“Just say you couldn’t get here and couldn’t get us on the phone.... You can blame anything on the Paris telephone service, you know.”
So his plan was carried out. He found Ben at home and told him his story before Ben had a chance to ask about the joke. Then when he returned to the rooms, I left and went home to receive a verbal trouncing from my roommate. He had finished two bottles of wine and was feeling rather cocky, so told me in great detail about meeting my sister with the Captain and about the Captain coming to find me “because your sister had to go on without sayin’ good-by to ya!... Ain’t you a fine specimen of Amer’can manhood, with a nice li’l sister like that, an’ you oft somewhere gettin’ cockeyed? Ya oughta be ashamed o’ yourself!”
I told him I was and tried to act and sound very sorry because I had missed my sister. But as soon as I had him calmed down on that score, he changed to the subject of the telephone address the Captain gave him.
“What the hell’s that guy think I am anyway?” he wanted to know. “I ask him where you was an’ he wrote down this address an’ told me to call ya up there. So I went out an’ found a telephone an’ asked a frog to get the number for me, an’ he wouldn’t do it: just stood there and laffed at me.”
“What for?” I asked innocently.
“That’s what I wanted to know, an’ he says, ‘You cannot have those number.’... I says, ‘How do you know this Monsoor Taureau ain’t got no phone?’... He says ‘Your friend have play joke with you. M’sieur Taureau is M’sieur le Bull, comprenez-vous?’... ‘Whatayamean Bull?’ says I.... ‘Eet is—what you say? a place where peegs is killed? what you call him?’... ‘Slaughterhouse?’ I says.... ‘Oui—that ees it, M’sieur.... Your frien’s ’ave tole you to call M’sieur le Bull at the slaughterhouse on the Left Bank ... a joke, non?’... An’ I says it’s a hell of a joke!”
“Did the Captain do that?” I asked incredulously.
“Course he did!... An’ what if I’d gone way the hell and gone over there to find ya?... Say, I’d ’a’ busted somebody’s head!”
“Aw, don’t get sore about a little joke,” I told him. “You know the Captain. He knew you wouldn’t go over there....’ Be a sport and laugh at a joke on yourself!”
He was finally pacified and we turned in for the night.... My head was going round in circles from the strain of the marriage business....