“What’s the matter, Portrait?” he asked her. “You getting hungry? I am.”
So he rang the bell for the waiter who would bring breakfast.
He knew that now, even though the light was so good that every wave showed on the Grand Canal, lead colored and solid heavy with the wind, and the tide now high over the landing steps of the Palace directly opposite his room, there would be no telephone call for several hours.
The young sleep good, he thought. They deserve it. “Why do we have to get old?” he asked the waiter who had come in with his glass-eye and the menu.
“I don’t know, my Colonel. I suppose it is a natural process.”
“Yes. I guess I imagine that too. The eggs fried with their faces up. Tea and toast.”
“You don’t want anything American?”
“The hell with anything American except me. Is the Gran Maestro astir yet?”
“He has your Valpolicella in the big wicker fiascos of two liters and I have brought this decanter with it.”
“That one,” the Colonel said. “I wish to Christ I could give him a regiment.”
“I don’t think he would want one, really.”
“No,” the Colonel said. “I don’t want one, really, myself.”
