Time flowed somehow. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, he felt as if his body were crumbling, he turned on the radio and tried to watch it as if it were television, but the radio had no screen and he closed the curtain, lay down, sweated, and dreamed he was watering a tree and the tree refused to drink the water. Maybe he really did order the boy because he came in wheeling a cart with a pot of coffee and cookies, and what was clear was that he said: The ambassador of Peru is staying in the end suite, and then he told him: My name's Samuel Lipker, and the boy said, Fine, sir, and slammed the door behind him as if it were made of thin glass.
Then he apparently ordered more food because with his own eyes he saw him gorging himself in the mirror and a girl who wasn't young, but not yet a woman, picked up the dishes and went off, leaving him a toothpick and an intoxicating smell of orange piss. The radio was on and he now understood some of the words, and once again a cold sweat started creeping on his back. He decided to take a shower or perhaps he took a shower because he had nothing else to do. The water flowing felt nice on his body that was strange to him. In the shower he smoked a cigarette under the stream of water, and so he also started longing for Melissa and Licinda and the beauty queen. Apparently more time passed because when he picked up the phone he was already dressed and combed. They replied that the beauty had come, but wasn't in her office, and who wants to know. He locked them in the phone and locked his feet in his shoes and went out to the small balcony and looked at the sea. When he went out to the corridor, he saw a woman bent over the carpet plucking up grains of dust. The sight was depressing. He pressed the button for the elevator and waited. Downstairs he searched for the beauty. Then he thought maybe he should search for the ambassador of Peru, but he didn't feel like asking. He felt pressure in his chest and sensed an incomprehensible need to look in the various mirrors and identify himself. He broke into a locked room with a skill he hadn't used in a long time, and there was the beauty queen. She wore fabulous clothes, her soft thin hands gleamed in the light of the big chandelier and her bright eyes were more violet than green or blue. Her hair was fair but without a clear tone, as if it were made of cardboard. She was also laughing, apparently at the ambassador of Peru. The ambassador was signing his name in the guest book after Sam Lipp's name, and he thought: She screws everybody, and went outside angrily. The sight of the charming beauty queen with the ambassador of Peru offended him. Outside he lit a cigarette.
Apparently he passed by the park because on the other side were rusted houses. He thought of a concept he didn't understand at all, he thought of a trigonometry of smell, something that reminded him of articles apparently written about his play. The city was full of one-way streets that became more and more familiar, burst out, and then disappeared. Even the boardwalk square was familiar to him, and he said: "Here's the square," as if he understood. An American girl with prominent nipples in her shirt passed by him and left a fragrant trail of white blood, he tried to see her from behind, but he didn't turn his face and so he lost her. He thought of the beauty kissing the bald head of the ambassador of Peru. Trees swayed in the wind and a precisely shaped cypress sharpened its crest to the sky. There were also stars, and he was glad about them. Beyond the window of a cafe, people sat and drank. He watched them and said to himself: Here's mother, here's mother, here's Aunt Leah, here's Lipkele. Here's Uncle Yom, here's Yashka, here's the Ukrainian. Maybe they sat naked in the cafe and policemen whipped them, but they smiled even though they had no teeth. He was terrified, but didn't do a thing about it. The manager of the cafe sat outside and read a score of "Making Whoopee." He thought, this is how they made a lady of jazz. And he thought about what Charlie Parker told him when he was hanging around New York searching for a celebration of authentic and well-woven social slime. The dead sat and acted his family for him. He wanted to break the window, and so he hurried on his way. Farther down was a boulevard, jazz and dead uncles, he thought, soda with straws, I'm walking in zigzags. Cafes full of sleepy young people, thinking thoughts. A girl wanted him to sign a petition against some occupation, he signed, in Hebrew, Samuel Lipker. He bought Le Figaro in a newspaper shop, because you could buy papers from all over the world there. It excited him that in a place of dead people you could buy newspapers in foreign languages and a little girl he had to notice could lick ice cream with a heartrending sweetness.
Apparently that night couldn't be reconstructed. An El Al plane reached its destination and Obadiah Henkin stood and waited for his guests. Boaz sat in Rebecca's house and heard how Nehemiah hated Joseph when he saw him in Rachel's face. Samuel Lipker saw a pair of legs in the opening of a house and next to the legs a small bottle of brandy. He stopped and looked at the legs and then at the owner of the legs. She smiled and licked her lips. Not far behind her appeared a shadow of a man wearing tight pants. Sam didn't say a thing and she became impatient. Finally he said to her: For ten dollars and the bottle too. She laughed and said: I'm not a whore for dollars, and that was the most beautiful thing he heard, a woman with a slightly charred face. On the mattress in the yard an open light appeared, blinking on and off, he tried to sleep with her, thought of the beauty queen in the hotel with the ambassador of Peru, but couldn't and he gave her another five dollars and heard yells not far away from there and stormy Greek music beyond the breakers of the sea. The mattress was filthy. The woman lifted her skirt, smiled, and held the bottle to her mouth and he drank from the bottle and forgot her and thought about the beauty and then lit her a cigarette. When the man in tight pants appeared, he ordered drinks for them all. The man saw the wad of dollars in Sam's hand, and yelled: There's a party and two other girls and three men immediately appeared.
The bar was dark with red lights burning in it. A fellow with an Uzi limped in. The fellow said to the bartender, who looked a little scared: That's an American sucker, what are you crying to me, and the soldier aimed the Uzi and laughed, and then they all laughed. Sam drank a lot and so did they. They told him to pay fifty dollars. He paid. Then he hugged them and started dancing. A buxom Greek woman tried to sing into a microphone, but an Arab tried to burn her dress. The scared bartender asked them not to cheat the American, but nobody paid attention to the bartender and took another thirty dollars from Sam. He also danced with the Greek woman. Then he said: That's like Paganini trying to compete with all of you in backgammon. They didn't really understand it and said: You want backgammon? And he said, Yes, and he let them cheat him at backgammon and he paid. And then he patted the fellow with the Uzi, crushed him, threw him at the lamp that went out immediately, aimed the other lamp at them, and also aimed the Uzi, cocked it and fired into the air. The police of the ten-twenty shift had gone now. He said quietly: Now stand up nice, and then he took all their wallets out of his pocket along with three watches and two chains with medallions and divided them, and they were too stunned to say a word, and he went to the counter, took out his dollars, counted, took more dollars out of the wallets and when his money was returned to him, he took five hundred pounds, and said to them: You wanted to fool me? Do you have any idea whom I've dealt with in my life? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?