"But they are witches!" Ruy expostulated.
Pimp blew a raspberry. "Merda. Good doctors. Good cooks. Run a clean and sensible tavern, man. Stuck it to the great and good last year, stuck it to them right in the ass. That makes 'em okay by me. Nobody believes they're witches, 'cept maybe a lot of excitable priests. They should get laid, y'know?"
Ruy chuckled. "True, they should. But I keep hearing where they do all kinds of magic, and burn people alive." He realized as he said it that he'd let his Italian improve, but it didn't look like the pimp was noticing.
"Burn people alive? I heard the same about your Inquisition, friend." There was a slightly wary look appearing in the pimp's eyes now.
Ruy realized he was probably pushing too hard for a reaction from this fellow, especially if he wanted to stay in character. He held up his hands, spread. "Hey, I'm from Catalonia. The Inquisition's a lot of damned Castilians, humiliating decent people. I know plenty of good folks who're shamed by their family names being hung up in the church as marranos and moriscos. They complain but nothing is done."
"That's the same all over, man," pimp said, shrugging. "Now, about that good time?"
"What kind of good time?" Ruy wondered how he was going to wriggle out of this one. It had never been his idea of fun to spend money that way, never mind that there was Sharon to think about. Some fellows he'd known had had no other idea of pleasure, and in a way he pitied them more than the poor souls rotted by drink. And since he'd taken that fateful decision that there was more to life than was traditionally offered to country boys from Catalonia, he'd learned that there were ways of getting laid that were a hell of a lot more fun, too. He'd never wanted for that kind of action, and the pleasures of romance and seduction were more lasting and more real.
The pimp laughed aloud. "What kind of town is Barcelona anyway?" he asked, sneering the question. "What you do for entertainment there? Goats? What kind of good time, Christ have mercy, man, what kind d'you think? Pussy, man, pussy!"
"Oh," Ruy said, "Look, I'm sorry and all, but I've got a wife, you know?"
The knowing leer he got back for that one was pure pimp. "Yeah, sure, man. And where is she tonight?"
"Uh, Barcelona," Ruy said. "But I never told her a lie yet, you know?"
The pimp's face was a picture of a building rant. Ruy had the gloomy suspicion that he was going to have to hit him to get him to shut up, and that was going to fix him in this man's memory. And that he'd pumped the man, none too subtly, for information about "those guys" who were paying for the riots. If he wouldn't sell that information, first chance he got, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz was no judge of the breed.
Fortunately, just at that moment, someone jostled past. Ruy let the slight nudge spill his drink, then rose to his feet and roared "Watch what you are about, you dog-fucked son of an Italian whore!" He stuck his face right into that of the fellow who'd jostled him, trusting that the sentiment he'd expressed in Catalan would carry over into Italian.
Truth be told, the fellow wasn't much of a threat to anyone. Weedy, at best. But Ruy needed a distraction to get him out of the place with everyone remembering him as an obnoxious drunken out-of-towner rather than anything more noteworthy. "I—I'm sorry, friend," the fellow stammered, flinching back.
"Sorry?" Ruy shouted, switching to Italian, "I make you sorry, shit-britches!" Under the bluster and fury he was cool and calm and noticed that the taverna had gone gratifyingly quiet. It had been so long since he'd done this that he'd forgotten how much fun a good bar-fight could be.
"Look, if I spilt your wine, I'll get you more," the fellow said, already looking pale and nervous. Ruy realized he'd not picked a very good target for this, but then he'd been improvising as he went along. Clearly this fellow didn't know how to stand up to a bully.
"Damn right you'll get me more, you fucking coward," Ruy shouted. "Same as all Italians, no fucking cojones!" He made the filthiest gesture he could think of, hoping it meant the same here as it did back home. The circles he'd moved in every other time he'd been in Rome, no one made gestures like that. Not out in front where they could be seen, anyway.
Amid the silence, there was the scrape of stools on the floor as—he counted the sounds, two of them were behind him—four men got up. From somewhere over his right shoulder, he heard "Watch your fucking mouth, Spaniard."
Ruy turned nice and slowly around. "Going to make me, cat-eater?"