Don't Stop the Carnival Read Free

Just as abhorrent to him were crude businessmen of the Atlas variety. Square was the deepest term of anathema in his circle. It was an excruciating discomfort for Norman Paperman to have to travel in public with such a boorish, booming, atrocious square as Lester Atlas.
     
     
Paperman's friends were writers, actors, newspapermen, television people, and the like. Many were real celebrities. In a company of these he spent most of his nights at one Broadway restaurant or another, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and talking. Paperman's circle worked hard at dressing correctly and at reading the right books. Paperman and his friends, indeed, made a second career, beyond their professional work, of being up to the moment, and of never wearing, saying, or doing the wrong thing. This was not easy. In New York the right thing to wear or to read, to think or to say, to praise or to blame, can change fast. It can be damaging to miss a single issue of one or another clever magazine. Doctors complain of the flood of periodicals they must read to stay abreast of their profession; but their burden is almost light compared to that of being a New Yorker like Norman Paperman.
     
     
That was one reason Paperman was in the West Indies. He had broken down in the task.
     
     
3
     
     
About half an hour after he arrived Paperman almost drowned.
     
     
He was wearing rubber fins and a face mask for the first time in his life, and he was charmed by the underwater beauty of the reef: by the parrot fish browsing on dusty pink coral, the gently waving purple sea fans, the squid staring with tragic human eyes set in little jelly bodies, and jetting off backwards as he drew near; and by the glowing clean pink color of his own magnified hands and legs. He was pursuing a cloud of little violet fish past a towering brain coral, and having a wonderful time, when he turned his head under water, and the breathing pipe pulled out of its socket. The mask filled. Before he managed to yank it off he had inhaled and swallowed a lot of warm, very salty water. Coughing, gasping, he retrieved the sinking pipe, and tried to put it back in the mask, noting that he had wandered out too far from the beach. He was a good swimmer. The trouble was that since his coronary attack he got out of breath easily, and it was bad for him to exert himself in thrashing, flailing motions. He fixed the mask, clumsily pulled it on, and again was breathing warm water. Again he tore it off, snorting and choking, and now he was scared, because he seemed unable to catch enough breath, and his frantic treading was failing to keep his head above the surface. He went under; he clawed himself up, uttering a feeble "Help!" With his eyes fastened on the beach, which now seemed five miles away, he kicked and splashed and groped in one spot. He thought, "This would be one hell of a stupid way to die," and he thought of his wife and daughter, and wondered what idiocy had brought him to this island three thousand miles from New York to sink and be lost in the sea like a punctured beer can. His heart thundered.
     
     
A strong hand grasped his elbow. "Okay, easy."
     
     
He saw a big red fish impaled bleeding on a spear, inches from his face. The person holding the spear gun had thick black hair, twisted in curls and streaming water. The face was a blank skin-diver face, all yellow mask and tube. "Lie on your back and float." The voice was boyish, quiet, good-humored. Some of the knots went out of Paperman's muscles; he obeyed. The hand released his elbow and took a cupping hold on his chin. "Okay?" Paperman managed a nod against the hard hand.
     
     
The skin diver towed him to the beach. He let go while they were still in deep water, so that Paperman could turn over and swim the last dozen strokes. Anxiously glancing toward the hotel veranda, Paperman saw Atlas talking with Mrs. Ball and two Negroes. Nobody had noticed the panic or the rescue. The skin diver stood in the shallow water,