Chapter 3 Breakfast at Tiffany's-3

A young woman and two men. The men, both red-eyed with fever, were forced for several weeks to stay shut and shivering in an isolated hut, while the young woman, having presently taken a fancy to the wood-carver, shared the woodcarvers mat. "I dont credit that part," Joe Bell said squamishly. "I know she had her ways, but I dont think shed be up to anything as much as that." "And then?" "Then nothing," he shrugged. "By and by she went like she come, rode away on ahorse." "Alone, or with the two men?" Joe Bell blinked. "With the two men, I guess. Now the Jap, he asked about her up and down the country. But nobody else had ever seen her." Then it was as if he could feel my own sense of letdown transmitting itself to him, and he wanted no part of it. "One thing you got to admit, its the only definite news in I dont know how many" -- he counted on his fingers: there werent enough -- "years. All I hope, I hope shes rich. She must be rich. You got to be rich to go mucking around in Africa."

"Shes probably never set foot in Africa," I said, believing it; yet I could see her there, it was somewhere she would have gone. And the carved head: I looked at the photographs again. "You know so much, where is she?" "Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think shes married and quieted down and maybe right in this very city." He considered a moment. "No," he said, and shook his head. "Ill tell you why. If she was in this city I have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man likeme, a mans been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years hes got his eye out for one person, and nobodys ever her, dont it stand toreason shes not there? I see pieces of her all the time, a flat little bottom, anyskinny girl that walks fast and straight -- " He paused, as though too aware of how intently I was looking at him. "You think Im round the bend?"

"Its just that I didnt know youd been in love with her. Not like that." I was sorry Id said it; it dismissed him. He scooped up the photographs and put them back in their envelope. I looked at my watch. "Hold on," he said, gripping my wrist. "Sure I loved her. But it wasn't that I wanted to touch her." And he added, without smiling: "Not that I dont think about that side of things. Even at my age , and Ill be sixty-seven January ten. Its apeculiar fact -- but, the older I grow, that side of things seems to be on my mindmore and more. I dont remember thinking about it so much even when I was ayoungster and its every other minute. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe thats why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden. Whenever I read in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know its because of this burden. But" -- he poured himself a jigger ofwhiskey and swallowed it neat -- "Ill never disgrace myself. And I swear, it nevercrossed my mind about Holly. You can love somebody without it being like that. Youkeep them a stranger, a stranger whos a friend."