“That can wait,” he said. “I’ve got to see you in your office.”
“Okay,” I said, and wiped my greasy hands on a rag.
Shuck poured himself a drink at my liquor cabinet. He closed the door after me.
“I spent yesterday afternoon with the ambassador.”
“How’s his golf game?” I took a cigar out of the pocket of my silk shirt.
“He spent yesterday morning with the army.”
“So?”
“I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“Spill it,” I said. But I had an inkling of what it would be. A week before, a Chinese feller named Lau had come to me with a proposition. He was from Penang and had twenty-eight girls up there he wanted to send down. He expected a finder’s fee, bus fare for all of them, and a job for himself. He said he knew how to do accounts; he also knew where I could get some pinball machines, American sports equipment, a film projector, and fittings for a swimming pool, including a new diving board. I told him I wasn’t interested.
“They’re closing you up,” said Shuck.
“That’s one way of putting it,” I said. “Who’s they?”
“U.S. government.”
“They’re closing me up?” I snorted, “What is this?”
“It’s nothing personal—”
“You can say that again,” I said. “This isn’t my place — it’s theirs! So I suppose you mean they’re closing themselves up.”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Shuck. “Officially the U.S. Army doesn’t operate cathouses.”
“If you think this is a cathouse you don’t know a hell of a lot about cathouses!”
“Don’t get excited,” said Shuck, and now I began to hate his lisp. “It wasn’t my decision. The army’s been kicking this idea around for ages. I’ve got my orders. I’m only sorry I couldn’t let you know sooner.”
“Do me a favor, Ed. Go down the hall and find Mr. Khoo. He’s just bought the first car he’s ever owned — on the strength of this job. He’s got about ninety-two more payments to make on it. Go tell him the Pentagon wants him to sell it and buy a bike. See what he says.”
“I didn’t think you’d take it so hard,” said Shuck. “You’re really bitter.”
“Go find Jimmy Sung. He’s paying through the nose for a new shipment of Jap cameras. Tell him the ambassador says he’s sorry.”
“Sung’s a crook, you said so yourself.”
“He knew what he was doing,” I said. “I shouldn’t have stopped him. I was getting bent out of shape trying to keep this place honest, and then you come along and piss down everyone’s shoulder blades.”
“Everyone’s going to be compensated.”
“What about Penang? You screwed them there.”
“That’s classified — who told you about Penang?”
“I’ve got information,” I said. “You’re ending the R and R program there. They’re all looking for jobs, and you know as well as I do they’re not going to find them. It’s not fair.”
“Jack, be reasonable,” said Shuck. “We can’t keep half of Southeast Asia on the payroll indefinitely.”
“Why put them on the payroll in the first place?”
“I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Shuck said. “I don’t know. I don’t make policy.”
“I can’t figure you out,” I said. “You’re like these fellers from the cruise ships that used to come to Singapore years ago, dying to get laid. Money was no object, they said. Then when I found them a girl they’d say, ‘Got anything a little less pricy?’ And you! You come in here with an army, making promises, throwing money around, hiring people, building things, and — I don’t know—invading the frigging place and paying everyone to sing “God Bless America.” And then you call it off. Forget it, you say, just like that.”
“Maybe it got too expensive,” said Shuck. “It costs—”
But I was still fulminating. “Play ball, you say, then you call off the game! You call that fair?”
“I never figured you for a hawk.”
“I’m not a hawk, you silly bastard!”
“Okay, okay,” said Shuck. “I apologize. What do you want me to say? We’ll do the best we can for the people here — compensate them, whatever they want. You’re the boss.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m the boss.” I was sitting behind my desk, puffing on the cigar, blowing smoke at Shuck. Briefly, it had all seemed real. I had a notebook full of calculations: in five years I would have saved enough to get myself out, quietly to withdraw. But it was over, I was woken.
Shuck said, “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You’re darned tootin’ I don’t,” I said. “I had a good job before you hired me. A house, plenty of friends.” Hing’s, my semidetached house on Moulmein Green, the Bandung. There’s Always Someone You Know at the Bandung.
“I mean, I’ve got a proposition for you.”
“Well, you can roll your proposition into a cone and shove it. I’m not interested.”
“You haven’t even heard it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“It means money,” said Shuck.
“I’ve seen your money,” I said. “I don’t need it.”
“You’re not crapping out on us, are you?”
“I like that,” I said. “Ever hear the one about the feller with the rash on his arm? No? He goes to this skin specialist who says, ‘That’s a really nasty rash! Better try this powder.’ The powder doesn’t work. He tries ointment, cream, injections, everything you can name, but still the rash doesn’t clear up. Weeks go by, the rash gets worse. ‘It’s a pretty stubborn rash — resisting treatment,’ says the doc. ‘Any idea how you got it?’ The feller says he doesn’t have the foggiest. ‘Maybe you caught it at work,’ the doc says, ‘and by the way where do you work?’ ‘Me?’ the feller says, ‘I work at the circus. With the elephants.’ ‘Very interesting,’ says the doctor, ‘What exactly do you do?’ ‘I give them enemas — but the thing is, to give an elephant an enema you have to stick your arm up its ass.’ ‘Eureka!’ says the doc. ‘Give up your job and I guarantee the rash on your arm will clear up.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says the feller, ‘I’ll never give up show biz.’”
Shuck pursed his lips. I didn’t blame him: I had told the joke too aggressively for it to raise a laugh.
“Do you know the one about Grandma’s wang house? Seems there was this feller—”
“I’ve heard it,” said Shuck. “‘You’ve just been screwed by Grandma.’”
“That’s how I feel,” I said. I split a matchstick with my thumbnail and began picking my teeth.
“Just listen to my proposition, then say yes or no.”
“No,” I said. “Like the feller says, it’s a question of mind over matter. You don’t mind and I don’t matter. Get it?”
“You’re being difficult.”
“Not difficult — impossible,” I said, and added, “Mr. Shuck,” lisping it with the same fishmouth buzz that he gave his name. I regretted that, and to cover it up, went on, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go break the news to Hing. I get the feeling Hing and I are on our way back to Beach Road. I’m not really a pimp, you know. That’s just talk.” I puffed the cigar and grinned at him. “I’m a ship chandler by profession, and it’s said that at ship chandling I’m a cracker jack.”
I winked.
Shuck glumly zipped his briefcase. “If you ever change your mind—”
“Never!”
At lunchtime it rained and the rain quickly developed into a proper storm, a Sumatra of the same velocity I had weathered in the harbor on Mr. Khoo’s launch when we towed that lighterful of girls to the Richard Everett. Ever since then, storms excited me: I could not read or write during a storm, and for the duration of the rain and wind my voice was louder; I found it easy to laugh, and I drank more quickly, standing up, peering out the window. I couldn’t turn my back on a storm. I switched off the radio and watched this one from my office at Paradise Gardens. It grew as dark at half past twelve as it was at nightfall — not sunset, but after that, dark sunless evening. I threw the windows open to hear the storm; it was cool, not raining yet, but very dark, with leaves turning over and stiff tree branches blowing like hair.