You have anything to say in your defense except to put your head back? he asked the portrait. You want some more, Shakespeare?
You don’t have to defend. You just rest and leave it as it is. It’s no good. Your defense and my defense is no damn good. But who could tell you to go out and hang yourself the way we do?
Nobody, he said to himself, and to the portrait. And certainly not me.
He put his good hand down and found that the room waiter had left a second bottle of Valpolicella alongside of where the first had been.
If you love a country, the Colonel thought, you might as well admit it. Sure, admit it boy.
I have loved three and lost them thrice. Give a credit. We’ve re-took two. Retaken, he corrected.
And we will retake the other one, General Fat Ass Franco on his shooting stick with the advice of his doctor and tame ducks and a screen of Moorish cavalry when he shoots.
Yes, he said softly to the girl who looked at him clearly now in the first and best light.
We will retake and they will all be hung upside down outside of filling stations. You have been warned, he added.
“Portrait,” he said, “why the hell can’t you just get into bed with me instead of being eighteen solid stone blocks away. Maybe more. I’m not as sharp now as I was; whenever.”
“Portrait,” he said to the girl, and to the portrait, and to the girl
