"It's good to hear you talk this way."
"I hope I keep on talking this way," says the producer. "I can't be trusted. I don't trust myself. Hell, I get excited, up one day, down the next. Maybe you'll have to hit me on the head with that hammer to keep me going."
"I'd be pleased," says Smith.
"And if we do the film," says the younger man, "I suppose you could help. You know the sets, probably better than anyone. Any suggestions you might want to make, we'd be glad to have. Then, after we do the film, I suppose you won't mind letting us tear the rest of the world down, right?"
"I'd give my permission," says the watchman.
"Well, I'll call off the hounds for a few days and see what happens. Send out a camera crew tomorrow to see what we can line up for shots. Send out some writers. Maybe you can all gab. Hell, hell. We'll work it out." Douglas turns toward the gate. "In the meantime, use your hammer all you want. I'll be seeing you. My God, I'm freezing!"
They hurry toward the gate. On the way, the old man finds his lunch box where he abandoned it some hours ago. He picks it up, takes out the thermos, and shakes it "How about a drink before you go?"
"What've you got? Some of that amontillado you were yelling about?"
"1876."
"Let's have some of that, sure."
The thermos is opened and the liquid poured steaming from it into the cup.
"There you are," says the old man.
"Thanks. Here's to you." The producer drinks. "That's good. Ah, that's damned good!"
"It might taste like coffee, but I tell you it's the finest amontillado ever put under a cork."
"You can say that again."
The two of them stand among the cities of the world in the moonlight, drinking the hot drink, and the old man remembers something: "There's an old song fits here, a drinking song, I think, a song that all of us who live inside the fence sing, when we're of a mind, when I listen right, and the wind's just right in the telephone wires. It goes like this:
"We all go the same way home,
All the same collection, in the same direction,
All go the same way home.
So there's no need to part at all,
And we'll all cling together like the ivy on the old garden wall..."
They finish drinking the coffee in the middle of Port-au-Prince.
"Hey!" says the producer suddenly. "Take it easy with that cigarette! You want to burn down the whole darn world?"
They both look at the cigarette and smile.
"I'll be careful," says Smith.
"So long," says the producer. "I'm really late for that party."
"So long, Mr. Douglas."
The gate hasp clicks open and shut, the footsteps die away, the limousine starts up and drives off in the moonlight, leaving behind the cities of the world and an old man standing in the middle of these cities of the world raising his hand to wave.
"So long," says the night watchman.
And then there is only the wind.