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Capital Hotel San Juan, PR November 24, 1932
Today was Thanksgiving. I just finished a sketchy meal in the restaurant below. My first taste of food since six-thirty this morning, and it is now about eight-thirty at night.All day I was with Jimmy Gresham. Tomorrow I’m moving my duffle up to his place where I will stay until the ship sails for Santo Domingo. I do not know exactly when that will be but at the most, it should be five days.
And all day long, Thanksgiving or no Thanksgiving, I was in the thick of sorrow. That’s no way to spend a holiday, but somehow I didn’t mind at all. You see, Jimmy’s girl —— Helen Nechodama, the artist —— left for New York today on the S.S. Berinquen. She is going to Paris and it is extremely doubtful that she will ever come back.
You see, Jimmy loves her, and she doesn’t love Jimmy. He is rather old, about forty, though he doesn’t appear to be more than thirty. He is about the swellest friend I have. A gentleman through and through, always ready to help anyone out of a tough spot.
“I died today, the day she began to live.” Jimmy was broken up. He went to the boat alone to see her off and came back about two in the afternoon. We heard the Berinquen whistle as she left the dock. And from Jimmy’s wide verandah, three stories above the street and exposed to all the sea, we watched the ship pass El Morro and grow smaller and smaller in the distance, until at last, even her smoke was gone from the horizon. Jimmy was all shot to pieces. I mean really ill, not just sad, but vitally and physically sick.... Each time he drank her health, he smashed his glass between his fingers. Blood dripped slowly from his right hand, and his knuckles were raw from pounding them against the cement wall. He didn’t mind my being there, in fact, I am sure that he was glad I was.