Note the proximity of Brett's message from San Sebastian to Jake's statement, "Nor did I see Robert Cohn again." When questioned about her trip, Brett replies that her trip was "not frightfully amusing," that she saw "hardly anybody," "never went out," and "[d]idn't do a thing." Brett seems to be changing the subject, and she is. As we will discover in the next chapter, she has traveled to San Sebastian with Cohn, a revelation that will enrage and sadden Jake. He feels betrayed by Brett, despite the fact that they are not currently involved with one another. In fact, Brett is married to Lord Ashley and engaged to Mike Campbell. But these two are men at least somewhat worthy of Brett's love, in Jake's opinion, unlike the immature and inexperienced Cohn.
Like Cohn, Bill Gorton is a writer. Unlike Cohn, however, Bill was in Europe during the Great War ("Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, right after the armistice," Jake tells us), though we learn later that he did not see combat. Thus, Bill is almost "one of us," in Brett's words.
One of the overarching themes of Hemingway's stories and novels was friendship between men, and in Jake and Bill he has one of the most memorable friendships in literature, comparable to that between Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, or the Bible's David and Jonathan. In this chapter, Bill serves mainly as comic relief, which the reader badly needs after the depressing goings-on at the end of Book I. Note, however, the undercurrent of sadness to Bill's incoherent drunkenness, especially when viewed as part of a pattern that includes Jake himself, Brett, and Brett's fiancé, Mike, all of whom seem to be anaesthetizing themselves with alcohol. They're trying to forget the pain of the worldwide conflict just past, and to dull their senses to the seeming meaningless of the life they fought to preserve in "the war to end all wars." Cohn does not drink to excess; as a non-veteran, he doesn't need to.
