Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Rum Diary > Status Update

You have that fugitive look, he said. A man on the run.

I knew I was coming to a point where I would have to make up my mind about Puerto Rico. I had been here three months and it seemed like three weeks.

The patio was crowded, so we sat inside at the snack bar. All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding -- shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self- conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike.

After only a few hours of sleep, I was awakened by a great shout. It was Sala, sprung up as if from a nightmare. Mother of balls! he yelled. The car! The vultures!

We went from twenty-four pages down to sixteen, and finally to twelve. The outlook was so bleak that people began saying El Diario had the News's obituary set in type and ready to go.

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.

A man who knew what he was after had damn little time to find it, much less to sit back and explain himself.

A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. I'd been doing it for ten years and I had a feeling that my reserve was running low.

I grinned and leaned back in the seat as we drove on. There was a strange and unreal air about the whole world I'd come into. It was amusing and vaguely depressing at the same time.

You sound greedy, I said.
He grinned. I am. There's nobody on the island greedier than me. Sometimes I feel like kicking myself in the balls.