The Long Lavender Look

  “Did you clean up this crock boat?”

  “Look at my poor hands, dear. Look at my nails!”

  “Seriously, how come …”

  “Travis, darling, a long time ago—maybe not so awfully long ago really, but it does seem way way back—I told Meyer that you had picked up all the pieces of me and put me together, and that if you were ever in need of the same he was to find me, through my gallery, and let me know and if I did not happen to have any compound fractures, I would come to you on a dead run. I got here a week ago yesterday.”

  “So that’s why Meyer has looked so bland and smug and mysterious. Why didn’t you come to the hospital?”

  “Hate them, darling. Sorry. Wasn’t this better?”

  “This is as good as anything can get. My God, you look lovely. You are something way out else, Heidi.”

  “Do you need putting together?”

  “Haven’t you noticed me?”

  “Oh hell, I don’t mean looking like sudden death. That’s a body thing. I mean putting together.”

  I looked at her and knew that I did. “Something was going wrong and it went further wrong. I don’t know. I lost it, somehow, without knowing what I lost. Some kind of … sense of light and motion and purpose. I went ragged around the edges and bleak in the middle. The world seems to be coarsening, and me with it. Everything that happens takes away, and less flows back. And I respond less, and in the wrong way. I still amuse myself but there’s some contempt in it now. I don’t know … I don’t know.…”

  “Darling, there’s that water from the eye syndrome again.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing so really wrong with you, you know. It’s second adolescence.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Of course, Travis, darling. I had delayed adolescence. Remember your absolutely dreadful analogy of comparing me to that old yellow Packard you bought when you were a child, and finally got running so beautifully?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “In your ravings you let Meyer know you had promised the cruising month of June aboard this fine houseboat to a lady who, for reasons he wouldn’t tell me, won’t be able to make it. You may tell me or not, as you wish. But I am substituting.”

  “That is very good thinking, Heidi.”

  “The cure for my delayed adolescence was a grown-up man. And I think a grown-up woman can cure a recurrence of adolescence, don’t you?”

  “Shock treatment, eh?”

  “McGee, I am a very grown-up woman, far more so than that grim day we said good-by on that lovely island.”

  “I think you are. Yes. I would say so.”

  She looked at me and I suddenly knew exactly what Mona Lisa was thinking about. It was exactly the same smile, though on a face far more to my liking.

  “I think, dear, that it is going to be absolutely essential for the health of both of us, and the sanity too, if you will kindly get a lot of lovely sleep, and eat the rich marvelous foods I am going to cook for you, and exercise a little more each day, and take the sun and.…”

  “I guess it’s pretty essential. Yes, indeedy.”

  “Because we are going to farther places on our cruise, darling, than anybody has ever reached before on a boat this slow in one single lovely month.”

  I finished the drink. She took the glass. She told me later that I fell asleep smiling, and that Raoul, the cat, joined me later, curling into a warm nest against my waist.

  BY JOHN D. MACDONALD

  The Brass Cupcake

  Murder for the Bride

  Judge Me Not

  Wine for the Dreamers

  Ballroom of the Skies

  The Damned

  Dead Low Tide

  The Neon Jungle

  Cancel All Our Vows

  All These Condemned

  Area of Suspicion

  Contrary Pleasure

  A Bullet for Cinderella

  Cry Hard, Cry Fast

  You Live Once

  April Evil

  Border Town Girl

  Murder in the Wind

  Death Trap

  The Price of Murder

  The Empty Trap

  A Man of Affairs

  The Deceivers

  Clemmie

  Cape Fear (The Executioners)

  Soft Touch

  Deadly Welcome

  Please Write for Details

  The Crossroads

  The Beach Girls

  Slam the Big Door

  The End of the Night

  The Only Girl in the Game

  Where Is Janice Gantry?

  One Monday We Killed Them All

  A Key to the Suite

  A Flash of Green

  The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

  On the Run

  The Drowner

  The House Guest

  End of the Tiger and Other Stories

  The Last One Left

  S*E*V*E*N

  Condominium

  Other Times, Other Worlds

  Nothing Can Go Wrong

  The Good Old Stuff

  One More Sunday

  More Good Old Stuff

  Barrier Island

  A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974

  THE TRAVIS MCGEE SERIES

  The Deep Blue Good-By

  Nightmare in Pink

  A Purple Place for Dying

  The Quick Red Fox

  A Deadly Shade of Gold

  Bright Orange for the Shroud

  Darker than Amber

  One Fearful Yellow Eye

  Pale Gray for Guilt

  The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

  Dress Her in Indigo

  The Long Lavender Look

  A Tan and Sandy Silence

  The Scarlet Ruse

  The Turquoise Lament

  The Dreadful Lemon Sky

  The Empty Copper Sea

  The Green Ripper

  Free Fall in Crimson

  Cinnamon Skin

  The Lonely Silver Rain

  The Official Travis McGee Quizbook

  About the Author

  John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.