Chapter 8

Frances is away and Cohn is out of the country for a few weeks. Jake is happy to have gotten rid of them for a while. Jake plans a trip to Spain with a friend named Bill Gorton at the end of June. Bill arrives and recounts a trip he’s just taken to Vienna and Prague.

Bill and Jake have a drink at a café and chat.

Brett jumps out of a cab, newly returned from her trip. Bill-Brett introductions are made, and they go for a drink.
Brett leaves to go bathe.
Jake and Bill go to eat at a little restaurant Jake knows. Hemingway reinforces the fact that Jake, unlike the majority of his fellow American expats, knows Paris like the back of his hand.
Jake suggests they have a drink but for the first time ever they decide not to have one. We are shocked.
Bill and Jake meet up with Mike and Brett (who’s now supposedly quite clean and is not wearing stockings…. more scandal) in one of their regular cafés. Mike turns out to be kind of nutty and extremely drunk; he’s taken home by Brett. Jake and Bill go to watch a fight.