Dyar was not a reader; he did not even enjoy the movies. Entertainment somehow made the stationariness of existence more acute, not only when the amusement was over, but even during the course of it. After the war he made a certain effort to reconcile himself to his life. Occasionally he would go out with two or three of his friends, each one taking a girl. They would have cocktails at the apartment of one of the girls, go on to a Broadway movie, and eat afterward at some Chinese place in the neighborhood where there was dancing. Then there was the long process of taking the girls home one by one, after which they usually went into a bar and drank fairly heavily. Sometimes, not very often, they would pick up something cheap in the bar or in the street, take her to Bill Healy’s room, and lay her in turn. It was an accepted pattern; there seemed to be no other to suggest in its place. Dyar kept thinking: «Any life would be better than this,» but he could find no different possibility to consider. «Once you accept the fact that life isn’t fun, you’ll be much happier,» his mother said to him. Although he lived with his parents, he never discussed with them the way he felt; it was they who, sensing his unhappiness, came to him and, in vaguely reproachful tones, tried to help him. He was polite with them but inwardly contemptuous. It was so clear that they could never understand the emptiness he felt, nor realize the degree to which he felt it. It was a progressive paralysis, it gained on him constantly, and it carried with it the fear that when it arrived at a certain point something terrible would happen.
He could hear the distant sound of waves breaking on the beach outside: the dull roll, a long silence, another roll. Someone came into the room over his, slammed the door, and began to move about busily from one side of the room to the other. It sounded like a woman, but a heavy one. The water was turned on and the wash basin in his room bubbled as if in sympathy. He lit a cigarette, from time to time flicking the ashes onto the floor beside the bed. After a few minutes the woman — he sure it was a woman — went out the door, slammed it, and he heard her walk down the hall into another room and close that door. A toilet flushed. Then the footsteps returned to the room above.
«I must call Wilcox,» he thought. But he finished his cigarette slowly, making it last. He wondered why he felt so lazy about making the call. He had taken the great step, and he believed he had done right. All the way across on the ship to Gibraltar, he had told himself that it was the healthy thing to have done, that when he arrived he would be like another person, full of life, delivered from the sense of despair that had weighed on him for so long. And now he realized that he felt exactly the same. He tried to imagine how he would feel if, for instance, he had his whole life before him to spend as he pleased, without the necessity to earn his living. In that case he would not have to telephone Wilcox, would not be compelled to exchange one cage for another. Having made the first break, he would then make the second, and be completely free. He raised his head and looked slowly around the dim room. The rain was spattering the window. Soon he would have to go out. There was no restaurant in the hotel, and it was surely a long way to town. He felt the top of the night table; there was no telephone. Then he got up, took the candle, and made a search of the room. He stepped out into the corridor, picked his key off the floor, locked his door and went downstairs thinking: «I’d have him on the wire by now if there’d only been a phone by the bed».
The man was not at the desk. «I’ve got to make a call,» he said to the boy who stood beside a potted palm smirking. «It’s very important. — Telephone! Telephone!» he shouted, gesturing, as the other made no sign of understanding. The boy went to the desk, brought an old-fashioned telephone out from behind and set it on top. Dyar took the letter out of his pocket to look for the number of Wilcox’s hotel. The boy tried to take the letter, but he copied the number on the back of the envelope and gave it to him. A fat man wearing a black raincoat came in and asked for his key. Then he stood glancing over a newspaper that lay spread out on the desk. As the boy made the call Dyar thought: «If he’s gone out to dinner I’ll have to go through this all over again». The boy said something into the mouthpiece and handed Dyar the receiver.
«Hello?»
«Hotel Atlantide».
«Mr. Wilcox, please». He pronounced the name very carefully. There was a silence. «Oh, God,» he thought, annoyed with himself that he should care one way or the other whether Wilcox was in. There was a click.
«Yes?»
It was Wilcox. For a second he did not know what to say. «Hello?» he said.
«Hello. Yes?»
«Jack?»
«Yes. Who’s this?»
«This is Nelson. Nelson Dyar».
«Dyar! Well, for God’s sake! So you got here after all. Where are you? Come on over. You know how to get here? Better take a cab. You’ll get lost. Where are you staying?»
Dyar told him.
«Jesus! That»— Dyar had the impression he had been about to say: that dump. But he said: «That’s practically over the border. Well, come on up as soon as you can get here. You take soda or water?»
Dyar laughed. He had not known he would be so pleased to hear Wilcox’s voice. «Soda,» he said.
«Wait a second. Listen. I’ve got an idea. I’ll call you back in five minutes. Don’t go out. Wait for my call. Just stay put. I just want to call somebody for a second. It’s great to have you here. Call you right back. O.K.?»
«Right».
He hung up and went to stand at the window. The rain that was beating against the glass had leaked through and was running down the wall. Someone had put a rag along the floor to absorb it, but now the cloth floated in a shallow pool. Two or three hundred feet up the road from the hotel there was a streetlight. Beneath it in the wind the glistening spears of a palm branch charged back and forth. He began to pace from one end of the little foyer to the other; the boy, standing by the desk with his hands behind him, watched him intently. He was a little annoyed at Wilcox for making him wait. Of course he thought he had been phoning from his room. He wondered if Wilcox were making good money with his travel agency. In his letters he had said he was, but Dyar remembered a good deal of bluff in his character. His enthusiasm need have meant nothing more than that he needed an assistant and preferred it to be someone he knew (the wages were low enough, and Dyar had paid his own passage from New York), or that he was pleased with a chance to show his importance and magnanimity; it would appeal to Wilcox to be able to make what he considered a generous gesture. Dyar thought it was more likely to be the latter case. Their friendship never had been an intimate one. Even though they had known each other since boyhood, since Wilcox’s father had been the Dyars’ family doctor, each had never shown more than a polite interest in the other’s life. There was little in common between them — not even age, really, since Wilcox was nearly ten years older than he. During the war Wilcox had been sent to Algiers, and afterward it never had occurred to Dyar to wonder what had become of him. One day his father had come home saying: «Seems Jack Wilcox has stayed on over in North Africa. Gone into business for himself and seems to be making a go of it». Dyar had asked what kind of business it was, and had been only vaguely interested to hear that it was a tourist bureau.