Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly by James M. Cain

her, nevertheless. I’m not a member of the Ancient, Free, and Accepted Order of Masons, and I don’t care if you ever get the twenty pesos to take you to Mexico City. I’ll not buy you a drink. Here’s a peso to be off, and if you don’t mind I’ll be having my dinner.”
    I let the peso lay and didn’t move. When he had to look at me again I recited it back to him just like he had handed it to me. “I have no uncle in New York, no brother in Sydney, no sister-in-law in Dublin, thanks for the benediction, nevertheless. I’m not a member of the Ancient, Free, and Accepted Order of Masons, and I’m not on my way to Mexico City. I don’t want your drink, and I don’t want your peso.”
    “By your looks, you want something. What is it?”
    “I want passage north, if that’s where you’re headed.”
    “I’m headed for San Pedro, and the passage will be two hundred and fifteen pesos, cash of the Republic, payable in advance, and entitling you to a fine deck stateroom, three meals a day, and the courtesies of the ship.”
    “I offer five.”
    “Declined.”
    I picked up his peso. “Six.”
    “Declined.”
    “I offer sweat. I’ll do any reasonable thing to work this passage out, from swabbing decks to cleaning brass. I’m a pretty fair cook.”
    “Declined.”
    “I offer a recipe for Iguana John Howard Sharp that I have just perfected, a dish that would be an experience for you, and probably improve your disposition.”
    “ ’Tis the first sensible thing you have said, but there wouldbe a difficulty getting the iguana. At this season they move up to the hills. Declined.”
    “I offer six pesos and a promissory note for two hundred and nine. The note I guarantee to redeem.”
    “Declined.”
    I watched him eating his fish, and by that time I was beginning to be annoyed. “Listen, maybe you don’t get this straight. I intend to haul out of here, and I intend to haul out on your boat. Write up your contracts any way you want. The thing to get through your head is: I’m going.”
    “You’re not. You’ve taken my peso, so be off.”
    I lit a cigarette and still sat there. “All right, I’ll level it out, and quit the feinting and jabbing. I was a singer, and my voice cracked up. Now it’s coming back, see? That means if I ever get out of this hellhole of a country, and get back where the money is, I can cash in. I’m all right. I’m as good as I ever was, maybe better. To hell with the promissory note. I guess that was a little tiresome. I ask you as a favor to haul me up to San Pedro, so I can get on my feet again.”
    When he looked up, his eyes were smoky with hate. “So you’re a singer, then. An American singer. My answer is: It wouldn’t be safe for me to take you aboard. Before I was out of the harbor with you I’d drop you into the water to rid the world of you. No! And don’t take up any more of my time with it.”
    “What’s the matter with an American singer?”
    “I even hate the Pacific Ocean. On the Atlantic side, I can get London, Berlin, and Rome on my wireless. But here what is it? Los Angeles, San Francisco, the blue network, the red network, a castrated eunuch urging me to buy soap—and Victor Herbert!”
    “He was an Irishman.”
    “He was a German.”
    “You’re wrong. He was an Irishman.”
    “I met him in London when I was a young man, and I talked German with him myself.”
    “He talked German, through choice, especially when he was with other Irishmen. You see, he wasn’t proud of it. He didn’t want them to know it. All right, look him up.”
    “Then he was an Irishman, though I hate to say it.—And George Gershwin! There was an Irishman for you.”
    “He wrote some music.”
    “He didn’t write one bar of music. Victor Herbert, and George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern, and buy the soap for me schoolboy complexion, and Lawrence Tibbett, singing mush. At Tampico, I got Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, that I suppose you never heard of, coming from Rome. Off