THE
WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
469
tempers. A quarrel over places, between two young men, ended with
both of them whipping out pistols and firing-and with the unluckier
one staggering headlong across the dance floor, doubled up and
clutching his rent belly, and dropping down just a foot away from where
Connie had flung herself flat on the floor. She screamed at the blood
and Paco jumped up from behind a drum and ran to pick her up
while people clamored and stumbled over chairs and tables in their
frantic flight to the doors.
Paco dragged the girl out to the kitchcn where he stood her up
and shook her until she stopped shrieking. She swayed away from his
hold and vomited all over the kitchen floor. He made her drink some
water and she flung herself on his breast and sobbed wildly. He took
off his coat and wrapped it around her and took her out to her car.
A light drizzle was falling, blurring up the moonlight. He drove around
the wet streets, one arm holding t4e girl to his breast, until she had
sobbed herself out. Then he stopped the car and made her dry her
face and gave her a cigarette. They smoked sitting apart; they felt
rather shy of each other. He was ashamed, remembering her girlish
terror, of his male spite; she shamefacedly remembered his tenderness.
Then she threw away the cigarette and crept back to his breast and he
put an arm around her and leaned his mouth on her hair. When she
offered up her face he kissed her damp eyes and the rim of her nose
and her quivery lips. He reached out with his free hand and started
the car moving and she asked: where were they going. When he said
that his hotel was just a few blocks away she put her arms around
his neck and he could feel her mouth closing and unclosing against his
neck as they sped through the gleaming streets. But when they arrived
at his hotel she clung tighter to him and would not get out. Appetite
collapsing from weariness, he agreed to drive her home but she asked
him to take her to the Chinese quarter first.
They drove through the cramped slums where the Manila Chinese
are kenneled: wet walls, wet cobbles, bridges arching over stagnant
canals, craggy tenements dripping rain into tight twisting streets, a
raggedness of black roofs and the arrowy silhouette of a pagoda soaring
in the rainy moonlight. She bought a doll at a shop whose locked
shutters she rattled until the owner opened up; she told Paco that she
needed the doll for a thank-offering. She directed him through winding
alleyways till they came to a small square, enclosed on three sides by
buildings and on the other side by a muddy canal choked up with
waterlilies and spanned by the rickety wooden bridge over which they
had come. She made him stop at the middle building, which was of
