Long After Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

strangers and strangers."
                 "But
think, Antonio," I said, touching his trembling elbow. "Not only
educated, a reader, but someone in the last few days who was—how shall I put
it?—odd. Strange. Someone so peculiar, muy eccSntrico , that you remember him above all others.
Someone who—"
                 " jMadre de DiosF ' cried Antonio, leaping up. His eyes stared off
into memory. He seized his head as if it had just exploded. "Thank you, senor. , sil What
a creature! In the name of Christ, there was such a one yesterday! He was very
small. And he spoke like this: very high— eeeee . Like a muchacha in a school play, eh? Like a canary
swallowed by a witch! And he wore a blue-velvet suit with a big yellow
tie."
                 "Yes,
yes!" I had leaped up now and was almost yelling. "Go on!"
                 "And
he had a small very round face, senor, and his hair was yellow and cut across
the brow like this— zitti And his mouth small, very pink, like
candy, yes? He-he was like, yes, uno muneco , of the kind one wins at carnivals."
                 "Kewpie
dolls!"
                 "
/ Si / At Coney Island ,
yes, when I was a child, Kewpie dolls! And he was so high, you see? To my
elbow. Not a midget, no—but—and how old? Blood of Christ, who can say? No lines
in his face, but—thirty, forty, fifty. And on his feet he was wearing—"
                 "Green
booties!" I cried.
                 "Shoes,
boots!"
                 " Si ." He blinked, stunned. "But how did you
                 I
exploded, "Shelley Capon!"
                 "That
is the name! And his friends with him, senor, all laughing—no, giggling. like the nuns who play basketball in the late
afternoons near the church. Oh, senor, do
you think that they, that he—"
                 "I
don't think, Antonio, I know. Shelley
Capon, of all the writers in the world, hated Papa. Of course he would snatch
El C6rdoba. Why, wasn't there a rumor once that the bird had memorized Papa's
last, greatest, and as-yet-not-put-down-on-paper novel?"
                 "There
was such a rumor, senor. But I do not
write books, I tend bar. I bring crackers to the bird. I—"
                 "You
bring me the phone, Antonio, please."
                 "You
know where the bird is, senor?"
                 "I
have the hunch beyond intuition, the big one. Gracias." I dialed the Havana Libre ,
the biggest hotel in town.
                 "Shelley
Capon, please."
                 The
phone buzzed and clicked.
                 Half
a million miles away, a midget boy Martian lifted the receiver and played the
flute and then the bell chimes with his voice: "Capon here."
                 "Damned
if you aren't!" I said. And got up and ran out of the Cuba Libre bar.
                 Racing
back to Havana by taxi, I thought of Shelley as I'd seen
him before. Surrounded by a storm of friends, living out of suitcases, ladling
soup from other people's plates, borrowing money from billfolds seized from
your pockets right in front of you, counting the lettuce leaves with relish,
leaving rabbit pellets on your rug, gone. Dear Shelley Capon.
                 Ten
minutes later, my taxi with no brakes dropped me running and spun on to some
ultimate disaster beyond town.
                 Still
running, I made the lobby, paused for information, hurried upstairs, and
stopped short before Shelley's door. It pulsed in spasms like a bad heart. I
put my ear to the door. The wild calls and cries from inside might have come
from a flock of birds, feather-stripped in a hurricane. I felt the door. Now it
seemed to tremble like a vast laundromat that had
swallowed and was churning an acid-rock group and a lot of very dirty linen.
Listening, my underwear began to crawl on my legs.
                 I
knocked.