The Truth About Lorin Jones

12

THE GARDEN OF BILLIE’S bar was hedged and overhung by lush, loose-leaved tropical plants, and by strings of colored Christmas-tree bulbs just beginning to spark the lilac twilight. On a low platform under a shredding palm a man in a cowboy shirt was strumming a guitar and wailing a sad country-Western song into a microphone.

Polly chose one of the scabby white-painted metal tables near the shrubbery and far enough from the music to make conversation possible.

“Can I get you something?” a long-haired waitress asked, balancing her tray on her skinny hip.

“No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone.” Polly was thirsty; but if she ordered before he came, Revivals Construction would think her either rude or an alcoholic or both.

Around her the tables were beginning to fill; it was nearly half-past six. Maybe Revivals Construction wasn’t coming; maybe he’d decided he didn’t want to see her again after all. Polly felt cross, restless, and — very irrationally, because why should she give a damn — rejected. She picked at the blistered white paint of the table, and stared at the laughing and drinking tourists around her.

“Hi!” Revivals called, waving from the entrance to the garden.

“Hi,” Polly called back. As she watched him dodge, with considerable speed and grace, between the crowded tables, she admitted to herself that he was what most women would consider a very attractive man; tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a lot of light hair and a face almost cubist in its assemblage of elegant angles and planes.

“Sorry I’m late.” He yanked out the chair next to hers, smiling unapologetically.

“That’s all right,” Polly said.

“Never again. I’m through with those damn T-shirts.”

“You’re quitting your business?”

“Huh? Oh, no. That’s not my business; I was just minding the stall for a friend. This place okay by you?”

“Oh, sure.” Polly sat back a little. It was clear from Revivals Construction’s easy triangular smile and the way he had dragged his chair closer to hers across the gravel that he thought he’d picked her up — or, worse, that she’d picked him up. She could disabuse him of this idea, but then he might get huffy and uncooperative.

“Like the music?”

“Oh, sure,” Polly repeated, though she hadn’t been paying attention.

“That guy used to be a star up in Nashville.”

“Really?”

“Had three record albums. He’s damn good. But nobody here’s even listening to him, if you notice,” He shook his head. “Stupid bastards.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. But that’s tourists for you.” Revivals Construction shrugged, then half smiled. “Present company excepted, of course.” He set his elbow on the table and leaned toward Polly. His arm, bare almost to the shoulder under the rolled sleeve of his dark green T-shirt, was also cubist in design, its blocks of muscle and bone outlined in veined ridges. “So how’d you like the sunset?”

“Well.” Polly hesitated, but there was no point in not saying what she thought. Revivals, thank God, wasn’t somebody she had to interview, and had no connection with the New York art world or with Lorin Jones. “It really wasn’t all that great, you know. I was surprised anybody applauded.”

“Yes. But they always do. The tourists assume it’s a show put on for their benefit.”

“That’s what I thought too,” she said, surprised.

“They believe that the sun bows down before them. Literally.” He grinned and touched her wrist. “So what’re you drinking?”

“I guess I’ll have a beer,” Polly said, aware of an instinctive reaction in her arm and thinking that she’d better clarify the situation fast. “What I wanted to ask you —” she began.

“Just a sec.” He waved to the waitress. “Two Millers. Okay?”

“Sure.” But maybe what she ought to do was play along until she found out what the hell had happened to Hugh Cameron, who still didn’t answer his phone.

“By the way, the name’s Mac.”

“I’m Polly,” she responded, thinking that in her childhood first names had been a sign of intimacy. Now, when waiters and flight attendants introduced themselves as Jack and Jill, their meaning was reversed.

“Nice to meet you.” Mac held out his hand. The strength and duration of his grip clearly suggested that he had, as Jeanne would put it, designs on her person. “So, how long are you in Key West for?”

“I’m not certain. Three or four days, maybe.”

“Aw, too bad. I was hoping you were down for the whole season.” He grinned meaningly.

“No.” Polly smiled back almost against her will, feeling a once-familiar rush of consciousness. Five years ago she would have enjoyed sitting in a tropical garden, flirting with a good-looking guy; she knew better now.

“Having a good time so far?”

“So-so.” Polly told the truth automatically, then realized that it sounded like a line; and that was how Mac responded to it:

“Maybe you haven’t been to the right places. You like to dance?”

“Yes ... no.” She felt as if her feet were sinking into quicksand. “It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Well —” Polly was rescued by the arrival of their beers.

“Thanks, Susie. ... So, here’s to your stay in the last resort.”

“The last resort?”

“That’s what we call it.” He lifted his sloppily foaming glass and knocked it against hers. Polly heard herself laugh awkwardly. “So what’ve you seen up to now?”

“Nothing much. The ocean, a lot of art galleries. I mean, one resort town is much like the next, isn’t it?”

“Not always.” Mac grinned. “There’s some special attractions here in Key West. Have you seen the pelicans yet?”

“Pelicans?”

“Yep. Big seabirds, they sit on the piers down by the docks, waiting to steal fish off the boats.”

“How big?”

Mac paused and tilted his head. “Oh, four, five feet tall, some of them.”

“Five feet tall?”

“You go down to Garrison Bight at the right time, you’ll see them.” He must be kidding, Polly thought, but she wasn’t sure. Key West was weird enough to have birds like that. “Okay, what did you want to ask me?” The question was put almost mockingly; Mac clearly thought it had been just an excuse to meet him.

“I wanted to know —” Polly took a breath. “That house you were working on this afternoon —”

“Mm?” He sat back, smiling lazily. The colored bulbs in the bush beside him cast a hot red-and-blue half light on the flat weathered planes of his cheek and jaw.

“On Frances Street, near the cemetery.” Polly plowed ahead. “You were there with a pickup truck. REVIVALS CONSTRUCTION.”

“Right: I was cleaning out the gutters. They always get jammed up with leaves this time of year.” He frowned, as if suspecting Polly for the first time of an ulterior, nonsexual motive, then smiled slowly. “You want something revived, maybe, or constructed?” His tone hovered equivocally between contractor and seducer.

“No, what I want —” Polly remembered to smile back. “See, I was trying to find the man who lives there, Hugh Cameron —“

“Yeah?” Now Mac looked wary, displeased: the progress of his pickup had been interrupted.

“I came down here to Key West to interview him, actually.” Polly leaned toward Mac, smiling, but his manner and tone remained cool.

“Oh, yeah? What did you want to interview him for?”

“Well, it’s for this book I’m writing. It’s a biography of a painter he used to know. I’ve been phoning him ever since I got here Tuesday night, but nobody answers. I was wondering if he was out of town.”

“Yes, he might be.” Mac leaned back even farther now, and looked away.

“You haven’t seen him lately?” she persisted, knowing as the words sounded out that this was a strategic mistake.

“What? No.” Mac took a swig of beer, staring into the foam-crusted glass. “The house is rented out from this weekend, anyhow.”

“Rented?”

“Oh, yeah. A lot of local people rent their places in the winter. A house like that, three bedrooms, a pool, you can get twenty-five hundred a month for it, easy.” He still wasn’t looking at her.

“Really?” Polly smiled hard, and tried to reestablish a friendly conversational tone. “I had no idea of that. No wonder there’s so many yuppie types around.”

Mac did not reply, only shifted in his chair and stared off sideways. She followed the direction of his gaze to three pretty girls at a table on the other side of the garden. He’s caught on that I’m not interested in him, she thought, so he’s turned off. She felt a researcher’s anxiety — and a stupid, automatic pang of loss. “You think Mr. Cameron’s left town already?”

“Could be.” Mac shrugged.

“Do you have his new address?”

He shook his head slowly.

“But you must know how to get in touch with him,” Polly persisted. “He has to pay you for cleaning his gutters, doesn’t he, for instance?”

“I’ve been paid already.” Mac surveyed the garden again, drained his beer, checked his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Got to have dinner with some friends.”

“Okay,” Polly said in a falling tone of frustration and disappointment. Her bad luck had returned with a vengeance.

“Well.” Mac stood up. “See you around.” He produced a meaningless, empty smile.

“Thanks for the beer.”

“No problem.” Mac started to lope away; then he stopped and turned, looking hard at her. “Say.” He took a step nearer, paused for what seemed to Polly a long while, then added, “How about you meeting me later on tonight? We could go dancing.”

A reprieve, Polly thought. “Sure, why not?” she heard herself answer. It’s not that I care anything for him, she told herself, but I’ve got to get that address.

“I could pick you up about nine. If you’re not too fancy to ride in a truck.” He grinned.

“Of course I’m not.” Polly tried to make this casual rather than either indignant or suggestive.

“Okay then. Just say where.”

Back at the guest house Lee, in a tropical-flowered red muumuu, set two plates of steamed fish on the table and refilled both their balloon wineglasses. She’d insisted on cooking supper, though she’d allowed Polly to contribute a bottle of Soave. “So now tell me all about your day,” she said, smiling.

“Okay.” Polly described her lunch with Ron and Phil, her frustrating visits to Cameron’s house and to the galleries, and the sunset on Mallory Dock. She included Mac’s aphorism on this ceremony (without attribution) but not her conversation with him at Billie’s. It was bad enough to admit that she was seeing him again later that evening.

“You’re going out with this guy you saw coming out of a house with a ladder?” Lee leaned forward; her black looped hair swung and her nearly black eyes sparkled with amusement.

“I’ve got to,” Polly explained. “He’s the only person I’ve met who has any connection with Hugh Cameron.”

“So what’s he like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. About forty-five; not bad-looking,” she said indifferently.

“Not bad-looking, huh?” Lee laughed suggestively.

“If you like that sort of thing,” Polly said flatly.

Lee gave her a weighing look. “Well, have a good time, and stay out of dark alleys,” she said finally, and stood to clear the plates away.

“Don’t worry.” Polly also started to rise, but Lee pushed her down with a warm brown hand.

“No, don’t get up. I’ve got a rule, no guests in my kitchen.”

Alone, Polly sat frowning at the hand-loomed tablecloth, displeased with herself. Because of her impatience, she had nearly messed up at Billie’s. She should have let Mac think she was here on vacation, and later just casually asked him about Hugh Cameron. In fact, she should have followed Jeanne’s advice on sweet-talking men, advice that had made her so uncomfortable when it referred to Jacky Herbert and Garrett Jones. But after all, Jacky was almost a friend, and Garrett was an important critic, someone she’d probably know professionally for years. Mac was just a local handyman; after she left Key West she’d never see him again.

Now, though, she had to spend a whole evening with him in some local dive. Well, it could be worth it. He must know how to reach Hugh Cameron, or at least be able to find out. And he might have other information too. If he’d worked for Cameron before, for instance, he could have been inside the old bastard’s house and seen if he’d still got any of Lorin’s paintings. Until Polly found out all Mac knew, she’d better go on pretending she was interested in him.

You are interested in him, a voice said inside her, not in her head but considerably lower down.

I am not, Polly said.

“Here you are.” Lee returned bearing a rough-hewn wooden bowl heaped with brilliantly colored tropical fruit, and looking even more like a Gauguin painting. “I wish I could take you out myself, show you some of the town,” she said. “There’s a really good piano bar down on Duval Street. Trouble is, I have to stay in tonight, I’ve got guests driving from Miami, and God knows when they’ll turn up.”

She placed the bowl in the center of the table and, standing so close that her broad hip brushed Polly’s shoulder, ran one sinewy brown hand through her curls. “You’ve got really nice hair, you know that?”

That was all she said, but Polly was as sure as if it were spelled out in the complicated hand-weave of the tablecloth that Lee was attracted to her and, having just heard that Polly didn’t care for men, wanted to make something of it.

But since women were more subtle and tactful about these matters, if Polly didn’t respond Lee would make no further approaches, or certainly no overt ones. Lee would never grab her, or blurt, “Hey, let’s go to bed.” No one would be embarrassed, and no one’s feelings would be hurt. But it would be easy now for Polly, just by touching or complimenting Lee in return, to silently reply, Yes, let’s.

“Are those real mangoes?” she asked instead.

“That’s right.” Lee smiled as easily as if nothing had happened or been decided. And maybe it hadn’t, not yet. “Why don’t you try one? I should warn you, though, they’re kind of messy to eat.”

“Wow,” Polly said, gasping with surprise and also with relief as the door of the Sagebrush Lounge swung to behind her and Mac, shutting them into a warehouselike space hung with animal horns and antlers and vibrating with noisy air conditioning and amplified country-rock music. On their left was a crowded dance floor, on their right a long bar against which men in work clothes and cowboy gear were leaning. Mac’s costume matched theirs; he had traded his Revivals Construction jersey for a blue Western-cut shirt with pearl snaps. Polly still wore her rumpled Banana Republic jumpsuit; she wasn’t going to change as if for a date, especially not with Lee around.

“Didn’t expect anything like this in Key West, huh?” Mac shouted against the music. Waving to two men at the bar, he led her to a table.

“You can say that again,” Polly shouted back, taking another deep breath. The Sagebrush Lounge was on an ill-lit back street somewhere out near the airport, next to a swamp and across from a trailer camp. On the way there, though she had kept up a sort of conversation, most of her mind had been occupied by Lee’s remark about dark alleys, and the possibility, increasing as Mac drove farther and farther from the center of town, that he would turn out to be a psychopathic rapist. Her instinct told her he wasn’t; but how many women had been raped or even murdered because they trusted their stupid instincts?

“I figured you’d enjoy it, ’cause you appreciate country music,” Mac said, or rather yelled. “’Course, this is pretty mainstream stuff.”

“Those guys over there, they look like cowboys.”

“Yeah, it’s what they think, too.”

“Of course there’s no ranches in the Keys,” Polly yelled, determined not to seem a fool.

“Well, not down here. They’re further up, around Marathon.”

“Really? You mean actual cattle ranches?”

“Yep. The Sea-Cow brand, it’s famous in these parts.”

“I don’t believe you.” Polly laughed.

“Okay.” Mac smiled. “Have it your way. Like a beer?”

“I thought, maybe a white wine spritzer,” Polly yelled, aware that she’d already had nearly half a bottle of Soave at the guest house.

“I wouldn’t advise that here.” Mac grinned. “Take it from me, only the beer’s worth drinking; unless you go for the hard stuff.”

“I’ll stick to beer.”

“What?”

“Beer,” Polly screamed, thinking that in this clamor it wasn’t going to be easy to bring up the subject of Hugh Cameron’s present whereabouts.

“Right.”

Almost before she could catch her breath a bottle had appeared before Mac and a bottle and glass before her; sexual stereotyping, evidently. She poured the beer, resolving to drink it as slowly as possible: she’d need to keep her head in case Mac did turn out to be a psychopathic rapist. Maybe what she should do right now was make some excuse to leave the table, call Lee, and tell her she was in the Sagebrush Lounge with Mac — Mac who?

“Say.” Polly made an effort to breathe normally. “What’s your name, besides Mac?”

“Huh?” Under the pounding beat of the music she heard a fractional hesitation, which she put down to Mac’s reluctance to, as he would probably put it, get involved. “MacFlecknoe. Richard MacFlecknoe. Like the poet. But we’re not related, far as I know. And you?”

“Polly Alter.” The music had crashed to a romping halt, and her name sounded out abashingly loud. “Well, Paula really,” she said, moderating her voice. “Only nobody I can stand ever calls me that.”

“Then I’ll make sure not to.” Mac smiled slowly. “Hey. You know that guy you wanted to interview?”

“Hugh Cameron. Yes, of course.”

“I found out he’s in Italy for the winter.”

“Italy?” It came out almost as a wail.

“Yep. In Florence. I’ve got the address for you, right here.” He held out a scrap of folded paper.

“Oh, thanks.” Polly tried to look grateful, but it wasn’t easy. She had neither the time nor the money to follow Hugh Cameron to Italy, and even if she did there was no guarantee he’d agree to talk to her. All she could do now was get whatever information she could from Mac. Maybe he could give her the names of some of Cameron’s friends in Key West, people who, if she was lucky, had been here when Lorin Jones was alive.

“Like to dance?” The music had started again, just as loud but to a slower beat.

“All right,” she agreed.

But as Mac led the way onto the floor, Polly realized that the other couples had stopped jigging and shaking en face, and were now clasped together in swaying pairs. Uneasily, she allowed him to put his arms around her, and placed her hand on his shoulder. It was years since she’d danced the two-step with anyone — by the time she got to college it was already out of fashion.

The tune was simple, soupy, a childlike whine of lost love spun over a slow pounding beat. Mac held her at a polite distance at first, but soon he began to gather her closer. Annoying, presumptuous, but it was easier to move in sync this way, swaying together, almost soothing. She only liked it because it had been so long since she’d held anyone ... But this was a man, and a complete stranger. She should pull back, so as not to give him any ideas.

But she didn’t pull back. You can’t afford to get him miffed, you’ve got to remember your research, she told herself, easing her arm farther along Mac’s shoulder, feeling his muscles move under the cloth. First things first.

“That man whose address you gave me,” she murmured. “Hugh Cameron.”

“Mh.” Mac looked down at her.

“D’you know him well?”

He swung her around, then spoke. “Not all that well, no.”

“I understand he’s a real basta —, I mean, kind of a difficult person.”

“Oh yeah? He hasn’t treated me too badly.” Mac took a firmer grip on Polly, bending their joined hands behind her back and pulling her so close that the whole length of his body was pressed against hers.

Taking a long breath, trying not to notice this, Polly plowed on. “You’ve been working for him quite a while?”

“Huh?”

“Cameron, I mean.”

“Mh.”

She waited, but he said no more. But the beat of the lowbrow music continued, they moved smoothly together. Polly felt herself blurring, loosening, becoming sensually addled, as if she’d been soaking too long in a hot bath. She gave herself a hard mental shake and tried again, speaking now in a sleepy murmur that matched the music. “So have you been in Key West a long time?”

“Yeah, I guess you’d say so.”

“Really — how long?”

“I d’know. Nineteen, twenty years, off and on.”

“Then you could have met Lorin Jones yourself.” Mac, swinging Polly deftly around, did not reply. “The artist I’m writing about.”

“Mh?”

“Did you ever know her?”

“Nope.” Mac was resting his head against Polly’s now; as he spoke his hot breath fluttered her hair. “Can’t say I did.”

Bad luck again, Polly thought; but another part of her, which was sick to death of Lorin Jones, breathed thank God. What it wanted now, what it needed, was to forget Jones for a while, to stop questioning and prying, to move to the simple thump and twang of the country band and murmur almost meaningless remarks.

“I always liked this old tune.”

“Yeah, it’s nice.”

But she could not disguise from herself that all the time, under their slow, banal exchange, another far more lively conversation was going on. Mac’s body and hers, like two good-looking oversexed morons, were speaking to each other; and she could hear clearly what they were saying, over and over again:

Hey, you want to?

Aw, sure.

When?

— Anytime.

I don’t do that anymore, she said to the moron that was her body; but it didn’t hear her.

The band repeated the last chorus and went into a crescendo. Holding her close, Mac did an expert dip, and came up again as the song ended.

“I like the way you dance,” he said, moving back but keeping one arm around her.

“Thanks.” Polly didn’t return the compliment. What she had to do now, she thought fuzzily as the music started up again, was get out of here before anything else could happen.

“Do you clog?”

“What?”

Mac gestured at the dance floor. Most of the couples had left, but those that remained were beginning to stamp and wheel and gallop around in tandem, like children playing horses.

“Oh, no.”

“It’s easier than it looks, y’know. I’ll teach you sometime.” He steered her back toward their table. “Like another beer?”

Polly nodded, then instantly regretted this. Well, you don’t have to drink it, she told herself as he held up two fingers to the waitress.

“Hey, Polly.” Mac leaned toward her and half shouted over the cantering dancers. “You married?”

Polly shook her head. “I was once.”

“Yeah? So was I.” He smiled. “Didn’t work out, hm?”

“No.”

“Me neither. It was a bust from the wedding night, only I got stubborn and stuck it out for three years.”

“With me it was all right for a while, but then my husband insisted on moving to Denver.”

“And what was wrong with Denver?”

“Nothing. Only I couldn’t get a job there.” Why am I telling him all this, Polly thought, listening to her own voice, which sounded like someone else’s. Because he doesn’t matter, that’s why, she answered. They were confiding in each other, yes, but only with the anonymous frankness of strangers who find themselves on the same bus or plane and know they won’t meet again.

“Uh-huh. Kids?”

“I’ve got a son, he’s fourteen. But he’s with his father now, for this school term. Till Christmas.”

“Rough, huh.”

“Yes,” Polly agreed, wondering how Mac knew this — it must have been her tone of voice. “Yes, I really miss him.”

“You’re lucky, though. What I miss, it’s the kids I never had.”

“You could still —”

Mac shook his head, looking away, then slowly turned back. “I can’t find the right woman,” he seemed to say, but since he didn’t raise his voice this time it was hard to tell. The music was louder, the couples stomped and tramped faster; it made Polly dizzy to look at them. What she ought to do, she ought to say she had to get back, as soon as he finished his beer, because she wasn’t going to drink hers — Except, she noticed, she already had.

The band paused for breath, then started another slow number, a wailing song about lost love.

“Let’s dance,” Mac said, rising.

This time Polly didn’t try to make conversation. She allowed herself to fall at once into a warm drifting blur, to lean against Mac, move with him. Because it didn’t matter, as soon as the music ended she’d go home. But now — now —

“Hey,” Mac whispered presently, his mouth against her face. “You know that place you’re staying? That Artemis Lodge.”

“Mm.”

“Artemis, you know who she was?”

“I think she was some kind of Greek goddess,” Polly said.

“Right. A jealous virgin. She turned her best friend into a bear on account of she’d slept with Zeus.”

“Really?”

“I’m not as illiterate as you might think.”

“Mm.” Polly recalled something Ron or Phil had said, that many of the permanent residents of Key West were middle-class dropouts, ex-hippies now managing restaurants or galleries, or running charter boats — or, why not, repairing houses for a living. “Nice people, most of them,” Phil, or Ron, had declared.

“Anyhow,” Mac said. “That place of yours. It’s a lesbian guest house; at least that’s what I hear.”

Polly swallowed; then, damning herself for her hesitation, said, “Yes, I know. I’m a lesbian.”

“Yeah?” Mac laughed. “You could have fooled me.” He circled with the music, holding her even closer. It was clear that he didn’t believe her; or if he did believe her, didn’t care.

“So how’s it going, your research?” he asked as they returned to the table.

“Oh, okay. Well, not all that great lately. Coming down here wasn’t much use.”

“Not much use, huh?” Mac said, with a grin. “Sorry to hear that.”

“I didn’t mean — It’s just —” What is the matter with me, the beer, Polly thought. “I mean, I came all the way to Key West, and spent all that money, and now I can’t locate Hugh Cameron or anybody who knew him or Lorin Jones, and I can’t even get into his house.”

“Get into the house? What good would that do, if he’s not there?”

“I want to see if he still has any of Lorin Jones’s paintings. The museum where I work put on a show a couple of years ago in New York, and I wrote to ask if he had anything we could borrow, but he never answered.”

“Ah.” Mac rotated his empty glass.

“Maybe you’ve noticed, if you’ve ever been in the house.”

“Noticed what?”

“If there were any pictures. Oil paintings, they’d be, or maybe watercolors.”

“Pictures.” Mac appeared to be thinking. “I don’t remember, really. I guess I never paid much attention. Like another beer?”

“Oh no, no thanks. I’ve got to get back.” Polly looked at her watch. “The manager at the guest house said she was going to call the police if I wasn’t home by twelve.”

“She did?”

“She’s afraid you might be a psychotic rapist,” Polly heard herself say, or rather lie.

“She never even saw me,” Mac protested.

“I know.”

“She probably thinks all men are rapists.” He laughed.

“I guess she might.” Polly mentally kicked herself for playing along, for misquoting and misrepresenting Lee.

“Personally, I’ve always liked cooperation when I make love.” Mac turned toward Polly. Something looked at her out of his eyes; she tried to look away, didn’t quite make it. “Okay, shall we go?”

Abruptly the smoky, pulsing sensual blur of the Sagebrush Lounge was replaced by the warm, silent night outside. Polly felt a tense, twanging apprehension — or was it expectancy? — as Mac drove along a dark side street, taking her — where?

“So you’re gay, huh?” he said abruptly. “Since when?”

“I’ve been living with a woman for two months,” Polly told him, accurately but deceptively, and realizing that even this didn’t sound like much. Or maybe it did, for Mac had just swung onto a broad, well-lit boulevard, edged on one side with movie theaters and drive-ins and motels, and on the other with a row of blowing palms and the dark choppy waters of the bay. “That is, I was living with her,” she added, unwilling to suggest that she was two-timing someone.

“You mean you aren’t anymore,” he said, or asked.

“No, not exactly,” she admitted.

“Ah.” They had turned onto a street that Polly recognized as not far from Artemis Lodge. There seemed to be nothing more to say, so she said nothing. It’s over, I’m safe; I won’t see him again, she thought, and was furious at herself for not being relieved.

“Listen, I’ve got an idea,” Mac said as he pulled up outside the guest house. “What if I was to get — I mean, I think maybe I could get the key to Hugh Cameron’s house, from the rental agent.”

“Oh, could you?” Polly gasped.

“Sure. Well, probably. I could tell them I had to check the bathroom pipes or something. Then you could meet me there tomorrow after I finish work and look for those paintings.”

“That’d be really great.” In her enthusiasm, Polly put a hand on his arm. “If it’s not too much trouble —”

“No. A pleasure.” Mac covered her hand with his. “So I’ll see you over there, say about four?”

“Great,” Polly repeated. She started to slide away across the seat of the truck, but he didn’t remove his hand; instead, he tightened his grip. “Well, hey, thanks for the drink.”

“Hey, you’re welcome.” Mac turned full toward her. He kissed her hard but very briefly, releasing her before she had time to react. “See you at four tomorrow,” he repeated as she scrambled down out of the cab.

The pickup truck roared off, and Polly, in what her mother would have called a State, stood on the porch of Artemis Lodge. The door was locked, and only one ruby-chambered electric lantern burned in the hall. Either Lee was out, or she’d already gone to bed. Polly let herself in and climbed the stairs to her room.

What are you so upset about? she asked herself. Your luck’s turned. Tomorrow you’re going to see Cameron’s place, and who knows what you might find there? Pictures, drawings — letters and notes even, if Mac doesn’t stop you —

Or, let’s put it this way, another voice said. You’re going to meet a man you hardly know in a town you hardly know, in an empty house, where there probably aren’t any paintings anyhow, because probably that was just his way of getting you there, and doing what he wants to you.

And what you want, said another treacherous voice.

The room felt hot and close and crowded; Polly shoved up the sash of the window, but the breeze that blundered in, sticky with the odors of tropical flowers and auto exhaust and tidewrack, was even more insidious and oppressive. Sex, it whispered.

All right, you feel something, the first voice shrilled in Polly’s ear as she paced the narrow strip of straw matting between the bed and the open window. But that’s just because you haven’t made it with anyone in nearly a month; naturally you’re susceptible. It doesn’t mean you have to fall into bed with whoever comes along, especially not with a man.

All right, you’ll be alone with Mac. But if he makes what your mother would call an indecent suggestion, all you have to do is say no; he’s not going to jump you. If you can’t control yourself, if you have to sleep with someone, Polly told herself, it doesn’t have to be Mac. There’s Lee, for instance — a generous and warmhearted (if rather scatty) woman, who likes you and is right downstairs in the guest house.

Polly fixed the image of Lee in her mind; mentally she removed Lee’s flowered muumuu and contemplated her low full leathery breasts, her thick waist, her sturdy brown Polynesian hips; her bushy black armpits, the probable black bush below. ... But she felt less than nothing. Lee wasn’t what she wanted; what she wanted —

It was her old ignorant desire for the Romantic Hero, recurring like some persistent tropical weed. Over the last two years this rank growth had been, she’d thought, thoroughly rooted up, and the earth where it once flourished raked hard, trampled down. But now, in the steamy, unnatural climate of Key West, the weed had sprouted again.

It was an addiction, really, like Jeanne’s addiction to cigarettes. There ought to be an organization for it, Heterosexuals Anonymous, it could be called, and when the uncontrollable urge came over you, you’d telephone their hotline and some nice woman would talk to you till you felt better. Jeanne had said she’d been through everything, trying to stop smoking: group meetings and individual therapy and hypnosis and clove cigarettes and nicotine gum, changing to a brand she disliked, tapering off gradually, going cold turkey. Eventually she’d realized that she was becoming obsessed with smoking-or-not-smoking; and that this obsession was crowding out the whole rest of her life. She couldn’t concentrate on anything else properly; she couldn’t finish an article, or give a decent lecture, she couldn’t enjoy seeing her friends or going to a film or having a good meal or sometimes even making love with Betsy, because she kept thinking about cigarettes. So finally she decided, the hell with the whole thing. It was a lot easier, Jeanne said, just to have a smoke when she wanted one and then forget about it.

Is that how Polly ought to treat her own addiction? Should she just sleep with Mac once — assuming that was what he had in mind — and get it out of her system? Right now, she not only found him attractive, she liked him. But probably it wasn’t really affection she felt, just disguised sexual need, aggravated by the climate. And probably it was only a matter of time before he’d do or say some ugly chauvinist thing, and then she wouldn’t have to care about him.

Besides, in a case like this it would be wrong to turn to Lee. You didn’t use another woman like that, you had respect for her feelings, her integrity as a person — where had she heard that phrase recently? Yes, from Jeanne. If Jeanne were here now, though, she would tell Polly not to do what she was in great danger of doing.

Eleven thirty-five. Late, but Jeanne often stayed up late. And even if she’d gone to bed, this was a crisis, she wouldn’t mind getting up. Unless of course she and Betsy — but then Polly remembered how, when she and Jeanne had slept in the same bed, Jeanne would always unplug the telephone before they “tumbled about a bit.”

Polly tiptoed downstairs to the lobby, stopping at each creak of the staircase, shifting as much of her weight as she could to the worn mahogany bannister.

In the sleeping house, the ringing of the phone in the apartment on Central Park West sounded so loud that Polly expected Lee to appear at any moment, followed by several of her guests. All right, let them come. Help me, she would say to them and to Jeanne. If you don’t, I’m going to do something irrational, something dangerous. But nobody answered the phone, and nobody came.