in particular. Though said in a normally loud tone of voice, it came out muffled.
The cab was already onto Union Street, still heading in, moving uphill toward Main Street and the big river, invisible beyond it. As the driver swung wide to make the U turn to stop in front of the Peabody, Strange grinned and said, without expression, in a normal tone, the one word, “Thanks.”
Strange had not forgotten about the picnic. The picnic, in fact, turned out almost exactly as Strange had imagined it. Except it was even more pleasant, more fun. There were four men from the old company waiting in the suite and they had picked up some girls in pairs and singles, both at the Peabody bar and at the bar of the Claridge up on Main Street. Landers noted that without exception the four were guys who had been at Kilrainey longer, and had run out of money. Strange was obviously concentrating his largesse and his giant spending on guys who no longer had money.
That part was okay with Landers. He was willing to do exactly the same with his smaller sum, as soon as he got it down here. And by that time, he thought, Prell would be further along with his therapy. He badly wanted to do something for Prell. Landers had tried to do what Strange apparently had done so easily with the faux pas of last night, and put it entirely out of his mind. But Landers couldn’t do it as well and Prell kept coming back to his mind in some comparative fashion almost all the time. And each time, Landers had the same awful feeling he had had that morning. Even to him, it seemed out of all proportion.
Then, when he had fallen asleep three-fourths drunk on the sunny side of one of the big trees in one of the big glades of the park, the dream or vision of the waterless platoons and his full canteen of water on the dry hill on New Georgia, suddenly came back to plague him. Again they were begging him for his water and he would not give them any. He woke suddenly, choking back a cry. The brunette girl who was with him, he did not remember which one she was or who, quickly grasped his biceps with her five fingers and smiled and winked down at him, and crooned soothingly. She apparently had done it many times before and knew what to do.
Landers sat up, and reached for another drink. It was the first time in a long time that that dream had imposed itself on him and he couldn’t help but wonder, Why now?
Fortunately, there was plenty still left to drink. If it had been a great, warm, sunny picnic, it had also certainly been a heavy drinking one. Strange had brought along just about every potable with alcohol in it that he could think of and get hold of. He had, at Landers’ instigation, even brought along a couple of bottles of French wine; but the wine had languished. Not even Landers drank it. Like everybody else, he preferred shots of whiskey with cold beer chasers. By the time it began to get chilly and they repaired to the hotel, they were all of them, including the girls, quite drunk.
Strange did not seem to show it as much as the rest. Though Landers was sure he had drunk just as much. Landers had been curious, after their conversation, and covertly watched him with the women. But it was hard to tell about Strange. Strange had divided his time about equally between Annie Waterfield, Prell’s girl of last night, and Frances Highsmith. Frances was a girl who had been around the bunch a lot, and whom Landers had made it with a few times, and whom he was sure Strange had been to bed with at least once. During all the booze buying and food buying, Strange had kept Frances with him and had ridden out to the park with her in one of the three cabs they had had to hire, and Landers had thought, Ah ha, that’s the one! But then halfway through the picnic he had redirected his attention to Annie and had gone off walking to sit with her across on the other side of the glade from where they had spread the blankets, and Landers had thought, Ah no, it was Annie! But before they left Strange went back with Frances, and rode