Manuela herself was coming down the steps in leisurely fashion, buttoning her blouse; he closed the door behind him, shutting out the bright sunlight. The lady of the house looked at him with a degree of surprise and turned to a small mirror on the wall, checking her appearance, speaking over her shoulder.
“Hello, André—”
“Hello...” He took off his cap and tortured it with his hands, looking around the dim hallway as if he had never seen it before. In fact, it was as familiar to him as his own room. Manuela leaned closer to the glass to compensate for the poor light.
“You’re early,” she observed, looking over her image to his face in the mirror. She brought her attention back to her face, brushing a tendril of hair into place. Wetting a fingertip, she traced her eyebrows. “And Rosa isn’t here. She’s on — on vacation.”
“I didn’t come for—” He took a deep breath, moving closer to the woman, staring at her in the glass. “Manuela, what do you hear about Sanchez?”
“Luis Sanchez?” Manuela finished with the eyebrows and curled a strand of hair into a loop beside one ear. She checked herself once more and then turned to face the large man standing, waiting. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, no. About Sanchez...” He let the words trail into silence.
“I know nothing about Sanchez. If it helps, I hear he’s out of town.” She considered him shrewdly. “What do you want with Sanchez? Did you want to borrow money?”
The repetition of Sanchez’s unfair accusation, especially coming from one he had considered a friend, was enough to try a person’s temper. “I never borrowed a centavo from Luis Sanchez in my life! That’s just one of his—” He cut the statement short abruptly, suddenly remembering that Sanchez had not made his statement publicly. “No,” he said more quietly. “I’m — I’m looking for a job.”
“Well, I hear he’s out of town, so you’ll have to wait.”
“Did he—” André floundered. What had he been about to say? Did Sanchez do what? Did he mention a suitcase? It came to him how ridiculous he must appear to the woman. What a sad waste of time. “Nothing,” he said and turned to go.
Manuela frowned. “You don’t want a girl?”
“No...” His hand was on the knob.
“Are you sick?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said and escaped. Manuela stared after him with a touch of pity in her large, dark, liquid eyes. It was awfully early for André to be drunk, and he looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping well lately either. Maybe she should have insisted on his having coffee and even loaned him a few pesetas to sober up on. Shaking her head, she went in to make breakfast.
It wasn’t until she had the coffee on that she remembered she had a message for the big man. She glanced out the window, but André had already disappeared around the corner. Oh, well, someone else would get it to him...
André wandered back toward the quayside from force of habit. Yes, there seemed to be no doubt but that he couldn’t possibly return to Paris and face Kek after such an abysmal failure. What a shame, after having waited so long for permission! Ah, well, water over the dam. Nor, of course, could he remain here in Barcelona, where Kek was sure to hear he was about, especially now. No, there was nothing else for it; it would have to be a ship, preferably one that went—
“André!”
— to China, if ships still sailed there. He was sure any ship would sign him on, even at his age and even with his gray hair. One thing he could do was work, and any deck boss with half an eye could see that. Of course, there was the sad fact that he had never worked on ships before, having a tendency toward seasickness, but what could one do? One might, of course, go—
“Hey! André!”
— back to Lisbon, but the truth was he had lived there a long time and hadn’t done very well. But, then, he hadn’t done very well in his life. Well, that last statement wasn’t exactly true. In the old days, working with Kek, he had done very well indeed, but—
“André!”
— that was a long time ago, and anyway, once he had his job outlined for him, there was nobody better at executing it. It was getting the idea of what to do in the first place, that was the trouble. Although in this case, even if he had been told step by step what to do, he probably would have failed—
A hand reached out, catching at his arm. A breathless voice spoke at his side.
“Man, are you deaf, or what? I’ve been chasing you and calling you for two blocks...”
André brought his attention from his multiple problems, looking down at his companion. “Hello, Raul. What’s new?” It suddenly occurred to him that he had money in his pocket, not a normal situation, and that he had found a familiar face, no small thing that day. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.” He would toast the end of his quest before it began, but at least he wouldn’t be drinking alone.
“Good!” Raul said heartily, never one to refuse. Turning down a small street, they left the dock area and entered a maze of narrow streets well trodden by them both in the past. The cobblestones were rough beneath their thin shoes, and the paved walk reflected the heat of the afternoon. Raul led the way to a familiar bar and sank into one of the small metal chairs before a marble-topped sidewalk table; André had more trouble adapting to the bent-wire contraption. Raul turned to call a waiter and then paused, looking over his shoulder with a touch of doubt. “Are you sure you have—”
André laughed, his first genuine laugh in a long time. He reached into his pocket, bringing out a folded wad of notes, running a thumb over them. “I’m sure.”
Raul frowned at the unexpected amount of money a moment, shrugged, and turned back to the hovering waiter. “A bottle of Fundador.”
The waiter stared. “A bottle?”
“A bottle,” André said grandly and waved the money.
The waiter disappeared into the café on the double. Raul looked at the large man across from him. “I’ve got a message for you.”
André frowned. Any message he was apt to receive undoubtedly dealt with an old debt, of which he had many outstanding. True, he had money in his pocket at the moment, but it was money given for expenses, money given for a purpose, not to be used wastefully, such as in paying old debts. In fact, now that the purpose had vanished, the money would have to be returned — or what was left, at least. He sighed. It seemed that in addition to having his mind occupied by his bankruptcy of ideas, he was to be distracted further with local problems.
“What’s the message?”
Raul paused as the waiter brought the bottle. He watched the cork being removed with all the suspicion of any connoisseur confronted with a fresh possibility of distillery error, watched the glasses being put down, and watched the waiter withdraw. He reached out, pouring two drinks, and raised his own.
“Salud.”
“Salud,” André repeated. He upended the glass, swallowing the contents in one gargantuan gulp, scarcely tasting it. The warmth of the brandy spread from his empty stomach through his body. “What’s the message?” Whatever it was, it had to be faced.
Raul was not to be hurried, however; certainly not with an almost-full bottle of cognac on the table and an old friend with him who obviously had made a killing in one illegal form or another. He drank his drink, savoring it with extra pleasure for the reserve quantity warehoused in the bottle, and then reached over to André’s glass in order to refill both.