The Truth About Lorin Jones

13

AT A QUARTER PAST four the following afternoon Polly sat on the wide leaf-littered steps of Hugh Cameron’s house, under heavy bulging clouds that had done nothing to lower the temperature. It seemed if anything warmer than yesterday; the light had a diffuse, oppressive purplish tint. Mac’s not coming, she thought for the fourth or fifth time. You should be glad; now you can’t do anything you’ll be sorry for afterward. But she didn’t feel glad; she felt ashamed and angrily disappointed, like a recovered alcoholic who’d tried to fall off the wagon in front of a package store that turned out to be shut.

If she could have reached Jeanne her resolution might have been strengthened; but Lee, who should have been on the same side, was no help. In spite of what some people might have taken as a sexual rejection, she had remained friendly and interested. “Had a good time last night?” she had asked at breakfast, and when Polly admitted that it hadn’t been too bad, and that she was meeting Mac again today, Lee grinned knowingly. Probably she was a sexual addict herself; probably most people in Key West slept with anybody they fancied who came along, regardless of their sex, occupation, age, marital status, or political party. Sure, go on, enjoy yourself, she had said to Polly, more or less; Polly had listened to her, and now look what had happened.

The whole trip to Key West had been a waste of time and money, a useless expense of spirit. Today, for instance, she had spent hours in the newspaper files at the county library without finding a single reference to Lorin Jones. She had also gone to the county courthouse and, after an interminable delay, seen a certificate that listed the cause of Lorin’s death as “pneumonia.” Lennie Zimmern had told her what he thought was the truth; but Polly still had doubts.

She stared across the cracked and tilted sidewalk and the potholed street at the cemetery opposite. Could Lorin Jones be buried there? And if so, how could Cameron stand to look out every day on the grave of the woman he’d deserted and allowed to die?

This Key West cemetery wasn’t like the ones up north. There were no weeping willows, no pruned shrubbery, no clipped lawns and orderly, ranked tombstones. Instead, behind an iron gate and a cyclone fence topped with barbed wire (what for?) was a wide expanse of untidy open land crowded with funeral monuments. No, not monuments, Polly realized — tombs. Soapy white marble and rough gray stone packing cases lay scattered in the long faded grass, like the debris of a freight-train wreck. Some were crowned with statuary or elaborate scrolled carvings, and many with garish arrangements of plastic flowers: waxy crimson and orange roses, purple pansies, white lilies. Most unpleasant of all, under several of the nearest tombs the earth had shifted or buckled, so that they canted up into the air at a crazy, improper angle. You could almost imagine that the dead people inside, Lorin among them, were trying to get out, or had already gotten out. Maybe that was the reason for the barbed wire. Maybe they were there, invisible, all those evil spirits who, like Lorin Jones, had died violently or too soon, clinging to the cyclone fence with their thin dry lizard hands, clamoring for the lives they had lost.

Polly checked her thoughts, annoyed; such morbid fantasies weren’t her style. They must be the result of Phil’s and Ron’s gossip yesterday about voodoo, or of something heavy and hot and abnormal in the climate. Besides, Lennie Zimmern had said that his sister’s ashes had been scattered in the ocean off Key West; she wasn’t even here.

All right, she would give Mac five more minutes, Polly decided; then she’d leave. There was probably nothing here anyhow. It had been more than fifteen years, after all, and Lennie’d been to the house on Aurelia Lane then and taken everything back to New York.

Two minutes. One minute. Okay, the hell with it. But as Polly started down the walk, the Revivals Construction pickup turned the corner.

“Sorry!” Mac called, parking on the wrong side of the street with a screech of brakes and leaping onto the curb. “Been waiting long?”

“It’s okay.” Late three times out of three, she thought; it must be a character trait. No point in complaining, though; she’d probably never see him again after today.

Mac gave her the warm, uneasy smile of someone who deserves and expects to be scolded. “Had a good day?”

“So-so.” Polly shrugged.

“Sorry to hear that.” He grinned; it was clear that he wasn’t particularly sorry — or, to be fair, particularly glad. “Shall we go in?”

Behind its closed shutters and drawn bamboo blinds the interior of Hugh Cameron’s house was silent, shadowy and almost cool. At first Polly could see nothing; then she began to make out, floating halfway between the floor and ceiling, a very large painting. It might be — it was, surely —

“That what you were looking for?” Mac asked.

“I — I think so,” she said in a strangled, panting voice.

“Wait a second.” There was the rattling sound of a blind being raised. A slotted golden light widened across the tiles; the huge canvas glowed out, white and umber and peach, patched with vermilion and scribbled with black writing. Yes: it had to be one of Lorin Jones’s late graffiti paintings, but looser and more brilliant than any she’d ever seen. What might be an M or an H had been scrubbed in thick pale color down one side of the canvas, in the manner of a pastel Franz Kline; and a line of fine writing ran diagonally up from the opposite corner.

“Yes. It’s Lorin’s, it’s got to be!”

“Really,” Mac said indifferently.

“I don’t understand it. Lorin Jones’s brother was supposed to have come here after she died and collected all her work, and he never even mentioned this picture.”

“Mh?”

“I don’t see how he could have missed it.”

“Maybe it wasn’t in the house,” Mac suggested, gazing idly through a sliding glass door at a pool surrounded by unnaturally white plastic furniture and unnaturally green shrubs. He doesn’t care, he’s not interested, Polly thought. And he’s not interested in me either, not anymore. She should feel relieved, but instead she felt hurt and miserable.

“You mean Cameron could have hidden it?” she said.

Mac shrugged, not turning around.

“You couldn’t hide something like this; it’s too big.”

“Sure you could,” he said. “Put it out back against the fence, cover it with an old drop cloth or something.”

“Maybe. I suppose that would have been like him, the creep.”

“What makes you think he’s a creep?” Mac strolled back into the center of the room.

“Everybody says so. For one thing, he walked out on Lorin Jones when she was dying. He didn’t even try to help her.”

“That’s what they say?”

“Mm.”

“And that’s what you’re going to put in your book, huh?”

“Yes, why not? I’m planning to tell the truth.” Polly turned back to the picture; holding her head sideways, she tried to decipher the line of writing. “What is... what is the morning,” she read out. “It looks like mouning, or maybe it’s warning — of wind. What do you think?”

“Let me look.” Mac came up close behind her. “It’s meaning, I think,” he said after a pause. “What is the meaning of wind under the sea?”

“It sounds like verse. Lorin Jones’s dealer, he thinks the words in these late paintings mostly came from Hugh Cameron’s poems.”

“Could be,” Mac said.

He’s bored with me, he’s waiting for me to leave, she thought. All right, forget about him. Concentrate on your job. “I’ll have to check,” she said. “The trouble is, I haven’t tracked down much of Cameron’s work, though I know —”

Polly started; Mac had just rested his hands on her shoulders. “— there were at least two volumes of poems, but I haven’t —” She turned and opened her mouth to finish the sentence; he closed it with a long kiss.

I’m not ready for this, Polly thought, feeling herself sinking; I didn’t expect — Her eyes focused on a wall of bookshelves behind his head. Cameron’s books. And Cameron’s poems must be here somewhere — “Wait,” she whispered when Mac paused for breath. “Not now — not yet —”

“I know.” Mac grinned. “You want to see the other picture.”

“There’s another one?”

“I think so. In there.” He gestured with his head toward an open door.

The second room, which also opened onto the deck, was mainly occupied by a low queen-sized bed. Over it hung what was surely, even in the dim light from the shuttered window, Lorin Jones’s lost painting, Aftershocks. Polly recognized it from the blurred black-and-white photo in the files of the Apollo Gallery, but only by the semiabstract seaweed shapes along the lower edge, for this painting had been terribly damaged. There was a raw, jagged-toothed hole in the center, as if something large and violent had burst through the canvas from behind.

“Oh, shit,” she choked.

“What’s the matter?”

“You can see.” Polly was in better control of her voice now, but her head was still full of angry buzzing. “It’s Lorin Jones’s picture, the one that disappeared after her last show, but it’s been all ripped up.” By Hugh Cameron, of course. He was the sort of man who might destroy his lover’s painting and hang the evidence of the crime over his own bed for nearly twenty years.

“Yeah?” Mac came closer. “Looks to me like it was done on purpose,” he said.

“I suppose it was,” Polly said tightly. “By that bastard who lives here.”

“No, I meant by Lor — your artist. Look at the way the words are written.”

It was true; a line of script, not present in Jacky’s photograph, began in the upper left of the picture and continued below the hole, curving up toward the right. To make it out Polly had to lean forward over the platform bed — Mac must be farsighted.

“You never saw it coming ... till it was gone,” she read slowly. “I don’t know — I suppose it’s possible she did it herself,” she conceded, realizing as she spoke that if this were so the importance of the work hadn’t been reduced; it might even have been enhanced. “But there’s no way of proving that. I wonder —”

“Wonder about it later, okay?” Mac had moved much closer. He ran his hand slowly down her back; all the way down.

“No, wait. I have to —” Breathing hard, Polly took a step away.

“Come on.” He pulled her to him. “That thing won’t fly off.”

No, it won’t, she thought. But I will, my ticket is for the day after tomorrow. I’ve got to plan. What I need is evidence that the paintings are here. Photographs, I need color photographs. It’s too late today, but I could rent a camera tomorrow, or borrow one — maybe from Lee? Then when I get back to New York —

But she couldn’t think clearly now. Now she was in a bedroom in Key West with a man who was kissing the back of her neck. His mouth was hot, his tongue insinuating. She was leaning toward him, against him.

“Oh, Polly,” Mac whispered, pulling her toward the bed.

Stop, wait, she told herself. But another part of her replied, Why not? It’s what you want. And besides, it’s what Mac wants; even what he deserves for letting you into this house, helping you to find Lorin’s paintings. She swayed and fell slowly onto the rough off-white cotton bedspread.

All right, go ahead, a voice said in her mind. But keep some control of yourself. All right, kiss him, it panted. All right, let him pull open your shirt and lick your breast. But for God’s sake don’t let yourself care about him, or you’ll be hurt and betrayed again. Remember, you hardly know him; remember all the horrible social diseases they’ve invented lately.

But in spite of this good advice, it was Mac who first broke off; he raised himself on his elbows above Polly, then half sat up.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Hold on a sec. I have to tell you something.”

“Okay,” she gasped. Realizing that she had one hand on the paint-spattered bulge in his jeans, she snatched it off as if she had been burned. Dizzy, full of heat, her heart pounding, she moved away from Mac. Herpes, she thought.

“It’s —” He swallowed.

Well, go on, she thought, staring at him, more and more terrified. Gonorrhea, syphilis. Or those awful warts they had now, what was their name? “Yes?”

“I —”

Maybe even AIDS. After all, this was Key West.

“I — I’ve been living with this woman, up on Sugarloaf Key.”

“Well?” Polly said. There was a pause. “And?”

“That’s it. I just thought I ought to tell you.”

“That’s it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay.” She laughed with relief.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Only I thought you were going to tell me you had, you know, some awful infection.”

“Nope.” He grinned. “Far as I know, I’m clean. I’ve been with Varnie over two years, never did anything like this before.” He looked at Polly. “You don’t mind?”

“No. I mean, hell, I’m only here till Sunday morning. I don’t care who you’re living with.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Mac said. Then, under his breath, what might have been “Or maybe I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He rolled back toward her; with one warm, work-roughened hand, he pulled her Banana Republic safari shirt fully open. “Shhh.”

Half an hour later the squares of the straw rug were littered with cast clothes, and their owners lay dizzy and entangled on the rumpled bedspread. Above them, Lorin Jones’s lost painting floated, mysterious and — in spite of the gaping hole in its center — serene. If it hadn’t been for you, Polly thought blurrily, slipping toward sleep, I wouldn’t be here in Hugh Cameron’s bed. I would never have known —

It was weird what she felt, even weirder than what had happened in Wellfleet, though in a way it was like that. It was as if she had magically become Lorin Jones, and the man who lay beside her, with his work-roughened hand loose on her breast and one leg across hers, was Hugh Cameron.

But of course that wasn’t even right magically, because this had never been Lorin’s house. It was only another backwash of all these months of immersion in Jones’s history: a sign of her obsession, her confusion of her own life and Lorin’s, Jeanne would have said.

Half-awake now, Polly unwound herself from Mac and raised herself on one elbow to look at him. Naked, he was a worn and flawed umber above the waist, but smoothly pale below to the ankles. His body, like his face, was long and spare, all steep planes, narrow ridges, and clearly outlined muscles.

Well, you did it, didn’t you, she told herself, and waited to feel shame and embarrassment, but felt only pleasure, joy, and a rush of affection. I like him, it said: I don’t want to leave Key West, I want to stay here with him. ... She shook her head angrily: how stupid and greedy the body is, how careless of the good of its tenant!

She ought to be angry, though; if not at herself, then at the world. Why should it be arranged so badly? Why should it be so much better with a man she hardly knew than with a woman she loved?

A warm shudder of wind bent the branches outside and gushed into the bedroom. Mac stretched, yawned, opened his eyes, and smiled lazily at the ceiling. Then he turned toward Polly, and his expression changed.

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered, and sat up.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He smiled again, but briefly and uneasily. “That was lovely, lovely,” he said, not looking at her.

Yes, Polly thought. Now he wishes he hadn’t. That’s how men are, remember? He wants to get away as soon as he can. She began to rise.

“Wait. Don’t get up yet.” Mac put out one hand to stop her. “You’re so beautiful lying there.” He stroked her near breast with one finger, as if it were a sculpture made of some rare, exotic material, then leaned over to kiss it.

“Shouldn’t we —”

“Shh.”

“Jesus, look at the time,” Mac said after a considerable interval. “Maybe we should get some clothes on.”

“All right,” Polly agreed. This isn’t his house, she suddenly remembered, it’s a rental property. He’s not supposed to be here, not like this. She imagined Hugh Cameron walking in; or, much more likely, the rental agent. Shameful for her; disastrous for Mac. Rapidly, she bent to retrieve her red cotton bra and panties from the floor.

“Listen, I’ve got to go back to the job, check with my crew,” Mac said, dragging on his jeans. “But that shouldn’t take long. How about supper?”

“All right,” Polly heard herself agree, too eagerly.

“It’s nearly five now. Say six o’clock?”

“Sure.” But what about that woman Mac said he was living with? she thought, tying her track shoes. The woman with whom, presumably, he had supper last night — and then lied to so that he could go with Polly to the Sagebrush Lounge. Well, it was none of her business.

None of your business? her guardian angel remarked, appearing suddenly in Polly’s mind; she was a tall stern marble figure like a Greek statue, probably the Artemis of Artemis Lodge. Where’s your female solidarity, your sympathy with your own sex? You don’t have to see him again tonight.

It’s just for a few hours, Polly explained. Then she can have him back.

“I’ll drive you home now,” Mac said, opening the door for her. “Then I can pick you up in about an hour at the guest house, okay?” He smiled as if sure of her answer.

“Well. ... Okay,” Polly said.

As dusk fell the low clouds thickened; flushed indigo and purpled gray, they billowed over the island like O’Keeffe’s giant dark flowers. The wind that had started up that afternoon was blowing stronger.

“Yep, that storm the TV promised is on its way,” Lee said, smiling, nodding. She had already congratulated Polly on the discovery of Lorin Jones’s missing paintings, and promised to borrow a Polaroid camera for her. When Polly let on that she was going out again that night with Mac, Lee grinned knowingly. “That’s right, honey,” she said. “You can’t work all the time, not in Key West.”

“Well,” Polly said. “This is work in a way; it’s research. I’m hoping he’ll tell me something about Hugh Cameron.”

“I’ll bet.” Lee’s wide flat Polynesian lips spread in another grin. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing anyhow.”

“Oh, I do, don’t worry,” Polly lied — because what the hell was she doing? What had she done already?

Well, one useful thing: she had called Jacky Herbert at the Apollo Gallery to report her discovery of the two lost paintings. After all, even if she hadn’t found Hugh Cameron, this trip to Key West had been a kind of success.

In more ways than one, she thought now, looking sideways at Mac, who sat next to her at the outdoor bar of an oceanside restaurant called Louie’s Back Yard. The wind, stronger here, shook the trees overhead, sending down a scatter of tiny leaves; it flung a succession of spotlit creamy green waves against the sea wall. Most of the other customers had retreated to a higher and more sheltered deck or gone inside.

“You want to try a piña colada?” Mac suggested. “It’s the local specialty.”

“Sure.”

The bartender, a long-lashed Michael Jackson type, squirted syrups and shook them in a blender, then placed before Polly what looked like a tall vanilla milkshake, with its own pink paper umbrella. She sipped the sugary froth warily.

“Too sweet, maybe?”

“Well, kind of.”

“Don’t drink it then,” Mac said. “Have something else.”

“All right. I’ll have a spritzer.”

Mac waved and ordered. “Listen, I don’t want you to give up on Key West. Tomorrow we’ll go to the Full Moon Saloon; it’s a kind of funky place, but they have good conch chowder and real Key Lime pie.”

“You think I’m having supper with you tomorrow,” Polly said, trying not to smile.

“What’s the matter, can’t you make it?”

“I’m not sure. I just wondered —”

“Yes?”

“What about that woman you told me you were living with?”

“That’s my problem.” Mac’s voice went cool, then uneven. “Does it bother you?”

“Not really,” she said, equally cool.

“Okay then.” He stared out over the darkening, churning sea.

It might not bother me, but it bothers you, Polly thought. You feel guilty because you’ve slept with another woman. And I feel guilty because I haven’t. It’s a joke, really.

“The thing is, Varnie and I, we’ve been having some rough times lately,” Mac said after a pause. “She’s a real eighties type: what she’s looking for is security, and a father for her kid. She has this four-year-old daughter, see. She wants to get married and set up a nuclear family, but I’ve been dragging my feet.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Last night, I didn’t even go back up there. I stayed at the house we’ve been working on, here in town.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “You don’t want to get married,” Polly said finally.

“No.” Mac shook his head several times. “Not to Varnie anyhow. I know what it’d mean. Life insurance, holidays with the in-laws, what they call a job with a future, and sleeping with somebody twice a week because you promised the State of Florida you would. That’s not my scene.” He pulled his gin and tonic toward him, but instead of drinking took the plastic straw out of the glass and, holding one finger over the top, released two drops of liquid onto the straw’s crushed paper casing. The paper caterpillar squirmed, expanded, collapsed.

“I haven’t seen anyone do that since sixth grade,” Polly exclaimed.

“Want to try it?” He grinned.

“All right.”

As her caterpillar in its turn rose and subsided, she realized for the first time what it resembled. The other kids must have known all along: that was why they had giggled and shoved each other so.

“Hey,” Mac said. “Do you really have to go back to New York Sunday morning?”

“Well, I was planning to.”

“Why don’t you stay awhile? There’s a lot here I’d like to show you. And I’ve got the whole day off Sunday. We could go out to the reef, if this storm blows over.” Mac glanced again at the waves, now spotlit to a milky aqua. “You ever been snorkeling?”

“No,” Polly admitted.

“It’s beautiful under the water. Literally out of this world.” He leaned toward her, stroked her arm. “I bet you could change your ticket.”

Don’t do it, Artemis cried, suddenly reappearing with a swirl of stony draperies. You’ve had your fling; if you don’t watch out you could become emotionally involved with this unsuitable person.

“Well; I could try,” Polly said, stubbornly refusing to listen to this inner voice. “But I’ve got to be back by Wednesday, I have an interview scheduled then.” What does it matter, she argued; it’s only three more days. I just want to get him out of my system. Yes, Artemis remarked. That’s what addicts always say. One more fix. Get it out of my system.

“Great.” Mac leaned farther toward Polly; he touched the side of her face.

“I said I’d try, that’s all.” In spite of her resolve, she smiled. Okay, she admitted. I like him. I could love him, even. What’s the matter with that? It’s stupid and dangerous; you’ll get hurt, Artemis replied, but her voice was shrill and faint.

“Great,” Mac repeated, putting his hand on her arm. The wind blew harder; the thick pale green lace-trimmed waves churned under the deck. He and Polly gazed at each other, half smiling.

“Hey,” he said finally. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

“Okay.” She laughed.

“It’s, uh. This bastard that you’re looking for, Hugh Cameron. ... That’s me. I mean, I’m him.” In the gathering dark his expression was impossible to read.

“What?”

“I’m Hugh Cameron.”

He’s kidding, Polly thought. It’s another catch-the-tourists tale, like the Sea-Cow Ranch and the five-foot pelicans (both already refuted, with hoots of laughter, by Lee). “Oh, you are not,” she said. “You already told me he’s in Italy. And you’re not anywhere old enough to be him.”

“I’m forty-eight.”

“Yes, well.” She smiled, though it was a few years more than she’d assumed. “If Lorin Jones were alive now she’d be nearly sixty. When she left Wellfleet with Cameron she was thirty-seven; that’s twenty-two years ago, and you would’ve been only —”

“Twenty-six.” Mac nodded solemnly, keeping up the joke,

“Right.” Polly smiled. “Besides, Hugh Cameron is a poet — he was a college professor.”

“Yeah. He was a professor, but he didn’t get tenure, so now he’s a contractor in Key West.” Mac still did not smile; his expression could almost be called grim.

Polly stared at him. “Prove it,” she said.

“Okay.” Mac sighed; then he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and took out a worn pigskin wallet stitched with thongs, such as Stevie had once made in Boy Scouts. “Here. Driver’s license, library card, food co-op, Visa —” He fanned them out on the damp wooden bar.

Cameron, Hugh Richard. H. R. Cameron. Hugh Cameron.

“Oh, my God,” Polly said slowly. Then a crazy laugh came out of her. She shoved her stool toward the ocean, away from him.

“I tried to tell you before, back in the house. Only I couldn’t. I knew you’d start asking a lot of questions, and I don’t like talking about those years now. It was a bad time in my life.”

“Yes?” Polly said half-consciously. I was right this afternoon, she thought, feeling disoriented, as if she had made it happen.

“And besides, I figured you wouldn’t sleep with me if you knew. You were so down on Cameron, that bastard, that creep, that shit, you kept saying.”

“Jesus.”

“Y’know, after I saw you on Frances Street, I kept kicking myself for losing my chance. When you turned up again on Mallory Dock, I thought somebody up there loved me.” He pointed at the sooty lowering clouds. “Then when I got to Billie’s I found out you were the woman from New York that’d been hounding me, so I decided to get out of there fast. And I started to leave, right?”

“Right,” Polly echoed, dazed.

“But the thing was, you looked so great, sitting there. I couldn’t let you go. I thought, what the hell, it’s karma, as my friend Sandy would say. You’ve got to play it out.”

“You’re Hugh Cameron,” Polly said, finally taking this in.

Mac nodded.

“So that was your house.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s not for rent; you live there.”

“Yes — no. It’s rented all right, from tomorrow.”

“But nothing else you told me is true.” Now she was trembling, furious. “You’re not living with a woman called Varnie; and I suppose your name isn’t even really Mac.”

“Most of it’s true. I was living with her, till yesterday anyhow. And Mac is what everybody calls me down here. I never liked the name Hugh, I don’t know why I stood it for so long. Back in Nebraska, where I come from, it was a sissy name. I had to take all these jokes at school. ‘Who? Who Cameron? You, Cameron.’ ”

“You lied to me,” Polly said, paying no attention to this story.

“Well, yeah. But it was in a good cause.” Mac grinned, but nervously. “Anyhow, you lied to me too.”

“I did not.”

“Sure you did. You told me you were a lesbian.” Mac was smiling now. “Last night when I took you back to the Artemis Lodge I was almost scared to kiss you. I let go real fast, in case maybe you’d hit me.”

“I should have hit you,” Polly said, with a short hysterical laugh.

“Come on. It’s not as bad as all that. I’m the same guy I was this afternoon.”

“No, you aren’t.” You see, the tall winged goddess said in her mind. You rushed into this like a greedy, sensual fool. Now you are punished.

“I didn’t have to tell you,” Mac protested. “I could have kept quiet. Only I thought we should start out straight.” He grinned awkwardly.

“It’s a little late for that,” she said, with an angry tremor in her speech.

“Better late than never.”

Polly did not trust herself to answer. She turned away from Mac, staring out over the ocean, milky green near the deck, but dark and shaky beyond the lights, like some kind of poisonous Jell-O.

“Hey, baby.” Mac leaned toward Polly and put a strong hand on her arm. “Let’s give this a chance. You don’t know anything about me really.”

“I know enough,” she replied, casting a miserable glance at him and then looking away over the churning Jell-O toward other countries full of folly and deception.

“Hell, what do you want? Do you want me to take you back to the guest house?”

“I don’t know.” Polly’s voice shook. “Maybe you’d better.”

“Okay.” Mac stood up.

“I have to think.”

“Okay. You want me to call you tomorrow morning?”

“Yes — no. All right.”