To Kill the Potemkin

18

The decrepit Hotel Pennsylvania was built around a covered central patio with three floors stacked like doughnuts. The single sofa in the lobby was threadbare; the green tile on the floor was chipped. Dirty windows looked onto the narrow Calle de Pescaderos, a side street off the Avenida de Sevilla.

A boyish red-haired clerk stood behind the front desk, which was cluttered with dictionaries and notepads, the paraphernalia of self-taught English.

"Welcome, Americans sailors. Bery welcome to you and you and you." The clerk nodded to Sorensen, Fogarty and Cakes in turn, exposing a set of gold teeth behind a fixed grin.

"You are wanting three rooms, jes? For the privation. We are very accommodate you here at El Hotel Pennsylbania. I am Rodrigo to help you in all things."

"How much are the rooms?"

"Ten dollars Americans in advance and three nights the liberation. Is bery resonant, no?"

"This guy has got beri-beri," Sorensen said.

"One night, Rodrigo," Cakes told the clerk.

"Four dollares the singular night."

He asked for their military IDs, copied the numbers and gave them keys to adjoining rooms on the third floor. As they were signing the registration forms he asked, "You want girls? Muchachas? Nice girls. Clean. Speaking English girls from Hibraltar. Liquores? Booze, you say? This is the correct idiot? I got Him Beam."

"You got him beer?"

"Sure. What kind you like? I got Herman, Dutch? It is the next door a bar for all drinkings."

"I don't care as long as it's cold. Two six packs."

"Para servirle, senor." Rodrigo went through a curtain into the bar and returned with a dozen bottles of San Miguel and stuffed them in a paper bag.

They went up to Sorensen's room. It was plain and clean with cheap prints of bullfighters on the walls. Sorensen opened beers, threw open the windows and stepped out on the balcony. Fogarty flopped on the bed, commenced guzzling beer. Cakes rolled a joint, twirling it under his nose, lit it and sucked mightily, then passed it to Sorensen, who took a hit.

"This is good shit, Cakes. You always have the best dope." Sorensen passed the joint to Fogarty.

"Ain't you got no sounds, man?" asked Cakes.

Sorensen shoved a Miles Davis tape into his recorder and turned it on.

"This is your last cruise, Cakes?"

"Yep. This is it."

"What're you gonna do?"

"I got me a lunch counter in Harlem. I've had it for years. My boys run it. I'm gonna sit in the backroom and watch the dough roll in."

"Sounds like you're set up pretty good."

"I make out."

Cakes rolled another joint. Fogarty said, "I can't get used to the idea I'm in Spain. It's like a foreign movie with no subtitles."

"This isn't Spain," Sorensen told him. "This is Rota. This is just a pit stop for horny sailors. Spain is over there across the bay."

Through the balcony doors they could see over the rooftops and across the water to Cádiz, shimmering like a fantasy five miles away.

"Why can't we go to Cádiz?" Fogarty asked.

"Ever hear of Palomares?"

"Palomares? No."

Cakes said, "It's where the Air Force lost an H-bomb."

"That's right," Sorensen said, "it's about a hundred miles from here. One day a couple of years ago a B-52 loaded with hydrogen bombs collided with the tanker that was refueling it and dropped its load on this diddlysquat village named Palomares. One of the bombs fell in the ocean, and the Air Force couldn't find it—"

"Yeah," Cakes put in, "it took the Navy to save their ass. We found it with Trieste."

"Right," Sorensen said. "Before Palomares nobody in Spain ever heard of a hydrogen bomb. When six of them fell on a village and scattered hot plutonium all over the school, the marketplace, the church, the cows and the chickens they got educated. Their country had been turned into a nuclear arsenal. There were bombs all over the place, including Rota, on the boomers. Vallejo, tied up to the dock down there on the waterfront, has sixteen Polaris missiles. Tick off the sixteen largest cities in the Soviet Union and that's what that one ship can do. The Spanish don't want any part of it. The Andalusians are not like the Neapolitans, who don't give a shit about anything. These people don't like being a target, and they don't like us. Over in Cádiz there've been demonstrations and a few scuffles. A white hat in Cádiz is an invitation to a fight. So it goes, so it goes. See, Fogarty, not everybody is like us, fearless nuclear warriors."

"I think I'm getting high."

"It's decent weed."

"Nuclear warriors," Fogarty repeated with a bland smile.

"Fearless nuclear warriors."

"Bum ba bum bum. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all nukes are created equal. Boom ba boom boom. Ain't that right, Cakes?"

Cakes stood up, swaying to the music, holding the joint with all his fingers like a big stogie.

"I," he said, drawing out the word in a deep baritone, "I am the nigger of the apocalypse. I am death in the deep. I am the end. I am your worst nightmare. I am General… Electric!"

Fogarty looked amazed. Sorensen whooped and hollered and rolled on the floor. Cakes sat down with a big chuckle and sipped his beer. They listened to Miles wail into the night.

"How long you been on Barracuda, Cakes?" Fogarty asked.

"Same as Jack, here. Since before she was commissioned, nine years."

"Oh, yeah, Fogarty, me and Cakes know each other's dirty little secrets. Cakes was there the day we invented Cowboys and Cossacks."

"Oh, baby, them Ivans ain't never going to forget us."

"What happened?"

"It was during the Cuban missile crisis. Barracuda was on station in the Carribean when we got orders to patrol one sector during the blockade. The Russians were ninety miles from our shores, and the only thing between them and Miami Beach was us, Barracuda. Now, that kind of situation shoots a lot of adrenaline into your blood. We had this macho president who was just like us. You want to talk about belief? We believed in John Kennedy, every last man. He left no doubt as to what would happen if the Russians didn't back down. Man, we had our tubes flooded and guidance systems locked-on the whole time. We were ready to die."

Cakes was nodding his head in agreement. Sorensen went on, "We would have died for Kennedy without a second thought. As it was, nobody died. It was suddenly ridiculously easy to kick the Russians out of our ocean. We made these wild runs under the Russian ships. They had a couple of diesel-electric subs and we blew their ears out. They took one look at us and split. When we got back to Norfolk you'd have thought we'd just won the Battle of Midway. At that moment, Fogarty, I'm telling you, the world was perfect, as perfect as it will ever be. Hell, in March 1963, I reenlisted. Kennedy was in the White House, America was number one, Barracuda was number one. We were invincible… And then the world fell apart. First, the Thresher sank. It was like the Titanic all over again. The perfect invincible nuclear sub imploded during sea trials. That was a mind-fuck. Then Kennedy gets assassinated and the world turns upside down. On that day I learned about perfection. In the five years since Dallas the reality has been exploding in our faces. Race riots, Viet Nam, mass murderers, you name it, we got it. So next year my reenlistment comes up again and I'm thinking maybe I've had enough of this shit. But I ask you, Fogarty, how many civilian sonar operators do you know? The truth is, I don't know if I can live in the real world any more. I don't have a lunch counter in Harlem like Cakes. All I have is Barracuda, so I just do my job. I like my job. I'm very stoned."

Sorensen walked out on the balcony and looked down into the dirty street. A pair of Guardia Civil policemen sauntered past the hotel, machine pistols slung over their backs. To his right he could see the sea wall and a slice of bay. A slice of an imperfect world. Dirty. Radioactive. He looked up at the sky, hoping to see stars. He saw clouds.

What do whales talk about? What is it like to live on dry land and have kids?

Inside, Fogarty was saying to Cakes, "I guess you've seen a lot of changes in the navy in twenty-five years."

Cakes blew smoke around the room. "Some things are different, some ain't. Now we got white boys smokin' dope, that's different. We got crazy Stanley, that's a whole lot different. There ain't nobody shootin' at us no more. I like that part, but otherwise the navy hasn't changed in two hundred years. We got nuke boats and all that shit, but it don't mean nothin', nothin' at all. You go to sea and you come back to the same place you started. It's all one big circle. It's all right with me."

"What do you think of the Russians?"

"Who gives a fuck? I don't never think about them. I like their vodka."

"What about the sub that went down?"

"You mean them dudes that sank?"

Sorensen said nothing. The Russian sub was alive. She never sank, and he had the proof on tape. The torpedo wasn't a torpedo at all, it was the sub itself. The implosions were faked. Now wasn't the time to tell them…

"Yeah. What do you think about them?"

"Nothin'. There ain't nothin' to think about. It was their tough luck. I'm glad it was them and not us."

"Were you scared?"

"Listen, I'm always scared. I'm scared right now, smoking this dope with you, but that don't stop me none. What are you talkin', man? Scared. You don't know what scared is until you been depth-charged." Cakes stood up. "I'm going back to the bar and screw one of them fat whores until she yells uncle. Uncle Sam, that is. How 'bout you boys?"

As Cakes was reaching for the door, there was a knock.

Sorensen opened the door an inch. Rodrigo stood outside. "He is down the stair to see you, a sailor Americano."

Stepping into the corridor, Sorensen saw Willie Joe drunkenly climbing the stairs, a ten-gallon Stetson propped on his head.

"It's okay, Rodrigo. He's a friend." He slipped the clerk a dollar. Willie Joe flopped on the bed.

"Anybody got a drink?"

Fogarty passed him a bottle of beer.

Finally Cakes said, "Well, I'm still going to party."

"Let's do it," said Sorensen.

They stood up to go back to the bar, all except Willie Joe, who mumbled, "Battle stations, battle stations, pussy off the port bow…" closed his eyes and passed out on Sorensen's bed. They left him snoring in a dreamless sleep.

The party in the Farolito was still going full blast. Buzz was pouring cognac for a dollar a shot.

"Straight up, all around," Sorensen ordered. Buzz wrinkled his nose at Fogarty and poured three shots of brandy. Sorensen counted a dozen sailors passed out in the sawdust and was tempted to join them.

Cakes walked down the bar to speak to one of the fat Gypsy whores. A few minutes later they left together.

In the rear a lone dancer went through the motions of flamenco in slow motion. Fair and blond, the descendant of a rampaging Vandal, she kicked the floor and snapped castanets to music only she could hear.

"See you later," Sorensen said. He carried his drink across the bar to the table nearest her, sat down and began to clap a rhythm to her dance.

At first she appeared not to notice him. Then she slowly danced around his table. She was young, nineteen or twenty.

"Como te llamas?" he asked.

"Rosa. Y tu?"

"Jack."

"Okay, Zhack," she said, and sat down on his lap, leaned against his chest and put her arms around his neck. Taking a Lucky from his pack, she lit it and stuck it in his mouth.

"You got any money, Zhack? These saylors spended all their bugs on liquores and womans. You got any bugs left, Zhack?"

"I got enough."

Her hand slipped down to his crotch. "You want to spend with me? I eat you."

"Let's go."

He waved at Fogarty on the way out.

Fogarty drank alone for an hour, staring at the whores in the mirror behind the bar. He wasn't sure about how to approach the women. He wasn't interested in fat Gypsies and was ready to stumble back to the hotel when one of the women sat down on the bar stool next to his. Tight jeans clung to her hips, and a peasant's blouse hung over bare shoulders. On her feet were expensive handcrafted sandals. She wasn't especially pretty but she had attractively strong and intelligent features. She looked older by several years, he thought. Guessed.

"Hello, sailorboy. Buy me a drink?"

"Sure."

Fogarty signaled to Buzz for more brandy.

"And I'd like a cigarette."

He lit a Lucky and handed it to her. "Are you English? You sound English."

She smiled. "Indeed I am. A bloody Brit, that's me. And you're a Yank."

"A Yank? I never thought of myself as a Yank."

"None of you ever does."

Her smile completely transformed her face and made her very pretty.

"What's your name, Yank?"

"Fogarty."

"That's it? Just Fogarty?"

"Mike Fogarty."

"My God, an Irish Yank. A mick."

"You don't like the Irish?"

"Of course not. They're bloody wogs, the whole grotty lot."

"Wogs?"

She smiled, and in a precise Home Counties accent said, "A wog, my dear boy, is a westernized oriental gentleman, to wit, a person of color or one who is not English. That includes the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish, the French and the inhabitants of any country that ever was part of the British Empire, or ever an enemy of England."

"That's everybody!"

"Precisely. Some would extend the definition of wog to include members of the Labour Party. I'm afraid this is all too terribly English. Since we don't rule the world anymore, we have to make jokes about ourselves."

"I think you're great. What's your name?"

"I'm called Liz."

She knocked a few ashes onto her chest and brushed them away. Fogarty saw tiny freckles under her collarbone.

"Are you… what I mean is…"

"Am I one of the whores?"

"Yeah."

"I am." She smiled again. "Ten dollars U.S. and I'm yours. For twenty dollars you can have me all night."

Fogarty was dazzled, but he was also so drunk he could hardly walk. She helped him up the stairs and out of the bar. A taxi carried them the short distance to the hotel.