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PARTISAN REVI EW
and fetched out her compact and was frowning at her face in the
mirror. Bending, he pressed his mouth to her shoulder ; she brusquely
nudged him off. He grabbed her wrist so suddenly the compact shot
out of her hands; whirling, she slapped him across the mouth. He
toppled backward, hit his head on the car's door, and snapped out of
the trance. He gaped in amazement at her vicious face. She said,
spitting out the words: did he think she was as easy a job as her
mother? As he tried to push himself up she suddenly started the car
and burst out laughing when he flopped down again. She continued
to shake with laughter all the way back to the city; Paco was quiet.
As the highway fanned out into streets she asked, controlling her mirth
and turning her mocking face toward him: where would he like to be
dropped?
That night she appeared at the "Manila-Hong Kong." Paco
smilingly ignored her. She was there every night that week; he could
locate her without turning around: wherever she was, the racket was
loudest. She danced sna tchily ; she traveled among the tables; she
laughed and chattered at the top of her voice-but whenever he
turned around he caught her eyc. His own smiling look stepped right
through her.
The senora did not show up. Paco heard that she was
ill
and
was receiving no one: she had been deeply shaken by the tragedy of
her friends. He did not visit her, he did not even call her up. He felt
ill
himself from the spiteful desire to get the daughter in his clutches–
but in his dreams, restless with flying landscapes, the woman he hunted
had two faces; and though he sweated to catch her he dreaded every
moment lest she stop and turn her other face around.
When he shifted his band to the "Boulevard Shanghai" the follow–
ing week, Connie followed-and she was there the night one young
man shot another young man because they both wanted to sit on the
same chair. The atmosphere, earlier that evening, had been tensed
up by the appearancc of two rival political bosses with their hench–
men. The club's manager came running up and told Paco to cut out
the intermissions, to keep right on playing-loud. The politicians oc–
cupied tables on opposite sides of the room. Timid folk fled; braver
ones-Connie among them-remained and danced nervously, waiting
for the shooting to begin. Nothing h appened. The politicians kept
getting up and crossing the room to offer each other drinks; they smiled
and shook hands and thumped each other's back; at midnight, they
and their unsmiling constabulary very peacefully departed. But the few
customers left behind, scared and disappointed, quickly developed ugly
