The work was progressing well, but Jack had to stand in the office helping Danny sort through reams of paperwork. Ignacio was a very good foreman, he had the men’s respect, but he couldn’t file paperwork if his life depended on it. Whatever paperwork he had, he left on a stack for the secretary to file away. His secretary was also his wife, who was also ready to give birth any minute and thus on bed rest until the baby was born. So the paperwork had stacked up and had continued to build for over two weeks now. It covered his desk.
This was the field office, it wasn’t air conditioned. It had large stand fans circulating the air. But when the air is hot and humid, you needed to stay in direct air flow to feel any relief. In direct airflow, it felt like the fan was blowing the heat and humidity around your body so in comparison, you felt cooler. But the minute the fan head rotated away from you or you stepped away, the heat and humidity rushed back and drenched you in sweat.
Jack had acclimated to the weather already, but Danny looked like he was going to pass out or melt into a puddle of sweat. So when Jack called for lunch, Danny practically ran out of the office just to get some air. The actual work was being done about 5 miles from city, so they had to be driven down to the city. Jack took them back down to the pension housewhere they were staying. The town didn’t have a hotel, so when they came here, they stayed in the best pension house Silay could offer. It sat on the sea wall and could be seen by any ship coming into the bay.
It wasn’t bad at all. It made Jack think of Somerset Maugham, white shirts and boaters, iced tea and gin. It used to be the ancestral home of the Martens, a Frenchmen who came to Silay 200 years ago to find his fortune in the supposed gold mines, but instead fell in love with a local beauty who knew how to haggle and run a business. The business acumen ran only in the female side of the family, so the male heirs ran the fortune down to the ground and the women married and made their husbands and their husbands’ families wealthy. The only thing left of the Martens fortune was Martens House, run by a Lopez who was a Martens great - granddaughter. Still a gleaming white washed colonial style mansion, originally it was an eight bedroom mansion that was converted into a 10 room bed and breakfast.
The large sala(salon) was turned into a “Presidential Suite” while the equally large dining room was renovated into the “West Wing”. Jack always had the “West Wing” reserved; from there he could step out into the veranda, have a drink and private dinner as he watched the sun fall into the sea. The old servant quarters was attached to the main house by a screened in path and turned into the dining area for everyone else. The two large rooms had the main floor and private baths and toilets. It was a grand, dark teak staircase that led to the upstairs rooms. The rooms upstairs weren’t as large, but they still had high ceilings and floor to ceiling balcony doors, but they had to share two baths and two toilets.
The house was situated so close to the seawall, in the silence of the night one could hear the gentle lapping of the waves. The sea’s close proximity afforded the house a constant sea breeze that also kept the voracious and nocturnal mosquitoes at bay. Old mahogany ceiling fans dominated each of the rooms, but quietly in the corners, stood modern portable air conditioners.
Danny ran into his room to jump into the shower and change from his dress shirt and tie, into a polo shirt and khakis. Jack had warned him, but Danny wouldn’t listen. So while Danny showered, Jack wandered over towards the market, he needed a new carton of cigarettes and there was a pretty little gal who had caught his eye several months ago as she tended the family convenience store.
Jack just flirted with her innocently, her father sat at the cash register with owlish eyes that seemed to follow everyone, everywhere. But the mother was a hawkish woman who reminded Jack of a more feral Bloody Mary from the movie South Pacific, if she could have sold off her daughter to Jack, she would have. That was enough to keep Jack in his pants but didn’t stop the flirting.
He had just gotten his pack of cigarettes when he tried to cross the street only to be stopped by a wall of tricycles. It was lunch time and the office workers and students were darting into the street. Jack had seen too many instances of run over feet, crushed bones and bloodied heads to try running that gauntlet. So he walked down the sidewalk looking for an opening. It was there in an opening of traffic that he saw Renata’s Café and Augusta laughing with another girl.