Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes Read Free Page B

mignon.”
    “¿Crudo?” asked the bartender.
    “Raw.”
    The waiter went to the street to hail a passing car that would take Cooney to a first aid center. Cooney’s friends were standing over him, staring at Hemingway.
    The bartender put a white plate with a raw steak in front of Hemingway, who wrapped it around his right hand. He lifted up the steak and showed his bleeding knuckles to Quinn.
    “See this? I’ve been out fishing, and the skin is dry from the salt and the sun. Otro doble ,” he said to the bartender.
    “I thought you were joking,” Quinn said to Hemingway.
    “Jerks are no joke,” he said. “Jerks should not be given houseroom. He said he was a writer. What kind of a jerk says that to a writer and he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to? Jerks and fools are a form of death when they turn up in your face. Singing that song in public is like writing a suicide note. I spent my life looking death in the eye and fighting it.” He paused. “I didn’t tell you what I was writing, did I?”
    “No, you didn’t,” Quinn said.
    “It’s not a suicide note. I’m reinventing my past in Paris, and I’m coming back with my trilogy,” and he emptied his new double daiquiri with one uptip of the glass. “The land, the sea and the air, and most of it’s been written for years. But there’s a future to think about, and if I put it out all at once we could die of taxation from publication. They’ll get it in time and it’ll knock them all on their ass. You’ll be very proud of me, Mr. Quinn.”
    “Didn’t you do the sea in the Old Man ?”
    “Only part of it. I did that for a woman. There’s more to come, kid. Let’s have two more dobles here. Dos más .”
    When Quinn began publishing his own novels in later years he looked at the notes he had made about Hemingway and about himself after this improbable night, and he understood there were important things he had left out, just as Hemingway had left things out when they talked. But as Hemingway had said, you can’t leave out what you don’t know, and in these years he had three novels in progress and could not stop writing them, or make them come together with meaning the way he could in the old days; because now everything had unendingly equal meaning, equal value. And he had left that out when he talked about it. Yet one must persevere. One must defy the forces that try to kill the spirit. One must not only persevere, one must prevail. And so Hemingway kept writing about what it was that was trying to ruin him, and the work became a love song to that. His one-two punches were part of it, just as Joe Cooney’s cellar door was the Cooney love song to his own lack of talent. Witness my absent gift. See how well I apply it.
    Failure can also be a creative act, Quinn decided. One must look straight ahead as one makes the forced march backward into used history. The death of ambition, gentlemen, is a great impetus for grasping this, and soon you will thrill to how urgently you are moving, how truly exciting this quest for failure can be. What you do not know at this point is that your quest for failure may also fail.
    The waiter came in from the street and said he had found a car to take Cooney. One of the friends pointed to Hemingway as he talked to the waiter, and the waiter nodded. A brawny young black man came in and Hemingway introduced him to Quinn as his driver, Juan. Juan was alert to hostile possibility and stood by Hemingway, monitoring the crowd. Cooney was conscious and talking with his friends, who helped him stand, then walked him to the street.
    The crowd in the restaurant stopped watching Hemingway and the tableau he had created, and went back to drinking. A trio of black street singers with guitars came into the bar but a waiter said they weren’t welcome. One of them said they knew Hemingway was here and had written a song for him, “Soy Como Soy” (I am what I am), about a whore who can’t be the woman Hemingway wants her