Slam the Big Door (20 page)

“Juicy gossip for Riley Key.”

“Are you going to spread it?”

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

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

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

“It stinks.”

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

“How so?”

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

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

“I’m not
that
restless.”

“Is conversation in order?”

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

“Sound idea.”

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

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

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

“Hey!” he said softly and stopped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, Mike.”

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

“I won’t cry.”

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

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

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

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

“What a crazy, crazy night, Mike!”

“I’ve spent quieter evenings.”

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

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

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

“It’s a sound program.”

“And I’ve been thoroughly kissed. That’s sort of a re-assurance.”

“As if you needed any.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Don’t mention it.”

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

“Sure. Good night, Shirley.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nine

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK on Sunday morning, as Mike was on his second cup of coffee and had just lighted the first cigar of the day, Debbie Ann came out onto the patio and joined him at the small table. She moved quickly and smiled a cordial greeting. She wore pale blue linen shorts and a white shirt with long sleeves, cut like a man’s.

“Durelda tells me you’ve eaten enough for three. She’s very pleased with you. All I can manage is hot tea, and a small experiment with dry toast.”

“Hung?” he asked.

“Uh
huh!
Totally.”

He looked at her with inward awe. She gave a superficial impression of daintiness, freshness and good health. She looked not quite seventeen. He looked at her dispassionately and marveled at the duplicity and resilience of woman. Her mouth had a bruised and pulpy look. There were dark shadows under her eyes. A scratch on her throat disappeared into the white shirt. And he had noticed that when she had seated herself, it had been with a trace of awkwardness, a barely perceptible wince of pain or stiffness.

The little filly had had a hard ride over the midnight steeplechase. Brown hands had lifted her over the moats and stone walls and brought her, winded and sprung, back to the stables.

He also detected a smugness about her, a little flavor of accomplishment, the end product of stolen satisfactions. Yet there was defiance commingled with the smugness, and perhaps some doubt. She was like a naughty child who would, through the blatant innocence of her poise, attempt to evade the deserved spanking.

Durelda served the tea and toast and went back to the kitchen.

“Saturday night comes around a little too often,” Debbie Ann said. “Somebody should change something.”

“We lost track of you people around eleven o’clock.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, did you? You two seemed so enthralled with each other I didn’t think you’d notice if the roof blew off.”

“She’s a nice girl. Fun to talk to. But enthralled isn’t the word. Sorry. I’d like to be more exciting, but I can’t man-age it.”

“Maybe you don’t get enough encouragement.”

“Where did you go?”

She had bitten into the toast. She took her time before answering. “Oh, we walked up and down the beach to sober Troy up, and me too, I might add. And then we did a little moonlight swimming. Nothing very exciting. Is Troy up yet?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He’ll have a head again. Not as bad as last time, but a pretty substantial one.”

“Who are you trying to kid, Debbie Ann? Me or yourself or Troy or your mother? Or everybody?”

She clattered the teacup down and stared at him. “Kid who about what? Make sense.” Her eyes were wide and utterly innocent.

“Before I walked Shirley home we went over to take a close look at the boat in the moonlight.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. She turned dull red under her tan. “Oh! That’s a little embarrassing, friend.”

“Just that? Embarrassing?”

With narrowed eyes she said, “What would you like me to do? Tear my hair out? Beat my head on the wall? Set fire to myself?”

“Those aren’t bad ideas, but maybe you could feel a little ashamed. A little guilty.”

She shrugged. “Not particularly; It’s better if nobody knew. But you do know. And I’m assuming it was an accident. It’s too bad, but it isn’t exactly the end of the world.”

“All right. It isn’t the end of the world. I’ll buy that. But it’s a filthy relationship. Shameful.”

Her smirk didn’t quite come off. “Moral judgments so early in the morning? Come now, Mike. Loosen up. It was just one of those proximity things. That’s all. Nobody’s fault. It’s been building for a long time. That ole black magic. And sooner or later it was going to happen, and it did. A little debauch, to clear the air. It isn’t really meaningful, Mike.”