A Flash of Green

Twenty-three

At ten o’clock Jimmy Wing found Brian Haas alone at the counter at Vera’s Kitchen. He went in and sat beside him. Brian gave him a casual and rather guarded smile and said, “Our Leader has been beating the bushes for you, pal. That seems to be happening a lot lately. I seem to find myself doing things you should be doing. Are you goofing a little, maybe?”

“Definitely not! Everything I do is constructive. I have been chugging around in the night, making up parables and fables.”

“You look a little bright around the eyes. You get the needle into a vein?”

“Mr. Haas, if a man suddenly went stone deaf and then suddenly got his hearing back again, he would go around listening to the rustle of every leaf. Right?”

“Is that a parable or a riddle?”

“My gears have been locked for a while. I rocked them loose.”

“Okay, it’s a riddle. So now you’re racing your engine. Is that the answer?”

“Mr. Haas, I will try out one small parable on you, one that I made up concerning you. Once upon a time there was a dog who had an undiagnosed case of distemper. Such was the morbidity of the disease that the dog went around blaming his low morale on his condition of doghood. He had black thoughts about dogs and destiny. So, to prove to himself that dogs are no damn good, he strolled over and quietly bit the hell out of the dog next door. It gave him considerable surly satisfaction, but when the disease wore off, he was suddenly very very ashamed of himself.”

Brian Haas put his cup down and swiveled his counter stool and stared at Wing. His eyes were dark and mild under the protective shelf of hairy brow. But there was a glint of amusement in them Jimmy had not seen for a long time. “In the first place, you illiterate bastard, when it has animals in it, it’s a fable, not a parable. In the second place, I know a dog who gets a different kind of distemper. He reaches around and bites hell out of himself. And is equally ashamed. In the third place, Nan wonders when you’re coming around so I can whip your tail with a jazzy new variation of the Ruy Lopez.”

“Tell her soon. I’ve got another one. This is a parable. No animals. This one is real deep.”

“I’ll pay attention.”

“They shot this character into orbit, seven thousand times around the planet, and he took along seven thousand squeeze-bottles full of high-vitamin gunk, one a day. And almost as soon as he was up there, he started thinking about steak. He tried not to. Before the trip was half over, he was breathing, dreaming, seeing, smelling steak. And then he came down and had a steak. He gobbled it down. He gobbled it down so damn fast, my boy, that the only slight taste he got was exactly the same as what had been in all those bottles.”

“So the second steak will be better, eh?”

“No chance. They shot him right back up there.”

“Seven thousand more times around?”

“Aw, no, Bri! For keeps.”

Brian Haas nodded. “You’re right. That one is real deep.”

“Ready for another deep one?”

“Let me get my feet braced. Shoot.”

“This one will be a fable because it’s got a monkey in it. One time there was a man who found himself a trick monkey. For a very small outlay in bananas, this man had himself a monkey who had a very quiet amiable personality. The thing was, this man could boost the monkey over transoms and through tiny windows, and when he was inside the monkey would unlock the house so the man could come in. The monkey thought he was pretty bright, and it was more fun than living in a tree. One day the trick monkey suddenly discovered that the kind banana man was... kicking the hell out of all the other monkeys... and...”

He put his fist on the counter edge and lowered his forehead until it rested against his fist. He heard the aftertones of his voice in the quiet lunchroom and knew he had gotten a little loud, somewhat shrill.

He felt Brian’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey, boy,” Bri said quietly.

Jimmy sat up. “I guess I didn’t get that one worked out yet.”

“It has possibilities. It has a plot line. It needs a kicker. You all right?”

“I’m brisk, Mr. Haas. Brisk and eager.”

“And I’ve got to go make J.J. think I am also.”

“That’s what I had on my mind, Bri. I don’t think you ought to go back there tonight. You ran into good old Jimmy. He’ll help J.J. put it to bed.”

“So we’ll both go confound him with our talent and intellect.”

“I’d just as soon you wouldn’t. Can you take it just like that? With no explanation, please? You go home to Nan. Tell her I love her.”

“I want maybe just one crumb of explanation.”

“If you go up there, there is something you might look as if you were mixed up in, and you wouldn’t be mixed up in it at all, but people might not hang around and listen to any explanations. Okay?”

“I’ve been mixed up in a lot of things.”

“This is mine.”

Brian studied him for a moment. “Just so I’ll know sometime.”

“You’ll know.”

Wing walked back to the newsroom. Borklund looked at him with weary disapproval as he listened to Wing’s story of Brian Haas’s headache. “If you’re as useful as you’ve been lately, James, it’s a damned good thing there isn’t much left to do. We aren’t holding much open.”

He worked with one eye on the clock. Finally he took an incoming call from a drunken woman and faked his end of the conversation, causing her considerable confusion. He went to Borklund and said, “I think I may have something hot, J.J. A man wants me to come down to my car in the parking lot. He wants you to listen to it too.”

“Who is he?”

“A bartender I know. He’s reliable. He says he overheard something that might give us a hell of a news break.”

“It probably won’t be worth a damn.”

“He said to be down there in three minutes. Maybe it’s something good. What’ll it cost us but a short walk?”

Borklund hesitated. “Okay, okay.”

They walked out to the parking lot. “I’m parked way over there in the corner,” Wing said. As they neared the car, he let Borklund get a step ahead of him. He looked around and saw no one.

Borklund started to turn around, saying, “There isn’t anybody...”

As he got halfway around, Jimmy Wing hit him squarely on the jaw with a short hard overhand punch. The blow opened Borklund’s mouth and staggered him back against the car, his glasses dangling from one ear. As Wing moved quickly to catch the man, Borklund grunted and lifted his fists and struck Wing weakly in the chest. Wing measured him and hit him again. Borklund started to slide sideways along the car, and caught himself. The glasses fell and splintered on the asphalt. Borklund sighed and assumed a brave John L. Sullivan stance and pawed at Jimmy with his left. Jimmy’s right hand was a throbbing lump of pain. In the shadows he could see a dark streak of blood on Borklund’s chin. He had the frantic, nightmare feeling that Borklund would never go down. He hit him again, and the shock of pain that ran up his arm made him gasp. Borklund wavered. He leaned against the car. His knees bent and slid down to a sitting position, lowered his chin onto his chest, and toppled over onto his side.

Brian Hass appeared beside Wing and said, “What the holy hell are you doing?”

Jimmy took his knuckles out of his mouth and said in an exhausted voice, “I told you to stay the hell away, old buddy.”

“You acted so damn strange I decided to come back.”

“My God, that son of a bitch can take a punch.”

“Are you out of your damn mind?”

“Shut up. You’re getting highly nervous. Here. Take this over there by the light and read it. I’ve got something to do.”

“Like what? Stomp him a little?”

Wing said with great patience, “I am going to tape his little wrists and tape his little ankles and tape a rag in his little mouth and put him in my car for a little while. So get the hell away from here before he comes out of it and thinks you’re in this thing too.”

Brian walked toward the light. Wing taped Borklund up and hoisted him in over the tail gate. Borklund seemed heavier than anyone would have guessed. Wing’s right hand was beginning to puff.

He walked slowly over and stood by Brian as he finished reading the last few lines. “Holy Jesus in the mountains!” Haas said in a soft strained voice.

“How do you like J.J.’s nice little initials on it?”

Brian looked at them. “They should pass.” He handed the sheets to Wing. “Where are you putting it?”

“Boxed on the right side of page one.”

“If it gets by Harmon and Tillerman and Crawder.”

“It will, with a nice two-column head: ‘Reporter Accuses Bliss.’ And the subhead: ‘Bay-Fill Conspiracy Charged.’ ”

“But what kind of an angle have you got, Jimmy? Where’s your protection? How much cover have you got?”

“None. Nothing. The sword of truth.”

“A sword against heavy artillery, boy. But did you have to put an assault rap on top of everything else?”

“Name another way to handle it?”

“Hell, I could have decoyed him away long enough.”

“Name another way to handle it where there’s nobody in it but me.”

Haas said slowly, “I see what you mean. But I know about it and I’m not doing anything about it, so that makes me part of it too.”

“Go home.”

“They’ll believe two of us quicker than one. Let’s go in there and spread some snow around, Mr. Wing. J.J. went home with a headache and a sore throat. We’ll snow them all, cut out some of the laudatory crud about Palmland and insert this little morsel.”

“You’ll get fired, Bri.”

“I don’t think so. They’ll have to fire you. That’ll make me more valuable. I’ll be terrible shocked when I find out you actually struck poor Mr. Borklund, and then lied to me, your good friend. Okay?”

“So let’s go.”

After it was done, they waited around and picked a couple of the first copies off the press run. Brian had phoned Nan so she wouldn’t worry. There was no one to worry about when Borklund came home.

“You better keep him,” Haas said. “Like a rare butterfly.”

Jimmy went to the car and checked and came back. “His eyes are open. He did a little thumping and grunting. I think he’s annoyed.”

“How’s your hand?”

“I have pretty dimpled knuckles. I better not turn him loose until circulation is too far along to be stopped.”

“Want to park him in front of my house for a little while?”

“I better not. I want to keep you clean.”

They stood under the streetlight on Bayou, smiling at each other. Haas said, “You were a sneaky bastard, working for Elmo, you know.”

“The job had small compensations. I got to take Buck’s girl to Tampa and put her on a plane.”

“I wondered what happened to her.”

“She made Martin Cable nervous.”

“When Eloise reads the morning paper, she’s going to be the nervous one.”

“Almost as nervous as Leroy.”

“Mr. Wing, it has been a pleasure being associated with you. In a day when the newspaper business has become about as glamorous as chicken-plucking, you have created a new legend with a nice old-timey ring to it. May I suggest that you seek your next employment in Portland, Anchorage or Honolulu, and as quickly as possible?”

“After I stay and watch what happens.”

“Don’t stay too long. I’ll say goodbye to Nan for you.”

After Haas drove off, Jimmy walked slowly to his car. He had had little sleep, but he did not feel tired. He felt stimulated and mildly reckless, a three-drink condition achieved without drinking. But at unexpected intervals a little streak of fright would flash across the back of his mind, like a penny rocket. He kept thinking of a bloody old joke about a man reputed to be very quick with a razor. Ho, ho, ho, you missed me, boy. Did I, now? Just you try turning your head. Beyond old jokes, and the little gleams of fright, and the problem of what to do with Borklund, and the ache of his bruised hand, were the tangled sensory memories of Katherine, untouched, unsorted — all the jumbled, silky tumbling of her, white long clean lines and the gasping, all untouched, unsorted, and too soon over. For a time there had been one incredible answer to everything, a solution of such curious simplicity it had been overlooked. But, almost within moments, it had become a false answer to all the wrong questions, and she came tapping back in on her tall heels, her face cool, her mouth sucked to an unforgiving tightness, to tell him that little boys who write nasty words on the blackboard lose their chance to attend the school picnic.

He turned to look toward the rear of the station wagon and said, “Borklund, old buddy, what would you like to do? We’re too late for the bars. They closed at two. We lost our chance to pick up a couple of girls. About the only thing to do is ride around. Okay with you? Fine. We’ll just ride around.” Borklund made a muffled growling sound and thumped with his heels on the tin deck of the wagon.

He drove aimlessly for nearly an hour, and finally parked at the small public beach at the north end of Cable Key. Two other cars were parked there, in search of love. There were hungry mosquitoes ranging the beach. He left the windows open a few inches, locked the doors on the inside, sprayed the interior of the car with the bug bomb he carried in the glove compartment, stretched out on the front seat and went to sleep. It was early daylight when he awakened. The other cars were gone.

He dropped the tail gate, hauled Borklund into a handy position and stripped the tape off. Borklund looked older and smaller, gray in the mild morning light. He sat on the tail gate, his legs dangling. His jaw was lumpy and discolored.

“Glasses,” he said in a dusty voice.

Wing got them from the glove compartment. One lens was almost opaque with a network of fine cracks. Borklund put them on. He fingered his jaw tenderly. He spat onto the compacted shell of the parking area. He stepped down and walked in a small circle, slowly, lifting his knees high, flexing his arms. He stopped in front of Jimmy and said, “I don’t want you sent to Raiford. I want you serving county time, so on the hot afternoons I can drive out and park and watch you swinging a brush hook on a county road gang.”

“You’re a hard man to put down.”

“What the hell is it all about, Wing?”

Jimmy handed him the paper. Borklund leaned against the tail gate and read it. Then he slowly rolled the paper into a small hard cylinder. He stared out at the Gulf and whapped the paper against his thigh and said, “You poor damn fool. You poor sorry ignorant damn fool.”

“Could I have gotten it in any other way?”

“No. That isn’t what I mean. You going to leave me here, or do you plan to drive me back to my car?”

“I’ll drive you in.”

Borklund got into the car. As Jimmy backed out, he said, “Who was in this with you? Haas?”

“He was there, but he didn’t know anything about you.”

“I got to get my other glasses and change my clothes and go see Mr. Killian and then go sign a complaint.”

At noon on Wednesday Jimmy parked on Center Street and walked a block and a half to the Bay Restaurant. He walked slowly in the hot sun. He had the feeling that if he looked down at the front of his clean shirt, he would be able to see his heart beating. There was a ludicrous flavor to the situation. It seemed that it had happened to him before, and then he remembered it was just a stock situation in ten thousand westerns. Ol’ Jimmy Wing, the tumbleweed kid, has come into town a-knowing the Bliss gang has swore to shoot him on sight. Play a little High Noon music while the townspeople gasp and bug their eyes and scuttle out of the line of fire.

He gave a hitch at his gun belt, narrowed his eyes, and listened to the slow jingle of his spurs. But there were tourists who didn’t scuttle, and glanced at him blankly, if at all. He went into the coolness of the lounge and stood at the bar where many members of the business community could be found at lunchtime, and had the small satisfaction of noting that he had put an abrupt end to about fifteen simultaneous conversations. When the conversations began again, they had a different character, a hushed sibilance. He ordered a drink and nodded and spoke to the ones within range.

“Hi, Les, Charlie. How you, Wade? How’re things, Will?”

The responses were guarded. They left him ample elbow room at the bar. Leroy Shannard came in at quarter after twelve, heading toward the dining room. He saw Wing and stopped abruptly and came over to him.

“I’ve been boring hell out of our mutual friend all morning, James,” Shannard said. “I keep saying to him I told you so.”

“What’s a good word for him? Disgruntled?”

“That word has always bothered me. If you’re not disgruntled, you have to be gruntled, don’t you?”

“What’s a better word for Elmo today?”

“I’d say hurt. Just plain hurt. He said if anybody was to see you, tell you he’d like a little chat with you. He should be at his office all afternoon. I guess he wants to talk to you like an uncle.”

“You seem calm and contented, Leroy.”

“I’ve had a busy morning, a right busy morning indeed, soothing some people down and chewing out other ones. I have to keep explaining how you snuck that into the paper without permission, and have been fired. Poor Eloise had hysterics over the phone after Martin left the house. Poor fellow has been adding two and two and coming up with twenty-two, but he can’t back out on the financing now without confirming all the gossip that’s going around. Darse Coombs was stamping around my office demanding we sue somebody. But, yes, I guess I’m calm and contented, James. The worst fuss is over already. It’ll be downhill from here on. Tonight in a thousand happy homes, they’ll use that paper to wrap the garbage. You’d better talk to Elmo. He’s upset about what you said about retaliation. I guess he isn’t entirely sure about what you meant, James. You’ve got no job with the paper and no job with him, and no chance of any kind of a job in Palm County. And of the people left who’ll still speak to you, there isn’t a one of them who’ll ever trust you. So he seems to feel you’ve given yourself all the retaliation one man can use.” He glanced at his watch, nodded at Jimmy and said, “Good luck, boy,” and headed for the dining room.

After lunch he went to see Sheriff Wade Illigan at his courthouse office. Wade had the mild pink face of a fat man, and a stringy, durable body. After he was seated, Wade got up and shut the door and went back to his desk.

“I was expecting to be picked up by the city police,” Jimmy said.

“Well, I heard about that, and the way I understand it, Jim, they decided against it. Borklund was for it, but Ben Killian was against it. They’ll explain just how you worked it in tomorrow’s paper, and publish it along with Elmo’s statement calling it a pack of lies.”

“Wade, we’ve known each other a long time.”

“Don’t expect much trade out of that, Jim. I’m an elected official.”

“Elmo knows how badly I’ve hurt him. Maybe nobody else realizes yet except Elmo, and me. Wade, what happens to people who hurt Elmo?”

“He doesn’t do anything without a purpose in it.”

“How about Pete Nambo? Pete is nice and tame now.”

“Maybe Elmo used to be rougher than he is now.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Not especially. What are you getting at, anyhow?”

“I might not be worth taming.”

“If there’s any laws violated in Palm County, outside the incorporated areas, I intend to do my duty.”

“Wade, damn it, I want to know what could happen!”

Illigan leaned back in his chair, and his face was still a fat man’s face, but no longer mild. “There’s a lot of people, some of them kin to Elmo, some not, thinking he’s the second coming of Jesus. He’s put a lot of meat in their mouth. They could just get the idea you’d done Elmo a hurt and he might like something done. But they wouldn’t let it point back to Elmo. It would have to be one of two things, Jim. You’d have to have some kind of innocent accident. Or else one day you’d just be packed up and gone, which would seem likely.”

“So, in either case, how close would you check it?”

“What are you trying to ask me? I’m an elected county official. I got half the budget I need. You know that. When, like they say, an aroused populace is on my tail, demanding justice, I have a hell of a lot of work to do. But with you, Jim, it’s like this. Who is going to get aroused? Just who? I grease the wheels that squeak loudest. If it looks like you left, who’s going to insist you get found? If you smoke in bed, who’s going to order an autopsy? The county coroner?”

“So... I’m out in the cold.”

“You knew that before you came in here.”

“I guess I did.”

Wade stood up, a sign that the talk was over. “I’m not saying anybody is going to even think of doing anything. I’m just saying you’re awful short on friends. You’ve got nobody here. A sister you’re not real close to. Who else? I were you, I’d leave. I surely would. You’ve wore this place out for yourself.”

“I’ll think about it, Sheriff.”

Illigan said, “Good luck, Jim.” He looked uneasy. “When I walk you out the door, I got to cuss you some and give you a little push. Don’t take it too personal.”

Jimmy Wing sat stiffly on the couch in Elmo’s office. Elmo paced slowly back and forth in front of the couch, his hands locked behind him. He sighed audibly.

“Look at it this way, Elmo,” Jimmy said. “This is the time you took too big a bite.”

Sandra Straplin sat on Elmo’s desk, swinging her beautiful legs, glowering at Jimmy. “The hell he did!” she said. “Everything was fine. Then you turned stinker. You betrayed him!”

Elmo turned toward her and said in a weary voice, “Now, you get on out of here, Sandra.”

She crossed to the door with an exaggerated swing of her sturdy hips and banged the door shut behind her.

Elmo looked toward the door. “She got all worked up. Dellie got all worked up. My oldest four kids got all upset to hell. The other two are too little to understand. I tell you, when a man has so many folks depending on him and looking up to him, he carries a heavy load. Anything happens, he feels like he was letting ever’ last one of them down. Sandra there was about the worst of all. You know you have a steady thing going with an office woman, and after a while she gets to take herself too damn serious.”

“Should I take her to Tampa and put her on an airplane?”

“Don’t you get smart-mouth with me, boy. I’ve got awful damn sick of you awful sudden. Here I am giving you the fairest offer in the world. You got a little upset and confused in your mind on account of your wife dying. You get up in the Municipal Auditorium tonight and confess you made it all up so as to help those bird lovers. You say you’re putting yourself under a doctor’s care. In return, I either get you back onto the paper, or I get you into the county somewheres at good pay.”

“For the last time, Elmo. No!”

Elmo stood and looked down at him and smiled in a sad way. “Boy, you are not only stubborn, you are right stupid.”

“So be it.”

“You could wind up tied to a tree, boy.”

“I could wind up a lot of ways.”

“Are you too dumb to be scared?”

“That must be it, Elmo.”

“The pity of it is you’re causing me no real hardship, you know? Two out of that five are going to use it as an excuse to back out of their promise to sell me the share they agreed. I can smell that already. But when the time comes, they’ll be brought around so fast it’ll put a cramp in their necks.”

“But what are you going to use the money for, Elmo?”

“I told you that once.”

“But it isn’t going to work now. You have to run against somebody, Elmo. And as soon as you start running, they’ll start talking about Palmland, and they’ll have names, dates, places and amounts. Your name will have a nice clinging little stink of corruption about it. You’ll never get the state backing in the party you’d have to have. Elmo, I’ve cut down on the size of the bites you’re going to take for the rest of your life.”

Elmo studied him somberly. “What got you hating me so much?”

“I don’t hate you at all. I think we both got trapped in a typical folk dance, Elmo. I think that every time — almost every time — a greedy little second-rater like you starts to get too big for his pants, some clown like me has to come along and cut him down. I don’t think you or I could have kept this from happening, one way or another. Without me coming along just now, I think your chance of making governor was about one in five thousand anyhow. Now it’s nothing in five thousand. I’ve drawn a line around you, Elmo. The border of Palm County. Get as big as you want to, but don’t cross the line.”

Elmo shook his head. “And the one I was most worried about was Leroy. Beats all, don’t it? Anyhow, you’re wrong. This will all die down. I just wait longer, that’s all.”

Jimmy stood up and moved a few steps toward the door and turned and looked curiously at Elmo. “Are you going to have me killed?”

“Killed! Lord God, fella, what kind of a man do you think I am? I’m a businessman who’s got into politics a little. I got a wife and six kids and another on the way. Why, if I went around having everybody killed that let me down in some little way, I’d be busy night and day. Christ, I got to tell Dellie this. She’ll laugh herself sick.”

“I’ll see you around, Elmo.”

“Well, I’ll say one thing to you. Don’t hurry back. You’ve give me just enough misery so I can get along just fine if I don’t see you again.”

Jimmy Wing arrived at the Municipal Auditorium at twenty of nine. The large parking area was almost completely filled. He parked at the farthest fringe of the lot.

“And now what?” Mitchie McClure said in a tone of bored impatience. “Christ, Jaimie, this evening is full of such dizzy excitement I don’t think I can bear it.” She was slumped in the seat beside him, the hem of her short white sheath hiked above her round solid brown knees.

He opened his door and said, “Sit tight. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She sat upright. “Oh, no! You can’t attend that clambake. Please, dear. They’d shred you.”

“I just want to listen for a couple of minutes. Outside. Wait right there.”

She caught up to him when he was fifty feet from the car. “I’m coming along to see you don’t get any dramatic ideas, lover.”

The sound was audible a long way from the auditorium. A male voice would give a long impassioned metallic garble, and then there would be a hard concerted roar of enthusiastic approval. It would die away quickly and the voice would begin again. He stopped fifty yards from the building. It was a hot and windy night, and the air was not as moist as usual. There were many city police standing near the exits. Groups of children romped and rolled and yelped on the green lawns of the auditorium. Bands of teenagers were clotted in the shadows, making their obscure jokes, tilting communal bottles.

Mitchie took hold of Jimmy’s hand and said, “Just listen to them! It makes creepy things run up and down my back. And it reminds me of something.”

“Newsreels, Mitchie? From long ago. We couldn’t understand what that voice was saying either, but they all yelled the same way.”

“Jaimie, it scares me a little.”

“It’s a mob. Mobs always believe they are brave and strong and a thousand percent right. There’s an old definition of how to find out how smart a mob is. You take the I.Q. of the most stupid person in the group, then divide that number by the number of people in the group.”

“Let’s go, hon. Please let’s go.”

As they started back toward the car there was prolonged applause and cheering, then a frailer voice and then a great flood of jeering, hissing, booing, derisive yelps.

“They’re expressing an opinion about bird lovers,” Jimmy said.

“Take me to the nearest bowl of kitchen whiskey, driver.”

At eleven they went back to Mitchie’s beach apartment. It was tidy and spotless. She put a stack of records on and turned the volume low. She pulled the draperies open so that the only light in the small room came from the reflected glow of the floodlighting around the pool area, shining through the window wall. She fixed their drinks, then changed to a brief fleecy cabana coat and came back to sit close beside him on the broad low couch facing the wide window.

“This is the Class A treatment,” she said. “This is for the very good friend of a very good friend. McClure Enterprises, a significant contribution to a vacation economy. No muttonhead conventioneers here, hon, because this is where I live.”

“Nice,” he said absently. He wondered how many drinks he’d had.

“It’s worth more than I paid for it. It’s co-op, you know. I had the sense to buy it with the settlement, and the stinking little alimony is the plus factor. I could sell it tomorrow.”

“Very nice.”

“The expensive ones stare out at the Gulf. Actually, I’d rather look at the pool.”

“Sure.”

“I like the way you keep yelping with sheer pleasure.”

“I’m sorry, Mitch. I’m a drag. That drunk at the bar, I’ve known that guy for six years, at least. I did him a pretty good favor one time. So tonight he wanted to see if he could smash my face in. He was eager. He acted as if he was doing no more than would be expected of any good citizen. And he had some things to say to you, just for being with me.”

“I didn’t learn any new words, Jaimie. And he kept repeating himself. It was very dull.”

“So who got asked to leave? Me.”

She put her glass down and turned deftly to lie across his lap, looking up at him. All he could see of her face was a pallor of her hair, a bright highlight on her eye, another highlight on a moist lip.

“Rather be there than here, huh?”

“No, Mitchie.”

“Darling, I still think you could be cheered up somewhat in a very ordinary old-fashioned way. So you should give it a small try, don’t you think?”

After several minutes she moved away from him and sighed and picked up their empty glasses. “I guess we’re down to one vice, hon.”

“I’m sorry, Mitchie, I just...”

“Jeepers, Jaimie, don’t get abject about it. At a time like this it isn’t exactly a definitive test of manhood. If I thought it was necessary to your morale, boy, I would persevere, but we’d be up to our hips in raggedy nerves. Honestly, I don’t feel at all scorned or spurned or anything. I was just making a small scorched offering anyhow.”

She carried the glasses into the kitchen and turned the light on. She hummed along with the gentle music as she pried ice cubes loose.

“Mind if I use the phone?” he called.

“Your house, your phone, your woman,” she said, and came in and turned the music off, turned the small lamp on beside the phone and went back to the kitchen.

Brian Haas answered and said, “I just came through the door, Jimmy. I didn’t note any fistfights in the audience, and I didn’t see anybody hanging from a tree when I left, so I guess you didn’t attend the festivities.”

“How did it go?”

“Like hot buttered wax, friend. First off, our Elmo gave a humble little address. He had been slandered. An irresponsible report had been published without the knowledge of his great and good friends, Mr. Ben Killian and Mr. Borklund. A retraction would be published. But, in view of the doubt it might have created in a few minds, he was abstaining from voting on the issue after the public hearing. Long, loud applause.”

“Naturally.”

“Next came the Reverend Coombs. He too had been slandered. And then he proceeded to slander all the Save Our Bayers. Slur, sneer, smear innuendo. Gist of message as follows: The soft weak do-gooders, the so-called liberals are gutting the strength of this great capitalistic God-fearing nation, and it doesn’t take any secret organization to put them down, because the common man, in his wisdom, will rise up as a multitude and smite them down. There is no place in our grrreat community for irresponsible, pleasure-seeking, Godless parasites and so on. Poor Tom got his turn next. Believe me, not one single word was audible. Same with a scared professorial type from Washington, from some national conservation group. Then Kat Hubble went up onto the stage and faced the animals. Couldn’t hear a word of that, either. My God, she is a lady. She is brave and true. That decency was like a banner in the sunlight. Then came the perfect timing. Burt Lesser scolded them for being so rude. He made his pitch. Then the golden voice of the Chamber of Commerce made a financial pitch that had them all breathing heavy. That was all. The commissioners called a short recess to determine if they would vote on it at once. They so determined. They voted yes. Gus Makelder gave a little sermon on the need for harmony, forget old differences, hand in hand into the golden future and so on and so forth. Not a peep out of the Costex people. The proponents had the sense to trim the presentation way down. With the S.O.B.’s whipped before they ever got started, there wasn’t any need for the customary parade of talent. It was hot in that auditorium, Jimmy. Hot, sweaty, noisy and a little bit dangerous. They went swarming out with some steam left to release. When the hot dry winds blow, the natives get restless anyway. So we’ve had a little flurry of alarums and arrests tonight. Fistfights, car thefts, rapes and other little evidences of high spirits.”

Mitchie handed Jimmy his drink. He said, “How are things at the zoo?”

“Your desk is empty. I’ve got your stuff in a carton in my car, and your check in my wallet. I’ll stop by your place tomorrow before I go in, okay?”

“Fine, Bri. Thanks. How does that retraction read?”

“It makes you look like a thug, a liar and a person of unsound mind. Other than that, you’ll love it. Borklund keeps staring at me the way the house cat watches the parakeet. He hates the news end. It complicates the money machine. I think he’s wondering how he can cover the local scene without using human beings. You want to stop by and use our crying towels? You sound down.”

“Thanks, no. And thanks for the report.”

Jimmy hung up and turned the phone light out. The fresh drink was tall and strong. Mitchie had reversed the stack of records. She sat at one end of the couch, wedged some of the cushions behind her, and had Jimmy stretch out. He made small changes in his position until the nape of his neck was perfectly fitted to a curve of her bare strong thigh. Her fingers were gentle, smoothing his eyebrows, stroking his hair.

“How did Brian get that terrible scar? In a war?” she asked.

“In a saloon in Kansas, from a broken bottle. No fracas. He fell on it.”

“Are they happy?”

“Huh? Nan and Bri? I guess so. Sure.”

“Jimmy?”

“I’m right here.”

“You know what the worst thing of all is? Really the worst thing of all? It’s when you do some idiot damn thing, drunk or not, and later there’s nobody you can go to and say you’re sorry. It’s when you can’t disappoint anybody. Oh, the hell with having somebody to please. The worst is having nobody to be cross with you because you let them down. If they didn’t have anything else, they’d have that.”

“I guess so.”

“Jaimie, it’s like that old problem of the tree falling in the middle of the forest. If nobody heard it, did it make any noise? If you do a wicked, evil thing, is it really wicked and evil if nobody gives a damn? Or does it just happen in a vacuum?”

“Mitch, honey, I’m not exactly up to philosophical speculation.”

“But this is heading someplace.”

“Is it?”

“It might get roundabout, but if you don’t fall asleep, you might find out how it comes out. My little girl was ten years old a week ago Tuesday.”

“Uh... Carol?”

“Thank you for remembering her name.” She leaned down and kissed him, then leaned back again. “When you’re emotionally upset, you can do yourself a hell of a bad turn, you know? I really think my lawyer was playing footsie with his lawyer. I got careless, you know. When the dust blew away, there I was with my clothes and my car, a sixteen-thousand-dollar settlement, and two hundred a month until the moment I remarry. But he had complete custody of the kid. I told myself I didn’t give a damn. He has the kid, and I am costing him less than seven dollars a day. For God’s sake, our phone bill used to run more than that! But because I got careless — because I’d stopped giving a damn — they had me in a bind, and it was sort of take the offer, or nothing. I took it and came home. I can’t see her, but they let me write to her. I write to her care of a lawyer. I guess they get together and fumigate the letter. Once a month is often enough, they’ve told me. I get formal, dutiful, polite little letters back from her. She sounds like a bright kid. When she gets to be eighteen, I guess she can decide whether to meet me face-to-face.”

“That’s a sad sort of...”

“Hold the sympathy, Jaimie,” she said, touching his lips. “I’m making no appeal on that basis. I’m just buzzed enough to be terribly stark about all this. I make an appeal on a different basis. It goes like this. I’m not happy. I accept that. I don’t expect to be. But I’m not having much fun.”

“I thought you were.”

“Now let’s get to the stark part, and take the cold appraising look at Mitchie McClure. First for the deficits. I’m a party broad, Jaimie. I’m not on call, but I’m in scads of little black books. Buster, old buddy, if you get to Palm City on this trip, I want you to look up a pal of mine named Mitchie McClure. Here’s her address. Tell her you’re my friend. She’s a lot of laughs and she’ll show you the town, and whether or not she puts out depends on you, old buddy. She’s no bum. Got the picture? Right. So there are the drinks and the dinners and the little gifties that piece out the budget. Sometimes a gift of money, tucked in a shoe or a drawer or a purse. The first few times that happened, it made me feel crawly. But we’re talking deficits, aren’t we? Okay. The girl is in the semipro league, and she drinks much too much, and she’s letting herself get too heavy.

“Now for the assets, and leave us not indulge in any vulgar puns. She is selective, which I suppose is the dreary excuse and justification of all the semipros. She is reasonably pretty, and she is getting very bored with drinking these days, and even more bored with being horizontal, resort-type recreation for good old Buster and Charlie and Jack. She’s clean, and reasonably intelligent, and she could hoe fifteen pounds of meat off those hips in a month or so, if she had reason to give a damn. And I think she has a capacity for loyalty which has never had a proper workout.”

“Where are you heading with this?”

“Shut up. Jaimie, tell me true, does it mean anything to you that you were my first and I was your first? Can you feel any... tenderness toward those two love-dazed clumsy kids, the you and me of a long long time ago, full of dreams?”

“You know it means something.”

“You know, I’m this here woman, this party broad, and I’m also the fifteen-year-old girl you used to take up into the storeroom over Getland’s boathouse, both of us breathing so hard we sounded like marathon runners. We told each other it wasn’t wrong, because we were going to spend our whole lives together.”

“We squirreled the money up there behind a beam.”

“Eighty-seven dollars it got to be. Runaway money, but Willy decided not to loan us the car. Jaimie, do you still love that girl a little bit?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you to love me. That would be a hell of a thing. Sooner or later you’d get awfully damned bitter about Buster and Charlie and Jack. But it wouldn’t hurt to love that boathouse girl. She can’t hurt either of us. You see, it was the sweetest part of my life. We invented how to make love. Nobody had ever done it before. We discovered it, and the rest of the human race couldn’t know what they were missing. Oh, Jaimie, bless you, what happened to us?”

“Sundry things, here and there. But where is this taking us?”

“Don’t be dull, hon. I’m proposing, of course. Stay right where you are! Don’t get tense. We both know you’re going to have to leave here, for the ordinary dreary reason you can’t make a living here. No. Let me finish. If I list this place at eighteen, I can move it within two days. I’ll go on the wagon. We’ll trade in our two exhausted little cars on something big and new and sexy, winnow our belongings down to the minimum, and take off and keep going until we find a place to try new things in. A trial escape, Jaimie. Not a marriage. My two hundred will keep coming in. So you won’t have to make a lot to keep us. Suppose we do get along. Then we can play it by ear. If we should decide we could live up to having kids, then we could see if we could start one, and then chop off my two hundred a month. You see, hon, what we’d have would be somebody to try to please, and somebody to say ‘I’m sorry’ to, and somebody to hold tight to when the nights are too black. And we start with that... that residue of tenderness from a long time ago. I think we know each other pretty well, and I think we’re both gentleman enough not to prod the other guy where it might hurt. I would try very hard to be good for you, and keep things light and fun and unpossessive, and I know you’d be good for me. And I have just one last thing to say. This didn’t just suddenly occur to me. It happened a couple of weeks ago, after I cried in the rain and came back to bed and you were gentle with me. I started thinking about it then. Since then, Gloria died and you’ve lost any reason to stay here. Jaimie, what do you think?”

He sat up and drank and settled back again. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Christ, it isn’t exactly what you’d call the chance of a lifetime. You know, though, you wouldn’t have to work for a while. You could get yourself sorted out.”

“I have to do something.”

“Yes, indeed you do. I’m neat. I make a lot of my clothes. I cook pretty well.”

“But terrible coffee.”

“I know. I know. So make your own.”

He sat up. “It isn’t every day I get propositioned.”

“It isn’t? I do. Oh, I’m sorry, hon. That’s the kind of joke I won’t make any more.”

“Mitch, I want to think about it.”

“I didn’t expect you to tear home and start packing.”

“But I do think I’ll go on home.”

“You could stay here. Please stay here, Jaimie.”

“I have to go. I couldn’t even tell you exactly why. Don’t be sore.”

“I’m not sore. It’s perfectly all right. Really. Just drive with care. I can’t afford to lose you too many times, my Jaimie.”

He stood just inside her doorway and kissed her. Barefoot, she seemed small. She tiptoed up snugly against him, her arm around his neck. Her solid weight moved him back against an angle of the wall by the door. His right hand, under her fleecy coat, traced the soft and heated planes of her back, down to the padded ledge of hip. At the end of the kiss he held her there, her lips at the base of his throat, her forehead pressing round and hard against his jaw. He looked beyond her and saw the palm fronds and the fat leaves of dwarf banana swaying violently in the inaudible wind.

“Goodnight,” she whispered and turned away from him. He let himself out. He had to cross the pool area to get to his car. He looked toward her big window from the far side of the pool, looked into the dark room. She was standing at the window. Only the pale short coat and the lesser pallor of her hair were visible.