Hurricane

Chapter 2

Bunny Hollis awoke before nine in a motel on Route 19 and lay there listening to the hard roar of the rain that seemed to be increasing in force from minute to minute. He wondered what morning it was. He counted back and decided that it had to be Wednesday, October seventh. He stretched until his shoulders creaked, knuckled his eyes and sat up. There was a faint pulse of liquor behind his eyes, a sleazy taste in his mouth. He sat naked on the edge of the bed and took his pulse. Seventy-six. And no suggestion of a premature beat. Lately when he smoked too much and drank too much the premature beat would start. He had been told by a very good man that it was nothing to worry about. Just ease off when it started.

He turned and looked at his bride in the other bed. She lay sprawled as if dropped from a height, a sheaf of brown hair across her eyes. She had kicked off the single sheet in her sleep. The narrow band of white across her buttocks was ludicrous against the dark tan of her.

Betty did look better with a tan, he decided. And he had chided her into losing ten pounds. But neither tan nor weight loss was going to do very much for pale eyes that were set a little too close together, for teeth too prominent or a chin too indistinct. She was young though, and she could be amusing... and at twenty-one she was worth close to three million dollars.

He went quietly into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. He examined his face in the mirror with great care, as he did every morning. He thought the face looked about twenty-six, nine years younger than its actual age. And, as always, he wondered if he was kidding himself. It was a face in the almost traditional mold of the American athlete. Brown and blunt, with broad brow, square jaw, nose slightly flat at the bridge, gray wide-set eyes with weather wrinkles at the corner. A very short brush cut helped mask the encroaching baldness. It was a face made for grinning, for victory, for locker-room gags, for Olympic posters.

He cupped cold water in his hands and drenched his face and rubbed it vigorously, massaging it with strong lingers, paying special attention to the area under the eyes, at the corner of the mouth and under the chin. He massaged his scalp and dried his face and head and then turned and studied his body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. Athlete body to match the face. Waist still reasonably lean, though not what it once had been. Deep chest and slanting shoulders. Brown body with the crisp body hair on the legs and arms burned white by the sun. Long slim legs with the slant of power. Muscle knots in the shoulders, square strong wrists.

At least the product she was getting was adequate, he thought. Cared for. Somewhat used, but not enough to show. Years of wear left in it; enough, at least, for him to be able to fake adequately the various intensities of a honeymoon.

Three zero zero zero zero zero zero.

And heah, ladies and gentlemen, we have a little girl who represents thu-ree million dollars. Who will be the lucky man?

Bunny Hollis, of course.

Bunny, who always ran out of luck every time but the last time. Like the good old Limeys. Never win a battle and never lose a war.

A long long way from the skinny, sullen kid out in southern California who practically lived at the public courts. The skinny kid had owned a second-hand racket and an amazingly powerful forehand stroke for a twelve-year-old.

Cutler, one of the great coaches, had spotted the skinny kid, made him work at the game, made him learn the fundamentals. Cutler had talked to his family about Bunny’s future in tennis. The family hadn’t cared much one way or the other. There were six other kids. They were glad to have somebody take the responsibility for Bunny. When he was fifteen, Cutler got him a job and moved him into a room at his own club, the Carranak Club. And Bunny started to win tournaments. He learned how to hide the sullenness behind a quick, artificial smile. He was skinny and brown, tough and tireless as leather. He knocked the other kids off, and the scrapbook grew. It was a good feeling, to be treated as though you were important. Those were the best years. Fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. That was when the will to win had not been weakened — when it was stronger than the will to live.

He learned how- to handle himself off the court. And he grew bigger and the smile grew more natural and the sun-bleacheu crew cut was pale against his tan skin. He went to the big tournaments and he began to climb higher in the national ratings. Cutler went along. Then Cutler was ill with that heart business and couldn’t go along. And something happened to the will to win. It became diluted. It was diluted by too many parties and too many young girls. And by the older women and their presents of bill clips and cameras, sports jackets and theatre tickets and plane rides. And once, just once, a convertible. A yellow one.

Some of the other boys kept the will to win. And kept climbing. And somewhere along the line the papers stopped talking about Bunny Hollis as “promising.” They called him an erratic contender, with flashes of brilliance. Cutler died and there was no one to chew him out any more. On his best days he could take some of the top ones. But long sets were poison. Liquor had undermined the tireless stamina.

During the war, he was in Special Services. He gave tennis instruction to field-grade officers in a big camp in the southwest. But there was the incident involving the wife of a full colonel, and then he was sent to Assam, in north India. There he went back into serious training at a small planters’ club. He took the All-India tournament and was sent on an exhibition tour, and then it all started all over again and the regained edge was lost.

During the next two years after the war, his twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh years, his game sagged badly, his charm wore thin, and tournament invitations became more rare. He hunted around for the right slot and found it, through a friend of a female friend, and by handling himself properly during interviews, he became a pro, the tennis professional at the Oswando Club in Westchester. There were six fine indoor courts, so that it was a year-round job. He found that he liked working with kids.

His personal problems were solved when Betty Oldbern came to him to be “brushed up” on her tennis. She was nineteen and he was then thirty-three. She was heavy, shy and unattractive. She knew how to play tennis because she had been given lessons ever since she was very small. Lessons in tennis, swimming, golf, riding, dancing, fencing, conversational French, painting, sculpture, creative writing. She was the product of private schools in France and Switzerland, and Philadelphia. There had been many tutors. She did nearly everything competently, yet did nothing with either grace or style, nor pleasure. She had few friends and a great many relatives, most of them elderly. And the name was Oldbern, as in Oldbern Shipping Lines and Oldbern Chemicals and Oldbern Natural Gas.

She came to him shyly at nineteen for lessons. She was living on a generous allowance, and in two more years she would be twenty-one and on that birthday she would receive something like three millions. She had had the most sophisticated education available, yet she was almost entirely naive. She still wore her baby fat and blushed like a sunset. Within a month she was deeply and helplessly in love with him. It had not been hard to manage.

Four days after her twenty-first birthday, after two years of her devotion, Bunny made an appointment with Harrison Oldbern. Betty’s father. He did not state his business. Harrison Oldbern was on the Board of Governors of the Oswando Club — a thin, alert, tanned man — sportsman, deep water sailor, shrewd businessman.

“Sit down, Bunny. What’s on your mind? Drink? I’m afraid I can give you only about ten minutes. This is one of those days.”

“I’d like a scotch and water, thanks.”

As Oldbern mixed the drinks he said, “What’s on your mind, Bunny? Contract for next year? I think I can personally reassure you that the membership wants you to stay. You’re doing a marvelous job with the kids. In fact, we’re going to raise the ante a little. We don’t want to lose you.”

He handed Bunny his drink. Bunny looked up and smiled and said, “It isn’t anything like that. It’s just that Betty and I want to get married.”

Oldbern stared down at him incredulously. “What! Betty? She’s just a kid.”

“She’s over twenty-one, sir.”

“How old are you, Hollis?”

“Thirty-five, sir.”

Oldbern went behind his desk and sat down slowly. “What kind of nonsense are you trying to pull? What the hell is going on?”

“The usual thing, I guess. Love.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Nearly two years. But we thought it was wiser to wait until we were both sure.”

“You mean to wait until she was twenty-one.”

“It happened to come out that way.”

“Yes, it happened to come out that way. Hollis, you’re a dirty, back-stabbing thief.”

Bunny looked down at his drink. “Sorry to have you take this attitude, sir. Betty and I have been hoping there wouldn’t be too much friction.”

“You’re a tennis bum. I knew your reputation back when we hired you. I was dubious about you. I had a hunch. I guess I should have blocked it. Well, I’ll never permit this marriage.”

Bunny took long calm swallows of his drink. He shrugged. “Betty says we’re going to get married no matter what. Being twenty-one, I guess she’s her own boss on that. You can certainly try to change her mind. But if she doesn’t change it, I don’t know how you’d go about stopping it, sir.”

Oldbern waited long moments. He leaned back in his chair. “Betty is not a pretty girl. She isn’t even close to being pretty. She happens to have three million dollars.”

“She knows I won’t marry her for her money. She knows I have ideals.”

“You have as many ideals as a mink.”

“We hoped there wouldn’t be friction.”

“How do you like this? I’m going to put a firm of investigators on you. I’ll get a report on you that’ll make Betty’s eyes stand out on stalks.”

“I guess you can do that. But it won’t surprise her any. I haven’t been near another woman in two years. And I haven’t touched Betty. I’ve told her everything I can remember. I guess you couldn’t shock her much. She knows why I’ve changed. And she’s helped me work with the kids out at the club.”

“You’ve had two years to work on her, haven’t you?”

“Love can change a man.”

“How much, Hollis? How big a check do I write?”

“That wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be a gift. It would be income. And it would all fall in this year, no matter how big a check. Then there wouldn’t be much left after taxes, and I’d be out of a job. Anyway, I’m not interested in money. I’m in love with your daughter. As they say, I’m asking for her hand. She knows I’m here. That’s putting it pretty straight.” Bunny finished his drink and stood up.

Oldbern had begun to look older. “Sit down, Hollis. I want to think.”

Bunny shrugged. “I’m not a bad guy. You got to know me.”

“There isn’t anything anybody can do, is there?”

Bunny permitted himself his likable grin. “If there is, sir, I haven’t been able to think of it, and neither has my lawyer.”

“She should have done a lot better.”

“Maybe you could think about this. Maybe she’s doing as well as she can do. We’d like a small quiet wedding. Just the family.”

“When do you want it?”

“One month from tomorrow, sir.”

The capitulation was easier than Bunny had expected. He stuck his hand across the desk. Oldbern looked at it. “You did a neat job, Hollis. But I don’t have to shake your hand. There’s nothing to make me do that.”

“Suit yourself, Mr. Oldbern.”

And it had been a quiet wedding, with even the gift of the Mercedes from the bride’s father as a concession to the normal courtesies. They had driven down to Miami, with stops at Nags Head and Myrtle Beach. They had taken a boat to Havana, had flown to Nassau and then back to Miami where they had left the car...

He walked back into the bedroom. She slept in the same position as before. He looked at her with fondness. He had expected to be bored by the honeymoon, by the constant aura of adoration, by her emotional vulnerability. And he had expected to feel somewhat apologetic about her appearance when they walked into strange hotel lobbies and restaurants.

But, ever since she had become assured of his love, months before the marriage, she had made strenuous efforts to reduce. Her skin was marvelously clear and unblemished and fragrant. She was tidy as a cat. In a dark room, her brown hair would crackle, and there would be faint bluish sparks when he ran his fingers through it. During the last week at odd moments he would happen to notice her with half his mind when she moved, when she turned away from him, when she walked toward him, when she pulled herself onto a swimming float or dived into a breaking wave — and he would find her desirable. And he learned that under the shyness was a perceptive sensitivity, intelligence and ardor.

He knew he did not love her. Yet he was becoming surprisingly fond of her, of her own special quiet sense of fun. She was sure in her conviction of being loved, and she had begun to blossom for him. He knew how easily he could change all that with an angry or contemptuous word. He enjoyed the quiet feeling of power that gave him. This was a structure he had built, and one he could collapse at will.

He sat on the bed and put his hand on her waist and shook her gently. “Come on, fat lamb.”

She came blurred and drowsy from sleep and found him with her eyes and smiled and said, “Not so daggone fat. And good morning.”

“Good morning.”

Her eyes were a pale gray. He had talked her into using dark pencil on her colorless brows, into touching up the eyelashes that were like fine gold wire. Now her washed face was defenseless and too vulnerable, yet after she used make-up she would look confident and all-of-a-piece.

“In exactly two months,” she said, “according to my master plan, I shall be down to one-fifteen and I shall be wondering why I wasted all this unearthly beauty on such a weary old type.”

“Not too weary,” he said...

They got into the car and headed north in the dusky gloom of the constant rain. The sports car was built like a low, fleet, expensive boat. It squatted low on the road, thrillingly responsive. The hard wind out of the west did not make it sway. But Bunny saw the tilt and dip of the pines and palms and wondered about the hurricane. They had felt disappointed in Miami when it had veered away to the west below Cuba.

When they stopped in a roadside restaurant for a late breakfast, the few customers were all talking about the storm. An old man with the long sallow knotted face and pale narrow deep-set eyes of the cracker was saying, “They say they know where it is. I ain’t fixin’ to listen too hard to them, with their planes and charts and all. You get this here rain, and it comes right at you like you had the bar’l of a gun aimed down your gullet. Nobody knows where it is. Where do you think all them birds went? I got me all boarded up and ready, by gosh. Try to breathe thishyeer air. There ain’t enough goodness to it. You got to keep a-fillin’ your chest. That’s one sure sign.”

When they were back in the car, Betty said, “He sounded awful certain, that old man in there.”

“So let’s add a few knots and get out of here. It would have been fun in Miami, but I wouldn’t want to have to sit it out in a car.”

The gray car, gray as the rain, sped through the moist heavy air. It threw up a great spume of spray behind it. It traveled fast on Route 19. When the winds became strong enough to make the car swerve, Bunny had to slow down.