He sank into the chair opposite me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or less standard procedure at the Cafe de Paris. It wasn't a place to go if you wanted to be alone.
Paul said, "How are you, Rupert? Haven't seen you for donkey's years."
The waiter came along and Paul ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easy-going, sallow-faced little man. I vaguely remembered somebody saying he was from Liverpool and in exports.
"What's in the newspaper?" he said, disinterestedly.
"Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel," I told him, "and Lil Abner is becoming a rock'n'roll singer."
"Oh," I said, "the intellectual type." I scanned the front page. "The Russkies have put up another manned satellite."
"Several times bigger than anything we Americans have."
The beer came and looked good, so I ordered a glass too.
Paul said, "What ever happened to those poxy flying saucers?"
A French girl went by with a poodle so finely clipped as to look as though it'd been shaven. The girl was in the latest from Paris. Every pore in place. We both looked after her.
"You know, what everybody was seeing a few years ago. It's too bad one of these bloody manned satellites wasn't up then. Maybe they would've seen one."
We didn't say anything else for a while and I began to wonder if I could go back to my paper without rubbing him the wrong way. I didn't know Paul very well, but, for that matter, it's comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier. Largely, cards are played close to the chest.
My beer came and a plate of tapas for us both. Tapas at the Cafe de Paris are apt to be potato salad, a few anchovies, olives, and possibly some cheese. Free lunch, they used to call it in the States.
Just to say something, I said, "Where do you think they came from?" And when he looked blank, I added, "The Flying Saucers."
He grinned. "From Mars or Venus, or someplace."
"Ummmm," I said. "Too bad none of them ever crashed, or landed on the Yale football field and said _Take me to your cheerleader_, or something."
Paul yawned and said, "That was always the trouble with those crackpot blokes' explanations of them. If they were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?"