Slam the Big Door (3 page)

“Why did they break up?”

“She never said. I’d guess that after sex wore a little thin, he bored her. She gets good alimony until she marries again. The closest she came to telling us why it went sour was when she said she got sick of being cooped up in the old homestead with a lot of Hunter women around clucking over her narrow pelvis while Dacey went galloping cross country tipping over all his old girlfriends in box stalls.”

Debbie Ann slowly scratched a bug welt on a perfect shin and said, frowningly, “I get the scoop that Daddy Troy was on the heroic side. Or is that a new family legend?”

“He was good. He had a squad and then a platoon and then a company, and he earned it every time.”

“Somehow it doesn’t fit.”

“He was twenty-three when I met him, Debbie Ann.”

“Oh, I don’t mean age. I’m not stupid, Mike. Anyhow, after my own father, Troy seems more like my generation. It made Mary a little jumpy at first, marrying Troy, worrying about what her friends would think, I guess. Daddy’d been dead two years, and he was nearly sixty when he died. More like my grandfather, I guess. I never did get to know him real well.”

“I didn’t know there was such a big difference in Mary’s age and your own father’s age.”

“He married her when she was eighteen, and she had me when she was nineteen. He was a business associate of my grandfather. And he fell in love with Mary. He’d never been married. There was a lot of opposition. But it worked out. It was a good marriage, and Mother told me once she didn’t really fall in love with him until after she had me. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about age, talking about Troy.”

“About what, then?”

“Skip it. I can’t explain it. How long did the party go on after I left with Rob? You met him, didn’t you? Rob Raines, the earnest attorney. I’ve known him forever.”

“I remember meeting him. When I folded at one, the party was still going on.”

“Rob brought me back about three. I was afraid he woke you up, the fuss he made. Did he?”

“Didn’t hear a thing.”

She sighed. “We left here and went to a damn beach party. A couple of miles down the key. I used to adore them when I was young and gaudy. But I’ve outgrown them, I guess. Charred meat and drinks that taste of paper cup, and a zillion bugs and somebody who can’t quite play a guitar, and dirty songs and somebody throwing up and then the inevitable routine—a prolonged interval of skinny-dipping in the romantical moonlight. I feel all over fingerprints. I swear to God I thought at one point Rob was making a sincere effort to drown me, but all he had on his mind was some sort of amphibious love-making. He was a good kid, but he certainly has turned out pretty self-important and dull.”

“Mary says you practically grew up with him.”

“Now there’s an apt phrase,” she said, and smirked. He could see that she did resemble her mother, but in some strange way the character and passion and strength in Mary’s face became weakness and self-love and indulgence in the girl’s. “Want to hear about my reckless past?”

“Not so much I’m panting,” he said.

She moistened her lips. “I like you, Mike. Here’s how it was with me and Robert Raines. I was fifteen and he was nineteen, and he had a dandy little Thistle named Dizzy and I crewed on her in the yacht-club races. We necked when we had a chance, and that was all. And one summer day—that was while Daddy was dying—it took him a long time to die—we snitched a bottle of white rum and bought two fried chickens and took Dizzy down the bay and out through Horseshoe Pass and down the outside—this key wasn’t built up the way it is now—and beached Dizzy in a very deserted place and had a picnic which turned into necking and, with some help from the rum, I suddenly found myself right in the middle of a fate worse than death. It scared hell out of both of us. I kept him handy until the calendar let me off the hook, and then I called him up and told him I never wanted to see him again. I was squeamish about boys for a year. Yes, we practically grew up together. And now he’s the promising young attorney and he can’t understand why I’m not in a fever to jump back into the sack with him. He hasn’t got marriage on his mind and neither, may I add, have I, and I can also add that I’m not what you’d call dead set against fun and games from time to time, but damn if I’m going to let him get away with assuming all he has to do is snap his fingers, just because he was the very first. He was actually indignant about my not letting him into our cozy little guest wing last night. And when he left he roared off like a jet, wheels spinning and gravel flying.”

“I dimly remember that kind of a sound.”

She rose lithely to her feet and smiled down at him. “The first dramatic chapter in the life of Deborah Ann, Girl Failure. Be good and I’ll tell you more.”

“The script will never sell.”

“Why not, sir?”

“I got the feeling it would be monotonous, I mean hearing all of it.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment before she regained her composure and made a face at him. She walked down toward the water. He watched the swing of her hips, the honey-brown of her shoulders, the narrowness of waist, the flex of calves. Sensing that she would look back at him when she reached the water’s edge, he lay back to deny her the satisfaction. A bald old guy, he thought. But it doesn’t matter to her. It’s her kind of narrowness. There are businessmen and doctors and such—very dull guys who have no interest at all outside their work. So with her it’s sex. Vocation, avocation and hobby. Intentional and unintentional provocation. I wear pants so I’m an audience. Legitimate. Somebody to practice on. The girlish confession was provocation. So is the way she leaves the guest bath we share. Full of steam and perfume and soppy towels. Poor Rob. She’s a bad type, Rodenska. Don’t sleepwalk. Don’t get too hungry. And subtle rebuffs aren’t going to work, because she is really pretty stupid. He thought of a way to give her a message. He liked it. So he got up, picked up towel, cigar case and lighter and, without a glance toward the Gulf, trudged back to the guest wing for his shower.

two

THE LARGE PATIO ON THE BAY SIDE of the Jamison house was half-roofed and completely screened. A small swimming pool, about eighteen feet by thirty, took up a third of the available space. There was a lushness about the inevitable planting areas, tree ferns, jasmine, Jatropha. A big broadleaf Monstera dreamed in a fat cedar tub, nursing its fibrous fruit. Part of the floor area was of compacted concrete block stained dark blue, and there were other areas of slab concrete broken by cypress strips into random rectangles, with broken beach shell set into the cement to give a pleasing texture. There was deck furniture of redwood with wide arms, chairs of tubular bronze, and small, unmatched, glass-top tables.

In the warmth of the April noon the glass doors that separated the living room from the patio had been rolled back on their aluminum tracks into the recesses in the walls on either side. There were bright cushions, sun-faded, on the apron of the pool.

There was a long table near the pool, with a white cloth, Stacks of paper plates, and a pattern of sunlight and narrow shadows across the chrome and copper and ceramic tureens under which blue alcohol flames burned, paled by sunlight.

There was no sea wall along the bay shore. Mangroves grew there, and some had been cut away to provide vistas of quiet water and the mile-distant mainland shore speckled with pastel block houses. Just to the north of the house there was a sea wall and a boat basin where the Jamison cruiser, a thirty-eight-foot Huckins, sat hot and white at her moorings, glinting in the sun.

There was quiet music on the high-fidelity system, from speakers hidden in living room and patio.

Mike Rodenska, ravenous after showering and changing to slacks and sport shirt, ladled himself a plate so generous he felt guilty about it, walked over and sat in one of the big redwood chairs in an empty corner, and began to eat.

Two minutes later a round brown woman wearing orange shorts, a red shirt, straw slippers and a clattering jangle of junk jewelry came over to him, carrying half a large Bloody Mary.

“Now don’t try to get up, Mr. Rodensky. I’m Marg Laybourne. A neighbor. We live just down the key. The pink house. I’m terribly sorry we couldn’t make the party last night. I’m one of Mary’s very closest friends.” She pulled a straight chair close and sat down. She had a breathless way of speaking. He had seen dark brown eyes like those before, and in a moment he remembered where. In the chimp cage at the zoo—an intent and liquid curiosity, full of malice and mischief. “Don’t you think these Sundays are a wonderful custom, Mr. Rodensky?”

“Rodenska. Mike.”

“Oh. Rodenska. Is this your first visit to Florida, Mike?”

“The first.”

“Please keep eating. Everything looks delicious. We’ve been down here five years now, nearly six. Charlie, that’s my husband, was in banking and he had a coronary and retired, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him now, but he does have to be a little careful, but not as careful as he should be, I keep telling him. Are you on a vacation, Mike? Oh, I’m sorry. That was a stupid question. Mary told me you lost your wife a little while ago and they’d asked you down here for a change. Mary said you’re in the newspaper business.”

“I was.”

“You and Troy got to know each other in the army.”

“Marine Corps.”

“Well, in the war anyway. Charlie was in the Navy in Washington on a sort of civilian thing. I guess this must be a really total change for you, Mike, coming to Riley Key.”

“After what I’m used to?”

“It is unusual here, don’t you think? I call it the last out-post of gracious living, and yet we’re not formal at all. I mean the homes along here, it’s more like a club. This whole north end of the key. The Jamisons and Laybournes and Claytons and Tomleys and Carstairs and Thatchers. Gus Thatcher, and he is an old darling, bought up most of this land in the beginning and he’s been careful to sell it to the right people. And the Key Club is so handy. We usually all end up there Sunday evenings.”

“We do?”

“Haven’t you seen it yet? It’s a rickety old place, full of stuffed fish, but the food is divine, really.”

“It’s all like one big happy family.”

“What? Oh, yea. Exactly. There are a few who don’t… participate very much, but we don’t have any of the wrong sort.”

“This old darling-type fellow, this Gus somebody, you figure he’d sell me a hunk of land?”

She seemed startled. “Well… the best pieces are gone and it’s really gotten terribly dear. The last piece sold, to a perfectly darling couple named Crown, well, it went at a hundred and sixty a foot, Gulf to bay, so they had to pay thirty-two thousand for their two hundred feet, and they’re going to start to build soon.”

“I wouldn’t need so much, Marg. Just to park a trailer on.”

“A trailer!”

“We call them mobile homes now. It sounds more deluxe.”

“You couldn’t do that! This is all zoned A-l residential. My goodness, you’d never… you’re joking, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m pulling your leg, Marg. Actually I’m loaded.”

“What?”

“Loaded. Up to here in money.”

“Really?”

“What you call
nouveau riche.
I’m a diamond in the rough. Heart of gold. I really come on for dogs and kids. I’d be an asset to the Key.”

She had become very uncertain. “Are you really thinking of staying here?”

“I’m looking around, kiddo. Put it that way. Of course, I move into a place like this, I’d change my name to Rodens.”

“Are you being rude?”

“I don’t want to make you sore. I figure you could tip me off on something good down here to get into. Or that Charlie of yours could. Got to put money to work, you know.”

“Did you… sell your newspaper?”

“I never owned one. No, it was like this, Marg. My old man was a real slob. Ran a sheet metal shop in Buffalo, New York. He was so dumb and crude and ignorant people couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t. I never saw him one time since I was sixteen. But he had one hobby. He bought little chunks of stock and put them away. I never knew about that. Not until he died. Crazy stocks like Polaroid and Electric Boat and Reynolds Metals. The timing is interesting. Last October my wife gets a diagnosis of cancer, one of the fast hopeless kinds. By the end of November I am entirely out of money. By middle December the lawyers in Buffalo find me, ten days after the old man is buried, and suddenly I’m worth a few hundred thousand bucks. I could draw against it right away, but I didn’t get it all until two weeks after my wife died. Now my kids are in Melford School in Vermont, and I’m loaded, kiddo.”

She stared at him. He noted that her hand shook a little when she hoisted the drink to her mouth.

She got up and said, “I hope you’ll have a very nice visit here, Mr. Rodenska.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Laybourne.”

She started to turn away and then turned back with a small and social laugh, and a special gleam of malice. “You’d better be careful about putting any of your great wealth in Troy’s project. My Charlie would tell you the same thing.”

She walked away. Rodenska forked up the last piece of cucumber and spoke to himself sharply. Down, boy. You’re too shaky to play games. Even with a target like that.

At one point he had felt close to tears. With no reason. Not about Buttons. Tears, maybe, from a kind of helpless frustration at finding himself mauling the woman without cause. She couldn’t help what she was. Of the two of them, he had been the vicious one. (Except for that crack about Troy.) She was merely empty, in a way that seemed to comfort her. He had been writing dirty words on the sidewalk, out of a kind of compulsion. As if, when Buttons had died, patience had died with her. The world was crummy, and they came at you from all angles lately. Have to watch it.

He changed the subject by focusing his specialized attention on a couple by the pool—a man, dry and brown as a corpse left too long in the sun, sitting angularly on a pool-side cushion talking privately to a rounded blonde in a pink suit who lay on a chaise lounge with her face upturned toward the sun. He soon realized they were quarreling, slowly, quietly, viciously, with long silences between the unforgiveable things they were saying to each other. He did not change expression and barely moved his lips when he spoke to her. When she answered her face would change. She had prettiness, marred by too small a mouth and a piggy little nose. She looked spoiled, petulant, bored, and bitter when she answered him. The lines would go away when she again composed her face for the beat of the sun.

Married, he decided. And he’s twenty years older, and it’s probably a second one, and he was so charged up about those tits he didn’t stop to think of what they’d find to do outside of bed, and now she’s started fooling around a little, and he can’t prove anything but he’s suspicious as hell. She was twenty-five when she married him and now she’s thirty—five years older and fifteen pounds heavier—and afraid he’s going to live forever.

The last outpost of gracious living. But informal.

He went over to the bar and found gin and collins mix and made himself a tall strong drink.

As he started to turn away from the bar Troy said, “Party pooper.”

Mike turned and looked up at the taller man. Troy had grown a lot heavier in five years. The hair was thin and blonde-gray. There were dark pouches under his eyes.

“I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Don’t kid me. I wasn’t missed.”

Troy started to build himself an Old Fashioned. “I should have folded when you did. How are you coming along?”

“Adequate. I just ate like a pig.”

“Mary says you were swimming early.”

“You know how it is with us athletes. What the hell does the ‘D’ stand for?”

“What? Oh, ‘D’ for ‘Dexter.’”

“Dexter Troy Jamison. My, my!”

“Looks juicy on that blue mailbox, doesn’t it?”

“Real rich. I’ll call you Dex, like I was a friend.”

“Try it. One time.”

They took their drinks over and sat on a bench on the far side of the pool.

“The Sunday routine,” Troy said. “If I recover fast enough maybe we’ll take the boat out, but probably no. There’ll be a group on the beach. There’ll be some ways you can lose money. Or you can play tennis at the Laybournes or the Key Club. Or just drink.”

“I won’t be playing tennis at the Laybournes.”

“No?”

“Marg Laybourne tried to work me over. But she wasn’t used to a counterpuncher.”

“Same old Mike. Same old war against the phonies. Surprised you bothered with her.”

“So am I. It was too easy. No challenge.”

“In a little while I’m going to see if I can make it all the way to the Gulf.”

“Say, are you used to a counterpuncher, old Troy?”

“Am I a phony?”

“How can I tell?”

“What do you mean by that, Mike?”

“Let me put it this way. I got here Monday. You got a fine place. And, let me add, a dandy wife. I like Mary. But I get the polite, gracious, impersonal routine from you, boy. I’m maybe somebody you met in a club car and invited down here to this last outpost of gracious living. We met seventeen years ago, Troy. Remember me? Chrissake, I don’t want hugs and kisses, but I don’t like you being on guard.”

“On guard?”

“That’s the impression you give. Damn if it isn’t. Are you self-conscious about all this? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? And you were on your way to making it one way, and you goofed yourself out of that, so you married it. All right. I’ve got nothing against you marrying it.”

“That’s nice to know. I needed your approval.”

“Get nasty. At least it’s a change.”

“It’s been five years. People change.”

“Not this much.”

“I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“All of it none of my business, eh?”

“Relax, Mike. You’re down here to relax. Soak up the sun. Have some laughs. Get drunk. But stay off my back.”

“You’ve got bad nerves, Troy. Worse than mine.”

“There isn’t any rule says you’ve got to know everything about everything.”

“With me it’s a habit. Like finding out this big Horseshoe Bay Estates of yours is sour.”

Troy stared at him. “Who says so!”

“Nobody did. It was a shot in the dark. You just confirmed it, boy.”

“Maybe a week is long enough. Maybe that’s all the rest you needed.”

“I’ll stick around a while, thanks.”

“Goddamn it, Mike!”

“Let’s drop it. When you get off this remote kick you’re on, and realize I might have some ideas—maybe even good ideas—about what’s chewing on you, look me up. I’ll probably be on the beach. Let’s drop it for now. Brief me on that pair over there.”

Troy scowled at him for a few seconds, and then shrugged. “That’s the Claytons. Rex and Tracey.”

“A very loving couple.”

“He loves her and she loves anybody. I got to go find some aspirin.”

During the next hour Mike had some dull talk with some dull people. When he was free he built a third drink and took it back to his pleasant guest room. He stretched out on the bed and thought about Troy. Friendship was one of the great variables. Like everybody is in their own little row-boat, with no oars, and the currents move you around. With some people it’s worth paddling with your hands to keep the rowboats side by side. With others neither of you have to work because you’re caught in the same current anyway. It had been like that with Troy. And he suspected it still was, if Troy would stop being remote. With Troy it wasn’t like other interrupted friendships—where you get back together again with great expectations and find out you’re a couple of strangers. Either you grew in different directions, or one stood still and the other one grew.

He was cynic enough to know that Troy could never entirely forgive him for that New York mess. Nobody can conquer all the subconscious resentment against a man who sees him at his hopeless, helpless worst, and drives off the dogs and gets him back on his feet.

He remembered how it was in New York. New York had to be put into historical perspective, because it was a part of a lot of things that had gone before.

After the war Mike had tried to continue with the column. It meant good money. But a lot of things went wrong. The syndicate was small and couldn’t afford to invest in a promotion to make Mike Rodenska a peacetime success. The bookings began to dwindle. A bunch of the best wartime columns were published in book form, and didn’t sell enough to make the advance. And the labor of tapping out the columns had become more than labor. It was misery. Mauldin and Hargrove were having the same problem—and probably Pyle wouldn’t have found it too easy either had he managed to miss his rendezvous on Iwo Jima. Actually Mike hungered to be back as a member of the working press. Doing a column seemed too remote—almost phony. Buttons wanted him to do what would make him happiest.