Patent medicines

"Patent medicines? Live and let live," Mr,moncler jackets men. Tench said.
"Are you sailing?"
"No, I came down here for—for ... oh, well, it doesn't matter anyway." He put his hand on his stomach and said: "You haven't got any medicine, have you, for—oh, hell. I don't know what. It's just this bloody land. You can't cure me of that. No one can."
"You want to go home?"
"Home," Mr. Tench said; "my home's here. Did you see what the peso stands at in Mexico City? Four to the dollar. Four. Oh, God. Ora pro nobis."
"Are you a Catholic?"
"No, no. Just an expression. I don't believe in anything like that." He said irrelevantly: "It's too hot anyway."
"I think I must find somewhere to sit."
"Come up to my place," Mr. Tench said,mont blanc pens. "I've got a spare hammock. The boat won't leave for hours—if you want to watch it go."
The stranger said: "I was expecting to see someone. The name was Lopez."
"Oh, they shot him weeks ago," Mr. Tench said.
"Dead?"
[7] "You know how it is round here. Friend of yours?"
"No, no," the man protested hurriedly. "Just a friend of a friend."
"Well, that's how it is," Mr. Tench said. He brought up his bile again and shot it out into the hard sunlight. "They say he used to help ... oh, undesirables ... well, to get out. His girl's living with the Chief of Police now."
"His girl? Do you mean his daughter?"
"He wasn't married. I mean the girl he lived with." Mr. Tench was momentarily surprised by an expression on the stranger's face. He said again: "You know how it is." He looked across at the General Obregon. "She's a pretty bit. Of course, in two years she'll be like all the rest. Fat and stupid. Oh, God, I'd like a drink. Ora pro nobis."
"I have a little brandy," the stranger said. Mr. Tench regarded him sharply. "Where?"
The hollow man put his hand to his hip—he might have been indicating the source of his odd nervous hilarity. Mr. Tench seized his wrist. "Careful," he said,fake montblanc pens. "Not here." He looked down the carpet of shadow: a sentry sat on an empty crate asleep beside his rifle. "Come to my place," Mr. Tench said.
"I meant," the little man said reluctantly, "just to see her go."
"Oh, it will be hours yet," Mr. Tench assured him again.
"Hours? Are you certain? It's very hot in the sun."
"You'd better come home."
Home: it was a phrase one used to mean four walls behind which one slept. There had never been a home. They moved across the little burnt plaza where the dead general grew green in the damp and the gaseosa stalls stood under the palms. It lay like a picture postcard on a pile of other postcards: shuffle the pack and you had Nottingham, a Metroland birthplace, an interlude in Southend. Mr. Tench's father had been a dentist too—his first memory was finding a discarded cast in a waste-paper basket—the rough toothless gaping mouth of clay, like something dug up in Dorset—Neanderthal or Pithecanthropus. It had been his favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano: but fate had struck,moncler jackets women. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet [8] riverport and the vultures lay in the waste-paper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.