The Truth About Lorin Jones (31 page)

“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.”