A Flash of Green

Twenty-two

When Kat walked around the corner of the bank building on Tuesday afternoon, she saw Jimmy Wing’s station wagon parked beside her car. She saw him standing in the shade of the building, smoking a cigarette.

He came striding toward her. His color was not good.

“Where were you?” she asked. “Golly I called here and there.”

“I want to come to your house. I want to talk to you.”

“Of course, Jimmy! I want to stop at the hospital first though.”

“At the hospital?”

“To see Jackie. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I have to talk to you.”

“Has something else gone wrong? You look sick, Jimmy.”

“I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine. I’m in perfect shape.”

“Do you want to stop at the hospital?”

“No.”

“Perhaps later?”

“Can we go to your house right now?”

“But you seem so... All right, Jimmy. Right now.”

He followed her. After a few blocks she realized he was following too closely. It was not like him. He was too good a driver. She concentrated on avoiding any traffic hazard which might cause her to stop too suddenly. When she had to stop for a light she turned and stared back at him. He sat motionless and expressionless, clasping the wheel high, his lips sucked pale, his mouth small. All the way home she invented things which could have made him act so strangely, but none of them fitted.

They went into the house through the patio door. The heavy noon rain had made the inside temperature more bearable than usual. She turned the air conditioner on. His strangeness made her nervous. And she heard herself talking too much, in the light quick way Van had called her society gabble.

“I was phoning you to tell you how Tom took it, which wasn’t very well at all, not that I expected anything else. Would you like a beer or something? Do sit down. You want to talk to me and here I am doing all the talking. When Tom heard about Jackie, he just seemed to sag all over. He turned into a little gray old man with shaking hands and tears in his eyes. He said he’d go there tomorrow night and speak out, but he would make it clear he was speaking for himself alone. He said he would not be responsible any longer for...”

“Is anybody coming here? Would your kids come here?”

“Have you heard anything I’ve been saying? Nobody is coming here. Jigger and Nat took the twins and my kids and Esperanza to an afternoon movie.”

He walked toward her with an expression so strange she instinctively backed away from him. He reached out and took hold of her upper arms and stared at her with an intensity which alarmed her.

“You’re hurting me,” she said in a faint voice.

“I wish I knew all it’s costing. But I can’t think that way any more.”

“I don’t understand, Jimmy.”

He shook her slightly. It seemed a gesture of impatience. “When you can’t figure out any of the possibilities, it’s like walking around on a roof blindfolded. You don’t even know what to be scared of.”

She felt the tears well into her eyes. “I... I don’t know what you mean, and you’re hurting my arms.”

He released her suddenly. He handed her some folded sheets. “Read this,” he said harshly. “You’ll get a signed copy in the mail.”

He walked over and sat in a fireside chair, slumped, leaned his head back, closed his eyes. She unfolded the sheets and moved closer to the window.

“James Warren Wing, Record-Journal reporter, revealed last night a conspiracy between County Commissioner Elmo Bliss and the five majority owners of the Palmland Development Company. According to Wing, Mr. Burton Lesser, Mr. Leroy Shannard, Doctor Felix Aigan, Mr. Buckland Flake and Mr. William Gormin all entered into a verbal agreement with Commissioner Bliss some months ago whereby, after the commissioner’s term of office was expired, they will each sell him, at a nominal figure, a substantial portion of their holdings. In return, Commissioner Bliss promised to aid Palmland in their acquisition of the submerged land in Grassy Bay.

“Wing stated that Commissioner Bliss, in his presence, estimated that his capital gain, after taxes, would be in excess of $300,000, a sum which Bliss has already earmarked as a campaign fund when he enters the next gubernatorial race.

“Wing further stated that he was taken into Commissioner Bliss’s confidence on the sixth of this month when Bliss employed him, at a salary of $100 a week and expenses, to secretly assist Bliss in nullifying the conservationist efforts of Save Our Bays, Incorporated. Wing claims he was selected for this task because of his previous close associations with many of the members of the Executive Committee of Save Our Bays, Inc.

“Based on information turned over to him by Wing, Bliss brought pressure to bear on Mr. Dial Sinnat and Mrs. Doris Rowell which resulted in their resigning from the Executive Committee. Wing has kept Commissioner Bliss informed of all the promotional activities of Save Our Bays. Bliss, working quietly through various pressure groups and organizations in the county, has been responsible for a campaign of vilification and harassment unequaled in Palm County history. Wing stated that Bliss, through Leroy Shannard, his personal attorney, had employed Tampa operatives who, through the use of illegal tape recording, forced the resignation of Mr. Morton Dermond, another Executive Committee member, from his post as Director of the Palm County Art Center, and secured his immediate departure from the area.

“Wing also called attention to the fact that Reverend Darcy Harkness Coombs is related to Commissioner Bliss, and that Coombs may well have been implicated in the brutal and unwarranted flogging of Mrs. Ross Halley last Monday night when she was kidnapped in a public parking area and taken to a wooded area near Everset by several black-hooded men. The threat of a similar flogging was instrumental in Mr. Dial Sinnat’s decision to resign from the Executive Committee and withdraw his financial support from Save Our Bays, Inc.

“Wing stressed the fact that, to the best of his knowledge, only Leroy Shannard, of the men in the Palmland group, has been aware of all the supplementary efforts of Elmo Bliss. He stated that it was Leroy Shannard, working through Mrs. Martin Cable, who has been most instrumental in securing a favorable financial climate for the Palmland Isles venture.

“When queried as to why Bliss should have gone to such lengths to smash all opposition to the bay-fill plan, Wing stated that Bliss wanted to be certain that Save Our Bays, Inc., would be in no position to offer any further opposition after the public hearing. Bliss also wishes public support to be so overwhelming that, in order to divert suspicion, he can be in a position to abstain or register a negative vote without endangering the bay-fill project.

“When asked why he had made this conspiracy a matter of public record at this time, Wing remarked that he had decided at the eleventh hour that the public has a right to know the details of this abuse of his office by Commissioner Elmo Bliss. He said that Bliss would undoubtedly attempt some retaliation for his having made this statement, but he could make no guess as to what form this would take.”

Kat slowly refolded the sheets. She found she was making a special effort to fold them more neatly than Jimmy had, getting the edges in better alignment. She crossed the room to where he sat, feeling tall and severe and gravely speculative.

She knelt beside his chair. He put the folded papers in his shirt pocket. She knelt erect, her hands side by side on his forearm.

“It’s true,” she said. “It couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t be some kind of crazy scheme... to help us.”

He turned his head toward her, his eyes half closed. “It’s true, of course.”

“We all trusted you, Jimmy.”

“I know.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“I don’t feel much of anything.”

“But why? Why did you get into such a thing? Did you need the money?”

“No.”

“Did they have something on you?”

“What’s so astonishing? I’m a small-town cynic. I know a lot of people and I know the way things get done, and this time I was in on it. It would have come out the same way with or without me.”

“Did they have something on you?”

“When you’re bored, you want a closer look at the machinery.”

“How did they make you do it?”

“They made it sound innocent.”

“But you knew it wasn’t.”

She felt the muscles of his arm tighten, move, relax again. “It looks as if I’d gotten out of it now, doesn’t it?”

She bit her lip for a moment. “But it’s a little late, isn’t it? A little late for Jackie and Morton and Doris. What do you want me to say? Bravo? Do you want absolution, forgiveness, a fat medal of honor? You’ve been mixed up in a terrible thing, Jimmy, and I think I owe it to you to try to understand.”

“I’m not very good at explaining anything these days. There’s no logic in my head. There’s some pictures, and some darkness, and no way of knowing anything that comes next, or understanding what happened.”

“They had some way of making you do it.”

“They used you.”

She stared at him. “Me!”

“That was just a part of it. I could play. Or they’d use rougher people. I thought I could keep it easy on everybody, especially you. I kept them off you. But they decided I wasn’t suited to the real dirty work when they went after Mortie and Jackie.”

“But I can take care of myself! Did I ask to be protected?”

“No.”

“Why should I be that important to you?”

He put his free hand over both of hers. “You are. You have been. You will be, even though I’ve canceled myself out. And not a very romantic attachment, Kat. Not very civilized, even. Basic. Below the belt. Physical lust. Just a hell of a driving need to have you.”

“But how could you have...”

“How the hell do I know! It isn’t something anybody plans is it? It started seven or eight months ago, and kept building. I can’t look at your mouth or watch you walk without feeling dizzy and sick with desire.”

“I... I’m just a woman. I’m not that... special.”

“I’ve told myself that and it hasn’t done any good.”

“I... don’t think of you that way!”

“I know that.”

“I’ve been... deeply grateful to you, Jimmy. You’ve been such a good friend to me. But now I find out you’ve been lying... I don’t know what to think.”

He sat up and took her suddenly by the elbows and guided her around so that she was in front of him, forcing her to hobble awkwardly on her knees, then pulled her close and wrapped her in his hard long arms and ground his mouth into hers. She fought for a few startled moments and then endured him. He gave a long shuddering sigh and rested his forehead on her shoulder. His hands moved gently on her body.

She felt very young, inept, confused. How do I get into such things? she asked herself. Why should I feel so uncertain, and why should I feel obligated? Why should I stop fighting him because I realized he was crying? Why should I owe him anything for being nice to me? How can he expect this of me? It’s idiotic! And it’s shameful. Does his wanting you give him rights? Make him stop.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Don’t, dear. Please don’t.”

He stood up and pulled her up and stopped her mouth again, and she knew her arms were around him. He was shaking with his need for her. What can you do now? she thought helplessly. You let it go so far.

He dipped and swung her up into his arms. “Please no,” she whispered. “Oh please no.”

She felt waxen in his arms. Beyond his still profile she saw the ceiling turn and move. She felt the cold whir of air against her as she was carried past the air conditioner.

“The guest room,” she whispered, and hid her face and her shyness and her confusion against his chest.

While it was happening, she watched herself from afar, severely on guard against any thought of Van that might slip into her mind. He was more powerful than she would have imagined, and with deftness and skill that disheartened her. Her treacherous body threatened a participation she wished to deny it. She seemed to be apart from herself, off where she could watch the clever sequences lure the blind body into disloyal flexures and strainings, lead it into the dread ultimate gallop, the lungs gasping, the heart racing, the throat beginning its terminal whine, while the shocked mind, apart from all of it, seemed to be screaming, What am I doing? How did this begin? Why am I letting him?

It ended for him when she was a half step from the brink, from the long dark plunging fall. She lay in tension, in a bright agony of indignation and annoyance which was mingled with a deep and humble gratitude that it had stopped short of that most ultimate seduction, leaving her used but not using, a donor instead of an accomplice. She waited for it to recede, but found she was caught there, lodged precariously upon the edge. She gathered herself, then quickly and roughly tumbled him away, got up and padded out of the guest room and down the hallway to her bathroom.

By the time she had showered, the tension was almost gone. She brushed her hair, darkened her eyebrows, made her mouth up with care. She studied herself in the mirror. Her mouth looked slightly puffy. She put on an almost-new dress, high-heeled sandals, a touch of her best perfume. She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, the short skirt swirling at her knees as she turned from side to side. She could think of no simple description of how she felt. She felt rueful about stumbling into one trap, yet smug about evading the second one, no matter how narrow the margin. In retrospect the second trap seemed the more deadly one because it would have made her hostage to the emotions her completion, at his hands, would have made inevitable. And she felt rather prim, as well as smug, filled with the severity of the one unjustly used, the one victimized by her own warm and generous heart.

She felt no shyness until she was a step from the guest room door. She lifted her chin and strode in quite briskly. He had pulled the draperies back, and he was standing at the window, slowly buttoning his shirt. He turned around as she walked in.

“Kat, I didn’t mean...”

“Don’t for the love of God start apologizing. I don’t recall being raped, exactly.” She went to the bed and with housewife dexterity, slapped and smoothed and poked the rumpled spread back to tautness.

“You’re... pretty matter-of-fact about it.”

She sat on the bed, crossed her legs, took one of his cigarettes from the night table and lit it. “How should I act? Grateful? All bashful and trembly? Heartbroken? I’m an adult female, Jimmy. You had your way with me, to coin a phrase. It wasn’t my idea, and it wasn’t an idea I was terribly enthusiastic about, but I couldn’t see fighting a bloody battle over it.” She made herself smile at him. “Let’s just say I felt a lingering little feeling of obligation to you for past favors. And it isn’t every day a girl gets to cure an obsession, does she? Now you’ve had me. Am I too matter-of-fact? When I think of it at all, and I certainly don’t plan to dwell on it, I’ll remember it as an invasion of privacy, Jimmy.”

He moved closer to her. “You reacted.”

She shrugged. “A little, I suppose. You seem to be a good lover. I haven’t known enough men to be able to tell. And what was I supposed to do after we both found out I was willing? Lie there like a stick? I expect I was being decently hospitable, but no more than that. And it was like I warned you in the living room. I’m just another woman. And it didn’t mean much to me, and hardly more than that to you, did it?”

“Kat, you’re being so damned...”

“The least you can do now is to be honest with yourself. If we loved each other we might be able to make something special and magical out of the bed part of it. But this way, it was just a vulgar, sweaty little interlude on a sultry afternoon. And I’m not special to you any more, am I?”

He hesitated, then said, “No, dear. Not the way you were.”

She was unprepared for her own quick sense of loss. She hid it with a smile and said, “So I’ve done you a favor, I suppose. Destroyed the illusion. Poor Jimmy. Pick somebody sexier for your next set of daydreams. It might work out better for you. Right now, all things considered, I think we’re even. Nobody is obligated to anybody for anything. And there’s a little sadness about it. Because there’s no place to go from here. This is the end of us.”

“I know.”

“I did cherish you as my good friend.”

“But that was over too, wasn’t it, before I carried you in here?”

“I guess it was, Jimmy.”

“So, either way, the ending is the same.”

“Not quite the same. I feel sorrier for you than I would have. You have to live with yourself. You have to live with what’s happened to all of us.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I’m sure you will. Jimmy, how can you get that into the paper?”

“I’ve thought of a way. If it doesn’t work, turn your copy of it over to Tom, will you? Don’t try to do anything with it yourself.”

“Tom will have better ideas, I’m sure.”

“But if my idea works, you won’t have to do anything with it.”

“Best of luck.”

They walked out into the living room. The shyness was upon her again when he looked at her. “You mustn’t think it will change the Palmland thing to get this into the paper. It will cut Elmo back down to size, nothing more. Palmland has got too much momentum.”

“I guessed that would be the case. But at least it’s something.” He stood in the middle of the room, looking around. “Did you leave something here?” she asked.

He ran a hand back through his stiff sandy hair and smiled in a rather apologetic way. “Maybe, but it’s no time for cute symbolic answers, is it? I was just feeling... kind of nostalgic. You know. I used to come here and have good times. But that was a different person, I guess.”

“Quite a different person.”

When he was outside the door he turned, frowning, and said, “If you think of anything else I can do, any way I could... help fix things up...”

“There won’t be anything else.”

He looked at her, nodded thoughtfully and said, “No. I guess there won’t.”

She watched him from the window. He sat in his car for long silent moments, then started it and drove away.

The house seemed very empty. When she paced, her heels made noises that seemed too loud whenever she crossed the areas of bare floor. She turned the television set on and turned it off. Suddenly she remembered her other clothing and went swiftly to the guest room. The skirt was across the chair at the foot of the bed. The pale blouse was on the floor beside the chair. She picked them up. The skirt would do for another day. The collar of the blouse was faintly grimed. She found her bra on the floor between the bed and the wall. A gray ball of dust clung to the elastic when she picked it up. Her brief blue Dacron pants lay across the sandals she had worn to work.

She had picked the clothing up, and quite suddenly she felt so weak and faint that she turned and sat quickly on the side of the bed, near the foot of it, the clothing in her lap. She saw herself reflected in the narrow wall mirror, perfectly centered.

She gave herself a quick, vivid, social smile and said politely, “All dressed up and no place to go.”

She gave herself a comic grimace. “Lo the faithful widow lady,” she said.

And then, in her pretty dress and her perfume, she huddled over, hunched herself over the clothing in her lap, and began to cry, in a choking, gasping, hiccuping way, with the tears coming in a thin, scalding, sour way. As she wept she kept remembering that neither of them had said a word. They had made of it a desperate, silent struggle. And that seemed the most shameful thing of all.