"We got married. Me and Rosa. We get on the train, the taxi driver takes us to justice of peace, we got married, we go to hotel here."
"Congratulations," I said, waking up. "Lots of congratulations. But you're under age, there's a waiting period—"
"Not in this state," he chuckled. "Here is no waiting periods and here I have twenty-one years if I say so."
"Well," I said. "Lots of congratulations, Julio. And tell Rosa she's got herself a good boy."
"Thanks, Beel," he said shyly. "I call you so you don't worry when I don't come in tonight. I think I come in with Rosa tomorrow so we tell her mama and my mama and papa. I call you at the hotel, I still have the piece of paper."
"Okay, Julio. All the best. Don't worry about a thing." I hung up, chuckling, and went right back to sleep.
Well, sir, it happened again.
I was shaken out of my sleep by the strong, skinny hand of Admiral MacDonald. It was seven-thirty and a bright New York morning.
Dalhousie had pulled a blank canvassing the neighborhood for Gomez, got panicky, and bucked it up to higher headquarters.
"Where is he?" the admiral rasped.
"On his way here with his bride of one night," I said. "He slipped over a couple of state lines and got married."
"By God," the admiral said, "we've got to do something about this. I'm going to have him drafted and assigned to special duty. This is the last time—"
"Look," I said. "You've got to stop treating him like a chesspiece. You've got duty-honor-country on the brain and thank God for that. Somebody has to; it's your profession. But can't you get it through your head that Gomez is a kid and that you're wrecking his life by forcing him to grind out science like a machine? And I'm just a stupe of a layman, but have you professionals worried once about digging too deep and blowing up the whole shebang?"
He gave me a piercing look and said nothing.
I dressed and had breakfast sent up. The admiral, Dalhousie, and I waited grimly until noon, and then Gomez phoned up.
"Come on up, Julio," I said tiredly.
He breezed in with his blushing bride on his arm. The admiral rose automatically as she entered, and immediately began tongue-lashing the boy. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger. He made it clear that Gomez wasn't treating his country right. That he had a great talent and it belonged to the United States. That his behavior had been irresponsible. That Gomez would have to come to heel and realize that his wishes weren't the most important thing in his life. That he could and would be drafted if there were any more such escapades.
"As a starter, Mr. Gomez," the admiral snapped, "I want you to set down, immediately, the enfieldment matrices you have developed. I consider it almost criminal of you to arrogantly and carelessly trust to your memory alone matters of such vital importance. Here!" He thrust pencil and paper at the boy, who stood, drooping and disconsolate.
Little Rosa was near crying. She didn't have the ghost of a notion as to what it was about.
Gomez took the pencil and paper and sat down at the writing table silently. I took Rosa by the arm. She was trembling. "It's all right," I said.
"They can't do a thing to him." The admiral glared briefly at me and then returned his gaze to Gomez.
The boy made a couple of tentative marks. Then his eyes went wide and he clutched his hair. "Dios mlo!" he said. "Estd per dido! Olvidado!"
Which means: "My God, it's lost! Forgotten!"
The admiral turned white beneath his tan. "Now, boy," he said slowly and soothingly. "I didn't mean to scare you. You just relax and collect yourself. Of course you haven't forgotten, not with that memory of yours. Start with something easy. Write down a general biquadratic equation, say."
Gomez just looked at him. After a long pause he said in a strangled voice: "No puedo. I can't. It too I forget. I don't think of the math or physics at all since—" He looked at Rosa and turned a little red. She smiled shyly and looked at her shoes.
"That is it," Gomez said hoarsely. "Not since then. Always before in the back of my head is the math, but not since then."
"My God," the admiral said softly. "Can such a thing happen?" He reached for the phone.
He found out that such things can happen.
Julio went back to Spanish Harlem and bought a piece of the Porto Bello with his savings. I went back to the paper and bought a car with my savings. MacDonald never cleared the story, so the Sunday editor had the satisfaction of bulldozing an admiral, but didn't get his exclusive.
Julio and Rosa sent me a card eventually announcing the birth of their first-born: a six-pound boy, Francisco, named after Julio's father. I saved the card and when a New York assignment came my way—it was the National Association of Dry Goods Wholesalers; dry goods are important in our town—I dropped up to see them.
Julio was a little more mature and a little more prosperous. Rosa—
alas!—was already putting on weight, but she was still a pretty thing and devoted to her man. The baby was a honey-skinned little wiggler. It was nice to see all of them together, happy with their lot.
Julio insisted that he'd cook arróz con polio for me, as on the night I practically threw him into Rosa's arms, but he'd have to shop for the stuff. I went along.
In the corner grocery he ordered the rice, the chicken, the gar-banzos, the peppers, and, swept along by the enthusiasm that hits husbands in groceries, about fifty other things that he thought would be nice to have in the pantry.
The creaking old grocer scribbled down the prices on a shopping bag and began painfully to add them up while Julio was telling me how well the Porto Bello was doing and how they were thinking of renting the adjoining store.
"Seventeen dollars, forty-two cents," the grocer said at last.
Julio flicked one glance at the shopping bag and the upside-down figures. "Should be seventeen thirty-nine," he said reprovingly. "Add up again."
The grocer painfully added up again and said, "Is seventeen thirty-nine.
Sorry." He began to pack the groceries into the bag.
"Hey," I said.
We didn't discuss it then or ever. Julio just said: "Don't tell, Beel." And winked.
Masquerade
A man can wake one morning to read in his tabloid that his father has been shot fleeing the scene of a bank robbery. In these times there is no guarantee against the unexpected striking one down harder than a thunderbolt and almost as quick. From the vast-spreading matrix of the ordinary there may fly into your face the grotesque, the shocking, even the horrible.
Why did Leonard die?
Who were the Whelmers, silent partners in the most horrid nightmare that ever rose to walk the streets of New York?
Mac Leonard, who is now compressed into the small confines of a crematory urn, had always seemed to me to be one of the chosen of the Lord. In Columbia University, where we both studied, he was a shining campus light. I said both studied, but that is a misconception. Keeping the profligate's hours that he did, tumbling into bed dead drunk four nights out of the seven, Leonard could not possibly have studied in the ordinary sense.
Revolving the matter carefully, I realize that Leonard could not possibly have done anything in the ordinary sense. He was a blinding flash of a man; the hardest liver, the most brilliant scholar and the coolest head on the blocks-long campus was his. If he had gone to a smaller school he would have stood out like a beacon. He would probably, furthermore, have been thrown out like a bum for his vices and dissipations. As far as I was concerned, of course, they were his business. He drank and went with the Joe College set, but had no illusions about their capacities.
This was, you will remember, in the Flaming Youth era, when skirts were short and gin was aged in the porcelain for about five minutes.
Mac drank with them, but he talked with men and the rest of the grinds on the school daily and the Journal of the Columbia Philosophical Society.