The Drifters by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online Page B

northern Europe, and told Joe, ‘This is it, American. Learn German and you’ll love it.’
    Joe said, ‘I thought Californians were crazy drivers,’ and the driver said, ‘You drive fast to get places. We do it for fun.’ With a burst of speed that not even an American teenager would have attempted, he exploded through the traffic and zoomed westward.
    With a small canvas traveling bag in his left hand, no hat, no topcoat, little money, Joe stood in the roadway and surveyed the scene of his exile, and what struck him immediately in these first minutes of a wintry day was that he saw more beautiful girls than he had ever before seen in one place in his life. They were positively dazzling, and in a short time he would know them all: Swedish blondes down from Stockholm; lean, good-looking German girls on their winter vacation out of Berlin; many French girls from the provinces; handsome college students from England; and a score of petite girls from Belgium.
    Across from the newspaper kiosk, there was a bar with a large outdoor area sunk a few feet below the level of the street. It served as a kind of observation patio, and its many tables were crowded with people sitting in the winter sunshine, nursing glasses of beer and watching the passers-by. Hesitantly Joe stepped down from the street, walked among the tables until he found an empty chair, and sat down. Even before the waiter could get to him, a young man of indefinite nationality grabbed the next seat and said in an attractive accent, ‘You’re new here, I see. An American running away from army service, I suppose. I don’t blame you. If I were an American I’d do the same thing.’
    ‘Who are you?’ Joe asked brusquely.
    ‘Who cares?’ the young man asked. He seemed to be about twenty, well dressed, amiable. Apparently he had money, for he said, ‘Can I buy you a drink? First day in town. Next time you pay.’
    He uttered a penetrating
psssstttt
and ordered lemonade for himself, a beer for Joe. ‘You ever see so many beautiful girls?’ he asked as a procession of especially attractive ones passed on the street above. ‘For a man, this town is paradise. The secret is this. Every girl you see has flown here on a special excursion rate. They have fifteen days in the sun, then back to the treadmill. Not much time to waste, so they don’t want to bother with involved introductions …’
    ‘You speak good English,’ Joe said.
    ‘Also German and Swedish and French.’
    ‘What do you dor
    ‘I look after things.’
    ‘How can a guy get a job?’
    Over the rim of his lemonade glass the young man assessed Joe, and while he did so, Joe had an opportunity to study the second layer of Torremolinos, for interspersed among the beautiful girls was a less appealing stream of fugitives—the dead-enders, both male and female, who had sought refuge in this Spanish nirvana and were finding life dreary, if not impossible. They were a shabby lot, young people from all countries who had thought that because Spain was warm it had to be cheap. They wore their hair long and their clothes tattered. Some were incredibly dirty and all looked as if they had not bathed for weeks. A considerable number were glassy-eyed, and they passed along the street as if in a trance; they were the ones who had been eating hashish or popping heroin, and their shoulders sagged and they moved mechanically. Unusually effeminate young men walked hand in hand. And there were the unpretty girls, the ones who had flown south in the same great jets that had brought the beauties. You could almost tell what point in their fifteen-day vacations they had reached; during the first tour days they were hopeful that life in a swinging town like Torremolinos might be different from what it had been at home; on the ninth day they faced up to the fact that when so many girls concentrated on one place, even some really attractive girls would have trouble finding young men; and by thethirteenth day, knowing