The Last One Left

Chapter Eleven

The wire-service stringers in Nassau, as a result of interviewing the Barths and the Hilgers, the two couples aboard that Jacksonville Chris-Craft which had taken Captain Garry Staniker off South Joulter Cay and rushed him to Nassau, were able to phone in reasonably complete accounts of the disaster in time to hit the Saturday morning newspapers.

CAPTAIN SOLE SURVIVOR IN YACHT EXPLOSION was the page-one head on the Miami Record. Raoul Kelly, eating a late lunch-counter breakfast noted that the paper had rerun a photograph an alert reporter had unearthed earlier in the week, taken at a Miami marina by a boat buff who had been far more interested in the lines of the custom cruiser than in the people aboard. It had been taken moments after the lines had been taken aboard. Staniker, at the wheel on the flying bridge, was half turned, backing the Muñeca out of the slip. Mr. Bixby Kayd, looking enormous in swim trunks and a terry beach coat, and wearing big dark glasses and a baseball cap, stood on the cockpit deck, leaning over the rail, fending off a piling with a big hand. Roger stood near the bow rail, making up a line. Carolyn Kayd — and few news reports failed to mention she had been first runner-up in the Miss Texas contest four years ago — lay supine on a beach towel spread on the trunk cabin roof, one knee hiked up, the briefness of her bikini and the camera angle giving more than ample reason for the approval registered by the contest judges. The little dark daughter, Stella, was up on the flying bridge standing by Staniker, looking back as he was. Just visible toward the stern, beyond Stella’s father, was the boat guest, Leila Boylston, a very trim and pretty young lady, making up one of the stern lines. Only Mary Jane Staniker was missing, and could be presumed to be below engaged in housekeeping duties. On an inside page Raoul found a simplified map of the central portion of the Bahamas, showing New Providence, the Berry Islands, and the Joulter Cays at the north end of Andros. The artist had marked a spot to the right of the Joulter Cays with a tiny symbol of a boat with little streaks erupting from it to indicate explosion.

Raoul read the whole account carefully, ordered more coffee and read it through again. Staniker’s condition was fair. He had some bad burns. He was in Princess Margaret Hospital, and had been unable as yet to confirm what he had told the Jacksonville couples after being rescued.

One small detail bothered him. It said that prior to their being employed a month ago by Bixby Kayd, Staniker and his wife had operated Parker’s Marina south of Tahiti Beach on Biscayne Bay. He had learned from Francisca that Captain Staniker, Crissy Harkinson’s frequent visitor, had been working somewhere not too far from Crissy’s home, but he had not known what it was. He had passed Parker’s Marina enough times to remember it as a dreary little beer-bait-boats place.

With the newspaperman’s instinct for just how much coincidence was acceptable, he felt something a little curious about the interrelationships involved. Ferris Fontaine, Crissy Harkinson, Kayd, Staniker. Staniker had been sneaking away from the drab little marina to continue his red-hot affair with the lady who had sold the Odalisque out from under him. Kayd visits Crissy in March. Why would Kayd hire somebody who apparently couldn’t locate another job as hired captain? Why couldn’t Staniker find another job? The cruiser the Senator gave Crissy had been sold in early January.

He shrugged and pushed it out of his mind. Obviously, if there was something fishy about the whole thing, any attempt to unravel it would involve ’Cisca because she was the only one who could swear to Kayd’s visit to the Harkinson woman. And what would that kind of fuss do to ’Cisca’s precarious adjustment? What would it do to her to be taken to a place full of men in uniform and asked questions?

It is, after all, gringo trouble, and none of our business, he thought. The attitude filled him with a mocking amusement. The refugee attitude. Or, more accurately, the peon syndrome. Let the rich slay each other at will. Each one is one less.

When the phone call came, a little after noon that Saturday, Crissy was on her back on a sun pad beside the sailboat tethered in the boat basin below her house. She had folded and tucked her bikini to the smallest possible dimensions, and she held her face upturned, the sun glowing oven-red through her eyelids, her face and body oiled, trickles of sweat diluting the oil. Francisca came pattering down the stone steps to say a newspaper was on the telephone.

It was a call she had expected, and to give herself time to go over probable questions and answers, she told Francisca to tell the man to phone back in twenty minutes. When he called again she had showered and just gotten into a robe. She took it on the bedroom extension, stretching diagonally across the large low bed, prone, propped on her elbows.

“Weldon, on the Record, Miz Harkinson. This Captain Garry Staniker, have I got it right that he worked for you?”

“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Weldon.”

“And the name of your boat was the Odalisque. Right? What was the size of it?”

“Not very large. It was a thirty-four foot Hatteras. Why are you asking me this, please?”

“Well, I guess you know he’s been found and...”

“Yes. It must have been a terrible thing.”

“The reason for the questions, there’s going to be some kind of investigation, find out if it was his fault. What we’re doing is trying to get the jump on it, trace him back a ways, see if people he worked for thought he was a good captain. How long did he work for you?”

“I guess you could say two and a half years, approximately. Nearer three. A little less than a year ago I put the boat on the market. I wasn’t using it very much, and the expense of the insurance and maintenance and dockage and fuel and the captain’s salary was just too much. When I put it on the market last April I paid him through May. I gave him excellent recommendations, but I guess jobs like that aren’t easy to find. Anyway, I kept reducing my asking price until the boat was sold last January. I got about half what I expected.”

“How did you happen to hire Staniker?”

“Actually a friend found him for me. The Captain had been operating a boat for a company my friend had an interest in, and they had decided to sell the boat.”

“Do you mind telling me who this friend was?”

“If I don’t tell you, I suppose you could find out easily enough. It was State Senator Ferris Fontaine. I’m afraid if you print this people might misinterpret it. I had an arrangement with the Senator whereby he had the use of the Odalisque and her captain whenever he wanted, letting me know in advance, of course. And he contributed to the upkeep. That’s why, a few months after the Senator passed away, I decided the Odalisque was costing too much for the number of times I was using it.”

“Were you satisfied with the job Staniker did?”

“Oh yes. He kept her in very good condition, ready to go on a moment’s notice.”

“Did he ever get into trouble with the boat?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, damage it in any way while running it.”

“There was just one little insurance claim. He went aground with the Senator and a party aboard up near Stuart, coming out of the St. Lucie Canal and heading out through the pass into the Atlantic. But I understand that is very tricky water up there, and the sand bars keep shifting. He ran aground at slow speed right in the Channel and bent a shaft and a wheel.”

“Did he drink while running your boat?”

“Sometimes when we went deep sea fishing and it was very hot, he’d drink some cans of cold beer. Nothing more than that as far as I know.”

“How about safety precautions?”

“The Odalisque was powered by gasoline engines, and he was always very careful about gassing up, always opening the hatches and turning on the blowers and being very firm with anybody who forgot and took out a cigarette. And he had a bilge sniffer installed when I first got the boat, with a warning buzzer. We passed the Coast Guard inspections without any trouble.”

“Then you were perfectly willing to give him a good recommendation when he was looking for another position?”

“Yes indeed. I gave him a letter, to whom it may concern, when he went on half pay, saying he had worked for me for such and such a period of time, and I was selling my boat, and I would be happy to answer any questions any prospective employer cared to ask about him.”

“Did many ask?”

“I think there were six or seven. I praised Captain Staniker to the skies, but I guess the jobs just never materialized. When I had to put him on half pay, Mrs. Staniker found a job at a little marina to make ends meet.”

“Did you keep track of how he was making out after your cruiser was sold, Mrs. Harkinson?”

After a careful moment of hesitation, she said, “I would say that I was kept better informed than I cared to be, Mr. Weldon. When he couldn’t find anything and began to lose his confidence, he seemed to begin to feel that I had some sort of responsibility to find him something better than working in that little boat-rental place. So he would stop by and tell me his problems. I felt too sorry for him to tell him to stop bothering me.”

“Did Mr. Kayd check with you before hiring him?”

“No, he didn’t. But I believe that Mr. Kayd was a friend of the Senator, and I think they had some mutual business interests. I didn’t know Mr. Kayd personally, but there is certainly a good chance he could have gone cruising on the Odalisque with one of the groups Senator Fontaine would take out, and he certainly could have talked to Garry Staniker and liked him, and found out that Garry ran a charter ketch all over the Bahamas for five years. And he would realize that Senator Fontaine would not — well, I guess you know the facts of political life, Mr. Weldon.”

“I see what you mean, sure. A boat is a good place to have a quiet little conference. Fontaine would have known Staniker was loyal and discreet when he recommended you take him on, and known he was competent. That should have been good enough for Kayd. Did Staniker tell you he’d landed a job?”

“He called up to tell me. He was very pleased and excited. He said it was a marvelous cruiser and fine people. But in the next breath he was complaining about it being a temporary job, perhaps six weeks, a little more or a little less. He said his wife was worried about giving up their job of operating the marina to take a temporary job, and he said that even though it was very good pay, maybe she was right. I told him that he should do the most marvelous job he could, and there was the chance Mr. Kayd might keep them on permanently, and without any children to tie them down, there was no reason they couldn’t take the Muñeca back to Texas. And even if Mr. Kayd didn’t want a permanent couple aboard, certainly he might recommend them to some of his Texas friends with yachts. It seemed to cheer him up. Frankly, it was a relief to me to know he’d found something, and he wouldn’t be heckling me for a while.”

“You read the story of what Staniker told those people, about the way it happened. You seem to know boats pretty well.”

“Not really. I only had that one cruiser, and I don’t think I’d want another one. They’re too much expense and responsibility. I’ve been learning to sail lately, and loving it.”

“When you read that account, Mrs. Harkinson, did you feel Staniker had maybe pulled a bad goof?”

“Not at all. It’s sort of natural to turn things on when you’re running. Blowers and bilge pumps and so on. And with that boat being diesel powered, and with a switch up on the fly bridge to turn on the generator and bring the other bank of batteries up, I’d think it would be a normal thing for anyone to just switch the generator on. A good captain tries to make everything as comfortable as he can for the owner and the passengers, so he would be thinking of the noise the generator would make if he had to run it at an anchorage after he’d set the hooks. Cruisers are very complex things, and there’s an old saying that no single thing ever goes wrong. It’s always three things going wrong at the same time. Things go wrong that you can’t anticipate. Like when the Sea Room blew up last year.”

“Something about bottled propane?”

“They finally figured out what had happened. That woman had found a piece of brain coral on the beach, worn almost round, and she put it in a saucer on top of a cupboard in the galley. When they came in through the pass the boat rolled and the hunk of coral fell and hit the copper tubing to the galley stove just right, and the gas leaked out and being heavier than air, filtered right down into the bilge, and when there was enough of it to ignite, that poor woman happened to be sitting on the cockpit hatch cover, and it broke her back and threw her into the sea.”

“I gather you think they’ll clear Staniker.”

“I think any other action would be terribly unfair.”

“There’s one thing for sure. Nobody is going to get a look at what’s left of the Muñeca. She’s a couple of thousand feet down. I’m grateful to you for giving me so much of your time, and being so frank and helpful, Mrs. Harkinson. It’ll give us a good chance to do a report in depth when we cover the investigation, and I’ll make sure there isn’t any wording in it that might embarrass you in any way.”

“I’ll be very grateful, Mr. Weldon. It certainly is getting an awful lot of publicity, isn’t it?”

“These things depend on the ingredients. Texas millionaire, young beauty-contest wife, crippled daughter, pretty young guest, luxurious cruise in the tropic isles, and pow! And the captain is the only one left. How long the media keeps leaning on it will depend on how soon something else comes along with juicy ingredients. Thanks again, and if I come up with a question I forgot to ask, can I get back to you?”

“Of course. It’s been nice talking to you.”

She reached and replaced the pink Princess phone on the cradle in the recess built into the headboard. It had gone well. And now if Garry was only playing his role just as it had been planned.

She remembered drilling one thing into him. “You are going to be stunned, sweetheart. Shocked and stunned. You’ll have lost a boatload of people, including your own dear Mary Jane. So slow yourself down. You won’t be tracking well. You won’t seem to hear some of the questions. Give yourself lots of time to answer. If you let anybody trick you, it could be my neck too.”

“You’re so right, baby.”

“And when the time and place is right, do it, and don’t let yourself stop or think until that part of it is all over, and then for what happens next, keep thinking every minute!”

“Stop worrying!”

“Go over it for me now, every little thing.”

“Again? For God’s sake, Crissy!”

“Again, yes. And again and again and again. Lover, this means clover forever. This is big casino. Every chance you’ve had, somebody or something has messed you up. A man like you! Who should have had the whole ball of wax. You’re due, Garry!”

It was strange how gradually it had dawned upon her that Staniker could be turned into a weapon, and used. When Fer had told her he had hired a captain to go with the gift cruiser, and they had gone to give her her first look at it and take the first short shakedown cruise, she had been startled and slightly amused at the Senator’s selection of a captain. Garry Staniker was a familiar type, one of those big, easy-moving, outdoor studs, in fact almost a caricature of the breed. Big brown craggy face, an acre of shoulders, bulging wads and pads of muscle, boyish lock of brown hair to fall across the seamed forehead, dimming tattoos on the powerful arms, a slim waist and even his work clothing tailored to display the power of his build. The crinkles around blue eyes had been shaped by weather and amusement. He had that lazy, half-mocking assurance of the man whose animal magnetism has given him his choice of women wherever he had roamed. And he looked at her with interest and approval, which did not displease her. It did not seem plausible that he could be so theatrically decorative and still be able to run the boat. He looked as if Central Casting had dug him up to play a bit part, a smuggler in the China Sea, a gun runner in the Indian Ocean.

But he could take the Odalisque in and out of tricky dock spaces in wind and tide with the casual competence of a taxi driver stealing a parking place. He maintained the cruiser beautifully, doing all chores not only with a tidy efficiency, but with a manner which seemed to say that he was indeed from Central Casting, but had learned the procedures aboard his own series of luxury vessels.

Ferris Fontaine obviously liked him and trusted his ability and judgment and discretion. On longer cruises Mary Jane would come along to take care of cooking, buying provisions, bunk-making, laundry. She was a plump, subdued, busy and docile little woman of about forty. Her only flaw as an employee was a somewhat uncomfortable anxiety to please. She obviously adored Staniker. He had an amiable manner toward her most of the time, the gentle, condescending attitude one might have toward a house dog one is used to and fond of. When displeased with her, he would put an edge in his voice which would make her jump as if stung by a lash. Crissy, by getting Mary Jane to talk a few times, learned that when they were married Garry had just gotten out of the Navy, and she was working as a waitress in San Diego. It had been mostly her savings they had used for the payment on the Bahamian ketch. After two stillborn babies and a series of miscarriages, her tubes had been tied for reasons of health. She said she often felt homesick for the Bahamas. It had been hard work. But so lovely. From little nuances when Crissy was able to get her to talk about her husband, she could guess at the emotional adjustment Mary Jane had achieved. Her rationalization was that women threw themselves at her husband, and men were often weak and did not have very good sense about women.

On cruises, sunning herself, Crissy often felt Staniker’s eyes upon her. She wondered what sort of approach he would make. She intended to fend it off with vivid directness. Finally she tested him by having him take her, alone, down the Waterway, inside the Florida Keys and anchor overnight in the seclusion of protected Tarpon Bay. Not only did he make no move, but the situation seemed to unnerve him. She made him join her for a nightcap out on the stern deck while the Odalisque swung at anchor in the moonlight, and got him talking enough to confirm her growing suspicion that he was not going to take any chance which might lose him the job. It paid five hundred a month. His small triumphs seemed to be all in the past. He had some vague conviction things would get better, but he was frightened by any idea they might get worse. Studying him the next day she saw more clearly how his forty plus years were eroding his image of himself. Pucker of flesh under the chin. Slight discoloration of the whites of the eyes, a little softness bulging over the tight-drawn belt. When she was alone on the boat she poked around in the crew quarters forward and found his little bottle of hair dye, and the gummy little applicator brush. The evidences were plaintive. As with athletes and beach boys and beefcake movie stars, the years were nibbling away the morale by corrupting the image, and he had to convince himself that nothing had really changed, that nothing really would, ever.

After Fer’s sudden and badly timed death, and after she had failed in her clumsy effort at blackmailing Fer’s cronies, she knew she ought to sell the Odalisque as quickly as possible. The money had stopped. She had a few thousand in a checking account, and half that much in her safe in the back of the closet wall. But the money had stopped.

Yet when Staniker, obviously troubled about his own future, sought her out and said that he guessed she would be getting rid of the cruiser, she found herself staring at him in an imitation of astonishment, and heard herself saying, “Why should I sell my lovely boat, Captain?”

It gave her a sour amusement to let him believe Fer had left her enough money to live in the same style as when he was alive. She had him take her cruising alone, knowing she was wasting money because of this foolish game of impressing her own hired captain, yet reluctant to end it. For a time she sought to solve the problem by making the job so unpleasant for him he would quit. She gave him the most menial chores and complained constantly about everything he did. But he refused to let it upset him and did all she asked with that amiable tolerance of someone humoring a child or a sick person. She learned, by talking to other boat people, why Staniker endured the abuse. He had captained the Odalisque for two years and more. And it was on his record that he had lost his own vessel in the Bahamas. Without a solid and impressive reference from the owner of the Odalisque he could not hope to find another position as good.

She stopped persecuting him. Weeks passed and she felt caught in a strange lethargy. She would not look directly at her future, at the step she would eventually have to take. While she still had the money to finance the venture, she would have to go hunting, posing perhaps as the stunned and tragic widow, going alone to some likely resort area where she could find a man of years and means and loneliness, a man who would believe every detail of the history she would invent, and who would marry her.

At her age she knew marriage was far safer than any other arrangement. She had no doubt of her ability to find such a man and, having found him, capture him completely regardless of all protestations by relatives and advisors. But she would be trapped then, for good. The contract would have to be honored, because her past could not stand the close scrutiny it would receive if any divorce action was brought. And the old man, she suspected, would live forever. She had not felt trapped in her arrangement with Fer. But he had not been with her day and night. She knew she needed the sense of freedom, whether she used it or not. Her mirror told her that she was attractive, vital and exciting. Yet she knew in her heart that when her looks began to go, they would go very quickly no matter how desperate her efforts to save them. She could not settle for less than marriage, and, in marriage, for less than what Fer had planned to give her.

In her mood of listlessness, in April, three months after Fer had died, she had Staniker take the Odalisque on down to the keys. In a bemused, half-hearted way she seduced Staniker, overcoming a suspicious reluctance on his part that it might be a trap, an excuse for firing him. She had not been with a man for months, nor with a man like Staniker for years. Yet he was just as she had expected him to be, a powerful, sensuous and domineering animal, very knowing and skillful, lasting, heavily built, quickly resurgent. She matched his pace and needs, and they remained at anchor in the secluded bay for a week, using each other up, dwindling at last into that softened drowsy lethargy of the slack and emptied faces, the smudged eyes, the little sorenesses and stiffnesses of the flesh.

For a time she amused herself by seeing if she could turn his simple carnality into self-destructive infatuation. But he was an old dog who had trotted down a thousand alleys, and had learned that some of it was good and some of it was better. She knew that in their topside roles of owner and captain he was totally aware of her as Crissy Harkinson. But down in all the tumble of the broad bunk in the master stateroom, he was aware only of Female, of her as an anonymous volunteer in an ancient army, a familiar ritual of arms, heat, gasping, holding and bursting, varying from all the others in such minor detail of skill, endurance, demands and size he was not aware of any difference at all, and aware only of himself after all.

The episode made it seem pointless to continue any pretense with Garry Staniker. On the way back up Biscayne Bay she told him she had to get rid of the Odalisque, that she couldn’t afford it, or him, and she was going to take her personal belongings off it and turn it over to a broker. She said she would pay him through the month of May. The abruptness of it soured him, but she saw him work to bring his temper under control and guessed he had remembered the recommendation he would need from her.

Three days later he stopped at her house to pick up the promised letter. She was irritated at the broker’s pessimism. He had said, “It’s a good make and a good year. It’s in good shape. Two months ago, if you’d brought it in then, I could have moved it in maybe a week. But now — I don’t know. Things might not perk up until the season starts again. It’s hard to say. And you’re asking top dollar on it, you know.”

“I checked around. I looked at what they’re asking for boats like mine.”

He had shrugged. “Sure. They’re asking that. And the boats are right there waiting for a customer, right? I’ll do the best I can.”

She was further displeased to learn she would have to pay a monthly fee covering dockage, insurance and maintenance. It was considerably less than her costs had been, but she had not realized there would be any expense at all.

Her mood was not improved when Francisca woke her from a nap to tell her Staniker was in the living room. She had forgotten to write the promised letter. She went out and said, “Come back tomorrow, will you?”

“But I need it now, Crissy. Please. I can wait. You take your time. I’ll wait right here. Okay?”

She went back to her bedroom desk and started to write the To Whom it May Concern letter. After writing a paragraph she stopped, tore it up and took a fresh sheet of her note paper.

“Should anyone wish to know the reason why Captain Garry Staniker is no longer employed by me, I shall be happy to explain it over the telephone.” She wrote her phone number and signed her name. She took it to him and, smiling, handed it to him. He started to thank her, then stopped in the middle of a word.

“What kind of a letter is this?”

“You can read, Captain. It’s the very best kind.”

“But the way it sounds...”

“But it’s so much more personal than a letter, Garry. Really! I’m not good at letters. But when someone phones me about you, I can give you all kinds of marvelous recommendations.”

He was dubious and suspicious, but he had no choice but to accept her way of doing it. An elderly man phoned her at noon the next day and put his wife on an extension so they could both talk to her. They started off quite enthusiastic about Garry Staniker. But at the end the life had gone from their voices, and she knew they would not hire him. Yet she could have repeated every word she had said and Staniker would have approved. What he could not know was the timing and the intonation.

“Did you ever have any problem about drinking on the job, Mrs. Harkinson?”

“... No?” The long pause then a thoughtful No with a slight question. “No. None at all. I would say... no problem at all.” Very emphatic, yet with another curious pause.

The game amused her. After she hung up she had a fleeting sense of mild guilt, but she shrugged it off. Let Garry sweat it out too. This was the year for it. The Senator was gone, and the party was over. Why should anybody land on their feet? Mary Jane Staniker had found a job at Parker’s Marina. It wasn’t as though Garry would have to stop eating.

When she came back from a shopping trip in the late afternoon he was waiting for her, pacing up and down the terrace.

“What did you tell the McMurdies?”

“Don’t yell at me, Garry. It annoys me.”

“It annoys you!” She carried her packages into the bedroom, and he followed her in, talking all the way. She dropped the packages onto the chaise and turned to him and said, “Did I ask you to come in here, Captain?”

“Crissy. Please! They were okay, and then they phoned you, and then they said they’d let me know. But I could tell it was off. Damn it, that was a good job. If you put the knife in me, I’ve got to know why. And I’ve got to know what I have to do so you won’t do it the next time.”

“What’s the matter with you? Every single word I said about you was a top recommendation. Why should I do anything else?”

He sat on the straight chair by her desk and shook his head dolefully. “I don’t get it. I don’t know what turned them off then. What you have to understand, it’s a time thing. There are more guys with the papers than there are owners who want a hired crew. You come off one job, that’s when you have to move into the next one. You try to line something up, and the owner finds out you’ve been on the beach two or three months, he thinks you’re a clown. I thought — you were sore at me for something I’d done or didn’t do. Look, could you give me a regular letter? Please?”

“Okay,” she said. “Sure, Garry.” She went slowly toward him, feeling a quickening of herself which grew more immediate with each step. She knew it was not a specific desire for a specific individual named Garry Staniker. It was a way to turn off all thought. He was a hiding place. He had the weight and skill and enough special knowledge of her ways and wants to turn the world off, and out of his anxiety would come a doggy earnestness to please. Then sleep would be deep. She had not been sleeping well.

When the next prospective employer phoned her she was prepared to recommend Staniker highly, but the man who phoned was the personnel manager of an electronics firm which owned a corporation boat, and in a most contentious and irritating way he cross-examined her over each answer she gave. “How do you know that?” “What makes you think he’s competent in that area?”

She said, “Little man, you seem confused. I’m not applying for a job.”

“It’s my job to double check these things, Mrs. Harkinson. Please don’t tell me how to do my job. When the safety of the executives of this corporation is involved...”

His voice faded as she reached and dropped the phone back onto the cradle.

Through the hot months she lazed and drifted in a self-indulgent stupor, baking herself in the sun, getting fuzzy on the midday drinks, taking long naps in the cool darkened bedroom, watching much television in the evenings. She told herself that she could not really make any plans until the cruiser was sold. The money was going. She knew she ought to get rid of Francisca, perhaps try to rent the house, make an effort to get a good price for the jewelry she had left. But she would push those thoughts aside, stretch and yawn and shout for Francisca to bring her a drink.

Several times through the hot months and into the coolness of the beginning of a new season, she became aware of the dangerous softness and heaviness of her body. Then she would spend days in the disciplines of exercise, diet, abstinence. She would try on everything she owned and leave the bedroom and dressing room heaped with clothing for Francisca to put away.

Staniker had gone to work at the marina where his Mary Jane worked. The man who had been working there had been caught pocketing some of the boat-rental money. The marina was not far away. There were no set hours when he had to be there. He and Mary Jane lived in a cottage on the marina property. Staniker stopped by to see Crissy quite often, arriving in his old car or in one of the rental outboards. He complained constantly. He said he was looking for better work all the time. Yet when she asked specific questions, he became vague and evasive.

They would drink together. Sometimes they would go to bed. They quarreled often. She had lost a measure of control over him when he realized she was no longer capable of helping him find a job. Sometimes he became ugly when he drank too much, and a few times he struck her and hurt her. At those times he told her she was his bad luck. She had spoiled everything for him forever. For a time she could not understand why, after she would become so angry with him she would tell him never to come back, he would make such humble and earnest efforts to regain her favor.

She realized one day that she was a necessary part of his status, of the fiction he made of himself. As long as he could come without invitation to this beautiful and isolated house where lived the attractive blonde ex-mistress of an influential man, and drink her liquor, be brought food by her maid, swim in her pool, pull her into bed, then he was maintaining one final contact with the golden world of yachts and ports and parties, and the inner image of the bronzed captain on the fly bridge, nodding down with amiable and knowing grin at the banquet of girls spread sun-struck on the foredeck.

So long as this relationship could be maintained, he could pretend that the dreary little beer, bait, outboard rental marina was but a temporary setback in the shining career of youthful Garry Staniker. And she could guess that, for the sake of his self-esteem, he would by nod, wink, nudge, veiled phrase, let the people know that Staniker had a good thing going.

In January the Odalisque was sold. She had cut the asking price several times. The offer she accepted was still lower. The expenses of sale were heavy. And there were bills to pay out of the cash she received, including back pay for Francisca. The amount she had left was frighteningly small.

Still she could not seem to stir herself to change anything. There was still the house itself. Prime waterfront. It would sell for a good amount of cash. She did not try to find out how much. She did not want to think in exact terms, because if she knew how much, then she would begin to work out how long it would last her.

In sleep she began to dream quite often of old times, before she had met Fer Fontaine. It was a life where you were told what you would do and where you would be. Punishment was brutal and immediate. She would awaken from such dreams with a curious sense of regret and nostalgia. It had not been a mode of life she had sought, or even realized what currents of chance had drifted her into it. She had told herself it was something she was doing for a little while. But the little while had been years.

And then, as if awakening from another kind of sleep, she came out of the long lethargy of waiting on that last day of March when Bixby Kayd came to see her. He had been at the house several times when Fer was alive, when a small group of men were quietly buying up raw land, marl deposits, gravel pits and central mix plants along the route for a big new highway later to be announced officially by the State Road Board. As a familiar index of the man’s importance, Crissy knew he had also gone on some of the Senator’s little cruises aboard the Odalisque, those cruises which would include the more special members of the larger group, the ones capable of making those special arrangements which would make their share a little richer than the shares the smaller fry would get.

Bix had phoned her and arrived a half hour later in a rental limousine. He sat in an armchair, facing her, in the living room beside her slate fireplace — a big, brown, beaming man with a loud jocular voice, custom-tailored suit in western style in sand-colored twill, elaborate stitching of boots, pale stetson on the floor beside his chair, the bourbon on ice she had fixed him looking dwarfed by the size of his hand. His hair, with the light behind him, was a sandy stubble a quarter inch long covering those places on his big skull which had not gone bald.

Francisca, as she had requested, brought in the tray of small crackers, the spiced cheese melted and hot atop them, slightly brown by the broiler flame, passed them, put the tray down within Mr. Kayd’s reach.

It was a time of mutual appraisal, as Kayd offered belated sympathies about the Senator, said how pleased he was to find her still living here, had phoned on the off chance, killing time between the flight from the Bahamas which had brought him into Miami International and his jet flight to Houston, where his own plane and pilot would meet him to take him back home to the Valley.

She was alert to all familiar nuances in the male attitude. He had that automatic courtliness, that appreciative manner of the self-confident man who finds himself alone with an attractive woman. She considered, and dismissed, the possibility he had come to check the possibility of sampling wares he had found interesting back when Ferris Fontaine’s presence made all curiosity academic. It was not that sort of visit, nor was it a social call.

Finally he gobbled a cracker, wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, took a large swallow of his drink and, hunching forward, lowered his voice to what, for most people, would have been the normal conversational level.

“Fer Fontaine was a damn careful man, Crissy. That’s why it was a pleasure doing business with him. That and having his handshake worth anybody else’s notarized signature. That’s how I know if you were the kind that runs off at the mouth, he wouldn’t have kept you around a week, much less all the time he did keep you. And he wouldn’t have left you fixed up pretty good like this, with the house and all. So I can ask your help in a little private problem I’ve got.”

“I’ll help any way I can, Bix.”

“Fer wouldn’t have had anybody around who wasn’t solid. So the times we did business aboard that boat of his, that fella I chatted with, that captain that ran it, with the chunky little wife who could cook up a storm, they had to be just as reliable as you. For the life of me, I can’t remember his name.”

“Staniker.”

Kayd snapped his fingers. “Right! Larry? No. Garry. And is her name Jane?”

“Mary Jane.”

“I remember him telling me about knowing every foot of water in the Bahamas. Do you know if he’s still in this area? Do you think you could locate him?”

“I don’t think it would be difficult.”

He lowered his voice a little more. “When you find him, you tell him Bix Kayd wants to hire him and his wife for six weeks, maybe a little longer, starting sometime after the middle of April, to work aboard my boat for a long cruise in the Bahamas. Tell him it’s a fine boat, fifty-three foot, custom built in North Carolina, twin diesels, every extra and navigation aid you can dream up, comfortable crew quarters. Name of it is the Muñeca. Soon as I get back, we’re going to get her ready to go and take off. She’s in Brownsville, Texas, right now, and me and my boy Roger will bring her around the Gulf, and my wife and daughter will be aboard, maybe a friend of Stel’s too. Stella is my daughter. Once we get here, we’ll buy some kind of runabout and take her in tow, so we can get to places too shallow for the big boat, and so the kids will have something to horse around with, skin diving and water skiing and so on.

“Now I know that a man as good as Staniker around boats must be working for somebody, and to get loose, he’d have to locate somebody reliable to take his job while he’s with me. So when you talk to him, you tell him I’ll pay him three thousand for the six weeks, him and his wife, and if it runs longer, I’ll pay him at the same rate. You line it up for me, and I’ll phone you from New Orleans or Biloxi on the way around the Gulf, and I’ll give you a little present for your trouble, Miss Crissy.”

“You don’t have to do that! I’m glad to do it, for old time’s sake, really. But...”

“What’s bothering you?”

“You know what he’s going to say. He’s going to want to know why you’re willing to pay so much.”

She got up and took his empty glass and her own over to the drink cupboard. He remained silent and thoughtful. When she handed him his new drink he said, “My pretty little wife is itching and aching to see the Bahamas. I’ve been too busy for a vacation. Stel and Roger are my kids by my first wife. I’ve got an interest in some resort land over there. Trying to do business with some people who aren’t what you’d call eager to take the bait. You tell Staniker I might have to meet some of those people on the sly, maybe on one of the Out Islands, and offer a little sweetening their partners might not get to know about. So I’d be paying extra for I’d guess the same thing Fer wanted, a real bad memory about where we went and when we went and who might have come aboard. I remember him being bright enough to buy that.”

“I’m sure he is.”

Kayd looked troubled. “There’s one thing he doesn’t have to know. But it’s the reason I want a man Fer was willing to trust. It isn’t likely Staniker would ever have to know, but there’s always the off chance him or his Mary Jane might find out somehow that I’ve got all that sweetening aboard, a stack of it I sure wouldn’t want to risk having a pick-up captain or ship’s cook knowing about.”

“And there’s no point in letting even Staniker know about it if you can avoid it.”

He looked at her warmly and appreciatively. “Fer sure found himself a smart gal. Don’t ever tell anybody one word more than they need to know. Decided to tell you because what I want you to do, if there isn’t enough, I authorize you to boost it on up to where he’ll say yes. But not over five. I pay for what I need, but I don’t want somebody trying to guess what the traffic will bear. If you know all my reasons, you can do a better job on Staniker. Maybe, later on, if things work out right, and you’ve got the time, you could go over there to Nassau on a little vacation once in a while and do me a little favor now and then. You’d get some little presents. Enough so as to know you weren’t wasting your time.”

“Little favors?”

“A man on my payroll with some cute ideas about what he can get away with, seeing as how I’m so far away, might want to put on the brag to some pretty tourist gal who never heard of Bix Kayd. Or some old boy who didn’t land a contract to barge building materials to one of the islands I hope to buy, might tell the big-eyed tourist gal how the boy who did get the contract is making kick-backs to the builder. When I get to wondering about something I get to fretting about it. A smart, pretty woman is the best pair of ears a man can buy. I’m into a lot of things, scattered here and there. I get the big sell from these investigation firms. They want me to put in what they call a security system. Screening, lie detectors, concealed microphones, psychological tests, plant some investigators on the pay rolls. Know what they never understand? Why should I pay some outfit forty or fifty thousand a year to find out everything about what I’m doing? Who do they sell that information to? I have a few smart gals here and there. They do little favors. I make a little present. They like it, the smart ones. It’s kind of a game. And nobody knows they’ve got any connection at all with Bix Kayd. It’s a little excitement. Something different.”

He looked at his watch, gulped the remainder of his drink, put the glass down and stood up. “Don’t want to miss that flight.” He took an alligator billfold out of his inside jacket pocket, fingered ten hundreds out of what he was carrying, said, “Here. Give it to Staniker so he’ll know we’ve got a deal.”

“I hope he isn’t off somewhere on a cruise, Bix.”

“Do your best, Miss Crissy.”

She thought about it all night long. Staniker did not come by. She paced and thought and drank and nibbled at the knuckle of her thumb. She would stop and study herself in her mirrors. The excitement kept starting in the pit of her belly, coiling up through her to burst like bright rockets in her skull, dazing her. In the bright dawn she closed the draperies and went to bed to sleep heavily for several hours.

She awakened not knowing for a little time where she was. Then it came tumbling back into her head. She got up and went to the money Bix had given her. The money made it real. The money made all the rest of the money possible.

She willed Staniker to come to her. He came strolling in at four thirty in the afternoon, smelling of beer, complaining about the condition the rental skiffs had been in when they were returned. The terrace was in shade at that time of day. They sat at a table, and she fixed drinks and brought them out. She had told Francisca she would not need her. At last Staniker noticed how unresponsive she was. “Is anything wrong?” he asked. “You sore about something, Cris?”

“How’s the job hunting?”

“Something will turn up.”

“Oh, certainly. Because you make such a marvelous impression these days, Captain. Let me list your charms. You’re getting a beer belly. You missed a couple of places on your jaw when you shaved. You smell sweaty. Look at your fingernails. It’s been a year, Captain, a whole year since you ran a good boat for good pay. And downhill all the way. Haven’t you noticed?”

“What the hell, Cris!”

She leaned toward him and said with a slow and deadly emphasis. “Do you know what’s going to turn up for you? More of the same, Captain. More of just what you’ve got. Nothing. Ten years from now your Mary Jane will be working as hard as she is right now. And by then you won’t even pretend to work. You’ll hang around the marinas with the other old nothings. You’ll tell lies about the navy and about the Bahamas and about me. I’ll be somebody you used to know, Garry. Just lies, my friend. Beer and dirt and no money and fancy lies that not even the other old bums are going to believe. Starting today I think I’m going to become somebody you used to know. You never had it. I guess that’s the secret. You always looked as though you had it. You acted as though you had it. But on the inside, Garry, nothing. Nothing I need. Nothing I can use.”

“What are you trying to do to me?” he whispered.

“Me. You’re doing it to yourself. You just haven’t noticed. You’re a slob. Everything you’ve touched has turned to nothing. It’s your great talent, wouldn’t you say?”

“I had some bad luck, but...”

“Your luck is going to change? Why? Because you’re so young and competent and charming? Staniker, you are a silly, stupid, middle-aged man who puts dark goop on his gray hair and keeps forgetting to hold his belly in when he stands up.”

“Do you know what you are!”

“Go ahead. Say it. It will help me decide.”

He hesitated too long. “Decide what?”

She laughed. “It’s all pretty funny, you know. We’ve run the string out, you and me. We’re both on the long downhill ride. The big chance came along, and it’s too late for us to try to grab it. Maybe back when you had some guts left and some pride. When you still wanted things badly enough to go after them.”

“How do you know how bad I want things? What do you mean, big chance? What are you talking about?”

“You’re not hard enough, Garry. Believe me, you couldn’t carry it off. I couldn’t take the chance. Not with you. You’d mess it up somehow. And the sad part of it is that I haven’t got time to find the right man for it. A hard man. One I could trust. So instead of a big, beautiful cake, all you get is a couple of crumbs. You might as well have the crumbs. He did ask for you.”

She reached into the pocket of her slacks and took out the little packet of bills Kayd had given her. They were folded once. She flipped them onto the table. “Go ahead. Pick them up, Captain. You’ve got a job. That’s an advance on your salary.”

His big hands shook as he counted it. “A job?”

She forced a yawn. “Running a boat. What else? You aren’t able to do anything else, are you? Six weeks, or so, beginning about the middle of this month. Oh, and he wants your wife aboard too, to cook. He wants to cruise the Bahamas. He said it’s a fifty-three foot cruiser, custom built, twin diesels. He’s bringing it around the Gulf from Texas and when he gets in touch with me I’ll tell him how to get in touch with you. He’ll pay three thousand total. That’s five hundred a week for the pair of you.”

“Why does he want to pay that much?”

“He knows you. His name is Kayd. Bixby Kayd.”

Staniker looked puzzled. “I know that name — Oh, great big fella? Big voice?”

“Himself. One of Fer’s pack of old buddies. He guessed that if you didn’t know how to keep your mouth shut, Fer wouldn’t have kept you on. So the big fee includes keeping your mouth shut. That means it’s some kind of a business trip.”

“A thousand dollars!” he said in a reverent tone.

She stood up, fists in the pockets of her slacks. “So run along, Garry. Let’s pretend it’s been nice. Anything you might think I owed you, this pays it off. Right? Just stay away from me. Don’t come around any more. It would just remind me of how close I came to the jackpot.”

As she had hoped, he pleaded with her to tell him what she was talking about. She refused, chopping at his pride as savagely as she dared, sometimes making his face turn sallow under his lifelong tan. She let him follow her into her bedroom.

Finally, in a blazing imitation of anger, she said, “All right! All right! I’ll tell you, not that it is going to mean a damned thing because you’re not man enough to even recognize a chance like this. And you wouldn’t have the guts to grab it if you did. It’s too rough for you. It would take more than you’ve got. More than you’ve ever had. You see, Captain, you’ll have four and maybe five people aboard. Kayd and his second wife. His two children from his first marriage. Maybe a friend of his daughter’s. And because he was idiot enough to trust me, I guess because Fer trusted me, he told me something you’re not supposed to know. He’s going to bribe somebody in a big land deal. With cash money. And he’ll have that aboard.”

“How much?”

She had given careful thought to what figure she would tell Staniker. She knew it had to be a very substantial figure to make Kayd edgy about carrying it or having the hired captain know about it.

“Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” she said mildly. “Cash money. Bribe money. The kind nobody knows about and it can’t be traced. Forget it. You’ll never even get a look at it.”

“That much cash?” he said incredulously.

“There was twice that in this house once,” she said. “One of Fer’s deals. You know how it works with men like that. They have tax angles to think about. Anyway — you can see why there’s no point in talking to you about it.”

“It’s a lot of money, Crissy.”

“And only one way to take it. You’d have to fake a disaster, Captain. An explosion or something. They’d have to go down with the boat, every one of them, dead because you’d have to kill them. And you’d have to hide the money somewhere in the islands, in a place so safe we could leave it there for months and months. You’d be the sole survivor. You’d have to have a good story and stick to it no matter how hard they tried to trick you. And when it all quieted down, you’d have to find a way to slip over there and pick up the money and bring it back. We’d split it down the middle, my friend. If you were gutsy enough to give it a try. And then we wouldn’t go hand in hand into the sunset, Captain. We’d head in different directions. I know what kind of a life I’d buy with it.” She tilted her head. “You’d probably go somewhere where you could buy a big old crock of a seagoing motor sailer and stock it with a couple of adventurous little floozies and go to the far islands of the Pacific. You could be their big daddy, their seafaring hero type.”

She threw her head back and gave a loud jeering laugh. “You! Good God! Can you imagine a meat head like you bringing off anything like that? You’re too small time, Captain. You’d wet your pants even thinking about it. I can tell from the look on your face that the idea of killing six people is making your tummy-wummy turn over and over. Do you know the difference between you and a man? A man would remember that a lot of things can happen to people. Hell, their airplane might crash on the way back to Texas when the cruise is over. Mary Jane might slip on that dock some dark night and crack her skull on a rental boat. A man sees a chance and takes it. You know, Garry, your trouble is that you’d rather live small.”

He reached her in three strides, clopped the side of her head with a big open palm and knocked her to her hands and knees, her ear ringing. “Get off my back!” he yelled.

She looked up at him. “Get out of here. You bore me. You want to talk about it. That’s all. Just talk about it and scare yourself like a little kid at the horror movie. Go away, Chicken Staniker. Get out of here.”

At midnight she lay in darkness on her bed, aware of the invisible bulk of him beside her. He sighed and said, “It’s the only chance I’ll ever get.”

“Talk talk talk. But you won’t do it.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I...”

“Maybe you could. If you really want to. But I don’t think you want to.”

He put his arms around her and pulled her close. “If you’d stop riding me and start helping me, honey. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe I can. If we get it all planned out, maybe I can. I... I think of that much money and I feel sweaty. You know? Things have never gone right. It wasn’t my fault things didn’t work out so good. Luck evens out, maybe. A big one, to wash out all the little ones. But — what you should be doing is building me up, not tearing me down. Come on. Let’s talk more about it. Don’t fall asleep.”

Her heart bumped with an almost painful excitement as she put her arms around him and smiled into the darkness. “I don’t want to play kid games, Staniker. Not with so much at stake. Not with two hundred and twenty-five thousand apiece on one big roll of the dice. Six people. Can you do arithmetic in your head? How much apiece, baby?”

After a few moments he whispered, “Thirty-seven thousand five hundred.”

“Suppose you could go to a place and walk in and they’d hand you thirty-seven thousand five hundred, no questions asked. All you’d have to do would be take them Mary Jane’s head in a brown paper bag.”

She felt him shudder.

She lunged over and turned the lights on. She bent over him and shook him. “I have to know! If you could fix it so she wouldn’t feel a thing, could you do that? For the money I gave you today, thirty-seven times over. Could you?”

He squinted in the light. His face was sweaty. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, looked at her and looked away.

“Yes,” he said in a husky voice. “If she — wasn’t in any pain. And I wouldn’t get caught for doing it. Yes.”

She dug her nails into the slabs of muscle on his shoulders. She stared into his eyes. Barely moving her lips she said, “You know, we might be home free. We just might.”

“You — you’ve got to help out.”

“Garry, you’ll know every move. Believe me. You are going to go through it so many times that when it really happens, you won’t even have to think about it. It will be as if you were watching something happen. Trust me.”

She watched his eyes. Long long ago Phil Kerna had taught her to watch for the special signs when a player decided to back his hand to the limit. Phil could tell when they had filled on the draw. When he believed that he had the better hand, and when the player was on his left, Phil would dawdle over his bet, keep scowling eyes on his cards, clatter his chips. That was his signal to her to study the player on his left. There was a point when the decision was made, to go all the way with the hand. The jaw would firm up, throat bulge with the dry swallow, chest lift in a long, deep breath, lids droop slightly to hide the eyes. Then, out of the cone of light over the table, too far away to see any cards of course, she would uncross and recross her legs, a motion Phil could see out of the tail of his eye. And with that signal he would bet into the do-or-die type.

“Like a kid jumping off the barn, baby,” Phil would say. “Once they decide to go, they go no matter what. They don’t stop and think again when I bet into them. They just boost their bet that much.”

When she read the expression wrong, he would thrash her after the session was over. She saw it now on Staniker’s face. She saw the instant when, in his mind, it changed from speculation to resolve.

“I... I got to do it,” he said, and his heavy face looked slightly astonished at the realization there was no longer any other choice.

She got up then and went into her dressing room, so filled with a strange hard exultant glee she did not dare remain close to him for fear it would erupt into a wild laughter that would upset and confuse him. She turned on a single light on the dressing table, and paced swiftly and silently back and forth, in and out of the area of light, across the soft, resilient carpeting. She saw distorted shadows of her naked body against the pale doors of closets and wardrobes, and caught glimpses of herself in the triple mirrors, lithe and swift, stalking and turning. Her legs felt springy and tireless and sweet. She set her teeth into her thumb knuckle, made a tiny snickering sound, whirled and sat on the dressing-table bench and smiled at the three images of herself, accepting their smiles in return. She arched her back and lifted her arms, pulling the solid breasts high. And then she identified what it was she felt. It was the sense of being young. All the time since Fer had been old, old, older. It was very, very good to be young again.

Now, remembering, and sitting at the dressing table and putting on the last careful touches of makeup to create the desired impression on Oliver Akard, she gave herself a bright little nod. It disconcerted her to do such a thing without thought of plan. Lately there had been too many of these puppety little actions, too many grotesque images flickering through her mind. Time to take a tight hold, girl. A lot has been done and there is a lot to do, and when it is all over you can act as batty as you please. This was going to need all her attention. It was the first time she had seen Olly since the news of Staniker’s rescue.

“Crissy?” Oliver called softly from the bedroom. “Crissy?” She had not heard him slide the glass door open or shut it again.

“In here, darling. In the dressing room. Come here, darling.” She made her voice drag, made it sound dispirited enough to match the eyes she had so expertly smudged.

Forty minutes later the scene was developing as she had planned it. He had kept asking what was wrong, and she kept denying there was anything wrong, and finally, as he began tremblingly to couple with her, she gave a cry of despair, wrenched herself away, went in a stumbling tearful run to her bathroom and locked herself in.

When at last she came out she put on a dark robe and sat on the chaise and made him sit on the foot of the bed, ten feet away.

“I had no right to fall in love with you, Oliver. Please go now, while I’ve got the strength to send you away. Forget it happened. I don’t want to hurt you. I have to get out of your life.”

After he pleaded and demanded for a long time she said, “All right. Maybe it’s a kind of punishment. You won’t want to touch me ever again after I tell you. It will make it easier for you to go. You see, I was playing a game of pretend. I made myself believe he was never, never coming back, and so that gave me the right to something — decent.”

“He? Who?”

“Staniker, of course. Garry Staniker, that brutal bastard who somehow got to own me, Oliver. I kidded myself. I thought I could lift my head and begin to live again. I cheated myself and I cheated you. I’m so — so terribly ashamed.”

Then she told him the story of a silly woman, of a short cruise on the Odalisque, a faked breakdown, a lonely anchorage, too much to drink, of fighting him off until it seemed easier to let him have his way. The boy looked stunned and sickened. She sighed, “After that, I guess I stopped caring for a while. I’m a mature woman. I had a married life for a time. He’s a very clever sensuous brute, you know. It was purely physical, dear, not like what you and I have. But I can’t lie to you about it. I got pleasure from it. He saw to that. Finally I realized I had to get out of the trap. I tried. God knows I tried. I thought that by selling the boat I’d be rid of him. So he started coming here. I fought it. Believe me, I fought it. But he is a strange man. I think there’s something sick and wrong and dangerous about him. He’d laugh at me when I begged him to let me alone. When I irritated him too much, he’d beat me. He’s told me that no woman he’s ever had has walked out on him, and no one ever will, and that until he gets tired of me, I have no choice at all. When he comes back, Oliver, it will all be the same as it was before. There’s nothing either of us can do about it. I even tried to kill myself once, but I didn’t have the courage.”

The words bowed his strong, young shoulders, made his face pale and sweaty, gave him a nauseated look.

“You’ve been a miracle I didn’t deserve, Oliver. I should have known it couldn’t be really true, to have you make me feel so proud, and so cherished. Please leave, dear. Right now. I’ll never forget you.”

“I can’t leave you!”

“Now is the time to leave me. He’s hurt, and it will be weeks, maybe, before he comes back. His wife is gone now. I think what he’ll do is move in here with me, and there’s no way in the world I can stop him. I’m a coward, dear. He’s trained me, with those beatings. He knows all the ways to hurt.”

He came lurching to her, bungling and clumsy, to hold her and make his groaning sobs and protests, his young heart in a terrible agony and, she knew, under the agony was the sly desire to keep on having her as long as he could.

With great reluctance she at last accepted the compromise she had sought. “All right then. We’ll be selfish, Oliver. We’ll crowd our whole lifetime into whatever time there is left before he comes back. From now on we’ll pretend there isn’t any ending to us.”

He began to make brave sounds about how he would drive Staniker away from her and keep him away. “Shush, darling. Let’s not spoil the time left by talking ugliness and silliness and things that won’t happen. Just — love me. Make me forget everything but you.”

Afterward, she studied his face in his heavy sleep, in the indirect glow of the bedside light. He looked haggard, yet very young, like a child after too much carnival, tickets for every ride, the belly queasy under the weight of candied apples.

As she got up and closed the interconnecting doors so she could take her shower without awakening him, she remembered how Spook used to talk about them. Spook had acting talent and a sense of mischief and a contempt for the men she could hook. “Look, kid, what have they got? They’ve got the drearies, these sad dull little jobs and houses and wives and irritating kids. The movies and the TV people have these huge, glamorous problems, and the marks feel left out. So along with the trick I give them a little theater, like maybe my old man is a U.S. Senator and he’s spent thousands trying to find me, or I have a rare and unusual kind of blood disease I caught in Arabia. I like to cry a little. Where else are these drearies going to buy genuine romantic stuff? Put them through the wringer, kid, and you establish a nice repeat business and a little bonus on the sly to help you out with your problems.”

As she was lazily drying herself after her shower she found herself reaching further back into memory, back to one of the games of her childhood. It had been years since she had thought of it, and she did not know what had brought it to the surface just now.

Each Sunday at the Home, when they filed out of the hall after supper, there would always be a bowl of those round hard candies on the table by the door, and old Satchel-ass would be sitting behind the table watching it like an eagle. If you had a dining-hall demerit that week, you got waved on by. If not you could take one, picking it up between thumb and first finger with the other fingers curled out of the way so you could have no chance to get more than one. They were each wrapped in a twist of white waxy paper, so that the color showed through, but if you hesitated to look for a color you wanted, she’d wave you by and your chance was gone.

Some of the kids chomped theirs up as they walked out of the building, and others rolled it on their tongue to make it last a long time, and if you stuck it back in the pocket of your cheek behind your teeth, it would last practically forever. But she had always saved hers for the games of Last One Left.

About nine or ten girls was the best number, each putting in one candy, and you had to look inside the paper to be sure nobody had wrapped up one already sucked a little. You drew the hopscotch squares on the cement playground with the edge of a piece of shale, with one candy in a corner of each square, making the jumps hard enough so that on the very first time some would jump onto a line, or lose their balance when they picked up one of the pieces, and it would be weeded down until only the winner was left, and the nine or ten pieces belonged to her.

Crissy won more consistently than anyone except a tall spry skinny colored girl named Shacks. When Shacks won she would stand and whinny with crazy laughter, and go whinnying off with the candy, until finally she got on everyone’s nerves so badly Crissy and three others had cornered her in the john after lights out. It had taken a long time and a lot of effort to make her start crying, and it wasn’t until then they found out she was so damned dumb she’d thought it was Laughs One Left, and the whinnying was because she thought it was the name of the game.

Crissy remembered the pleasure of being the Last One Left, and often, after winning she would save the treasure until lights out, and then unwrap as many as six in a row, putting each one in her mouth and trying to identify the flavor, then roll them around with her tongue until all flavors blended, and finally chomp them all into sweet splinters and powder and juice, knowing that in all the nearby beds the ones still awake could hear the night feast and know what it was.