BECAUSE YOU DESPISE ME, by J.S. Cook, available October 11, 2009 from MLR Press. Do look for it at your neighbourhood fine bookstore.

Rick, worried that I might inadvertently divulge our secrets, pulled us both off the train. He found lodging in a tumbledown hotel on the edge of some nameless desert town halfway between Hell and Algeria, and put me to bed.

I vomited until my stomach was empty of all I’d eaten in the past few days – precious little, because food was hard enough to come by and we didn’t want to attract undue attention by flashing any of the American bills we’d brought, or the healthy bundle of francs I’d taken from the safe in the Palais de Justice, right before we left. I lay for a long time, shuddering and sweating, convinced I was in Gallipoli with our old battalion from the legion etrangeres, that we were being shelled by the enemy, that Rick and I were both in mortal danger. I dreamed that the Germans were shelling us with mustard gas, which condensed in the air and fell down on me in drops like rain.

I was freezing to death.  “I’m so cold.”

“Louis, you’re burning up.”  Rick sponged cold water on my skin, trying to chase the heat away.  At some point, I realised, he’d stripped me naked, and this amused me.  Rick aspired to be  a libertine but could never really escape his innate puritanism.   It was too dark to tell if he was blushing.

“Ricky, please stop pouring water on me. I’m freezing.”    It came over me in waves, cold mounting upon cold.  I had gotten lost once as a boy in a snowstorm in the Auvergne, while hunting with mon oncle Michel.  The cold was torturous, hellish, unending…the world dissolved into a sea of white that went on and on forever.   “I’m freezing.”

I felt the lumpy mattress compress as he lay down beside me.  I could just barely make out his features, the outline of a bared shoulder, his hands.  He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him and held on to me throughout that awful night as I shivered and raved, drifting in and out of dreams, never entirely sure where I was, or when.  I lay like that for two whole days and it was early morning on the third day when I finally felt well enough to get up and wash, brush my teeth and swish a little cold water around in my mouth.  My stomach felt too tender to eat or drink anything, but the cold water tasted good, especially after the warm, brackish stuff we’d been drinking on the train.  As for Rick, he was still asleep, lying on his stomach with his cheek crushed into the bed and one hand curled next to his face.

I took advantage of the growing dawn to examine him.  In sleep he looked younger, and the lines of care that he wore nowadays were smoothed out.  His tousled hair, I think, added to the illusion.

I like looking at Rick.  I’ve always liked looking at Rick; I make no bones about it.  I fear I’ve embarrassed him on more than one occasion by commenting openly about his beauty, his allure, and my feelings for him.  I can still see the expression on Ilsa Lund’s face that night in the Cafe, when she asked me that immortal question, Monsieur, who is Rick?

If I were a woman, and if I were not around?  I should be in love with Rick.

I know now – beyond the shadow of a doubt – that all the lady heard were those final four words.  I know that. In retrospect, perhaps those four words were all I ought to have uttered, all I would have ever needed to say on the subject.

But he was awake, and watching me.  “How do you feel, Louis?”

“Much better, thank you.” There was not a lot of room on the bed; we were literally in each other’s faces. “You could have left me – gone on ahead yourself.”

“Nope.” He continued to gaze calmly at me and made no move to get up. “I couldn’t do that.”

“I rather think you could,” I said crisply, “especially once I’d become incapacitated – “

“Louis, you think you know me, but you got it all wrong.  You and everybody else.”  He shifted, tried in vain to fluff up the ratty pillow under his head. “You honestly think I’d go away and leave you here to fend for yourself?”

“In my state, I’d become a risk for you – “

“Not enough of a risk for me to leave you.”

“But -”

“But nothing, Louis.” He tried to grin. “I know how it feels to be left. I don’t recommend it.”

“So why the devil did – Ricky, I confess I don’t understand you – up until now we’ve never been anything to one another except – “

“Louis, shut up.”

As far as first kisses went, it was hardly remarkable.  There were no bursting fireworks, no angel choirs singing, no celestial trumpets.  His mouth was hot, and I felt the tip of his agile tongue coaxing my lips apart, and I think I might have groaned.  At any rate, someone did.

“Why?” I gazed into his eyes and saw nothing there but his usual grave good humour. “Why did you kiss me?”

“Maybe I wanted to.  You ask too many questions.” His thumb brushed my cheek; I leaned into the caress, his touch making me shiver.  “You feel well enough to go on?”

“Mm-hm.”  I wanted to ask him: why this, why now? but I couldn’t.  Maybe it was a bad idea, starting a love affair this way, on the run and in the middle of the desert, but I’ve always been an optimist.

Perhaps Rick is an optimist too.

We were on the train – finally, after interminable hours of waiting in the burning sun – and Rick moved directly from sleep into wakefulness.  I’d never seen anyone do that and I told him so.  “Drink?”  I offered him the canteen at my side.

“What is it?” he asked.  He unscrewed the top and sniffed the mouth of the bottle.

“It is water, Ricky. There was no time to purchase anything more exotic but perhaps along the way…”

“Mmm.” He swished some around in his mouth before swallowing it. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“That’s because I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.  I turned away from him, pretended interest in the vista passing by the windows of the train.  My heart was pounding almost painfully in my chest and nausea rose in the back of my throat like bile.  This was the question I had been fearing for many months now – ever since Rick had twigged to what I really was, and why.

There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, Louis.  Oh, you can demur all you want.  You can even try to deflect me but I won’t be deflected.  You see, I know you.

I’d asked him what, exactly, he thought he knew. Had he been checking up on me?

Not at all.  I’m not as dumb as people think I am, is all.

I began to protest: surely I had never said such a thing!

“Who was he, Louis?”

“Who was who, Rick?”

“The man you were in love with.”

Now that was a thunderbolt!  And I’ve learned that the best thing to do when confronted with evidence of an unassailable fact is to own up to it.

So I did the only thing I could do: I told him the truth.

“Many years ago, before this war but rather in the middle of the last one, I was attached to a French regiment stationed on the Western Front.  There were perhaps a dozen of us from my old village, and we spent much of our idle time together, reminiscing, the way men do.

“His name was Phillipe.  He was twenty years old. He had the sort of light brown hair that looks blond in sunlight, and hazel eyes.  He was very lonely, he said. He wanted to talk about home.  He had a sweetheart named Amelie; he showed me pictures of her.  She was very pretty.  Very pretty indeed, in that rather bovine way that country girls so often are.  He expected to marry her when he went home, or so he said.  It didn’t stop him from visiting the Belgian whores in the villages around us.  It was like scratching an itch with him, or so he said.

“We got very drunk one night.  On cognac, I believe it was. It hardly matters.  He was a maudlin drunk.  I didn’t care: even drunk, he was beautiful to me.  He was…very beautiful to me.

“Well, we were hiding behind a ridge – the earthworks we’d erected in the area – and he began to cry.  Of course, I comforted him!  Who wouldn’t comfort a comrade under such circumstances?  I comforted him…I held him in my arms and talked to him of home and we kissed one another and this seemed to calm him…

“I don’t think I need tell you the rest. It wasn’t my first experience with a member of my own sex, but for him it was.  Hardly ideal circumstances, but there you are.”

Rick had hardly blinked during my recitation.  “What happened to him after the war?”

“He was – ” The old sorrow clamped its teeth on me; I could scarcely go on. “When the armistice was signed, of course we all went home.  He…never got over his experiences.”

Rick’s face twitched. “Louis, do you mean – “

“No, not – not that, my dear Ricky.” It felt good to laugh. “That was as the Americans say, par for the course. No, he was badly shell shocked…he claimed that the face of a young German he had bayoneted was forever before him, hissing and gurgling and grimacing.”  I fought in vain to repress the shudder that rippled through me. “He was dispatched to a military hospital and they found him some weeks later, dead in his bed.  He had gotten hold of a medicine bottle left lying about, broke it and used the glass to cut his own throat.”

I was glad the train was dark.  I could not go on.  I turned my face to the window and feigned interest in the passing desert, the dunes seeming to rise up and down like the waves of the sea.

Rick reached for my hand, clasped it, and held on.

“Well?” He leaned against the doorframe. “Are you ready?”

I tossed my passport onto the pile and stood up. “Yes, Rick, I suppose I am.  However, there are one or two little things – “

“We haven’t got time for one or two little things, Louis.”

I unbuckled my Sam Browne and tossed it onto the desk, unbuttoned my tunic and hung it over the back of my chair.  The hat, as well, had to be left behind, which was regrettable – I like to think I cut rather a dashing figure in that ensemble. Ah, well.  Better badly dressed than dead, or rotting in some Nazi concentration camp.  “There,” I said, when I finally stood in front of him, dressed in my shirt and trousers. “Does that suit our new policy of anonymity?”

“Louis, I can honestly say you’ve never looked better.” He grinned.

“I feel naked,” I confessed. “Do you know how long I’ve been in that uniform?”

“Aw, you don’t need that Vichy finery.” He glanced at his watch. “Come on. We’d better scram before – “

“Yes. Before.” I took one final look around and allowed myself the luxury of a sigh. “Well, there’s no going back from here.”

“Was there ever?” Rick closed the door behind us; the fire was still crackling merrily in my wastepaper basket.  With any luck, it would burn the whole damn building down.  “You knew as well as I, that as soon as we got them on the plane – “

“Yes, yes,” I agreed, if only to shut him up. “And now that they are safely out of Casablanca…” I deliberately left the rest of it unspoken. “Ricky, are you sure you want to cast your lot with me?”

“I cast my lot with you a long time ago, Louis.” He laid a hand on my shoulder and steered me into the relative safety of a doorway, just as a German convoy roared past us.  “Like it or not, we’re in it together.”

“Until the next woman comes along,” I replied.

“No,” he said, “there won’t be any more women.”

“Mmm. You say that now.” I didn’t dare hope.  I know the kind of man Rick is, and anyway, I’ve never bothered planning for the future.  It seems rather superfluous, given that we’d most like not survive more than a day or two – let alone long enough to reach Brazzaville.

“Say it and mean it, Louis.  She was the last one. From now on, I’m strictly -”

“-celibate,” I put in, irritably, “and I suppose you think that’s noble of you.”

“I didn’t say celibate.” There was just enough light for me to see his grin.

We were on the outer edges of the city, moving fast towards the desert emptiness, he and I, alone together. 

It was a heady thought.

Leaving Casablanca…leaving Rick forever.  Believe me when I tell you, he was not going gentle into the good night of Ilsa-less existence.

“Going to sit there all night, are you?”  I found him at the bar, alone, drinking. 

“Not now, Louis.”  Not quite drunk, then–merely three sheets to the wind. 

“When is she leaving?” I had nothing against the lady, but having heard something of her treatment of Rick, I was not exactly disposed to like her.  “Soon?”

“I thought you said there was no exit visa for him.” Rick raised his head and stared at me. “That was what you said.”

Misery…the patent misery in his eyes stopped me cold.  There was nothing I could say. “Yes, that is what I said.” I shrugged. “But you know as well as I—”

“Louis, are you pro-Vichy or Free French?”

“Ricky, you should know better than to ask such questions.”  I sat down beside him, uninvited, and poured myself a drink from the bottle at his elbow.  “Have you spoken to her?”  Of course he had: he’s the type of man who prefers torturing himself.  It’s like absolution for him.

“Louis, there are some things that are none of even your business.”  He shivered, as though from a sudden chill.  Perhaps he was sick.  Perhaps Ilsa Lund was making him sick.

No…I didn’t really believe in such fancy.  “Ricky, it might be to your advantage to take me into your confidence,” I said—even though I knew that he didn’t need to talk.  Talking would solve nothing for him.

I could solve nothing for him.  Until Ilsa Lund was gone from Casablanca, there was nothing anyone could say or do to relieve his self-inflicted misery.

 Sometimes Rick is his own worst enemy.

“Talking isn’t going to help me,” he said. “Nothing is going to help me, and you know it.”

I braced myself. I sensed a philosophical diatribe coming up, of the sort that drunken men often indulge in. “How long has it been?” I asked, “Since you and Miss Lund…?”

“Two years, more or less.” He paused to slop more liquid into the glass. “The one person who loved me…my whole life.”

I couldn’t stand him when he was like this. “What an idiot you are,” I said. “Sitting here and feeling sorry for yourself, drinking yourself into a stupor.  You know, we French have always considered the English the world’s greatest drunkards, but you Americans seem to be making quite a job of it.”

“The only one who ever loved me, Louis.”

“Open your eyes, Ricky.” I steeled myself, then plunged in. “She’s not the only one who ever loved you.”

I turned on my heel and left.

“Louis, it must be your lucky day,” said a familiar voice.

“Well, Ricky, isn’t it early for you to be up and about?”

“Well, yeah, but today’s different,” he said. “I made a special effort to be up early today, just because.”

“Oh?” I buzzed Casselle to bring us some coffee. “Because what?”

“Louis, are you telling me you don’t remember?”

I confess my memory isn’t as perfect as it once was, but I trust I am not yet prey to the ravages of dementia. “Now see here, Rick, I’ve got work to do.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “It’ll just have to wait.”

“Oh? Is that so?” I gave him the benefit of my raised eyebrow. “Another of your schemes, is it?”

“I’m taking you into custody, Louis. Now it’s best for both of us if you come along quietly.”  His expression said he was serious, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.  “Get your hat. Leave everything on the desk and come along. I don’t want to cause a commotion but I will if I have to.”

“Really!” Now I was irritated. “I hope you realise what you’re doing, Rick!”  I did as I was told.  I’ve always trusted that Rick is as sane as the next man, but I also know he can be wild and unpredictable.  He has a spotted past, does Rick, a life with many interesting detours. 

We went out and got into a car that he’d obviously hired for the occasion.  It’s the sort of car one seldom sees in Casablanca since the war started: sleek and black and very well-appointed.  We drove for some time, to a part of town I’m personally unfamiliar with, but which I’ve heard a great deal about.  My stomach clenched in apprehension, and I wondered what his intentions were: perhaps he was taking me to some assignation?  Did he think I wanted that sort of thing, shadowy encounters with strange women in the dark? A quick fumble and a few francs left on the bedside table? 

“You know, this isn’t necessary,” I said. “There are plenty of desperate young wives about these days, who are all too eager to impress the Prefect of Police.”

“Louis, you’ve got me all wrong,” he said.  He pulled the car in and stopped. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

It was dark inside, at least until my eyes adjusted, and then I saw that the room was done entirely in red and gold, all very sumptuous.  “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly your garden-variety bordello, is it?”  A man appeared out of the shadows and ushered us behind a bead curtain, into what was obviously a private room. 

“The bottle I ordered,” Rick instructed, as soon as we were seated.  The man nodded, lit the candle on our table and vanished.  Rick grinned at me. “Louis, I’m amazed at you.”

“Really?” I lit a cigarette. “You know, I’m still violently confused. What is this place and why have you brought me here? Surely it’s for some heinous purpose?”

“Louis, what’s the date?”

I thought for a  moment. “Why, it’s the fifteenth of the month.”

“Right.” He waited.

And then it dawned on me. Of course…I had forgotten.

I think I may have even blushed a little.

“Starting to make sense?” he asked.  He paused while the waiter appeared and poured for us: a very fine Veuve Clicquot. “What day is it, Louis?”

“It’s my birthday.” I’m afraid I was smiling—pleased that he had remembered, even when I had not. “Thank you, Rick.”

“Oh, and this is for you. Sascha picked it up for me, so I can attest to the quality, but you might want to check the engraving.” 

“Rick, I can’t accept—”

“A present on your birthday? Sure you can. Just think of all those bribes you’ve taken. This shouldn’t be too hard.” He nodded at the box. “Go on, open it.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Happy Birthday, Louis.” He raised his glass to me, and I raised mine to him. “Looks like it’s your lucky day.”

I went to the decanter on the table. “Brandy?”

“No, nothing, thanks.”  He was looking at my painting, the one hung on that long, pale wall that forms one side of my sitting room.  The painting, might I add, that I’d been silly enough to have shipped all the way to Casablanca. Ah, well. Perhaps it is harder to part with treasured objects than we like to admit, and North Africa just now is an arid place, in beauty as well as climate.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” He moved close to it, then back, as I have seen people do in museums when they aren’t certain what their reaction to a piece of art should be. “What’s it supposed to be?”

I suppressed a smile.  Really, he’s a dear man and I wouldn’t change him for the world. “What’s it look like?”

“What’s it supposed to look like?”

“My dear Ricky, it is a painting by Degouve, and I like it very much.  To me it looks like some houses in the nighttime. It reminds me of where I grew up.” Trying to explain the visceral and emotional appeal of visual art to him was like trying to force a sausage through the eye of a needle. And I mean that in the nicest possible way…

“Worth anything?”

Now I did laugh aloud. “I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s worth something to me, if that matters.”

He offered me a cigarette, lit it for me. “Louis, I don’t get you. On the one hand, you’re…” He grinned. “Well, what you are–”

“Oh, do stop,” I protested, “My house boy might hear you.”  I sat down on the sofa but didn’t bother to turn on any lights.  The faint illumination from the sky was enough.

“You’re what you are, and yet you’re not.” He sat down beside me, his weight making a pleasant dent in the cushions. Dammit, I was lonely.

I hate being lonely. I have always imagined my solitude well-chosen, a respite from the outside world with all its pains and pressures.  Perhaps chosen solitude is necessarily pleasant, but loneliness…loneliness is something else, entirely. “Ricky, are you going to tell me about Miss Lund?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Ah.”

He shot me a sharp look that even the darkness couldn’t hide. “You can ‘ah’ all you like,” he said.

“Meaning, of course, that it’s none of my business.” I raised my eyebrow at him. “Mmm. Keep your damned mystique then, if you like. Who do you think you are, anyway? You’re like a brooding bedouin out of some romantic story, riding across the desert on a fine Arab charger.”

“Florid,” he smirked, “but it’ll play. Do go on.”

“Are you lonely?” I blurted. “I mean, are you lonely like I am?”

His face froze; I’d overstepped myself, said too much.  Now he would get up and leave and there would be awkward explanations, apologies, a world of embarrassment on both sides. Why hadn’t I just left well enough alone?

“Louis,” he asked, and his voice was quieter than I had ever heard it, “are you lonely?”

His hand cupped the back of my neck–but how? I hadn’t even seen him move. We were sitting face-to-face and gazing at one another, suddenly without the familiar solace of words. “Yes,” I whispered miserably. “Yes, Rick, I am very lonely.”

His thumb stroked my jaw; his expression was meditative. “So am I,” he said. “I think it’s the desert. I think the desert makes you lonely.”

[...]

I will confess, all this is very confusing. I woke up this morning and came downstairs and he was up and dressed and pouring coffee in the kitchen.  I had gotten into bed and fallen immediately down some strange rabbit hole of a dream, and knew nothing until the smell of fresh coffee woke me.  “Did you make this?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

“Is it poisoned?”

“Now Louis, why would I want to poison you?”

I’m no coward; I believe in jumping in where angels fear to step. “After my confession last night, I should think you’d want to punch me in the face.” I carefully didn’t look at him. I kept my gaze on the dark liquid in my cup.

When the silence threatened to swallow the room, I raised my eyes. He was smiling. He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I can keep a secret.”

“What secret?” I scoffed. But I was relieved.

I realise I have hung the wrong picture. I should have hung something more prophetic, something full of bleakness and dangerous emotion, like Simeon Solomon’s Love in Autumn.

I should have done that.

“No,” I said.

“Okay.”  We were sitting on the low wall that borders my property; he moved over until our shoulders were touching.  We smoked for a long time in silence. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, after a while. “I couldn’t face the Cafe tonight.”

“I don’t blame you,” Rick said, “sometimes I can’t face the Cafe.” He held something out to me, a small flat parcel tied with string.  “Sorry about the wrapping.  I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”

I was glad it was dark. “Ricky, my dear chap, you don’t need to bring me presents.”

“It’s that poet you like, that guy, what’s-his-name—”

I opened the parcel: “Rumi.” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t come here of my own accord/whoever brought me here will have to come and take me home.”

“Yeah, he’s got a real way with words, that guy.”  Rick drew on his cigarette, his features momentarily illuminated by that lit circle.  “Louis, what’s the matter? You sore at me or something?”

“No, my friend, it isn’t you I’m angry with. I’m afraid I’m angry with myself.”

“Huh.” There was a sloshing noise and I smelled the pungent waft of good, aged whisky.  He passed the bottle to me.

“Rick, do you ever wonder where you might be if only you’d done some things differently?”

“Yeah. I wonder if I’d be dead now or in a concentration camp, if I’d stayed in Paris.”

“What a funny man you are. How very amusing.”

“Careful, Louis. This whisky doesn’t go good with sarcasm.”

“Mmmm.” I took another drink and handed the bottle back.  “Do you ever wonder if you’ll survive the war?”

“Sure.”

“I might not survive the war.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I worry that I’ll end up in a concentration camp like Victor Laszlo.”

“Victor Laszlo escaped from that concentration camp, you’ll remember…”

“I’m not what I seem, Ricky.”

“Oh, is that it?” He was grinning. “Well, Louis, I figured that out long ago.  Seems there’s two kinds of men in the world: those who don’t know themselves and lie about, and those who do know themselves—”

I couldn’t resist: “—and lie about it?” I nudged him with my shoulder. “Which one am I? Or do I dare ask?”

“Louis, you know as well as I do—”

“Rick, I’ll warn you: I’m not what everyone suspects.” This was dangerous talk.  I should know better than to talk like this, even to Rick.  This sort of talk could get me imprisoned or hanged… “Anyway.”

“And that’s the end of the story?”

“That’s the end of the story.”

“You ever going to tell me the truth?”

“About what? My taste for women young enough to be my daughters? My predilection for long, cool baths when the weather’s hot? Or my unabashed interest in you?”  I added that last just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm.

He didn’t squirm; he laughed. “Sure. Come over to my place some night and we’ll cuddle up together.”

“Don’t tease me, Ricky. It’s not polite.” I sighed. “I am going to win that ten thousand francs, you know.” I slid a sideways glance at him.  There was just enough moonlight.

“Louis, I think I’ll go home and go to bed.”

I hopped off the wall. “Mind if I walk part of the way with you?” 

“Do you want me to stay the night?” He peered at me like people do when they suspect there’s something wrong with you.  “To tell you the honest-to-God truth, I’m worried about you, Louis. I really am.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said.  “There’s nothing wrong with me that a good night’s sleep won’t fix…”

I seem to have reached a strange place in my own life: that point when one has the uncomfortable realisation that certain of one’s dreams are not going to come true—that particular things one has hoped and prayed for cannot be had, by any amount of striving, wishing, or prayer.  I have reached that place in my life where the naivete of my youth is powerless against the cynicism of age: I know that I have gone as far as I will likely go in my profession.  There is no more after this—that is to say, there is no more for me.

I like to pretend, as I so often say to Rick, that I am just as cynical as he is, and that my heart is my “least vulnerable spot.”  I say this mostly to convince myself, but deep down I believe no such thing.  I know precisely where my own soft spots are located, and where I’ve kept my most cherished dreams, hidden away from the world for all these years.  In truth (and I’m sure this shocks no one who really knows me) there are certain dreams I have always held as inviolable, and I knew—I absolutely knew—that if I would just hold on and hold out, if I could simply possess my soul in patience for just another little while, the odds would break in my favour.

 I no longer believe that.  Tonight, sitting by my back door with a glass in my hand, I no longer believe in anything at all.  I never really believed in God, or should I say, I never really believed in le bon Dieu whose prayers and praise were so often on my dear grandmother’s lips.  If God exists at all, I very much doubt He gives a damn for any of us here.  I rather think He’s forgotten about us, and so I resolved to forget all about Him.  (This hardly sat well with my grandmere, who was devout to the end of her days.)

When I was young and naive, I believed the lie that one’s elders always tell the young people: if you work hard, you can have anything at all that you like.  This was blatantly not true.  In the first war—the “War to end all Wars”—I distinguished myself to the point of Captain.  Similarly with the police force: unlike a great many others, I became Prefet de la Police by dint of grinding hard work and not by currying political favour.

Over the years, I saw a great many men promoted ahead of me: men whose talents hardly outstripped their meagre brains; men who were more venal and corrupt than you could possibly imagine; men who passed their wives around like party cakes in order to ensure their continued rise up the ladder.  I found myself astounded and amazed as men rose ahead of me, by sheer dint of those they knew, until finally I realised that I had been lied to! There is no reward for hard work, except the reward that awaits us all in the end; no matter how diligently I applied myself, I would end in the same cold ground as everybody else.

I had thought that by this point in my life I would have achieved something of note, but such accomplishments as I have are blown away on the desert wind.  The world twists and grinds itself to pieces in yet another war and I waste away out here in the desert, waiting the inevitable invasion that will demand my loyalties. Or not. (I’m not quite the Vichy puppet everyone suspects, but it benefits me to let others think so.)  I cannot fool myself; I cannot lie.  Given my particular talents I had envisioned a certain future for myself—a future that will now never come to pass.

I suppose you could say I’m sulking.  I think I’m allowed. I don’t do it very often and mostly I am full of joie-de-vivre and ready to shake anyone out of his doldrums, even Rick, whose doldrums are deeper than most.

Not tonight. I haven’t got the heart.  I can’t stand at the bar and banter with Carl and Sascha and Sam, or pretend to be cheerful when I have run full into the greatest truth of all.  I have grappled with life, and I have lost.  If I survive this war—which is doubtful—I will go to my grave with a great many things still left undone.  That bothers me.  It irritates the hell out of me, if you must know. Because it isn’t fair; I’ve worked so hard and denied myself so much, put so many things aside so that I could pursue what I saw as my destiny…

Ah, well. So much for destiny.

It’s very late; the desert night is warm, and the slight wind is very soft and full of fragrance.  I hear footsteps coming up the gravel drive, and by and by the sheen of a white dinner jacket emerges from the blackness.

“Hello, Louis.” He sits beside me, lights a cigarette.  “Missed you at the club tonight.”

He doesn’t say anything else. We sit together, Rick and I.  We sit there in the dark, alone together.

“Herr Captain Renault, what is the matter? Such faces as yours I have seen on Nazi watchtowers, ja?”

“I’m quite all right,” I assured him, “but thank you for your concern. Really, it’s very kind of you.”

He stood there for a moment, wringing his little fat hands. “Is there anything I can do for you, mein herr?”

I smiled, but I confess, it was rather a painful smile.  “Another brandy wouldn’t go astray, if you please.”

“Ja.”  He grinned. “And put it on your bill?”

“Put it on my bill.”

Rick was busy in the other room, no doubt supervising the roulette wheel.  If he’d noticed my absence he hadn’t bothered to mention it.  We’d been rather sore around each other for the past few days—touchy, really—and I didn’t want to go barging in where I wasn’t wanted.  I knew about his history—as much as anyone can know Rick—and to some degree he knew mine.  Perhaps our conversation on the Corniche the other night was unfortunate.  It was certainly very gauche of me to bring up his romantic past; had I been in a different frame of mind I’m sure I would have thought twice about it.  It’s the sort of thing that men like us usually discuss, but in a superficial way: ‘I knew a girl once called Lucille and oh! la la!‘  Men like we are don’t usually say how some woman, somewhere, tore us up inside and left us that way, and in time the scar grew over but the wound was still there, pulsing away underneath…we would never dream of it.  Instead, we dwell in superficialities, the colour of a woman’s hair, the way she wore her clothes, the things she said and did.  We would never dream of telling some other man how a woman’s carelessness wounded us so deeply that we feared we might never recover.  We would never dream of being so honest.

 Just as we would never dream of saying other things, more dangerous things, about how certain friendships gain privilege over others…and how certain people work their way into our hearts, despite many decades’ worth of armor.  And as they work their way into our hearts, we begin to wonder whether certain things are possible, if there might be closeness, and a certain trust between us—if we might get beyond those prejudices that hold us physically apart, the unspoken rules that say one doesn’t touch another man avec la tendresse.  It simply isn’t acceptable, no matter how lonely one may be…no matter how much one may want to.  In the old days, we had a word for the other man with whom one felt a certain kinship; he was your particular friend, a term that needed no such explanation as we are nowadays wont to give.  A gentleman’s particular friend was his own, as bound to him as a wife is bound to her husband, and just as privy to the secrets of his soul.  It is said that the great American president, Abraham Lincoln, had just such a friend as this, and indeed, the two exchanged affectionate letters to the end of Lincoln’s life. 

I’m not a stupid man; I realise where this is heading.  I realise, too, the enormous damage that might possibly be done if—

But I digress.

Rick’s piano player is a man named Sam; he has the unique ability of taking the most hackneyed old tunes and making them sound new again.  I’m convinced the reason that so many people end up at Rick’s Cafe every night is because of Sam.  After all, Ferarri has dancing girls and myriad other delights at the Blue Parrot, yet his patrons hardly number a fraction of Rick’s.

Tonight, Sam was singing “Knock on Wood,” a song that always makes me smile, if only for the ridiculous naïvete of its lyrics:

Who’s got trouble?

We’ve got trouble!

How much trouble?

Too much trouble!

Well, don’t you frown, just knuckle down, and knock on wood—

It’s the sort of song that people enjoying singing along with; whenever Sam does that song, almost everyone in the Cafe joins in, although I never do, personally.  It’s rather beneath the dignity of the Prefect of Police to be seen singing in a nightclub.  I shudder to think what Major Strasser and his ilk would have to say if I made such an exhibition of myself.  Mind you, I hardly think I am high on Major Strasser’s list of favourite people, nor is he on mine.  The quicker he is out of Casablanca, the better.

“Hello, Louis.” Rick materialised beside my table, momentarily shaking me out of my musings.  “I almost didn’t see you there.  This a covert op or something?”

“I’m keeping a low profile,” I said.  “Please, won’t you sit down?” I caught myself. “Of course, you never drink with customers. Forgive me. I seem to be slipping in my old age.”

He sat down, and leaned across the table to me.  His eyes were alight with some expression I had never seen in them before—indeed, his whole person seemed to be thrumming with excitement.  “You busy later tonight?”

“Oh, Ricky, not another drunken sojourn on the Corniche? What do you take me for?”

“Louis, come up to my apartment after the Cafe closes.”  He tossed this off casually, but I could see that it cost him: twice in as many nights?  He was scared of letting anyone in—that I had been extended a return invitation was really going quite far for Rick.

Still, I couldn’t resist tormenting him: “Now there’s an impetus for me to insist you close up early.” 

He leaned close to me, so close that we were gazing into one another’s faces in a shockingly intimate fashion. “Louis, are you coming or not?”

“Ricky, nothing would please me more than to…come.”

He actually blushed.

He is so very charming when he blushes.  And really, I ought not to tease him but, as Rick himself has so often pointed out, I may not be subtle but I am effective.

“Will you come?” he asked.

“Bien sur,” I said, “I’d love to come in your apartment.”

It’s a little game we play, Rick and I.