Saint Jack Read Free Page B

stopped drinking—that shame, unfamiliar as regret, tugged at my neck hairs. Through the glass-topped table in front of me I could see I was curling my toes and clawing at my sandals.
    â€œLet’s go,” I said. “I’ll call a taxi.” I started to get up. I was hot; I wanted to roll up my sleeves, now damply stuck to my tattoos, revealing them.
    â€œFlowers,” he said, and narrowed his eyes at me, “are you a ponce?”
    â€œMe? Hyah-mn! What a thing to say!” It was a loud hollow protest with a false echo. Prostitute, he had said, pimp, whore, queer, ponce—words people use to name the things they hate (liking them they leave them nameless, the human voice duplicating the suspicion that passion is unspeakable). “I’m a sort of pornocrat,” I was going to say, to mock him. I decided not to. His incredulity was a prompting for me to lie.
    The waitress passed by.
    Leigh said, “
Wan arn!
” greeting her in vilely accented Mandarin.
    â€œScuse me?” she said. She took a pad from the pocket of her dress, a pencil from her hair. “Anudda Anchor?”
    â€œ
Nee hao ma
,” said Leigh. He had turned away from me and was looking at the girl. But the girl was looking at me “
Nee hway bu hway
—”
    â€œMister,” said the girl to me, “what ship your flend flom?”
    Leigh cleared his throat and said we’d better be going. In the taxi he said hopelessly, “I was wondering if I might get a chance to play a little squash.”
    â€œSure thing,” I said, pouncing. “I can fix that up for you in a jiffy.”
Squash?
He was wheezing still, and red as a beet. Carrying his suitcase to the taxi rank he kept changing hands and groaning, and then he put his face out the taxi window and let the breeze blow into his mouth, taking gulps of it the way dogs do in a car. He had swallowed two little white pills with his beer. He looked closely at his palms from time to time. And he wanted to play squash!
    â€œWhat’s your club, Flowers?”
    We had agreed that I was to call him William if he called me Jack. I liked my nursery-rhyme name. Now I felt he was cheating.
    â€œName it,” I said, and to remind him of our agreement I added, “William.”
    I had an application pending at the Cricket Club once, or at least the “Eggs,” two elderly bald clients of mine, who were members, said I did. I had been trying to join a club in Singapore for a long time. Then it was too late. I couldn’t apply for membership without giving myself away, for I often drank in the clubs and most of the members—they knew me well—thought I had joined years before. There wasn’t a club on the island I couldn’t visit one way or another. I had clients at all of them.
    â€œCricket Club’s got some squash courts, but the Tanglin’s just put up new ones—you may want to have a look at those. There’s none at the Swimming Club so far, though we’ve got a marvelous sauna room.” I thumped his knee. “We’ll find something, William.”
    â€œSounds very agreeable,” he said, pulling his head back into the taxi. He was calm now. “How do you manage three clubs? I’m told the entrance fees are killing.”
    â€œThey
are
pretty killing,” I said, using his dialect again, “but I reckon it’s worth it.”
    â€œYou’re not a squash player yourself?”
    â€œNo,” I said, “I’m just an old beachcomber—drinking’s my sport, nyah!”
    That made him chuckle; I was laughing too, and as I shifted on the seat I felt a lump in my back pocket press into my butt: two thick envelopes of pornographic pictures I had brought along just in case he asked. Their reminding pressure stopped my laughing.
    The taxi driver tilted his head back and said, “Bloomies? Eshbishin wid two gull? You want boy? Mushudge? What you want I get.