“If you like.”
“I guess I won’t trade you in after all,” Eve said, and she leaned over the table and kissed him quickly on the cheek.
At one o’clock a bellhop brought up their bags. As soon as he was gone, Larry unlocked the one lockable valise and began a frantic search for the traveler’s checks. When he found them, he sighed, held them up, and said, “I was getting a little worried.”
“What for?” Eve asked. “When you’re stranded in a strange land and can’t speak the language, who needs money?”
Larry laughed. “Want to take a swim?”
“Are all your calls made?”
“All but one, and I can make that later. I’ve got two appointments for tomorrow, and I also got us a dinner invite for tonight. Guy named Hebbery.”
“Good. Then let’s swim.”
They changed into their swim suits and took the service elevator down. Following the signs, they walked through the cool basement corridor and emerged in the hot Puerto Rican sunlight. They found chairs for themselves, dropped their towels, and went to the deep end of the pool. Larry dove in first. Eve followed with a clean dive, surfacing again and then breaking into a strong, fast crawl. She touched the tile lip at the shallow end, reversed her body and — as if she were in a high-school swimming match-started back toward the deep water. Larry watched her, pleased with the way she swam. He came up the steps, waited for her, and handed her a towel when she came dripping from the pool.
“Cigarette?” he said.
“Yes. That was good. I feel all tingly.”
She pulled off the cap, and her black hair tumbled to her shoulders. Larry put two cigarettes into his mouth, lighted them, and handed one to Eve.
“Mmm,” she said, inhaling. “Now let’s go back to the chairs and just toast for a while.”
They soaked up sun for a half hour. At the end of that time they both conceded it was a treacherous sun and moved into the shade of a palm. Eve’s lip was beaded with perspiration. She lay in the chair limply and said, “I feel as if I’d been flogged.”
“It’s hot,” he said. He was propped up on his elbows, looking toward the breakwater. “I wonder what that is.”
“What?”
“Over there. All the commotion.”
Eve rolled over. She squinted into the sun. “Looks as if they’re taking pictures.”
“Let’s walk over,” he said.
Leisurely, they strolled to the breakwater. A tripod was set up facing the ocean. Two young girls, a redhead and a blonde, smiled prettily at the man behind the camera.
“She’s a Vogue model,” Eve whispered. “I recognized her.”
“Which one?”
“The redhead.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She photographs beautifully,” Eve said, “but I’m a little disappointed. She’s very thin.”
“I don’t think so.”
A woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat went over to the girls and adjusted their dresses. She said something to the photographer then, and both girls smiled more broadly, holding their poses.
“The dresses are pinned in the back with clothes pins,” Eve said. “So that no wrinkles will show in the front.”
They watched in silence for a while. The photographer, the models, the woman in the straw hat, went blithely about their business.
“That sun is beginning to get me again,” Eve said. “Can we go back to the shade?”
“I want to watch a little,” Larry said. “It’s interesting.”
“The photography or the redhead?” Eve asked.
“Oh, come on.”
She looked at him curiously and said, “Well, I’ll be under the palm when you’ve had enough.”
“All right.”
She looked at him again, the same curious expression on her face, and then she turned and walked back to the beach chair.
Larry’s two Saturday appointments were with men who were willing to accommodate him even though they did not normally work on Saturdays. The first was at the Autoridad Sobre Hogares de Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras.
With a man named Fiente, Larry discussed the basic minimum housing needs as experienced in the island’s public housing program. He approached the problem of factory housing the way he would approach any architectural problem. He wanted to use space in a way that would be satisfactory both functionally and aesthetically to the people who would occupy that space. And whereas Baxter was footing the bill, Larry nonetheless considered the Puerto Rican factory worker his client.
Fiente was an intelligent, farsighted man struggling with perhaps the biggest problem on the island: slum clearance. He spoke enthusiastically of his own program and of the strides they’d made in eliminating the fanguitos. At the same time he showed grateful appreciation for incoming industries which considered housing a basic component of their factory operation.
Larry talked with him for almost three hours. He did not speak a word of Spanish, and he discovered that talking to a man who spoke only hesitant English was a trying task. The long pauses while the mind searched for a translation, the mispronunciations, the monosyllabic exchange of ideas, the limiting of oneself to a basic vocabulary in deference to the man struggling with one’s language made communication a grueling experience. He was fatigued when he left Fiente for his appointment at the Planning Board in San Juan. But he thanked him warmly for his time and stepped out of the office into a sudden Puerto Rican shower.
At the Planning Board, he spoke to a man named Miguel Dominguez. Again, in their discussion of materials which would be most satisfactory and most economical for the proposed development, the language complication stood between them like a solid stone wall. They talked of lumber and cement and doors and windows and crushed stone and pipe and floor tiles and interior and exterior paint and galvanized iron sheets and sand. And if simple conversation with Fiente had been difficult, the problem of translating “galvanized iron sheets” from the Spanish was almost insurmountable. Larry was anxious to get back to the Caribe and the simple, sweet, clean American English Eve spoke.
As he was leaving, Dominguez said, “I enjoy your visit, Señor Cole.”
“Thank you,” Larry said. “I enjoyed talking to you.”
“When you arrive, I think perhaps is Tyrone Power. My secretary come in an’ say, ‘There is han’some American wants to see you.’” Dominguez grinned. Left-handedly, he added, “They don’ see many mainlan’ visitors here.”
Larry was tired enough to have taken the remark as an insult. But Dominguez was smiling, and he sensed that no offense had been intended. The man, in his own confused English way, was offering a compliment. He took his hand, thanked him again for his time, and left.
When he got back to the hotel room, Eve had already showered and was lying on one of the beds resting. “How’d it go?” she asked, not opening her eyes.
“Pretty rough. Why didn’t I take Spanish in high school?”
“Did you get to see the site?”
“Not yet. We’ll discuss that with Hebbery tonight. Maybe he’ll take us out there tomorrow.”
“Out where?”
“Vega Alta. That’s the factory town.”
“Is it far from San Juan?”
“I don’t know. Hebbery’ll tell us all about it.”
Eve nodded. “I’m going to catch a nap,” she said. “Wake me when you’re almost ready, will you?”
“And then spend the next half hour waiting for you.”
“Oh, the hell with you,” Eve said, and she rolled over.
Grinning, he went into the bathroom to shower.
The room phone rang at 7:20 while Eve was still making up at the dressing table in her bra and half-slip. Larry, fully dressed, answered it.