Beecher sat facing the small flower garden in the middle of the plaza. The bougainvillaea and climbing geranium were incredibly vivid against a background of whitewashed shops and pensions and cafés. Off to his right was Mirimar’s administration building, yellow, squat, and ugly. The Guardia Civil had offices there, and also the local police constable, Don Julio Cansana, who was a friend of Beecher.
A stream of burros was coming into the plaza from the hills, pausing to drink from the iron fountain at the foot of the street. Beecher bought a newspaper and sipped his drink.
When he first came to Spain this was the hour of the day he had liked best of all. The siesta was over, the breezes were cool, and the promise of the long evening ahead filled everyone with a sense of significance and excitement. And there had been a lot of good evenings, Beecher thought, putting his paper aside. All sorts of people were available in Mirimar, all national, political, and sexual complexions, and it was an easy matter to find friends. You drifted with the crowd. Everything was informal. You went to parties where everyone drank red wine or Spanish brandy, and someone had a guitar and sang folk songs. In the daytime you soaked up sun on the beach and drank a few bottles of cold beer to minimize the hangovers, which were the most staple topic of conversation in the village. People were always going off on trips. To Gibraltar to change money; to Tangier to eat couscous and hear jazz and watch the slim and epicene boys who danced in the tourist restaurants; to somewhere over the mountains to see the bullfighter everyone was comparing to Manolete and Belmonte.
Beecher had done all these things. Sometimes he felt guilty about squandering time so pointlessly. Or else he felt like a fool. Then something would come along, another party, another trip, another girl, and this would anesthetize his concern for a while. But lately he had been withdrawing from the foreign colony. He avoided parties, and he swam five miles from the village in a graceful cove cut deep into the mountainside. He went alone to bullfights in Málaga, instead of making a carnival out of it with the bearded young Americans who carried goatskins of wine slung over their shoulders and quarreled with everyone around them on the merits of the corrida.
Beecher didn’t understand his withdrawal, except that he was tired of busy people. Of course, few of the expatriates were busy in any normal sense; but they had busy bodies and busy heads. He preferred Spaniards. Don Julio, the policeman, came to his villa occasionally to play dominoes and listen to opera music. And he knew a number of Spanish families from the golf course, and he enjoyed spending a quiet evening with them in their homes in Málaga. These relationships weren’t deep or significant, because he brought nothing to them but his own emptiness and loneliness. He was given friendship because he needed it, not because he had earned it.
Beecher finished his drink and walked through the terrace into the cool depth of the bar. There was a party going on at the corner table, three young Americans with an assortment of Danes, South Africans and Canadians. They were noisy and happy. Beecher knew all of them, and said hello as he walked past their table to the bulletin board at the end of the bar where the postman left his mail. There was nothing but a postcard from a girl who had lived in Mirimar in the spring. She was an Australian who wanted to write, and her family had given her a year of travel to help solve her artistic problems. Beecher tried to puzzle out her microscopic script. She was in London now and had made contacts in television. The English work restrictions were — he couldn’t make out the word, but it looked like “fopelup” which could be “fouled-up” or “filled-up” or even “bollixed-up.” She shared a flat with two British models. They had so many friends it was impossible to get a night’s sleep. She had met someone who knew Peter Ustinov. There was more, but Beecher didn’t bother to read it. He tore up the card and dropped it in the spittoon at his feet.
The girl’s name was Millicent something-or-other, and he had difficulty remembering what she looked like, except for a general notion of blondeness and excitement. There should have been a letter from his sister, Bunny. She was all the family he had; his mother and father had been dead for ten years. Bunny was married to an insurance man and lived happily on Long Island. She was a sweet thing, and was always turning up jobs for Beecher in America. She wrote ritualistically each week, urging him to forsake Spain and come home. It was almost funny; she thought he stayed in Spain because he was having too much fun to leave.
One of the young Americans weaved to the bar and put an arm around his shoulders. “Come on over and have a farewell drink,” he said in a thick, cheerful voice. “Trumbull’s going home. Fed up. Sick of bullfights. Sick of Spain, Europe, everything. Wants to raise a family, collect a pension. Come on, help save the poor bastard.”
The American’s name was Nelson. He was tall and thin, with a great sprout of erratic red hair which seemed to require all the strength of his body to nourish; at least it was the only thing about him that looked strong and luxuriant. His ribs showed sharply against a cotton T shirt, and there were great dark hollows beneath his wild and beautiful gray eyes. He was twenty-four years old, and had a degree in psychology from Ohio State University. “Come on, Mike,” he said, pulling ineffectually at Beecher’s arm. “You’re a wise old bastard. Let’s don’t let him do this awful thing.”
“We’ll give him fight talk number ten,” Beecher said. “Words of comfort for the doubting expatriate.”
“That’s the idea,” Nelson cried shrilly. “We’ll bug him good. Tell him about supermarkets and frozen foods and trick wives rampant on a field of ruptured husbands. On guard, Trumbull! Here comes the artillery.”
Beecher took a drink to the corner table and sat down between Trumbull and a quiet Canadian girl who taught English to a wealthy Spanish family in Málaga. Trumbull was a huge and droll young man with an air of exuberant energy which Beecher found stimulating. He had been a fine college athlete, and had made the Dean’s list, but after graduating he had turned down a half-dozen job offers and had come to Spain to tour the country on motorcycle. He wore a wild black beard, which he contended was essential to the doggerel he wrote, and enjoyed brawling and bullfights and red wine. One of his poems celebrated the rout of Don Willie from the Bar Central by the little Czech. It was called, inevitably, Beecher thought, “The Bouncing Czech.” Because he liked Trumbull and disliked Don Willie, Beecher thought the poem was very funny. It started off: Six leagues and more, this son of Thor, did run and run, this naughty Hun, with rolling eye and roiling bowels, he flew like one of Siegfried’s fowls... Beecher had forgotten the rest of it.
He raised his glass to Trumbull. “It’s true? You’re going home?”
“Yeah, man,” Trumbull said, nodding his big head emphatically. “I want that split-level in the suburbs, and a pine-paneled playroom. When I climb down from the commuter’s special little old sweetie-face will be waiting there with a pitcher of dry Martinis, and her hair in curlers and a baby under each arm.” When he grinned, his firm red lips coiled in the black luxuriance of his beard. “I’ve had Spain. Through being a lousy expatriate wasting time in the company of sexual perverts and Democrats. I’m heading home.”
The Canadian girl said crisply, “What’s all this about sexual perverts and Democrats?”
“My old man’s a Republican. He thinks the words mean the same thing.”
Nelson tugged at his untidy mass of red hair with both hands. “You’re out of your Chinese mind,” he said, in a voice closer to the howl of a dog than to human speech. “They’ll eat you up! They’ll devour you. You’ll have kids and debts up to your navel in two years. Freezers, TV sets, Mixmasters, none of it paid for. The Goddamn home you’re dreaming about will be nothing but a substation for Westinghouse. When are you going to think, man? Dream and grow?” Nelson put his cheek on the table and wrapped his thin arms around his head. “Somebody wave for drinks. I’m too depleted.”