Condominium

by John D. MacDonald

  One day a wind came off the Gulf out of the northwest so cold and strong it drove her off the beach after less than a half hour, chilled through. But around in back of Golden Sands it was warm in the sun, and so she went for the first time to the jungle and found a winding path into the dense growth.

  It took her three weeks to determine that she very probably would not live long enough to identify every kind of growth in those fourteen thickety acres. There were century plants, black mangrove, white mangrove, Australian pines, sea grape, punk trees, Brazilian pepper, bay cedar, grape, bayonets, cabbage palm, saw palmetto, wild coffee, greenbriar vines, marsh elder. There were varieties of live oak, a stand of them deep in the middle of the wild place, some of them huge, with low outspread limbs bigger around than her body. In the oaks were air plants in bewildering variety, some of them as big as bushel baskets. There were wild orchids, trailing strands of Spanish moss, strangler fig. Parts of the tract were too dense for her to penetrate, even with the help of the heavy pruning shears she bought and with which she made herself new paths winding through her private kingdom, trying always to cause a minimum of destruction and disturbance. There were saltwater pools, brackish pools, rainwater pools. After a rain there was a deafening shrill of tree toads. Each morning and evening there was the sad moaning of the doves. Day and night in season there was the showoff repertoire of mockingbirds, one near, two others far, the area being big enough to provide territorial rights for three pairs. Big gray squirrels lived there. You had to move swiftly on one path or get bitten by furious red ants. The shafts of sun came down and illuminated high webs of great gaudy banana spiders.

  She was happily busy, filling notebooks, taking leaf samples. She traced a map of the fourteen acres, marked in her paths, and devised a number and letter code keyed to her identifications and wrote the code in at the proper coordinates on her map. Several times she tried to talk to Jack about her special kingdom and the challenges it provided. But he listened with that alert and interested expression, that polite intensity which she at last realized was exactly the same way she listened to his endless tales of the cleverness of the yard-long snook, the noble fury of the bonito, the single run and thrashing leap of the barracuda, the merits of a particular reel, the crucial choice of what test line to use, the experiments with the proper depth and speed for trolling. She had listened to him with the same glazed intensity, losing the sense of the words, her mind wandering as she made the sounds and nods of the good listener. So, out of mercy, she stopped talking to him about Schinus terebinthifolius, Melaleuca leucadendron, Coccoloba uvifera and Laguncularia racemosa.

  One steamy day in early July her infatuation with sorting and classifying and identifying, with imposing her own order on the disorder of nature, turned to something astonishingly different.

  She had gone back to the biggest stand of oaks and had stepped on a fallen branch and turned her ankle. She hobbled to where a giant limb had sagged almost to the ground and sat on it and bent and massaged her ankle. Mosquitoes gathered, and she took the repellant from her canvas shoulder bag and greased the exposed skin of arms, legs, throat and face and forehead.

  For a little while she looked frowningly at the growth nearby, identifying each plant. But then she relaxed and in the next few magical minutes she became part of what she saw and heard and smelled. She sat amid a complex unity, an exquisitely balanced pattern of interwoven, interdependent life forms. Around her was a veritable furnace of birthing and dying, a soft roaring of consumption, consummation, growth and contest, the heats of decay, the ripeness of blossoming. At first she was only a witness to the life around her, and then she became aware of herself, of her body, as part of it too. Within her was a ferment of microorganisms, dreadful combat, birthing of cells, and the gases and stinks of decay. She was a miniature of the miniature world around her, caught up in life rhythms independent of thought and mood. She was a furnace within a furnace, another strand in the complexity, a growing churning dying part of all wildness. The sense of unity was a revelation which shook her. She knew she had never felt at home in her body because she had never clearly identified herself with all the processes of life and death. She was a life form supporting within herself billions of smaller life forms dependent upon her for food and shelter just as the live oak under her rump was haven for spiders and moths and bugs under its skin of bark. She would die as would the tree, and their substance would fuel and provision other life forms in a chain too complex to ever comprehend.

  She was dazed and dazzled by this realization of herself as a part of what she had been measuring and cataloguing. When she stood up, a squirrel yelled a sentry’s warning. A dragonfly, the color of blue oiled steel, paused on high in an angle of sunlight. A breeze moved by, stirring the leaves far overhead. A brown beetle lumbered across the path. Far far away she heard a boat horn demanding that the bridge be raised.

  From that day on she pursued her botanical tables with just as much discipline, but less fervor.

  She did not know she had very little time left on those fourteen acres.

  15

  HOWARD D. ELBRIGHT, the retired chemist in 4-C, was perhaps the first occupant of Golden Sands to learn that unwelcome change was coming. During the couple of months they had lived in the apartment, Howard had become a fisherman. He had acquired a light spinning rod, with a reel that held a hundred and fifty yards of six-pound monofilament.

  He was a methodical man. He had asked a lot of people a great many questions, and had ended up fishing with live shrimp from the bay-shore frontage of the Silverthorn tract behind Golden Sands. There was a narrow shell path which led from the rear parking area of Golden Sands, along the north boundary of the Silverthorn tract, down to Palm Bay. There was an oyster bar, exposed at lowest tides, which curved out into the bay. Howard Elbright, carrying his bucket of one dozen live shrimp, his rod, his little plastic box of gear, dressed in old khaki pants, white T-shirt, long-billed baseball cap on which was written Athens Aggies, would walk to the bay and immerse the perforated inner container of the shrimp bucket in a place next to the oyster bar where the water was deep enough, would carefully thread a shrimp onto the long-shanked hook, wade out along the bar until the water was halfway to his knees, and then cast his bait out toward the edge of the grass flats beyond a channel that ran close to the end of the bar.

  He had learned to make up his own rigs, using brass swivels and twenty-pound leader material and threading the end of his line through a barrel sinker, half-ounce weight, before tying it to the swivel. He had learned that he did best when he retrieved the shrimp in an erratic manner, when the tide was coming in.

  He used a newsstand manual to identify what he caught. He had become familiar with the look and escape efforts of trout, redfish, mangrove snapper, crevalle jack, catfish, grunt, blue runners, ladyfish, sand perch, blowfish and other common varieties.

  There was a pleasant tingle of excitement in making each cast, awaiting the swift knock or the furtive tugging. But at the same time there was an uneasiness in the back of his mind, born of self-knowledge, that his interest would one day fade. And then what? All the attics and cellars and backs of closets of his mind were full of abandoned adult toys: Heathkits, rock tumblers, photo enlargers, tape decks.

  He kept thinking that if he could but go back in time and cancel those purchases and put the money to work in good places, retirement would be a lot less worrisome. It had cost the Elbrights $1,181.40 for that necessary work on the apartment which he had detailed to Higbee soon after they had arrived. And the increased charges had come as a bitter blow. He had thought it was yet another rip-off until he had gone over it carefully with David Dow, the treasurer of the Association, and David had explained exactly how it had all come about and told Howard his options, the most attractive of which was to pay the extra money. It changed their retirement budget. He had thought he might get a small boat. Forget it. The golden years had become, he thought, a little bit brassy.

  But, hell, a
lot of people were worse off. This was very pleasant, standing and fishing in the summer heat, with a breeze to keep the bugs away. To the northeast, across the broad part of the bay, he could see the tall banks in the downtown business area of Athens, and see traffic glinting across the north bridge onto Fiddler Key. His fishing place was reasonably private. He suspected that if he told his acquaintances about it, soon the oyster bar would be lined shoulder to shoulder with other fishermen. And, he decided, they would look like him. An oldster uniform. The SocSec Army, in funny hats and ragged sneakers. When a boat went by in the channel, if he had a fish on, he tried to look as if he didn’t. Privacy was an ever more valuable commodity. It seemed to him that he was, in some obscure manner, imitating a retired person. He was the same Howard Elbright he had always been. But now indignities had been wished upon him. The years of gravity had tugged his flesh downward and it no longer fit his bones as well. He was an imposter, hiding inside this old-man body.

  The bay shore of the Silverthorn tract was very irregular, with deep notches into the dense stands of mangrove. In the beginning, when trying to find the best fishing place, he had moved back and forth along that irregular shoreline, all the way to the south end of it where the channel curved well away from the bay shore. Once he had heard, over the lapping of the water, a sound he could not identify, and as he waded around a projecting point of mangrove he came upon an open white runabout tied to the mangrove in a place of considerable privacy, and had seen a fat brown bald man with a black beard fornicating most vigorously with a fat young woman with short blond hair, both of them naked upon the upholstered bench that ran across the rear of the boat. He backed cautiously away from their thumpety striving and, one ladyfish and one snapper later, he had been startled by the sudden roar of the big outboard motor as the pair took off, heading south, dwindling down the long, narrowing bay, the boat kicking up a rooster tail that blurred his view of them. He made mental notes that this was the third and perhaps last time in his adult life that he had caught a glimpse of the sex act in progress, each time accidentally; that the episodes had averaged fifteen years apart; that the first time it had seemed to him to be deliciously wicked, the second time banal, and this last time wistful.

  And so when he heard a male voice raised in laughter, he wondered if the hefty lovers had returned. There were thrashing sounds and chopping sounds, and then a man yelled, “Over here, Harry. I got it.” There was more chopping, more thrashing, and a little while later two muscular men in sweat-soaked khakis came walking into view up the shoreline, towing a skiff.

  “Morning,” Howard said.

  “Hi. Mister, that there path go on through to the west side of this here piece?”

  “Right through to Golden Sands. What are you looking for?”

  “Metes and bounds on this here parcel. Corners was socked in a long time back, but hell finding them.”

  “Is it sold or something?”

  “I surely don’t know, mister. We’re out of Davis’ office, just surveying. Keep an eye on the stuff in the boat a minute? Thanks.”

  He got three keepers that morning and let the rest go, and then ran out of shrimp. Edith didn’t like him to clean them in the kitchen sink. He carried a sharp fillet knife and used a driftwood board, washed the fillets in the bay current and dropped them into the shrimp bucket. Make a nice lunch, if she hadn’t maybe already started fixing something else.

  He told her about the surveyors and she looked troubled. “Having other condominiums on the three sides of us is enough, Howie.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything like that, honey. I keep reading how the sale of condominiums is beginning to fall off so badly the banks and the construction industry are getting worried. God knows there’s enough of them for sale up and down the key. I don’t think anybody will be starting new ones. I heard they are going to stop working on some of the ones that are partway built.”

  “You know something? The compressor on the air conditioner is starting that noise again.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Edith!”

  “It isn’t my fault, is it?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “It isn’t really as bad as it was, not as loud maybe, and it doesn’t go on constantly. Just a little yip every once in—”

  “So I’ll call that thieving son of a bitch and see if he can figure out how to void the guarantee this time too.”

  “Howard!”

  “We’re pigeons. You know that? We’re a big field of old pigeons, too pooped to fly away, and those service sons of bitches roam among us, grazing, for Christ sake!”

  “Howard!”

  “We should never never never have been suckered into buying this rotten …” But then he saw that she was about to cry, and so he hugged her and comforted her and said he didn’t mean it. She loved the rotten apartment and the rotten view and the rotten neighbors and every part of the whole rotten retirement.

  16

  ON A JULY SATURDAY Gus Garver spent an hour and a half with his wife, Carolyn, in Room B-4 of the Crestwood Nursing Home. She was in her chair when he arrived, and she seemed displeased. He was beginning to be able to interpret the erratic gestures of her left arm, and detect nuances in the damp croaking sounds she was able to make.

  He realized that she was tired of sitting up in the chair and wanted to be back in bed, and so he helped her, adjusted the pillows so she would be comfortable, and turned her little television set on. There were things he wanted to tell her, the little day-by-day things that he had seen and done and heard about. Though he knew she would not understand anything he might say, he found himself organizing the little bits of information, adding, editing, discarding, a process much like that he had followed in writing to her, during the years when he had been in construction camps, apart from her. It was a reflex based on long habit.

  When she began making her bathroom sounds and gestures he went and found one of the attendants to help her, waited until she was back in her bed and said goodbye to her, knowing she had no comprehension of any word he could use.

  As he reached the foot of the stairs leading down into the front foyer, Mr. Castor came out of the office door, a large, plump, pasty man with a harried manner.

  Garver stopped him and said, “Got a minute?”

  “Not much more than that.”

  “My name is Garver. My wife is in B-four. Stroke and aphasia.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. If you have questions about finances, I can’t help you. Mrs. Holly doesn’t work Saturdays. She knows all the regulations and so forth.”

  “I wanted to know about her rings and so on.”

  “Rings?”

  “They were stolen the third day she was here.”

  “Mr. Garver, it says very clearly on the admission documents that personal objects of value should not be—”

  “Hold it!”

  The size and the command timbre of Gus’s voice startled Castor. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s obvious your staff does the stealing. A lot of it goes on here. It’s obvious your staff neglects patients like Mrs. Garver. She can’t demand attention. I found her twice when she’d messed her bed. I found her once with her good arm caught in the sleeve of her jacket. I was told she’d get therapy here, and I assume she must be getting some, but I can’t find out anything about it, so maybe she isn’t.”

  Castor stared at Garver. Gus guessed the man was about forty years old. He had a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. His thick glasses looked as if smeared by thumbprints.

  “I … am … doing … the … best … I … can,” the man said, voice quivering on the edge of control.

  “Which isn’t one hell of a lot,” Garver said.

  The control snapped. Eyes bulged behind the glasses. In a feverish half whisper Castor said, “God, how I hate you people. You goddam old lizards, acting like the world was made just for you. You come charging down here by the millions and take over everything and all you want is handouts. Complain, complain, compla
in. Jesus, I am sick of all you so-called senior citizens.”

  As he started away, Gus caught the man by the plump arm and swung him back and said, “You sure you really belong in this line of work, Castor?”

  Even that small evidence of any kind of personal interest and concern made Castor’s eyes fill. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. None of you have any idea of the kind of shit I have to take. I’m supposed to clear nine percent on the gross. I can’t pay staff enough to keep anybody good. I’ve got a turnover you wouldn’t believe. People don’t know the hassle we go through processing Medicare and Medicaid and those insurance policies. I can’t keep nurses because they get sick of being bad-mouthed by vicious old ladies and cleaning up after dirty old men. They get shoved in here by their goddam relatives and then they come and spend ten minutes a week with Granny and want … want … expect …”

  Garver patted the man’s quivering shoulder. “Take it easy. Take it easy, fellow.”

  “I’m just about at the end of … I need …”

  “You do something for me and I’ll do something for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve run some big jobs on small money. When we’ve gone over budget and were on penalty, I’ve had to keep things moving. Sometimes the answers are simple, but it takes somebody coming in from outside to see them.”

  “There aren’t any answers.”

  Gus shrugged. “Take stealing. Had a job in India, where stealing is a way of life. Small tools started evaporating by the hundreds. So everybody on the payroll put in a voluntary contribution, which I asked for in a loud voice, and when something was missing, we paid for it out of the kitty, bought a new one. So everybody started policing everybody.”

  “State and local regulations wouldn’t permit me to …”

  “Maybe you haven’t tapped all the sources for voluntary help around here. Is there a vocational training center? Maybe you could get them to send some people here for on-the-job training, for course credits.”