised himself heavily on an elbow. "You'd go ahead with this, Lester?"
     
     
"You're the one who'll be going ahead with it."
     
     
"I have no money to invest. That's the whole problem."
     
     
"That's no problem." Atlas sighed and sat on the bed next to Paperman's. "It's as hot as hell in this cottage. This island is hot. I don't care what anybody says."
     
     
Indeed it was choking and damp in the large white plastered room, though the porch was open to the sea. Norman said, "November is the worst. The trade winds die down. Then in December-"
     
     
"Trade winds! For Christ's sake stop with the trade winds. It's hot. Hot! In the winter people want to be hot, so you're in business. You got merchandise." Atlas drank off his bourbon and poured more. "Now about the deal. You don't really think you can buy a