In the morning it was all over. The fiesta was finished. I woke about nine o’clock, had a bath, dressed, and went downstairs. The square was empty and there were no people on the streets. A few children were picking up rocket-sticks in the square. The cafés were just opening and the waiters were carrying out the comfortable white wicker chairs and arranging them around the marble-topped tables in the shade of the arcade. They were sweeping the streets and sprinkling them with a hose.
I sat in one of the wicker chairs and leaned back comfortably. The waiter was in no hurry to come. The white-paper announcements of the unloading of the bulls and the big schedules of special trains were still up on the pillars of the arcade. A waiter wearing a blue apron came out with a bucket of water and a cloth, and commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing and rubbing away the paper that stuck to the stone. The fiesta was over.
I drank a coffee and after a while Bill came over. I watched him come walking across the square. He sat down at the table and ordered a coffee.
“Well,” he said, “it’s all over.”
“Yes,” I said. “When do you go?”
“I don’t know. We better get a car, I think. Aren’t you going back to Paris?”
“No. I can stay away another week. I think I’ll go to San Sebastian.”
“I want to get back.”
“What’s Mike going to do?”
“He’s going to Saint Jean de Luz.”