Free Thompson, Hunter S by The Rum Diary

on the paper, but Yeamon invariably went
     straight home after work and I had come to regard him as a loner with no real past and a
     future so vague that there was no sense talking about it. Nonetheless, I felt that I knew
     him well enough so that we did not have to do much talking. From the very beginning I had
     felt a definite contact with Yeamon, a kind of tenuous understanding that talk is pretty
     cheap in this league and that a man who knew what he was after had damn little time to
     find it, much less to sit back and explain himself.
    Nor did I know anything about Chenault, except that she had undergone a tremendous change
     since my first sight of her at the airport. She was tan and happy now, not nearly so tense
     with that nervous energy that had been so obvious when she wore her secretary suit. But
     not all of it was gone. Somewhere beneath that loose blonde hair and that friendly,
     little-girl smile I sensed a thing that was moving hard and fast toward some long-awaited
     opening. It made me a little nervous; and on top of that I remembered my initial lust for
     her and the sight of her locked with Yeamon that morning in the water. I also remembered
     those two immodest strips of white cloth around her ripe little body on the patio. All
     this was very much on my mind as I sat with her there at Al's and ate my breakfast.
    It was hamburger with eggs. When I came to San Juan Al's menu consisted of beer, rum and
     hamburgers. It was a pretty volatile breakfast, and several times I was drunk by the time
     I got to work. One day I asked him to get some eggs and coffee. At first he refused, but
     when I asked him again he said he would. Now, for breakfast, you could have an egg on your
     hamburger, and coffee instead of rum.
    “Are you here for good?” I said, looking up at Chenault.
    She smiled. “I don't know. I quit my job in New York.” She looked up at the sky. “I just
     want to be happy. I'm happy with Fritz -- so I'm here.”
    I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that seems reasonable.”
    She laughed. “It won't last. Nothing lasts. But I'm happy now.”
    “Happy,” I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like
     Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much
     faith in them and I am no exception -- especially the big ones like Happy and Love and
     Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to
     sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because
     they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest
     or a fool to use them with any confidence.
    I was not ready to put any labels on Chenault, so I tried to change the subject.
    “What story is he working on?” I asked, offering her a cigarette.
    She shook her head. “The same one,” she replied. “He's had a terrible time with it --
     that thing about Puerto Ricans going to New York.”
    “Damn,” I said. “I thought he finished that a long time ago.”
    “No,” she said. “They kept giving him new assignments. But this one has to be in today --
     that's what he's doing now.”
    I shrugged. “Hell, he shouldn't worry about it. One story more or less on a sloppy paper
     like this doesn't make much difference.”
    About six hours later, I found out that it did make a difference, although not in the way
     I had meant. After breakfast I walked with Chenault to the bank, then I went to work. It
     was just about six when Yeamon came back from wherever he had been all afternoon. I
     nodded to him, then watched with mild curiosity as Lotterman called him over to the desk.
     “I want to talk to you about that emigration story,” he said. “Just what in hell are you
     trying to put over on me?”
    Yeamon looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
    Lotterman suddenly began to shout. “I mean you're not getting away with it! You spent