The Boy Character Analysis

The next day I held Brenda’s glasses for her once again, this time not as momentary servant but as afternoon guest; or perhaps as both, which still was an improvement. She wore a black tank suit and went barefooted and among the other women, with their Cuban heels and boned-up breasts, their knuckle-sized rings, their straw hats, which resembled immense wicker pizza plates and had been purchased, as I heard one deeply tanned woman rasp, “from the cutest little shvartze when we docked at Barbados.” Brenda among them was elegantly simple, like a sailor’s dream of a Polynesian maiden, albeit one with prescription sun glasses and the last name of Patimkin.

“Look, look, look here at this one. Ain’t that the fuckin life?”
I agreed it was and left.
Later I sent Jimmy Boylen hopping down the stairs to tell McKee that everything was all right. The rest of the day was uneventful.
I sat at the Information Desk thinking about Brenda and reminding myself that that evening, I would have to get gas before I started up to Short Hills, which I could see now, in my mind’s eye, at dusk, rose-colored, like a Gauguin stream.

Up on the beach there were beautiful bare-skinned Negresses, and none of them moved; but suddenly we were moving our ship, out of the harbor, and the Negresses moved slowly down to the shore and began to throw leis at us and say “Goodbye, Columbus…goodbye, Columbus…goodbye…” and though we did not want to go, the little boy and I, the boat was moving and there was nothing we could do about it, and he shouted at me that it was my fault and I shouted it was his for not having a library card, but we were wasting our breath, for we here further and further from the island and soon the natives were nothing at all.

What had probably happened was that he’d given up on the library and gone back to playing Willie Mays in the street. He was better off, I thought. No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head if you can’t afford the fare.