A Deadly Shade of Gold (2 page)

She was a grown-up, composed, watchful and gracious, and extraordinarily attractive in her own distinctive way.

In a little while Nora came hurrying out, and I got up for the quick small old-friends hug, the kiss on the cheek. She is a lean, dark, vital woman, with vivid dark eyes, too much nose, not enough forehead. Her voice is almost, but not quite, baritone. Her figure is superb and her legs are extraordinary. In spite of the strength of her features, her rather brusk and impersonal
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mannerisms, she is an intensely provocative woman, full of the challenging promise of great feminine warmth.

She was in a deep shade of wool, not exactly a wine shade, perhaps a cream sherry shade, a fur wrap, her blue-black hair glossy, her heels tall, purse in hand, mouth shaped red, her eyes sparkling with holiday. Her face looked thinner than I remembered, her cheeks more hollowed.

We said goodnight to the smiling Shaja, and as we went out Nora said, "I haven't had a date in so long, I feel practically girlish."

"Good: My car or yours?"

"Trav, you should remember that I would never slight Miss Agnes that way. She'd sit here and sulk." After I closed her in and got in beside her she said, "I hate to be a bore, but I left a letter on my desk that has to go out tonight. Do you mind?"

"Of course not." As I turned out of the drive I said, "I thought you were a loner."

"Oh, Shaja? She is a jewel. I'm in the process of setting the shop up so that she can buy in, a little at a time. She's the only one I've ever found I can really depend on. Or live with. She has a very precise sense of privacy, of fairness, of sharing. And... she reacts to things the way I do. We're men's women, both of us. No sorority overtones. No girlish giggles and confidences. And we're both tidy as cats. No hair in the sink, no crud on the dishes. So it works. She's married to a man years older than she is. She gets two letters a year from him. He's in a Hungarian prison. Four years to go, I think, and then the problem of trying to get him out of the country somehow, and get him over here, but she has a wonderful confidence that it is all going to work out. She is absolutely marvelous in the shop. If a woman is torn between something terribly expensive, and something quite suitable, Shaja has a little trick of raising one eyebrow a fraction of an inch and changing the shape of her mouth, and sighing in an absolutely inaudible way. We're doing just fine, and how are you doing, Trav, darling?"

"Medium well."

"You were away for quite a long time, weren't you? I tried to get to you for some little things that came up. I thought they'd amuse you."

"I've been back since Christmas. Emotionally convalescent, sort of. Ragged edges."

"Something rough?"

"I came out of it with a little money, and absolutely nothing else, except a case of the flying twitches."

"What in the world is that?"

"When you try to drop off to sleep and all of a sudden you leap like a gaffed fish and start shaking. So you have a drink and try again. But now I'm having play time. Months of it, Nora."

"Until the money gets low?"

"Is this going to work into the lecture about ambition, security, reliability, the obligation to use
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all the talents God gives you and so on?"

"No, darling. Not tonight. Not ever again. You are incorrigible."

I parked in the vast emptiness in front of her shop. She is in a superior shopping center, multilevel, with walks, planting areas, piped music, a sprinkling of nationally known retail names.

The two feminine dummies in the shallow window were silhouetted against her night lights. In a slant of gold script on the display window was written Gardino.

I went with her while she unlocked the door, and stood inside the door while she went back to her office in the rear to get the letter. In the still air was the scent of perfumes and fabric. Out of some mild ironic impulse I reached into the shallow window and patted the hard plastic curve of the sterile rump of the nearest dummy, covered by $89 worth of cotton. I thought of what Meyer had said, and I murmured, "I dub thee Carol."

She came swiftly and soundlessly back across the thick carpeting, the paleness of the letter in her hand and said, "I hate to be so stupid."

"What's the most expensive thing in stock?"

"What? We can get almost anything very quickly for special customers."

"I mean right here, right now."

"Why, dear?"

"Aimless curiosity Nora."

"We have some absolutely lovely suits at nine hundred dollars."

"Would a woman buy one of those to please a man?"

She patted my arm. "Don't be an ass, Travis. A woman buys a nine-hundred-dollar suit to prove to the world at large that she has a man willing to buy her a nine-hundred-dollar suit. It gives her a sense of emotional accomplishment. Come along. You're a drink ahead of me."

As she checked the lock on the door behind us, I said, "How about the Mile O'Beach?"

"Hmmm. Not the Bahama Room?"

"Later, if we feel like it. But food and drink in the Captain's Room."

"Fine!"

It was a conversational place, a small dark lounge far from the commercial merriment, all black woods, dark leather, flattering lighting. We took armchairs at the countersunk bar, and I told Charles to bring us menus in about forty minutes, and told him what sort of table we would like.

We talked very busily and merrily, right through the drinks and right into dinner, and then the conversation began to sag because there wasn't anything left to talk about except the way things once were. It brought on constraint.

I do not know if she ever actually realized, while things were going on, how it all was with me.

Sam and Nora were so inevitably, totally, gloweringly right for each other, that the reflected aura deluded Nicki and me into thinking we had something just as special. A habitual foursome can work that kind of uneasy magic sometimes. When Sam Taggart and Nora broke up in that dreadful and violent and self-destructive way, Nicki and I tried to keep going. But there wasn't enough left. Too much of what we thought we were to each other depended on that group aura, the fun, the good talk, the trusting closeness.

I waited until she had finished dinner and had argued herself into the infrequent debauch of Irish coffee.

Not knowing any good way to do it, I waited until one line of talk had died into a not entirely comfortable silence, and then I said, "Sam is on his way back here. He wants to see you."

Her eyes went wide and deep lines appeared between her dark brows. She put her hand to her throat. "Sam?" she whispered. "He wants...." The color drained out of her face abruptly. She wrenched her chair sideways and bent forward to put her head between her knees. Charles came rushing over. I told him what I needed. He returned with it in about twelve seconds. I knelt beside her chair and held the smelling salts to her nostrils. Charles hovered. In a few moments she sat up, her color still ghastly.

She tried to smile and said, "Walk me, Trav. Get me out of here. Please."

Two

WE WALKED on the dark grounds of the big hotel, among the walks and landscaping. In exposed places the wind was biting.

"Feel better?"

"Terribly maidenly, wasn't it? What did they used to call it? The vapors."

"I didn't do it very well. I sort of slugged you with it."

"How did he sound?"

"Exhausted. He'd been driving a long way."

"From where?"

"He didn't say."

"How did he sound... about me?"

"As if he's convinced you can never forgive him."

"Oh God! The fool! The damned fool! All this waste...... " She turned and faced me in the night.

"Why should he think I couldn't ever understand? After all, a man like that is always terrified of...

any total commitment. It was cruel and brutal, the way he did it, but I could have...."

She whirled away and made a forlorn sound, staggered to a slender punk tree, caught it with her
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left hand, bent forward from the waist and began to vomit. I went to her, put my right hand on her waist to hold her braced and steadied, her hip pulled against the side of my thigh, my left hand clasping her left shoulder. As her slim body leapt and spasmed with the retching, as she made little intermittent demands that I leave her alone, I was remembering just how brutal it was, so all involved with that dreary old business of killing the thing you love the best. Because you are afraid of love, I guess.

Sam was a random guy, a big restless, reckless lantern-jawed ex-marine, a brawler, a wencher, a two-fisted drinker. He loved the sea and knew it well. He crewed on some deep-water racers. He worked in boat yards. He went into hock for a charter boat, did all right, then had a run of bad luck and lost it. He worked on other charter fishermen, and did some commercial fishing. A boat bum. An ocean bum. For a time he captained a big Wheeler for an adoring widow. He was a type you find around every resort port. Unfocused. A random, rambling man. After you knew him a long time, if he trusted you, you would find out that there was another man underneath, and a lot of the surface was a part he played. He was sensitive, perceptive. He had a liberal arts degree from one of the fine small colleges. He had a lot of ability and no motivation.

Then he met Nora Gardino, and she was that marvelous catalyst that brought all the energy of Sam Taggart into focus, into some sense of purpose. Nora gave him meaning. And it took a lot of woman to do that. She was more than most, by far.

At that time I picked up with Nicki and the four of us ran in a small friendly pack. Nicki and I got in on the planning phase. Her shop was doing well. Sam scouted a good piece of waterfront land. He wanted to start a marina from scratch, and he had sound ideas about it, and good local contacts. Once he got it started, they would be married. She would continue with the shop until too pregnant, and then she would sell out and put the money into the marina project. They designed the big airy apartment they would live in, right on the marina property.

Maybe he felt the walls were closing in. Maybe he felt unworthy of all the total trust and loyalty she was so obviously giving him. Maybe he was afraid that, in spite of all his confidence, he would fail her in some way. By then he was earning pretty good money in a boat yard, and saving every dime of it. She had a dull little girl working for her at the time, plump and pretty with an empty face. Her name was Sandra. Maybe, subconsciously, he wanted it to happen just the way it happened. Maybe, after he got drunk, it was just accidental. But it was cruel, and it was brutal, to have Nora, after a day and a night of searching for him, find him at last, see his blurred self-destructive grin as he stared at her from the tangled bed, with all the naked fattiness of Sandra snoring placidly beside him.

She turned on her heel quickly, closed the door with barely a sound, and went away from there, her heart breaking anew with every step she took.

By the next day he was packed and gone. I helped her try to find him. She put a thousand dollars into agency fees without their finding any trace of him.

After a while you give up. Or maybe you never give up.

Nora straightened up at last, weak and dizzy and held the slim tree with both hands and stood with her forehead resting against the soft silvery bark.

"I must be a very attractive date," she said in a half whisper.

"It's been three years."

"Not knowing if he was sick or dead or in trouble." She shivered visibly.

I patted her shoulder. "Come on. Go freshen up and we'll get away from here."

"When will he be here?"

"Saturday"

"What time?"

"I don't know."

"Will he... come to the shop?"

"Or phone you. I don't know."

"Does he know you've told me about him?"

"Yes."

"He hasn't found anybody else?"

"Neither of you have. For the same reason."

"I'm glad to have some warning, Trav. But I will be a complete wreck by Saturday."

I waited in the lobby for her. When she was ready I drove to Bahia Mar. We could talk aboard the Busted Flush. Obviously she wanted to talk.

I turned the heat up. I made her a tall mild drink. She took her shoes off and sat on the far curve of my yellow couch in the lounge, her legs tucked up, her color better, her frown thoughtful.

"Damn it all, Trav, I just don't know how to handle it. Rush into his arms? I want to. But does he want me to? Or does he want to be punished? She was a dreadful little bit of nothing, you know.

God, how I remember that whining little explanation." She imitated Sandra's immature little voice. " 'Miss Gardino, we just had a coupla drinks and you know, one thing led to another.

Geez, I don't know where he went. I ast him and he pushed me away so hard I fell down. He just went.' "

"I don't know how he wants you to act."

"Boy, it was a real belt to the pride. My pride hurt so badly, I didn't really know he was gone until he'd been gone a month. The wedding was a month away. We were practically living together. That was no secret. And it was such a wonderful magic, Trav. Every time was a promise of forever. Wasn't I enough for him? That's what made it such a terrible slap in the face."

"He was drinking."

"What started the drinking?"

"Fright, maybe."

"Of what?"

"A real live complete entire woman can be a scary thing."

"Did I come on too strong or something?"

"You have to be what you are, Nora. The complete package."

"Now I'm twenty-nine. Three lousy stinking wasted years. What did he say? Tell me some of his words."

"Quote God how I want to see her unquote."

She jumped up and went back and forth with panther stride. "What the hell did he think I was? A white plaster saint? A vision of perfection? Did he think I was so weak I couldn't handle a little ugliness? So okay! We'd have had a terrible couple of months. We'd have torn each other to ribbons. And I would have told him that if he ever did that to me again, I'd cut his heart out. But he didn't give me a chance! He didn't give us a chance. He ran, damn him!"