"I have no idea what you're talking about, Cletus. What's a 'Dear John'?"
"It's a letter a girlfriend writes her boyfriend in the service. 'Dear John, I'm sorry to tell you this, but someone else has come into my life.'"
"Sometimes you are a bloody ass, Cletus," Dorotea said angrily, and loudly enough so that the monk turned. "I love you, and until this moment I was la-boring under the delusion that you loved me, too."
"Princess, I love you more than my life," Clete said. "When I thought I was going to lose you, I wanted to jump in the goddamned River Plate."
She looked at him. Her tongue came out and licked her lips in a nervous gesture he found exquisitely exciting.
"Yes," she said.
"Yes what?" he asked, confused.
"Yes, I will marry you. Or wasn't that a proposal?" she asked, a naughty glint in her eyes.
"It was," he said. "But I don't think this is the place to get on my knees."
"Or the time. You had better wait a couple of days before you ask Daddy for my hand. And speaking of the devil, so to speak, what he thinks I'm doing is trying to find the loo, so I'm going to have to go back."
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
"I would really like to put my arms around you and really kiss you," she said. "But not here with the monk watching. Can you wait?"
"I don't have any choice, do I?"
"None," she said brightly, turned, and walked away.
She's not wearing a girdle under that dress. She really has a magnificent fanny. And as far as that goes, a magnificent everything else, too.
And she's carrying my child!
Why couldn't you keep your pecker in your pocket, you stupid sonofabitch?
Capitan Lauffer raised his eyebrows questioningly: Don't you think you should be getting back to the church? Clete nodded and walked to him.
[TWO]
1420 Avenida Alvear
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1215 10 April 1943
"Would you like something to eat, Cletus?" Humberto Valdez Duarte asked, walking over to where Clete stood at the bar set up in the downstairs reception, helping himself to a bottle of scotch.
Is that just good manners, or an expression of concern for my welfare, or is he worried that I 'm going to climb into a bottle the way my father did when they buried Cousin Jorge Alejandro?
"I'm all right, thank you. Can I fix you one of these?"
"There is supposed to be someone..." Humberto said impatiently, and looked around the empty reception. A door leading to the butler's pantry opened as he watched, and two barmen in starched white jackets came through, carrying a large, galvanized tub filled with ice and various bottles. "Ah, there they are!"
He waited until they had placed the tub behind the bar, then ordered: "I'll have one of those, please."
"Are you all right, Cletus?" Humberto asked.
Just peachy-keen, Uncle Humberto. I have just watched my murdered fa-ther being buried, and have been standing here thinking that if I hadn't shown up down here, he would still be alive. And also thinking that heading the list of shitty things-sins, if you like-I have done in my life is impregnating an inno-cent nineteen-year-old. Fucking up not only her life, but that of a child, too.
"I'm fine. Thank you."