I shook my head.
“I’m going to take you right home, and ‘put you straight to bed.” The hand moved still higher. “You’ll like that, sweetheart, won't you?”
I bobbed my head again.
“Of course you will.” Her hand shot all the way up, groped, stopped groping abruptly, and then just stayed suspended. “You’re not Samara!” she said.
I shook my head sadly.
“You’re not even a Woman! ”
I nodded again.
“You’re a man! ”
Another nod.
“A man! ”
And then she screamed.
Following which, all female hell broke loose!
chapter nine
THE STEAM grew thick with outraged cries. Breasts flapped indignantly in the breeze I made bolting for the door. Legs leaped and haunches bounced as the open-pored ladies scrambled furiously to get out of my way. It was a sweating babble of pure female hysteria, that I left behind me.
Still, it was nothing compared to the hysteria which broke loose when I emerged naked in the ladies’ locker room. Some of the ladies were every bit as nude as I was, so I really didn’t see what they were making such a fuss about. I didn’t hang around to find out, either. With undressed and half-dressed ladies of every creed, color, and national origin dropping into faints in my wake, I zoomed through the locker room and out the door on the other side.
I was in a hallway with another door facing me. There was a sign on it saying: DO NOT ENTER. So, naturally, I entered. I was in luck. I found myself in the men’s locker room. I’d come in the back way. Making my way toward the front, I found my friend the attendant.
“Will you unlock my locker, please?” I asked him. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Of course, sir. Will you be returning your suit and towel now? ”
“I’m afraid not."
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I can’t return them. I don’t have them.”
“But what happened to them, sir?”
“It’s a long story. And you’d never believe it, anyway.”
“Then I shall have to charge you for them, sir.”
“All right. I’ll pay you as soon as I get dressed.”
I didn’t pay him, though. What stopped me was the fact that just as I was putting on my suit jacket, “Baby” Torres and his three chasers appeared in the locker room. All four were naked and still wet from the showers, their bathing suits dripping from their hands. “Baby” pointed, and the chase was on again.
The three naked hoods leaped like gazelles, but I was one leap ahead of them. I raced for the exit, the bare-bodkin trio behind me, the angry locker room attendant close behind them. “Stop, thief!” the attendant shouted.
He was still shouting it as I sprinted through the swinging door and ran up Dewey Boulevard into the night. That swinging door had stopped the three toughie Adams, though. They were too shy to come out on the street and play in the buff. So I dived in and out of a series of alleys to shake the attendant, and finally I lost him.
But I was afraid to just wander the streets. There were too many people who might be looking for me. The cops, the “North Dock Gang,” the crew from the Luzona Maru, members of S.M.U.T., Mavis, the guy who was knocking people off in my name—I didn’t want to risk bumping into any of them until I’d taken a breather and figured out a course of action. I was hot as a firecracker, and I had to park somewhere until the heat died down.
I stuck my nose out on Dewey Boulevard again. I could barely make out the front of the U. S. Embassy far down the street. I thought about going there and decided it would be useless. They wouldn’t know who I was, and even by some chance they did they couldn't jeopardize their diplomatic status by acknowledging it. Certainly they couldn't afford to grant me sanctuary. Not with the Philippine National Constabulary after me for murder!
The Embassy was out. I looked closer at hand. Only a few feet away there was a brightly lit sign and an extremely dark doorway. The sign said: CAFE INTERNATIONAL-Maganda Dalaga.
“Maganda Dalaga” means “beautiful girl” in Tagalog, the main dialect lingo of the Philippines. There were bulbs to make it plural, but they’d been popped out -- probably in one of the shooting fracases between the dock gangs. I crossed over to the sign and went through the doorway.
Its blackness was a promise that only a few colored lights kept from being carried through inside. These lights marked either end of a long bar and both sides of a small stage. A native stripper was just getting out of her sarong on the stage as I entered. Another native girl materialized out of the darkness and asked if I wanted to sit at the bar, or if I preferred a table.
I told her I’d rather have a table. She led me deeper into the blackness, moving with the sure agility of a seeing-eye dog. I felt rather than saw the chair she’d pulled out for me, and sat down. A moment later another sarong appeared at my elbow to ask for my order. I told her Scotch and water. She was back quickly with water and watered Scotch. I downed it, grimaced, and ordered another.
The on-stage sarong was working its way down over impressive Filipino hips. A small but equally impressive bosom gleamed nakedly in the colored lights. The breasts had the tilting shape of twin bananas.
It figured, because the place was a veritable tropical fruit market. Two melons had overflowed the top of the sarong worn by the girl who'd greeted me when I entered. The waitress bobbled firm mangoes in my face as she bent to put my drink on the table. And as she departed to bring me a second, ripe coconuts rolled onto the table beside me and nudged my arm.
The coconuts were wrapped in thin white cotton which etched the outline of the sharp ruby tipping each. I knew this, because as they came to rest, a hand placed a candle on the table between them. It was as appealing an advertising display as I’ve seen.
“Want company, sweetheart?” A face appeared over the candle flame. It was a striking face— female, French and Polynesian at the same time, smouldering with invitation. A cloud of dark black hair almost completely encircled it like a nimbus around a tropical sun.
“I’m' not in the—” I started to say, planning to get rid of her diplomatically. But the situation was taken out of my hands. The waitress returned with my drink and with one for my new companion. I couldn’t chance a scene. I shrugged and paid for both drinks.
“My name is Jana,” she told me. “What’s yours?”
“Steve.”
“You are a Yankee, yes?”
“Yes. How did you know? ”
“You paid the waitress in American dollars. That is very foolish. You will lose on the exchange.”
She had a point there. But it wasn’t the bilking I’d take that bothered, me as much as the fact that the money immediately labeled me an American. If I had Philippine currency, it would be a lot easier to lose myself in the European community. “I really should change my money over, “ I agreed with Jana. “Do you know anyone who can make the exchange for me?’
“How much money? ”
“About five hundred American dollars.” I had some English pounds from Malta, too, but I decided not to bother with them.
“I know someone who can accommodate you at three and a half pesos to a dollar.”
The going rate was four pesos to a dollar, and I knew it. I decided there was no point in letting Jana think I was that much of a patsy. “It’s worth ten centavos to the dollar to me,” I told her firmly. There are a hundred centavos to a peso, so I was offering her forty centavos less than she’d wanted to charge me as her commission.
“Twenty-five,” she bargained, cutting her original gluttonous offer in half.