Slam the Big Door

Eight

On Friday morning he left the house at nine before Troy was up, and while Debbie Ann was having breakfast, and drove up to see Mary. Though the peak of the tourist season had passed, the Tamiami Trail was thick with cars from Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan. The cars were dusty from travel, the rear window ledges cluttered with Kleenex boxes, fruit, seashells, coconut masks, children’s toys, yellow boxes of camera film.

As he neared Sarasota the tempo of the traffic slowed for the long, tawdry, dangerous strip of commercial slum — juice stands, beer joints, drive-ins, grubby motels, shabby sundries stores, tackle shops, shell factories, gas stations, trailer parks, basket shops — all announcing the precariousness of their existence with big cheap bright signs imploring the passerby: STOP — BUY — EAT — SHOP — CUT RATES — SALE — BARGAIN — SPECIAL. Here and there were trim, tidy, attractive operations, lost in the welter of potentially bankrupt anxiety, in the dusty flavor of a dying cut-rate carnival. Tires yelped and horns brayed indignation as people cut in and out of the lines of thirty-mile-an-hour traffic.

The road widened as he entered Sarasota. He found a marked turn through an exceedingly complicated interchange, swooped around a bay-front drive and on out over bright new bridges to St. Armands Key where the leggy brown girls walked in their short shorts, and there were a great many convertibles. He found his way to Longboat Key and drove past some vast and florid hotel ventures along the Gulf front and, just when he was wondering if he had passed Lazy Harbor, he saw the high blue and white sign ahead, with a plywood seagull balanced on one wing tip on top of it. He parked by a long low pink building, asked for Mrs. Jamison, and was told she was out by the pool. He found her in a deck chair in a white sheath swim suit that accented her tan, her long legs burnished with oil, big black sunglasses with coral frames, cigarettes close at hand, an O’Hara novel propped on her stomach.

“Pardon me, miss, but haven’t I seen you someplace before?”

“Oh, Mike!”

“I generally don’t try to pick up young girls,” he said, and moved a chair closer to hers and sat down.

“It must be this suit. I bought it Wednesday, and yesterday when I was walking over on the beach, I was whistled at, by a boy Debbie Ann’s age. It made me feel horribly smug. This suit must do something special.”

“You do something nifty to it, maybe.”

“Stop it right now, or I’ll become unbearable. What’s happening, Mike? How is Troy? Don’t you think I ought to come home?”

He told her about Troy, how he was reacting. It took a long time. She had a lot of questions. Then he told her about Jerranna and Birdy and how that had worked out.

“They sound like members of a different race,” she said wonderingly.

“Martians, maybe. I don’t know. It’s a kind of evil, Mary. Psychopathic. I saw one like him once, a younger version. Killed his parents. They wouldn’t let him have the car keys. He was indignant. Why the big fuss, he wanted to know. They wouldn’t let me have the keys. I got sore. They didn’t have any right not to gimme the keys, see? I had a date.”

“And have you ever seen anything like her?”

“Never. A lot of them almost like her, but without that something added, whatever the hell it is.”

Mary kept at him to describe Jerranna more completely. But words merely made her sound totally unattractive, and made Mary feel baffled by the whole thing.

“I’ve had a chance to think about Troy,” she said, “and about the things you told me about him. I’ve been wondering something. I want to know what you think.”

“Go ahead.”

“Could a man... a man like Troy... have such a fear of failure, which could come from a feeling of guilt, have such a great fear of failure that through some sort of reverse, compulsive thing, he forces himself to fail? In two businesses and two marriages, probably the four most important things in his life?”

“It’s a thought. It could be right. The neurotic ambitious pitcher who can’t help serving up that fat pitch, that home-run pitch.”

“Oh, Mike,” she said in a lost voice, “I don’t know what to think.”

“Maybe it was just drunk talk. Just that.” He felt a sudden unreasoning contempt for himself and for his involvement in this thing. It was unreal to be here, sweating in the sun, talking to a brown handsome woman beside a tourist pool. “We all take the big swing with amateur psychiatry. What does it mean? What do we know? So Troy is another alcoholic, and we make a big thing out of it.”

“It’s a big thing to me, Mike.”

“I shouldn’t have said it that way. Hell. It’s the alcoholic cycle, isn’t it? Build everything up so far and then tear it all to hell down and start again. But how many starts does a guy get in one lifetime?”

“I better come home, Mike. Now.”

“I don’t know. I felt sure I was being smart. He’s trying to smash everything he cares about. So if you’re out of the way, I thought... now I don’t know what I think. I feel as if I’d been meddling. Maybe an occupational disease. Come home — stay here — how important is it to you?”

She looked away from him. A little muscle moved at the corner of her jaw, and her throat looked taut. She pitched her voice so low he found himself leaning forward to hear her. “I want to say... it’s terribly important. But that’s a pose, isn’t it? Noble Mary, forgiving and understanding. My own retouched photograph of myself. It... isn’t as important as it was. It never will be, Mike. Never again. That foul woman. He went from me, to roll in filth. So I wasn’t enough. Something inadequate.” She looked directly at him, her eyes brilliant, and said abruptly, “A lot of this warm protective desire to understand the poor sick man is crap, Mike.” She banged her fist on her naked thigh. “He hurt me! He made me ashamed! He hurt me! He hurt me!”

She bent forward from the waist, face in her hands, in a quiet agony. On the other side of the pool a sheep-faced woman stared, nudged her husband, spoke secretively to him, still staring, the explosions of rapid sibilants audible across the pool. He opened his eyes solemnly and the two of them stared at Mary. There had been a slight flavor of childishness in her outbursts, a little of petulance, but it was mostly a mature woman in that special area of pain reserved, in irony, for those who know how to give.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, but did not want to make the little scene more interesting to the couple opposite them. He sat in discomfort, thinking how easy it was to hurt the good ones, how impossible to hurt the bad ones. Vulnerability, he said to himself, seeking for that epigrammatic quality, is the curse of the thinking classes.

She lifted her face, fighting for, then achieving an illusion of composure, and said in a small weary voice, “I’m so damn tired of being so stinking decent about everything. It was easier to get away from him than you know, Mike. I... snapped at the chance, with a pretty show of reluctance. The least I can do right now is be honest with myself and with you.”

“Mary, this honesty thing is tough. The pretending is so easy. There is maybe about four of me, and only one is real, so once in a while, like for character or something, I have to go down into a hole with those three other guys and lay around me with a club so I’m the only one left. But they win sometimes. How do you tell the player without a scorecard? I’ll give you this. I admire you. I’ll do it up in needlepoint. You can frame it. Like home sweet home.”

“Don’t you make me cry, darn you.”

“Okay, let’s try a change of pace. Now I’ll tell you how I’m becoming a big land merchant. They call me Mike the Dealer. I’ve got the secret of this land-development kick. You’ve got to hate trees. A tree has to offend your sense of ugliness, so you bulldoze it the hell out of there, and asphalt the whole area. Then you put up eighty-six lousy little forty-thousand-dollar houses and you’re in.”

He told her about his adventures. He made her laugh. Laughter took the agony out of her eyes, made her visibly younger. It took so long to tell that he stopped while she went and changed to a yellow sunback dress, and then he drove her to a garden restaurant where, under a pink umbrella and with the pleasant distractions of a fashion show of beach wear and a small and tender filet, he finished it. She felt sorry for Corey Haas. She told Mike he was brilliant. He told her he had known that all along, but it was difficult to get anybody to perceive it. She told him that if he was actually, seriously considering risking his money, he needed his head examined. And that had a double meaning which put shadows back behind her eyes. He said he would risk it out of greed, maybe, having always wanted to see how a millionaire felt on the inside — smug or nervous.

So, after some silence, not particularly awkward, they got back to Topic A.

“I don’t want to go back right now,” she said with a certain defiance, “even if I felt he does need me, which I don’t quite believe somehow. I need myself. I’m getting re-acquainted with Mary.”

“Then the thing to do is stay.”

“But if I stay here, it leaves it all in your hands.”

“So I’ll try to cope. No obligation. Should I sit on the beach in mourning? There is a thing you should know about. Buttons called it the Curse of Rodenska. I’ve got used to it. I can explain it this way, Mary. Suppose I was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The day before they’re going to finish me off, the warden comes to the cell. He sits down and looks at me sadly. I’m all braced for words of compassion. So he says, ‘Look, Mike, I’ve got this problem I need your advice on.’ ”

Mary laughed. “Oh, Mike, honestly—”

“Everybody does it. Should you be different? If all I had to do was lie on your beach it would make me highly nervous.”

And so, promising to keep her up to date, he took her back to Lazy Harbor and drove back on down to Riley Key. It was nearly four when he arrived. He looked across the beach before he turned into the drive and saw Troy stretched out, alone, in the sun.

He changed to swim trunks and walked down onto the beach and sat on his heels beside Troy.

“You could even be human,” he said.

Troy rolled up onto one elbow. “It took until noon today. You’ve been to see Mary? Thought so. Spare me any play-by-play, old buddy.”

“I wasn’t going to present a report, old buddy.”

“The words would be familiar. I’m tearing her heart out. I don’t deserve such a fine woman. And so on.”

“For a nearly hundred-percent bastard, Troy, you run in luck. You not only get the friendship of a sterling type like me, but you marry real good women.”

“It’s a knack. I’m a great guy. I’m a war hero.”

“About Mary, set your mind at rest, war hero.”

“How so?”

“One time a guy on our street bought a dog. The dog didn’t adore him enough. So he got a stick and beat on it, but for some reason the situation got worse. He couldn’t understand it.”

“Pull up a cracker barrel and we’ll spit on the chunk stove to hear it sizzle.”

“I’m just homespun, Troy. True blue. She’ll be back, I suppose. But it won’t be the same deal you had.”

“Something precious has been forever lost?”

Mike studied him: “You’re a great guy, Troy. You’re a prince. You need that shrinker.”

“Anybody who doesn’t agree with you is sick?”

“Let’s say you’re scared, Troy.”

The word dented Troy’s mask of bland amusement, ironic arrogance. The word twisted his mouth. Mike watched him regain control.

“Scared of what, old buddy?”

“What’s happening to you. Because you don’t know why it’s happening. Or how it’s going to end. You know it’s going to end bad. You don’t know how bad. Nobody knows how bad. So everybody’s scared, Troy.”

“I’m scared. I’m sick. I’m a mess. So I need a drink. That’s indicated, isn’t it?” Troy got up and walked toward the house. Mike stood up and watched him. Troy strolled. He ambled along, scuffing sand. But his back muscles were rigid. Very casual, Mike thought. Like a thief walking past a cop. What gutted him like a fish? Mike wondered. What hollowed out the empty man?

Mike swam. He stood, winded, in the clear water. A fish the size of his thigh, wearing a black-and-white-striped suit, swam by with slow, purposeful dignity, heading north. You got lousy taste in clothes, Mike told him. A self-made fish. So you don’t know how to dress. You buy mail-order stuff from Playboy, and all your employees snicker behind your back. Find a good tailor, buster.

Mike waded out. He prodded his belly and told himself all this swimming was making him hard and lean and dangerous. Rodenska, soldier of fortune. They all wondered who the tanned stranger was, with that look of far places in his eyes.

Wait until Buttons sees...

He turned and squinted through the water in his eyes at the fat red dying sun. Go on down, he said. Don’t bother to come up again. Stay down. It isn’t worth the trouble.

So he went back to his room, and when he shut himself into the shower stall, he sang his shower song. Not exactly a song, without much of a tune. Up half the scale — boom, boom, boom, boom — and back down — bum, bum, bum, bum. It resonated well.

The alcohol was working on Troy. Mike nursed his drinks and listened. Good old maudlin garrulousness, he thought. Paddlin’ maudlin home. Every drunk has the conviction he is unique, and all drunks are alike. A few tears for Bunny. A few lies about the war. Tears for the daughter. Tears for Mary. Some jokes, badly told. Owlish laughter. The world is down on me. Nobody cares. The bad luck I’ve had. Jesus! Bathos instead of tragedy. Alcohol loosening the mouth, dulling the eyes, causing the expansive, uncertain gesture. Paralysis of the cerebral cortex. No judgment in choice of words or thoughts. The fumbling tongue. Mike watched him. This had been the lean and deft young officer, good at love, good at killing — full of a quickness. Now the chronological age was forty, the apparent age fifty. A pulpy drunk, bragging now of many conquests, some of them obviously imaginary.

When does life end?

Shirley and Debbie Ann arrived at eight. They were both in shorts and sandals and sleeveless blouses — Shirley in dark green Bermudas with a white-and-green-striped blouse and golden sandals — Debbie Ann in off-white shorts and a black blouse and red sandals. They had been to a large and informal cocktail party down the beach. They stood just inside a cone of light, both of a height, a dark one and a fair one, shapely, slightly flushed, close to laughter, twenty-five and twenty-three, the frosted cone of light picking up the highlights of perfect teeth and the fluids of their eyes and the fresh moistness of underlips, the slant of the light accenting the breasts hammocked in dacron, the both of them standing slightly hipshot with forward pelvic thrust and tilt.

I have been here before, Mike thought. This is an advertisement in full color. The plates cost a fortune. They have just stepped out of their convertible Spumoni in front of this Jamaican villa. Real clean women. Sixty-bucks-an-hour model fee.

But there was something a little out of key in the advertisement. These two lacked the scrubbed, vacuous sterility of ad models. They had come half-laughing out of the night, out of the hot night, slightly feral, with a moist and sensual pungency about them, their tanned roundnesses bespeaking their elemental service to the race. Toast lightly and serve with gin. He stared blandly and approvingly at the projections of breasts and narrowness of waists, at curved ripe mouths and lilting eyes, and thought, Which twin had the baby? No stranger could have told.

They both talked at once, the wee little voice of Debbie Ann alternating with Shirley’s gamin croak. “A hell of a big dull party... but with gaudy goodies, a long table full... And what is he celebrating?... Is this a party like...? Invite us, sir... I love smaller groups... Same poison, Shirl?... Let’s put on some music... The lights are lovely... Poor Troy’s got the wobblies.”

And so it became, in a somewhat limited sense, festive — with music and dancing girls. And a little later, with Shirley in a suit borrowed from Debbie Ann, swimming girls, accompanied in the small pool by Troy, while Mike located suitable ingredients and constructed a monster sandwich. The swim sobered Troy somewhat, and the girls, though they continued the martini route, seemed to maintain control — at least as much control as they had arrived with. The girls changed back to their shorts and blouses. Quieter music was stacked on the changer, and the volume turned down.

When Mike looked at his watch he was surprised to find it was a little after eleven. He had been sitting for some time in a double chaise longue affair with Shirley. They had circumspectly switched to beer. They were in a far corner of the patio, shadowed from the lights by the broad leaves of a clump of dwarf banana. He had enjoyed talking with Shirley. They had gotten off into obscure and esoteric areas of philosophy, such as why do the fattest women wear the shortest shorts, and how big can tail fins get, and could you market a cigarette that was eighty percent filter, with enough tobacco for three drags. Nothing personal, nothing weighty, nothing pretentious. No drunk talk. No flirtatious innuendos. Just a couple of people talking in the tropic night, finding it easy to make each other laugh.

So why should I feel guilty? Mike asked himself. So we are lounging here on this double deal, and those brown legs have a very sweet shape stretched out right there, ankles crossed. So she is somewhat slumped, and props her beer can on the delicate convexity of her little tummy. So with those black bangs and that pointed chin and all that mouth, she somehow keeps reminding me of a cat. (Her eyes tilt a little, no?) So she smells good and the jasmine smells loud around here. So she is thoroughly girl, and I am, as an unkind traffic cop would put it, slightly under the influence. Am I making passes? No. Am I thinking of making a pass? It is a subject for idle speculation. But there is no intent, judge. And who wouldn’t? What red-blooded American newspaper bum wouldn’t be thinking somewhat along those lines? Don’t feel guilty, Rodenska. Some days you tire me. Some days you are an old lady, indeed. Rodenska, dwell on this. The same year you found out what girls are for, she was missing her mouth with the pablum.

Troy and Debbie Ann were at the other end of the patio, beyond the pool, and they had been talking quietly and inaudibly together for a long time, and with a flavor of intensity that made Mike uneasy, though he could not guess why.

“One enchanting little deal at that big dull party, Mike,” Shirley said aimlessly, and with a slight trace of bitterness. “A very brown man of about sixty, known hereabouts, they tell me, as a tireless tennis player. He had found out what we will delicately refer to as my status. But I didn’t know his, which seems to be professional widower. Anyhow, he kept calling me ‘my dear.’ Very uncle about the whole thing, you know. He said divorce is an emotional shock. His name is Van Cly or Van Clay. Something like that. He said the dangerous time is when the knot is finally cut, and he offered a suggestion of what to do with myself. And like a damn fool, because I really thought he was being quite nice, I had to ask him what he had in mind. So he said he had a nice little motor sailer, a jewel, not too much boat for one man to handle, and he knows the Bahamas like the back of his hand, and it would give me the perfect chance to relax. We could go around the Keys or through the canal and the lake, and spend a lazy month cruising the islands. He would show me places few people ever saw. ‘It would be so good for you, my dear.’ By that time, finally, I had the picture, so I got all hopped up about the idea and said it would be wonderful, and my mother and my little boy would enjoy it just as much as I’m sure I would. And all of a sudden he got very vague about the whole thing.”

“You are a cruel girl. You spoiled all his fun. Just think, you could have been a rich man’s plaything, and when he tired of you, he’d sell you to a native chief.”

“And I’d end my years in a crib in Port Said, a pitiful, broken thing, chanting my dreary invitations to sailors of all nations. Golly, I really missed a good thing, didn’t I? I wish I could remember that old clown’s name. Troy will know. Troy? Troy.”

She swung her legs off the chaise and stood up. “Hey! They’re gone!”

Mike stood up too. “We better check the cars. That’s the one thing neither of them are capable of doing right now.”

But the wagon and the Porsche were both there. Mike took the keys out of the Porsche and pocketed them.

“Maybe they’re just walking on the beach,” Shirley said.

They went back to the patio. They looked at each other and looked away, uneasy. “Mike, we shouldn’t have left them...”

“Are they teenagers?” he demanded irritably. “Are we chaperones?”

“But...”

“I know. I know. I know. Stay right here a minute.”

He left her there and, with a little crawling of apprehension he checked the master bedroom, the other bedroom in the main house, and finally the guest wing. No locked doors. No melodramatic confrontations. He went back to Shirley, where she sat cross-legged on a poolside mattress.

“We seem to be alone at last,” he said.

“Can we be sued for libel for what we were thinking? I guess they’re just walking on the beach.”

He sat in a nearby chair. “You know her. I can only guess. What... how much would she be capable of? She’s his stepdaughter.”

“I was worried. Is that an answer?”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe it’s what he’s capable of.”

“Right now he’s trying to nasty up his life as completely as possible.”

“Oh.”

“Look. Do you like her?”

“I don’t know, Mike. I don’t trust her. She’s amusing. And we have so much in common. Like her? You know, that’s getting to be an old-timey sort of question, isn’t it? Do people go around liking each other any more? Or just enduring. I like you, Mike. But with most people — I just keep my guard up, and lower it as much as I dare. I don’t understand the things people do any more. I used to think I did. I don’t any more. I can’t put myself in their place, I guess. It’s a world full of strangers. The world’s a big cruise ship, and you don’t want to get committed too far because the cruise ends. Why should you ask me if I like her?”

“I liked Troy a long time ago. I loved him. That’s an old-timey word too, for a friendship between men. So once you love, in any way, you make a commitment. Give away a chunk of yourself. So he’s calling the debt now. I don’t like Debbie Ann. I think maybe she’s a monster. I like Mary. And you.”

“Thank you, Mike.”

“Shirley, I got left behind somewhere. I’m put together of old-timey parts. I don’t react modern. I’m still on this good-and-evil kick. Okay, it hit both of us, soon as we found they were gone, they went off to crawl in the sack. Right? So I say, on one level, worse things happen all the time, don’t they? It’s incestuous only on a legal basis, no? It’s a forty-year-old man, a twenty-three-year-old woman, unrelated. So I ask myself, why the sweat? Isn’t copulation getting about as casual as shaking hands in certain circles? Who is going to tell on them anyhow? But all that fast talk I give myself doesn’t work so good. Maybe they’re walking on the beach. Maybe not. If they’re doing what we thought they were doing, then I’m just full up to here with outraged indignation, righteous horror. A real bluenose. Because it is evil. Capital E. Rodenska is old-timey. That’s my message to you.”

“Evil,” she said thoughtfully, “not because of the act itself, but who it can hurt. Mary, mostly. That’s what evil is, hurting people.”

“Would that be your only rule? That’s pagan, isn’t it? Shouldn’t there be rules of behavior? If Mary never knows, Mary isn’t hurt. That’s the way practically anything could be justified. You have to have a rule book and a scorecard.”

“They keep changing the rules and nobody keeps track of the score any more.”

“I’m inner-directed. That’s the new-timey word for old-timey. You’re a child of your times, Shirley. So you’re outer-directed more than I am. You go most by what people think of you, and I have to go almost all the way by what I think of me. So, contemplating a deal like what we thought, I get horror, and, honestly, what do you get?”

“Not horror. It would just be... offensive to me. It would make me feel crawly, because it’s an offense against good taste. Like watching your bridge partner peek into somebody’s hand. Maybe a little more than that because it’s in an emotional area. Maybe more like being in a supermarket and watching some woman bashing her four-year-old around and shrieking at him in public. You wonder what it’s doing to her and doing to the child, basically.”

“I don’t like to think what it could do to Troy. A man who despises himself can do a lot of filthy things, Shirley. Symbols, maybe. But what if he goes too far? What if he does something that really sickens him beyond his capacity to endure it? Then what does he do?”

She yawned. “The questions are getting too hard, Gramps. You are so old and wise. And the party is over. And I am pooped. So walk me home, huh?”

“I guess I can hobble along beside you, youngster. Wheezing.”

They went out into the night. They saw the running lights of something big, far out in the Gulf. The slow and meager swell curled lazily, thumped the beach, hissed and sighed.

As they walked toward the road she said, “Tomorrow I am being taken out fishing. By uncle. We’ll be after king-fish. I hate fishing. Have you been out on Troy’s boat?”

“Not yet. I looked it over. It looks nice.”

“I haven’t been out on it either. Debbie Ann says it’s dreamy. And very, very fast. I haven’t even had a close look at it.”

He remembered later how casually he said, “Let’s go peer at it by moonlight. We can stand on the flying bridge and pretend we’re cruising the Bahamas. I’ll be showing you places nobody ever saw before.”

“And how’s your tennis?”

They cut diagonally across the raked sand of the wide yard toward the boat basin where the Skimmer III sat pallid and quiet, moored to the pilings of the dock, serene in starlight. They made little noise as they walked across the sand. As they neared the boat he heard a curious creaking, an oddly familiar yet momentarily unidentifiable sound, audible over the surf sound when they were six feet from the boat, as rhythmic as the sea sound, but considerably faster. He did not yet understand when Shirley grabbed his arm with surprising force, pulling him to a stop. She made a hissing sound. He looked down into her eyes, dark and wide in the moonlight, and then suddenly realized that the quickening sound came from the cabin aboard the Skimmer III, the surging and creaking of the nautical bunk, the strenuous, cyclic pulsations of a mating, that only rhythm in the world which is almost as old as the cadence of the seas.

As they turned away, quickly, like thieves who had been challenged in the night, and before they had reached that point a few feet away where the metronome of the flesh would be buried by the night sounds of the Gulf, full confirmation came in the thin, raw cry of a woman, so like the daytime sounds of the terns, full of pain and triumph and self-mocking.

They walked quickly to the beach and walked three hundred yards without a word to each other. Then Shirley paused and walked more slowly up the slope of the beach and sat down at a place where a storm had cut into the beach sand, leaving an abrupt two-foot miniature cliff, as comfortable as a hassock for sitting. He sat beside her. She dug cigarettes and lighter out of her straw purse, lit his cigarette and her own. She snapped the lighter, a sound like a pistol being cocked in the darkness.

“Pretty,” she said, and her tone was not pretty.

“We don’t know for sure that it was Debbie Ann and—”

“For God’s sake, Mike! Why don’t you go make a formal identification? Take their fingerprints.”

“All right. We both knew it when they took off. Suspicion confirmed. Charming girl, isn’t she?”

“And he’s a doll.”

“I have a bad feeling, Shirley. I think bad things are going to happen.”

“Have happened, don’t you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean. All I know is Mary deserves a hell of a lot better from a husband and a daughter.”

“Juicy gossip for Riley Key.”

“Are you going to spread it?”

“How would you like a smack in the mouth, Rodenska?”

“I wasn’t accusing you. Settle down. I was just wondering how it would get around.”

“It isn’t any great trick to tell about a man and a woman when you see them together in public. It always shows. People always guess. They’re either too utterly casual with each other, or too tensed-up. Mary will sense it right away. It stinks, Mike.”

“It stinks.”

She shoved the burning end of the cigarette into the sand and stood up. “Now you have a longer walk.”

“How so?”

“I was sleepy enough to go right back. But that — tender little episode has made me restless. We’re going to walk right on by the Tennysons’. Okay?”

“All the way to the Club, if you want.”

“I’m not that restless.”

“Is conversation in order?”

“I’ll let you know when it is. Mike, I am being awfully irritable. I’m sorry. Give me a little while and I’ll be all right again. Right now I feel a little sewery, as if the girl on the boat was me. Could be me. I think I’ll stop being chummy with Debbie Ann. Not all of a sudden. I’ll taper off.”

“Sound idea.”

And so they walked in silence, not as quickly as before, walking where the sand was hard-packed, past the Tennyson house and on down the long wide empty beach. The night was utterly still. Palm fronds were cut out of black metal, striped with silver along the edges from half a high-riding moon. The beach was gypsum, left over from an alpine movie of long ago, held in place by a wrought-iron Gulf that infrequently, casually, lifted and thudded against the sand.

Mike had begun to recover his composure as premonitions of disaster faded. She walked neatly and placidly beside him, their moon shadows black against white sand.

She made a small sniffling noise. When she made it again he looked at her and saw that she was walking with her head bowed, her shoulders slightly hunched.

“Hey!” he said softly and stopped.

She faced him, lifted her head reluctantly, and he saw the tear tracks on her face, rivulets of mercury.

“Hey, girl,” he said gently. Such gentleness was a mistake. It crumpled her face. It brought out of her a hollow yowl of grief and plunged her against his chest, clutching at him, sobbing and sniffling against his ear, shuddering within the circle of his heavy arms, so automatically and protectively placed around her. He heard the strangled gulpings, rasping breath, little cries of loneliness. The top of her shining black head came to the level of his eyebrows. The straw purse thudded onto the damp sand.

He made the automatic and traditional sounds of comfort. There, there. And, Now, now. And, It’s all right. There, there. Take it easy, honey, patting her slim shoulders and back with a big earnest clumsy hand, supporting, against him, most of the weight of her.

A woman is soft and fragrant. A weeping, trusting woman is compellingly appealing.

The ape thing had been crouched back there in the brush, somnolent, half-dozing, scratching its hairy chest and belly, and peering from time to time at the females of the tribe. Suddenly he selected a female, stood up on knotted bandy legs, thumped a stone fist against a bass chest, grunted and came waddling out of the brush into the clearing where the female stood, curious, half-poised for fight...

Mike Rodenska could not pinpoint the precise moment of transition. He knew only that he had been standing trying to comfort a weeping young woman, and that he had been feeling fatherly and awkward as he waited for the storm to diminish. He had been glad, he knew, when it started to diminish. But somewhere along in there, things had changed. It was a new relationship. Perhaps their mouths had come together by accident. But there it was. Her mouth upon his in a raw, warm, soft, compulsive insistence, taking eagerly the weight of his mouth. His hands, moving not in comfort but in more intricate design, readying her. Her fingers stabbing into the meat of his back. Her hips beginning to pulse against him, her breasts hard against him, his right hand sliding down to cup her haunch as that great elemental force dizzied them, beseeching them to find a place, very near, to lie down and join themselves together.

The alarm bells were all going off in the back of his mind, and there was a little man back there, very busy, running around stuffing rags between the clappers and the bells, deadening the clamor. She ripped her mouth away and made a convulsive sound and thrust so hard against his chest she pushed herself back and away, off balance, almost falling, but recovering to stand six feet away, breathing deep and hard, black hair wild across her face.

“My God, God, God!” she said, panting.

“I didn’t... I wasn’t... I didn’t mean to...”

“Oh, Mike.”

“Look. Don’t cry again. Just do that. Don’t cry.”

“I won’t cry.”

“This was just an accident that didn’t happen. Okay? Nobody’s fault.”

“I’m an accident walking around looking for a place to happen. Looking for a person to happen to. Me and Debbie Ann. Oh, Christ!”

“Feel sorry for yourself. It sounds dandy. I didn’t start it. You didn’t start it. My God, would we want to? What the hell is this place tonight, a convention hotel, maybe? Listen, Shirley. Look around. Moonlight, tropic night, beach, and a couple or three drinks. You can figure that a lot of people have got carried away under much worse conditions. So who are we? Invulnerable? You broke it up. I didn’t. I knew I should, but I kept telling myself I’d get around to breaking it up in just a minute or two. Sure! Like maybe by dawn. You broke it up, so select a medal. But don’t go bleating around about being sorry for yourself, or being just like Debbie Ann.”

And suddenly, astonishingly, she was laughing. Genuine laughter. Not a trace of hysteria. He felt abused and indignant. Don’t laugh at the little bald man, honey. It ain’t polite. Then he sensed that she was laughing at both of them, and he saw how funny it was, how it was funny in a very special way, so he laughed too, and it felt good to laugh. As they walked back toward the Tennyson house the laughter kept coming back, and each time it was a little less than before, and by the time they got there it was all gone.

“What a crazy, crazy night, Mike!”

“I’ve spent quieter evenings.”

“I’d like to fall in love with you, Mike. I think I could. I don’t think it would be hard to do.”

“Don’t give it a thought. Please. I’ve got enough problems.”

“All right. I won’t fall in love with you. You know, I feel better than I have in months and months, right now. Tears and laughter. Therapy, I guess. From now on I’m going to be all right, Mike. From now on I’m not going to take myself so darn seriously.”

“It’s a sound program.”

“And I’ve been thoroughly kissed. That’s sort of a reassurance.”

“As if you needed any.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Good night, Mike. If there’s anything I can possibly do about... the mess at the Jamison house, let me know.”

“Sure. Good night, Shirley.”

He walked back alone, quite slowly, only half-aware of the beauty of the night as he did some cautious probing within himself. I kissed a pretty woman. Nothing else happened. A lot else could easily have happened. Or maybe not so easily. Who can tell? But let’s say it could have. What then? It would have put me right on Troy’s ball team, playing left field. Because I can’t feel casual about a thing like that.

All right. So I feel relieved I didn’t get into a mess. But I feel more than that. Strengthened, somehow. In a way I don’t understand. Because we laughed at ourselves? Maybe. Because I accept concern and involvement in the lives of Troy and Debbie Ann and Mary? Maybe that’s some of it. But here is what I know. Those big waves are going to continue to come at me when I’m not looking. And they’ll hurt. But tonight, somehow, I got my feet planted a little better. The waves won’t do quite as much damage. And I can feel a little sorry that they won’t. So I cannot yet look squarely at the idea of being alone, but I can look sort of sideways at it.

When he got back he took a chair off the cabaña porch and placed it on the beach, facing the Gulf. He sat there a long time. He struck up a lazy conversation with Buttons. What do you think, kiddo? I think you’re still letting people take advantage of you, Mike lamb. Leaning on you. The Curse of Rodenska. Okay, I am, but it’s something to do, and they need somebody, and I haven’t been able to do much of anything anyway. What about Shirley? What do you want me to say about her, Mike? She’s young and pretty and reasonably bright and pretty mixed-up. Don’t take her on as a problem. Take somebody on, someday, Mike, but not because you think they need you. Wait until you need them. Okay, but how about the way I all of a sudden found myself climbing all over her? I knew you were going to get around to that, Mike. What are you after, a clear conscience? Absolution? I am certainly willing to testify you’ve never been exactly backward in that department. But you won’t get any built-in excuses or forgiveness out of me. Your degree of continence is your own problem, my boy. Now that my concern is... academic, you have only yourself to live with. But I can tell you you’ve never been cheap — if that helps you any. Thanks, girl, but that wasn’t exactly what I was digging for. I know, Mike.

So he dozed there, and when he opened his eyes the world had changed. He felt a little chilly and stiff. The gray of dawn had come. He yawned, growled, fingered his chin stubble, and carted the chair back onto the porch. There was a line of red in the east. He felt totally relaxed and slightly surly, and a little bit reckless.

Reckless enough or, as he later admitted to himself, curious enough to creep up upon the Skimmer, board her with great stealth, and move forward along the side deck until he could look down into the cabin. There wasn’t enough daylight yet so that he could see distinctly. He didn’t particularly wish to see with total clarity. He looked down through the oblong of screening. They lay entangled in the bunk, a blanket across their hips. Troy snorted in his sleep. Mike could see enough of a pale scramble of limbs to know the two of them were there, but not to be able to tell which was which.

A tender scene, he thought. I will be the loving dicky bird and go gather dead leaves and cover them up.

He stepped ashore, scowling, and trudged to his room, went to bed, and fell into sleep like stepping into a mine shaft.