The South African started to speak and Hemingway cut him off.
“Pour,” he said.
This is when my memory gets a little hazy. We went on with rum for a while, then suddenly there were all sorts of bottles at the table, his gang was drinking up a storm. Toasts were being raised and there was a lot of fooling around, but I tried to keep the focus in the eye of the storm, whatever Hemingway poured or was poured, I doggedly made sure I got the same. They came in a flurry, mostly foreign stuff — brandies, liqueurs and a lot of grappa.
My stomach started to roll a little and when I reached down to loosen my belt a notch I saw the old man grinning at me. I suddenly realized that the wily sonuvabitch had been working an angle. Like an old boxer who’d lost his knockout punch, he’d bulled in close and went to work on my midsection, he’d been working my body with weird liquors that didn’t mix well.
