A Flash of Green

Eighteen

When Jimmy Wing parked in the field beside Elmo’s Lemon Ridge home a little before eleven there were at least forty cars in the area. As he walked through the gate he could hear music that was almost drowned by the interwoven, incomprehensible texture of loud conversations, whoops, laughter. When he could see the pool area from the path, he saw that it was packed with people, most of them standing, most of them in large conversational groups. All the landscape, pool and apron lights were on. There were more people in the workshop, where the bar was set up. There was no uniformity of dress. A half dozen people were swimming. As he walked slowly down toward the screen doors, he saw women in shorts and halters talking to women in strapless cocktail dresses.

He stopped in the shadows to look at the composition of the group. He picked out the Palmland Development people, and many of the younger faces in the Palm County Democratic Party. He saw some of the wheels of the Palm County Chamber of Commerce, and a mixed bag of businessmen, those who might be the ones to benefit most quickly from a project to build eight hundred upper-income homes. One couple was leaving. The woman looked wan, tottering and drunk, and the man looked both concerned and angry. It was evident the party had been in process for a long time, and was showing exceptional vitality.

He looked for Elmo and did not see him. He saw Dellie Bliss on the far side of the pool. As he worked his way slowly through the throng, nodding to friends, acknowledging greetings, he saw Dellie leave the people she had been talking to. He hurried and caught up with her.

“Well, hi, Jimmy!” she said.

“Hello, Dellie. Pretty festive around here?”

“Isn’t it a mess? It sort of just grew. That’s the kind of parties you find around this house. I was just going to check and see if I ought to have more food brought down from the house, but I can tell you there isn’t much left up there. If you’re looking for Elmo, you come with me. I think he’s in by the bar.”

Inside the workshop the music was louder than the voices. Inside a circle of spectators, Buck Flake was proving he could lie down on the floor and get up again without spilling any of the full drink balanced on his forehead.

Elmo saw Wing and left the circle and came over to him. They moved out of the doorway to talk. “How much is the paper doing?”

“Headline and half of page one, half of page two, one whole page of pictures and about eight little specials scattered around.”

“Fine! It’s been big on the radio all day too.”

“What’s the party? Premature celebration?”

“Keep the voice way down, Jimmy boy. Way down. Get a drink. You’re way behind. This’ll start to thin out some. You circulate and listen to the happy folk. We’ll talk a little later on.”

Jimmy carried a stiff drink out toward the pool. He admired a tanned and lovely back and, as the woman turned, he realized it was Eloise Cable, in a deceptively simple sun-back dress. She was standing with Leroy Shannard, Martin Cable and young Connie Merry, the wife of the county attorney. Jimmy joined the small group. They all greeted him.

Martin said, “Tell me, Jimmy. You were there. Did I give the impression the bank was already behind this Palmland project?”

“That’s not the way I reported it. There were a lot of ifs and whereases. Anyhow, Borklund got a copy of your statement and it’s running on page three, I think, word for word.”

“People seem unable to listen,” Martin said gloomily. “It’s a delicate situation. Palmland has absolutely nothing worth loaning money on until they have title to the bay bottom.”

“How about the sterling character of the participants?” Leroy asked lazily.

“Oh, each of you could borrow a certain amount on signature alone, of course,” Martin said humorlessly, “but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.”

“You worry too much, dear,” Eloise said.

“I couldn’t go around obligating the bank like that,” Martin said.

“We know that,” Leroy said. “Everybody understands. And we appreciate your making that statement for us.”

“Martin was glad to do it,” Eloise said. She smiled at Leroy. Jimmy could see no meaningful emphasis in her smile or her expression. She looked hearty, handsome, confident and utterly relaxed.

“Maybe they could raise money by having Buck Flake put that up for collateral,” Connie Merry said, looking across the pool.

“Put what up?” Eloise asked. “Oh, is that the one? In the little orange dress?”

“That’s the one,” Connie said.

The orange dress was short, beltless and sleeveless, with a scoop neck. It made a striking color combination with her heavy silver hair. Each time she turned and moved, the dress clung for a moment to the warm lines of her strong young body.

“There is collateral the bank would like to accept, but cannot,” Martin said with heavy-handed humor.

“I saw her and wondered who she was. I’d heard about Mr. Flake’s... interest in her. I didn’t put two and two together. Got his nerve bringing her to a thing like this, hasn’t he?”

“He brought one of his salesmen along too,” Leroy said. “That’s supposed to make it all right. But it doesn’t make it all right with Dellie and Elmo. Not at this kind of a deal. Buck realizes that, so he’s been drinking to keep up his spirits. In spite of his knowing he’s just making certain Betty will hear about it from some dear friend, he has to keep showing her off around town.”

“She’s something to show,” Eloise said. “She must be over five ten.”

“In that glass she’s got is gin and ice,” Leroy said.

“You seem to know her pretty well, Mr. Shannard,” Connie Merry said, with a smile that wrinkled her freckled nose.

“As well as I ever shall, my dear,” Leroy said. “When they’re that young, they alarm me.”

“Maybe it isn’t any of my business,” Martin Cable said, “but isn’t it rather bad judgment on the part of one of the founders of Palmland Development to get mixed up with a young girl? Don’t the rest of you disapprove of such... an obvious relationship?”

Leroy smiled. “Ol’ Buck hasn’t been much use to us lately. But what are we going to do about it?”

“I can tell you one thing you can do about it. You can tell your other associates that the bank, any bank, is always hesitant about loaning money to people of dubious moral stature.”

Leroy looked at him sharply. “Do you mean that, Martin?”

“I was stating a fact, not an opinion.”

Leroy shook his head in mild wonder and said, “You know, I think a romance just ended. Didn’t it sound like that to you, Jimmy?”

Five men stood around Charity Prindergast. They all wore the same glazed, bemused expression. He saw her pat one of them atop his bald head, hand him her empty glass. The man scuttled off.

“I heard a small crunching sound,” Jimmy admitted.

“Suppose he won’t give her up?” Eloise asked.

“A noble stance like that,” Leroy said, “can happen in books, plays, and television, but not in the life of Buckland Flake. When anything stands between Buck and a dollar, he boots it out of the way.”

“Are all men like that, Leroy?” Eloise asked, slightly coy.

“Most of them, my dear. There are exceptions. I try to have the best of both possible worlds.”

“How nice for you!” she said acidly. “Isn’t Leroy clever, Martin?”

“What? I wasn’t listening, darling.”

“Let me guess! You were thinking about the bank!”

“Well... as a matter of fact, I was.”

By twelve-thirty most of the guests had left. Most of those who remained were drunk enough to have no intention of ever going home. There was one stubborn swimmer, and one girl who danced slowly, dreamily by herself, circling back and forth in front of the floodlights.

Jimmy Wing killed time, glancing at his watch. Elmo and Leroy were up in the office. Elmo had told him to come up at about quarter to one. Buck had passed out, facedown on a long padded bench in the workshop. The bar was self-service. Major had gone home. When Jimmy went to make himself another drink he found Charity sitting cross-legged on the floor, going through the stack of records.

She smiled up at him and said, “These are sticky old disks, dear. Look. Wayne King, for the love of God!”

He leaned on a table near her and said, “You’re trapped in the middle ages, Miss Prindergast. Rectangular types. We’re not cool. We’re not way out.”

She laughed up at him. “Buckie does that too.”

“Does what?”

“Tries the hip talk, but it doesn’t sound. It’s way over flat. Like I was to say ‘twenty-three skidoo’ and so forth.”

“God, girl! I’m a more recent vintage than that!”

“What difference does it make? I mean when a thing is gone, does it matter how long it’s gone? It’s like memories, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Well, you have a pocket to keep memories in. And there’s a sweetie memory that happened when you were six, right? And you can take it out of the pocket and it’s as shiny as what happened yesterday. And I have a memory of when I was six. In those memories, yours and mine, we’re both six and it happened yesterday. I was twenty last week. You can be twenty with me by taking out a memory from when you were twenty. There isn’t any age but young, dear. And the only time left is now. What is your name, anyhow?”

“Jimmy Wing. A momentarily confused Jimmy Wing.”

“Oh. With the paper. I don’t confuse myself. Why should I confuse you?”

“Stay where you are. I have to go now. I’ll be back later.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I always like being where I am best. I don’t have to go looking for me because I’m never anywhere else but here.”

“While we’re apart, I’ll think that over.”

Elmo was sitting on his desk. Jimmy sat on the couch beside Leroy Shannard. “We could have banners made,” Jimmy said. “The Palmland Panthers.”

“You drunk?” Elmo asked, frowning.

“No. I was just talking to Miss Charity. I got into the habit of a stream of consciousness.”

“Stream of unconsciousness,” Leroy said.

“Leroy is as pleased as I am with the two little things you worked out for us, Jimmy.”

“I’m pleased that he’s pleased.”

“We’ve decided that for a little while you’re going to mark time,” Elmo said. “We might not have to push anybody. They may drop off of their own selves.”

“Particularly when they find out they’re being un-American,” Leroy said.

Jimmy turned and stared at him. “How’s that?”

“I guess you just haven’t thought it through,” Leroy said. “What’s the greatest strength of America? Free enterprise, of course. And what’s more free-enterprise than reclaiming unsightly disease-breeding mud flats and turning those flats into a garden spot dotted with beautiful American homes? It adds strength to the economy. Why, my boy, if all over this great country little bands of Communist sympathizers and Communist dupes could put a spoke in the wheels of free enterprise by blocking progress and production, Red Russia could bring this mighty nation to its knees without using one single little bomb. Lenin said that in order to achieve victory over the capitalist nations, it is first necessary to bankrupt them. Leaving that bay untouched is one of the devices of a welfare state. It’s socialistic in nature. It’s part of the trend of the government owning everything. Naturally some of the people in Save Our Bays, Incorporated, have the best motives in the world. They love birds, or fish, or canoeing or some damn thing, but can you say they aren’t being subverted by somebody working behind the scenes, somebody who will take every chance that comes along to divide and confuse us and cripple the free-enterprise system? And maybe that person has a Red Chinese wife.”

Jimmy stared for a moment and licked his lips. “That’s a hell of a dangerous thing to turn loose in this town.”

“You mean people would believe it?” Elmo asked.

“A lot of them. Too many of them. It’s just wild enough and absurd enough and idiotic enough.”

“It’s been turned loose in a lot of towns, for a lot of different reasons, Jimmy. And it’s loose here already.”

“Who started it?” Jimmy demanded.

“I did,” Leroy said, “and I didn’t mean to, and I’m ashamed of myself. A few days ago one of our more militant crackpots was in my office. Whenever he wants to sue somebody he comes to me and I talk him out of it. Jake Cooper. You know him. He heads up that big trailer park group.”

“Fighters for Constitutional Action,” Jimmy said. “Yes. I know him. He’s a damned old bore.”

“I was tired and bored, so I went into that little spiel just for kicks. Suddenly I realized he was taking it seriously. So I told him I was just making a complicated joke. He kept nodding and licking his lips and saying he understood. He’s been hungry for some new liberty to suppress. Before he left he told me that he understood that I had to say it was a joke because I didn’t want to get mixed up in that end of it. He said I didn’t have to worry a bit. He said I could leave all those dirty radical nigger-lovers to him. He’s already started making a noise, Jimmy. The other idiot-fringe groups will jump in. It was a stupid thing to do, but I console myself by saying it was such a natural that it would have happened anyway. So let’s just lay back for a while and see what happens.”

Elmo said, “You just write pretty words about Grassy Bay for us, and let me know if Jennings happens to come up with any good ideas. The money will keep coming.”

“But weren’t you talking about one little odd job for him, Elmo?”

“Hell, yes! I damn near forgot. You won’t get much sleep tonight, Jimmy boy. You got to go pack that big blonde of Buckie’s and stick her on an airplane. Here’s a hundred dollars for a ticket.”

“Where to?”

“She can pick her own direction, long as it’s a nice long flight.”

“Does Flake know about it?”

“He will in the morning, and when Leroy finishes talking to him, Buck will go down on bended knee and thank us for giving him a second chance. If she’s long gone, he’ll be easier to handle.”

“Does the girl know she’s going?”

“Leroy’s going down there right now with you and have a little talk with her. Leroy’s good at this kind of thing. I’ll be down in a while, but I expect you’ll be gone by then, so goodnight, Jimmy.”

As they walked down toward the pool, Leroy said, “All you do is back me up if I have to bring you into it. Two work better than one on these things. She’s just a kid.”

Charity was fixing herself a drink when they found her. Flake was still in the same position, mouth open, arm dangling.

Leroy smiled at the girl and said, firmly, “You come out here for a while. We want to talk to you.”

She came along willingly. Leroy took her to the far end of the pool and had her sit in a redwood chair. He pulled two other chairs close, facing her, and motioned to Jimmy to sit down with them.

“I want to ask you some questions, Miss Prindergast.”

“I never give interviews except at the studio, sweetie.”

“Where’s your home?”

“Wherever I happen to be, sweetie.”

Leroy Shannard made a sudden skillful motion. His hard palm cracked her face around to one side. Her drink fell and shattered. She was motionless for one stunned moment, then squealed with rage and lunged at him. Leroy shoved her back into the chair. When she tried again, he slapped her again.

“Settle down or I’ll really have to hurt you. You’re not among friends.”

There were welts on her face and her eyes were streaming. “You... you dirty bastard!” she said.

“Exactly. Precisely. Now answer the questions without any cute talk. Where are you from?”

She hesitated. When he raised his hand she said, quickly, “Dayton, Ohio.”

“That’s better, dear. You met Flake in Fort Lauderdale. You went there for spring fun and games with the rest of the kids. Why didn’t you go back home?”

“I was going to flunk out anyway.”

“Buck Flake was stupid to bring you back here. Do you realize that?”

“I don’t know what you mean. He offered me a job.”

“You know what I mean. He’s a married man.”

“He’s a lot of fun.”

“The fun is over.”

“You better ask him about that, sweetie.”

“Buck has a lot of friends. He’s tied up with a lot of people in various business ways. Those people want to take good care of Buck, whether he wants it or not. So nobody is asking him anything, Charity. In fact, nobody is asking you anything. We’re telling you exactly what choice you have. Mr. Wing will take you home and wait while you pack and drive you to an airport, buy you a ticket and put you on a flight. If you want to be stubborn, I can have a sheriff’s deputy and a jail matron here within fifteen minutes. They’ll take you in and book you for theft.”

“Of what?”

“Anything plausible. My wallet, maybe.” He smiled. “Or it could be disorderly conduct, public intoxication, soliciting.”

“Whatever you do, Buck would get me right out.”

“Probably, if none of us could talk him out of it. But it’s a funny thing about that matron at the county jail. Every time a pretty girl is booked, the matron looks her over and seems to find lice or the evidence of lice in her pretty hair. So, in the interest of hygiene, she orders the pretty tresses shaved off, before she puts the girl in one of her nice clean cells. Sometimes it takes four holding and one shaving to get the job done. But it gets done, Miss Prindergast.”

She raised her hand slowly to her heavy silver hair. She stared at Jimmy Wing. “Could... could that happen?”

“It usually does.”

“You’re both trying to scare me.”

“If you want to take the gamble, Charity,” Leroy said, “go right ahead. It wouldn’t be permanent damage anyway. Hair always grows back.”

She snuffled, bit her lip and looked at the pool. “Can I even say goodbye to Buck?”

“You might say it too loud and wake him up, dear,” Leroy said. “You have your purse. You better leave right from here.”

“But I didn’t want to leave. This is a fun place.” She sighed. “They’re all fun places. Hey! How about my pay?”

“What’s due you?”

“Let me see. It would be about eighty dollars.”

Leroy took out an alligator wallet, separated eighty dollars and handed her the money. “I’ll get it from Mr. Flake.” He stood up and said, “It wouldn’t be wise to write or phone Mr. Flake, or to turn around and come back.”

“I said he was fun. I didn’t say he was a thing.” She stood up. “Well, Jimmy Wing, let’s go. I just didn’t realize Buckie had such sweetie friends.”

She was a tall girl to walk with. She had nothing to say. She sat in the car, subdued, as far from him as she could get. She did not speak all the way to Palm Highlands, except to direct him to the display house where she was living. It was several doors beyond the sales office. He stopped in the drive and said, “I’ll wait here.”

“Hell, come on in and help me say goodbye to it.”

He followed her in. She turned on the lights in every room as she went through it. All the furniture was new. She had managed to strew clothing in every room, fill every ashtray, dirty every glass. She turned the built-in music system on at high volume, hauled two blue suitcases out of a closet, fixed herself a drink and told him to help himself.

“He belted me a couple of good ones,” she said. “Look at the damn marks!”

“It surprised me.”

“I know. Your mouth hung open. But it didn’t surprise you as much as it did me. Go gather up clothes, dear. Start in the living room. Dump them in this suitcase.”

In less than twenty minutes she was ready to leave. As she went around, taking a last look, she said, “It makes you feel like dirty, being hustled out of town. It makes me feel cheap. All clear, I guess. Help me get the lights. Key on the table, I guess. Should I leave him a note? Hell, no. What would I say? Four pieces of luggage and one sweater. Where are we going, dear? Which airport?”

“It depends on where you want to go, I guess.”

“I’d like to look at what they have, and pick one out.”

“Dayton?”

“Sweetie, if that’s the only one they have, you can bring me back here for the new hairdo. I wore that place out.” As she reached for the last light switch, she gave him an urchin grin, a bawdy wink.

“Shouldn’t we do some phoning first, Charity?”

“That would be planning ahead, Jimmy. Makes for a dreary case of the dulls. Let’s just roll the dice.”

He carried the two big bags out and put them in the wagon. She brought the smaller ones. As he backed out of the driveway she said, “Maybe I kept you from phoning the little woman, eh?”

“No little woman. There is one, but she isn’t taking calls.”

“Separated?”

“That’s a good enough word. Where do you want to fly to?”

“Let’s see what they got first. Where’s the nearest place with the biggest choice?”

“Tampa. But we can stop at Sarasota and see what they’ve got.”

“Wing, sweetie, you’re ugly in a kinda nice classy way. I usually don’t like sandy men. They look as if they’d go fat and pink and start snorting.”

“Thanks so much.”

She carefully folded her white cardigan and placed it on his right thigh. She hitched around until she could lie on her side, using the cardigan as a pillow. The seat was as far back as it would go. The bottom curve of the steering wheel was within an inch of her forehead.

“Mind?” she said.

“Not at all.”

“I’m a big girl. I need a lot of room. Wake me at the ticket counter.” She breathed deeply a few times, and was asleep sooner than he would have believed possible. He was very conscious of the solid weight of her head against his thigh. When he slowed for a stop sign, there was a scent of her in the car, gin, and a soapy fresh smell of her hair and a faint fragrance of perfume.

It was a little after four when he stopped in front of the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport Terminal. She had stirred slightly in her sleep a few times. His leg was tired and numb from having held it in the same position so long. She sat up, rubbed her eyes with her fists, shook her glossy hair back, and then looked at him and said, “Oho! You again! Are you following me?”

“Want to wait while I check?”

“No. I’ll go in too. You can check while I use the biffy.” She got out and limped around in a little circle, stamping her foot. “Pins and needles,” she said. She took the smallest suitcase out of the wagon and carried it in with her.

She came out in fifteen minutes, hair brushed, mouth fixed, looking incomparably fresh and rested. She came tocking toward him on her high heels, a big, gaudy, smiling young girl. She stood eye to eye with him, making him feel dwindled.

“Four hour and fifteen minute wait,” he said.

“Where does it go?”

“It’s Eastern, and it hops here and there and ends up in Idlewild in the later afternoon. There’s room on it.”

“On to Tampa, Wingy sweetie.”

“After some coffee.”

“Sure. But I could drive and you could sleep, you know. Show me a map. I’m damn fine about maps, man. I’m sober and I’ve got dandy reactions and I love to drive right into the dawn.”

After slight hesitation, he skipped the coffee. He moved into the rear seat. She gave him her sweater for a pillow. He sat up until he saw that she handled a car with precision and competence. He stretched out. Moments later she was leaning in, shaking him. It was gray dawn. He sat up. They were in a parking area at Tampa International.

She handed him the parking tag. “Come on, sweetie. Wake up with the sun. I got lost once, but we still made pretty good time. You need a motor job. Let’s leave the bags here until we know which lucky airline gets them. How do you lock this thing? How do you feel?”

“Wretched.”

“You look worse than that. Come on. Get the blood moving. You didn’t stir a muscle when I bought gas. You owe me five sixty, sweetie.”

He stood beside the car and stretched, then locked it and followed her into the terminal. Every man within a hundred feet, sitting and standing, straightened up and stared at her. She went from counter to counter, airline to airline, standing at each long enough to read the dispatch board.

“Now the coffee,” she said, and he followed her to the coffee shop. They sat at the counter. She ordered a large orange juice, cereal, hot cakes with sausage and a pot of coffee. He ordered juice and coffee.

“If you’d eat, you wouldn’t get so tired, Wingy. This is like a new day. Fortify yourself. Now let me get straight. I name the place, you buy the ticket.”

“Up to a hundred dollars.”

She glared at him. “The hell with that! If I’m run off, I want the first-class treatment. You can get it back from all those dear old pals of Buckie’s. How much have you got on you?”

He checked, his fingers slow and fumbling. With the money Elmo had given him yesterday morning, he had two hundred and fifty-six dollars.

“Of which five sixty is mine anyhow,” she said. “No airlines credit card?”

“Not on my salary.”

“Well, give me two-forty of it, and if it’s more, I’ll have to chip in.”

“Damn decent of you. Where are you going?”

“Las Vegas. There’s a couple of ways to get there. Any objection?”

“Nothing I can think of. Except the cost.”

She had been eating with a considerable fervor. She finished and said, “Stand guard over my coffee. Give with the money. I’ll get the ticket.”

“Go see if you can get on a flight and then we’ll go buy the ticket.”

“Such trust,” she said. She was back in ten minutes. She handed him a small package. “All for you, sweetie.” He looked into the bag. It was a plastic kit containing comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. “You don’t owe me,” she said. “It will improve your outlook.” She patted his shoulder. “Run along and burnish.”

When he came back to the counter she saluted him. “In a sense, you look human, Wingy.”

“In a sense, I feel better. I was shaving and thinking about you. You’re better organized than you look. Maybe Las Vegas makes some sense too.”

“There was a spooky little bartender in Lauderdale. His brothers are all wedged into a thing out there, the Sahara, and they’d made a niche for him and he was on his way, wanting me to come along and share driving, saying I could make out, because there’s so many ways out there. So he’s there and he’d make some motions around and about but I could drop anyplace and land dancing, so it isn’t a sweat. About my little airplane, dear, let’s go buy it. But it isn’t until three-oh-five, a jet thing, and the best I could do, except sprawling around Chicago for half my life.”

“I’m supposed to be a working man.”

“But you are working, aren’t you? I didn’t get the idea this was a pleasure trip.”

They bought her ticket and checked the luggage through, except for the smallest suitcase. The sun was up and there was an early-morning fragrance, and a promise of heat and rain.

She stood in the terminal and looked at him with a great earnestness and said, “I really and truly, honest and truly, will get onto that thing and be gone, sweetie. I’ve got the ticket and the urge. So you can paddle back to Palmville and say you stoned me out of town. Okay?”

“All right, Charity. Sure.”

She looked at the terminal clock. “But I am not going to stand around here like some kind of a nut for nine hours, rebuffing the chatty types. I saw nearby motels. You can drop me, and I’ll leave a call and taxi back. One thing I can always do is sleep.”

He drove her to a cluster of competing motels and she picked the one she liked. She strode in and registered and came out with a key, and he drove her back to a unit at the end of the court beyond a ludicrously small swimming pool. “She promised no maids clashing and bellowing around, and a taxi hooting for me at two-fifteen.”

He carried the small suitcase in. The room was small, shadowy and chilly, with one bed and a giant television set and a faint institutional odor of antiseptic.

He put the suitcase on the luggage rack. She moved close to him and looked at him with a strange expression. “Well?” she asked.

“I was wondering...”

“Yes?”

“I guess it’s none of my business. And you seem a lot more competent at twenty than I was. But that’s a very hard town, Charity. I know you don’t want anybody being protective. But there’s a guy I know out there, works on the paper for Greenspun, I could give you a note to him you could hold onto and use if you have to, if things get rough for you somehow.”

She shook her head slowly, her expression wry. “Here I stand, itching for the pass. Oh boy, did I ever have one for you! I was going to give it the swivel and a lot of back. I was going to give you one to make the pair I was given look like pattycake pattycake. So you don’t pick up a single clue. Instead you keep on being a very nice sweetie guy.”

“Do you want the note or don’t you?”

“Now he’s bugged. Yes, I want the note, don’t I. Pretty please.”

There was stationery in a drawer. He sat and addressed the note, and wrote, “This will introduce Miss Charity Prinderg...”

“Hold it!” she said. She was standing behind him, a hand on his shoulder. She reached over and crumpled the note and said, “This is a bigger departure than most, so I need a new name. For more reasons than you could guess. You give me one, sweetie.”

“Is the Charity part okay?”

“It’s even a character trait. Let’s keep it.”

He thought for a few moments. “How about Charity Holmes?”

“Mmm. As in Sherlock, eh? If it doesn’t sound too much like a housing project for the aged. Charity Holmes. It swings a little. Charity begins at home. You know, I like it. I like it a lot.” She kissed his ear. “I’m christened. On with the note. I’m ticketed as Prindergast. When I walk off the ramp I turn into Miss Holmes.”

He wrote the note and gave it to her. She read it over, nodded, and put it in her purse. When he stood up, she put her arms around his waist and leaned back slightly and looked up at him. She had stepped out of her shoes, stepped down to a height where she seemed younger, smaller, more manageable.

“Poor old Wingy,” she said. “The hard types using him for a handy man. Let’s take ourselves a little lovin’, just for luck.”

“I just... thanks but I... I mean I really...”

She looked at him in a puzzled way. “You pledged, or something? Sick? Queer? Or you don’t like great big girls? Sweetie, I may give it away, but I don’t throw it around. There just aren’t that many I need.”

It was his intention to give her a friendly smile, a kiss, a perfectly polite and orderly and face-saving refusal of favors offered. But to his utter disbelief and consternation, the mild words clotted in his throat, he felt his face twisting into a sob, and the tears began to run out of his eyes. Through the distorting prism of tears he saw the sudden warm concern on her face. He tried desperately to laugh at himself, but it came out as a huge coughing sob. She led him over to the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, slumped with his face in his hands. She knelt on the floor beside him, pressed against his leg, one hand on his knee, the other gentle at the nape of his neck. She made small tender sounds of comfort.

“I... I don’t know... what the hell... is wrong with me,” he managed to say.

“Sweetie, you’re on the dirty ragged edge. Something chews your heart, Jimmy. It’s a people-trouble. It can only happen to people, you know. Vegetables never get churned up.”

“This... is so damn silly, for God’s sake.”

“It ain’t manly, you mean?”

He struggled for control. “Today... yesterday, I mean, I felt good without knowing why. Now this. I’m cracking up.”

“Darn you anyhow, James Wing. I don’t want to know people can be racked up. Not elderly types like you. I had my little turn at it. It’s a scene I don’t want to make again. You coming out of it? Go wash your face, sweetie.”

He delayed in the bathroom for long minutes, staring at his puffy red eyes in the mirror because he felt ashamed to face her. When he came out, she was sitting on the bed. She patted the spread beside her. “Come sit and listen,” she ordered. She took his hand. “This is the story of a girl bitched by biology, sir. When I was thirteen I looked exactly like I look right now, almost. My face was a little thinner and my hair was mousy brown, but all the rest was as you see it. One minute I was in my happy little world of scabby knees, hopscotch and bicycling, and the next minute I came bursting up out of my girl-scout uniform and discovered, to my alarm, I’d turned into a big freak. And freaks, my dear man, either hide or turn into clowns. So I went into my clowning era. The marks of it are still with me. It didn’t last too long. It lasted like until I found out that what was freaky to other little girls was just nifty for little boys. I was getting no appreciation at home, for some dingy reasons I won’t dwell on, so I gloried in all the approval I was getting, and was too damn careless, and got into a scandal bit which got nastied up by the police coming into it, and I had to change schools. Then began my sneaky era, where I still got cheers, but kept it out of the papers. Then I fell in love. I was true as blue. I trotted after him like a big dog, all happy and panting. It lasted into college, my love era. I couldn’t see he was really a filthy little prig, I’d trusted him and told all, so when he was ready, he bounced me out of his life on the grounds I was a loose woman, all of which had happened before I met him. Then I had the bad time, Jimmy. The tears that come for no reason, and a kind of reckless joy that comes for no reason. It’s a pendulum thing, like something came loose and starts swinging around in your head. I wasn’t mourning a lost love. By then I despised the cruddy little stinker. I’d just gone raggedy. But I came out of it, and soon thereafter I went to Lauderdale. Now are you all right?”

“How about your people?”

“Really and truly they couldn’t care less, and never have.”

“What do you think is going to happen to you?”

“I’m going to dally around, finding coffee and cakes, until the President of the World finds me, sweetie. He’s going to fit the word ‘man’ as if it was invented for him. When he laughs, they’ll have landslides in the Andes. And he’ll be after a big, durable, true-as-blue girl, with so much ready waiting love to give he’ll be the only one who can take the pressure. And every one of my kids will have the living be-Jesus appreciated out of him. I’ll kiss them and applaud them all day long.”

She raised his hand to her lips for a moment, then said, “He won’t be like us, Wingy, sweetie. All scabs and sores and busted feathers. We’re the half-people, you know. It’s the wise bastards who keep shoving us out into the traffic.” She smiled at him, her blunt features oddly leonine in that light. “Nobody will push my President of the World around. He’ll be solid and sound, scaled big enough so it’ll take all day to walk around his heart. What, or maybe who, has bitched you up, dear?”

“I have no idea.”

“So it’s either something you are doing or something you’re not doing. No fee for that analysis. And now if I should say make way for love, will you start flipping again?”

“Not this time, Miss Holmes.”

She grinned and jumped up and pulled the orange dress off over her head. She held it by the shoulders and turned it to one side and then the other and said, “This little nothing in pumpkin is sadly rrrrrumped out, darn it. And I’m the gal who can do it. Sweetie, I think I’ll take a shower first, with this little number hanging in there and see if it’ll hang out some.” She put the dress over her arm and went to her suitcase and dug around in it, taking things out. She smiled at him and said, “Feel free to stare your little pink eyes out, Wingy. A boy told me once I’m like Mickey Mantle — the more I take off, the bigger I look. Imagine a thirteen-year-old kid suddenly carting all this around? I went up through four bra sizes in three months. Why don’t you pounce into the hay and have a little snooze? You’ll have the time for it. I take long, long showers, dear.” She got a hanger for her dress and went into the bathroom, humming in a small off-key voice.

He left the motel at a little after ten. She fell asleep while he was dressing. He bent over and kissed her on the temple before he left. She did not stir. A heavy tassel of the silver hair lay across her eyes.

As he drove by the airport a prop jet coming in startled him. It annoyed him to be startled. He did not wish to be roused out of a state which was neither trance nor lethargy, but an oddly quiet plateau, a place a little bit off to one side of reality.

After a dozen miles he recalled what it reminded him of. In his final year of high school he had been a third-string end, diligent enough and fast enough, but too brittle for the hazards of the game. They went into one of the last games of the season with three ends more useful than he out of action. He was sent into the game in the second quarter, and came hobbling out after the fourth play, with a sprained ankle. During the half, the trainer injected novocaine into his ankle and instep in three places, and bound it so tightly the flesh bulged over the tape. Within minutes he could put all his weight on it without pain. It felt like a hard rubber foot and ankle, springy enough, but not a part of him. He started the third quarter. In the middle of the final quarter he misjudged a tackle and broke the middle finger of his left hand against a flying heel and came out for good. All that evening he felt strange. The bloated ankle had been cut free and retaped, but it did not hurt. They told him it would hurt, later on. He had this same strange quiet feeling then as now.

He had awakened in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat. The pain of the splinted finger was nothing. The ankle felt monstrous. It bulged with every heartbeat. It felt like a balloon packed full of hot splintered glass. After he was off crutches he had limped for nearly a year, and it still ached when the weather changed.

So my sudden tears, he thought, were the sign of injury, and Charity was the novocaine. It will hurt later, when I try to laugh.

He had waited in the bed for her, wondering what she would be like. After a long time she had come to him, sweet and steamy from her long shower, friendly, talkative, busy, utterly without artifice. She brought to the bed a flavor of healthy, absentminded innocence. It was strange and casual, as though they had met at a party and were dancing together for the first time, taking turns leading, interrupting their conversation when the steps became tricky, apologizing for any small miscues, attempting more ambitious twirls and dips as they became more accustomed to each other, then dancing some simple placid step when they wished to talk. “So I found this stuff that doesn’t make my hair brittle and crack,” she said. “A kookie name though. Silva-Brite.” “I like it,” he said, “and I like the way you wear it.” At last her voice grew blurred and she said, in question, “Well, here we go?”

It was ended. She kissed the tip of his nose. “Sweet,” she said. “Very sweet and nice. I’ll sleep like stones now. Poor Wingy. You have to stagger up and churn back south. Poor dear man.”

“You’re quite a girl, Charity.”

She yawned. “I don’t like that tone of voice. You’re trying to patronize me. I’m just a girl sort of girl, bigger than most, friendlier maybe, who likes you well enough for a little chummy kind of love. I thought I could loosen some of those knots in your heart, that made you cry. So don’t quite-a-girl me. It wasn’t that big a scene.”

He was beside her, facing her from such close range her eye looked enormous. She stuck her underlip out and blew a fringe of silver hair back off her forehead.

“You made it exactly right,” he said.

“Good! I wanted you to have something good to go with the weeps.”

“That’s never happened to me before.”

“Hell, sweetie, neither have I, so at least you aren’t in a rut. Kiss goodbye. There. Now you can get up and scoot back and tell them the big pig has been shooed out of Buckie’s precious little life.” She winked that enormous eye. “Don’t tell them I was beginning to think about leaving several days ago.”

By the time he was twenty miles below Tampa, she had begun to seem unreal. He told himself he had merely reacted in the fashion of a normal male. He had taken a successful hack at a promiscuous, restless, rootless twenty-year-old girl. They passed out no medals for that. He told himself it was a pleasant, vulgar, meaningless little episode. But it kept being more than that. It was finding contact with someone in a place where all you usually touched were mirrors. She had a mangled wisdom of her own, suited to the lonely places. She made him wish he were fool enough to pack and drive to Vegas and try to be President of the World.

The novocaine was thinning, and pain was just a little way underneath it. The car roared down through the Gulf towns, toward the heat of the middle of the day. He sat and steered and was carried along, feeling disembodied, fragile, a husk-man, fashioned of cardboard and spit, dried in a hot wind.

The girl asked him if he had an appointment, and when he said he didn’t, she checked with Leroy, and said Mr. Shannard could see him in about ten minutes if he cared to wait. He sat and turned the pages of an old magazine. The minutes ticked on toward two o’clock.

“Come in, James!” Leroy said with the sweet-sad welcome smile which crinkled the eagle eyes.

He went into the paneled office. Leroy closed the door and went around behind his desk.

“You got our problem lady off without mishap?”

“Off and winging.”

“I didn’t think she’d present much of a problem, somehow. Where did she elect?”

“Las Vegas. I had to put another hundred and forty into the kitty.”

“She worked you over very nicely, didn’t she?”

“Who reimburses me?”

“I guess that would be Elmo. And it won’t make him terribly happy.”

“She was going to be a problem otherwise. It seemed best to handle it quietly.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I approve. But Elmo is our leader. And he will fret a little. By the way, our Mr. Flake is adjusting rapidly. He’s sore as hell, but for the wrong reasons. He stayed at Elmo’s place last night. This morning he learned he had been rude to her last night and she took off with some happy stranger for parts unknown, leaving him an unprintable verbal message. The switch in the story cost me eighty dollars, which somehow amuses the hell out of Elmo.”

“How did the morning paper look?”

“Surpassed our fondest dreams. Stroll anywhere in our friendly little city, James, and you will hear an enthusiastic populace buzzing about our new golden era.”

“And I’ve got more of the same to write,” Jimmy said and stood up. Leroy walked toward the office door with him. Jimmy stopped and turned toward him and said, “You certainly handled that girl with a lot of authority, Leroy.”

Leroy shrugged. “I picked what seemed likely to work the best with a girl of that sort.”

Jimmy felt a mild and wistful sense of disbelief as he heard his own grunt of effort. As Charity had mentioned, you get a good swivel, and you get your back into it. He saw Leroy’s eyes widen an instant before the pistol crack of palm against brown leathery cheek. His open hand blazed with pain. The slap spun Leroy halfway around, and he stumbled and braced himself, his hands against the paneled wall beside the door.

Jimmy stared at him stupidly, and suppressed the inane automatic apology which first came to mind. What do you say? My hand slipped?

Leroy seemed to stand for a very long time with his hands against the wall, his head bowed. He straightened up and turned around. Jimmy stood balanced and waiting, not at all certain he could whip the older man in a fair fight. He realized at that moment that it was not impulse, that he had brought the compulsion to violence all the way from Tampa.

Leroy was bleeding slightly from the left corner of his mouth. He looked at Jimmy with complete and hostile disgust. He took his handkerchief out and dabbed his mouth and sat down behind his desk.

“Feel better?” Leroy asked. “Sit down.”

Jimmy sat down. He felt strangely bland, mild, uninvolved.

“Noble gestures cramp my ass,” Shannard said gently. “Gallantry revolts me. It’s always based on a faulty image. I didn’t know you rode such a big white horse. What did you do? Bang her on the way to the airport and take a liking to her?”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

“You’re so right. It doesn’t illuminate the new problems.”

“Such as?”

“You’ve just done an amazingly stupid thing, James. Would it sound too pretentious if I were to say that it is the sort of thing which could change your future personal history?”

Jimmy considered that for a moment. “You could be right.”

“Thank you. It was a quixotic gesture, expressing moral disapproval at the risk of some form of martyrdom.”

“Just defense of womanhood, maybe.”

“If so, it came twelve hours late, didn’t it? The main thing is this, James. I don’t like people around me who are capable of such wild unexpected stupidities. I find them hard to predict. They can upset apple carts. Do you follow me?”

“Up to a point, the point being that I am not around you, the point being that Elmo brang me into this, as I recall.”

“You know, I’m annoyed at myself for misjudging you so completely. I didn’t want you brought into this. I told Elmo as much. But I think I had all the wrong reasons.”

“Such as?”

“You’re bright and you’re capable, James. And you’ve done very damn little with those qualities. You seem satisfied to stay where you are and be what you are. You’re not hungry. There isn’t anything you want badly enough to go after it. The best way to control men is through their hunger, whether it’s for money, fame, importance, power, liquor, women, gambling or what have you. You’re a bored man, James. I told Elmo you’d go along with us, but without any particular conviction one way or the other, so it would be smarter to leave you out of it. He said he didn’t agree. He said you like to be on the inside, to know a little more than the next guy, so your ego would make you useful. Also he said that you would be a sucker for the argument that you could keep your friends from being roughed up too badly by playing along with us. In a sense, James, it has worked out as he thought it would, right up until now. Now you disclose a new facet of the Wing character. And it bothers me. It makes me wonder what other dangerous impulses you might have.”

“I’m just a bundle of neuroses, Leroy.”

“You’ve been a help, but Elmo says you have a tendency to drag your feet.”

“I haven’t been standing at attention and saluting. Maybe I just didn’t get the top jobs to do. Like Eloise Cable.”

Leroy Shannard tilted his head, pursed his lips, stared intently at Wing. “Elmo tell you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be damned if I can figure out why. Everything he does usually turns out to have some reason behind it.”

“Maybe he knew we weren’t going to get along too good, Leroy.”

“Believe me, boy, if I could turn Eloise over to you or anybody, I’d gladly do it. It stopped being much of a pleasure a long time ago. I can’t wait for the money end of it to get all tidied up. There’s been some dumb women I’ve enjoyed. And there’s been some earnest ones who’ve pleasured me. And I’ve nothing against a woman with a real loving nature. Also, a woman who can’t help being real active in bed is supposed to be a good thing to come across. But I’m telling you James, after the new has wore off her, a dumb, earnest, loving, passionate woman can give you the longest afternoons you ever spent in your life.”

“Martin should be grateful, you mean.”

“You’ve got a smart-pants way about you that just rubs me the wrong way, James. But now I’m quieting down a little. I’m going to tell Elmo about what happened here.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“The way I see it, we’re both being used by Elmo. He isn’t going to unload you because I don’t like you and don’t trust you. He’s going to keep the people he can use, and get rid of the ones he’s used up, so I can guess you and me, we’re going to be in this right along.”

“There’s one thing about you which puzzles me, Leroy. Half the time you speak like a bad essay in the Atlantic. Then you switch to a southrun folksy lingo as thick as Elmo’s. I have the feeling that when you get folksy, that’s the time to watch you the closest.”

“Watch me at all times, James. Watch me at all times.”

“Do we have anything more to talk about, actually?”

“Since trying to slap my head off, you’ve handled yourself well. Very smooth and quiet.”

“All I did was make the point I didn’t think you had to belt that girl the way you did.”

“You know the old story about the agricultural college that had a special course on mule training. The first day of class this old boy led a big skittish mule into the classroom, dropped the rein, snatched up an eight-pound sledge and give the mule one square between the eyes. The mule sagged, cross-legged and cross-eyed, tongue hanging, and nearly went down. The class gasped. The professor turned to them and he said, ‘The first thing you do in training a mule is you get his attention.’ ”

Jimmy stood up and said, “So it worked both ways, didn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You got hers, and I got yours.”

Leroy nodded very slowly. “Yes indeed, you can say that you captured my attention, James. Permanently.”