Condominium

by John D. MacDonald

  He wished there was someone he could tell the dream to, who would appreciate it, who would have known all four of them well. But the only people who could have appreciated it, really and truly, were Larry and Bill and Ted, appreciated the ghastly humor of it.

  Larry especially. He could almost hear Larry’s voice. “You mean the three of us was sitting there in that old car, in that gawd-forsaken old white Cad I had that time, with the steer horns on the front and the calfskin upholstery with the hair side up? Jesus, I loved that dang car. Stomp it to the floor, it’d go like whistlin’ piss. But that thang been crunched up into a little bale and recycled four or five times since those days. Me and Ted and Bill here, raised up from the daid to come grab you? That must have spoiled your undershorts for sure, Lee.”

  What the world does, Lee thought, it pulls out your plugs. You sat there with a big switchboard and you could talk to them all and they could talk to each other—about you, if they happened to feel like it. The little ruby lights go out and you have to manually yank out the plugs and let them snap down into their secret places where the cobwebs grow on them. You can plug in and talk to strangers. But nobody knows what all the past was like for you, and nobody cares. And, if the truth be known, you do not really give a God damn what their lives were like either, if you were not a part of them. Comparing pasts is the most tedious conversational exercise known to mankind. Everybody was a cute baby, once upon a time.

  We are all in the path of a slow-moving avalanche, a gray, rolling clutter of unidentifiable, unimaginable junk. We can stroll on ahead of it, uneasy, but in no specific danger. If we look back and see some bright treasured object left behind, there is no time to dart back and rescue it. The avalanche rolls over it, grinding it down and out of sight forever. One day we tire or trip, we fall, and in moments we are covered, lost and forgotten.

  Long ago, serving as a War Department consultant, he had stood in the light of a hot dawn in Calcutta in front of a hotel, waiting for a friend to come by in a jeep and take him out to Dum Dum airfield, where he hoped to hitch a ride on a C-88 headed for China. There were perhaps fifty people asleep on the broad sidewalk in front of the hotel, arrayed at random, ragged robes drawn up to cover most of the sleeping faces.

  Soon three hotel porters in wine-colored uniforms came out carrying a fire hose. They clamped the brass fitting of the hose into the water outlet on the front of the hotel. Two porters handled the long brass nozzle while the third turned the water on with a large key. The flattened hose sprang to fatness, and the hard gout began to spray the sleeping people. Many of them sprang up with loud cries of rage and danced away from the stream of water, making ugly gestures and ugly faces at the impassive porters. Others got up more slowly, too weakened by the Great Famine of Bengal and by disease to escape being soaked and battered by the water. A very few crawled out of range. He counted eleven who did not move. The porters moved the hose to proper positions where, by directing the stream of water, they could roll the bundles of rags over and over, into the gutter. He wished the jeep would come. The still morning air smelled of rancid goat butter, charcoal fires, urine, sickness and hot wet sidewalk. But before the jeep came, a lorry came slowly down the street and men walked beside it, picking up bodies by wrists and ankles, and with a practiced and muscular swing, heaving them over the high sideboards of the truck onto the bodies already collected. The hose had been rolled up and taken back inside. The eleven were thrown into the truck.

  He was frightened by the utter inconsequence of the eleven deaths. If they had names, only they knew them. The bodies were not worth searching because there was no chance there was anything of value on any of them. They were not even worth inspecting to determine if they were dead or merely nearly so. They were dead who left no echoes, no resonance, no mourners. In that one instant when they passed from awareness to nothingness, they became one with all the nameless dead from all the pestilences of mankind from the very beginning.

  His friend from the embassy came in the jeep. He told him about the hose. His friend said it happened all over the city every morning. He said they did not count how many were taken to the municipal burning ghats, but merely estimated them by the number of truckloads.

  With sudden insight he realized that only a very few years need pass before he was one of the anonymous billions of the unknown dead. Postmortem identifications were brief and faded quickly. Perhaps by the time of the death of his youngest grandchild he would be utterly gone. Name, pictures, letters, marker. He would become a statistical micron. The great Bengal famine killed X million. In 19—X retired persons in Florida died.

  The accumulated wealth would provide a spurious kind of immortality. Out of an odd mix of vanity, irony and idealism, he had set up the Lee Messenger Foundation with objectives so carefully tooled to his own beliefs, the trustees of the future could not freely ride off in all directions. There was the Foundation, the bequests to the sons, the many trust accounts for the grandchildren, and of course the large gift to Barbara, predeath, no business of any executor or tax collector in the future.

  But Lee Messenger the man will be as thoroughly gone as all the others without that special knack of attracting money. And when the man was gone and the century was gone, those now being born would perhaps look back and see the people of that prior century and see them as quaint, or innocent, or touching.

  Not so, he thought. Each year on earth involves vast confusions for those living through it. There are shrill cries, confusing shapes, clouds of dust, and people running and pointing in all possible directions, most of them wrong.

  You up there in the future, you can look back and feel that we should have known exactly what was happening. While you scramble around in your own clouds of dust, yearning for some less perilous niche where you can escape the crushing impact of your own history, remember that it was like that here too. And everywhere. Always.

  He saw the door open a cautious crack, then swing wide as Barbara walked in.

  “Saw your eyes open,” she said. “How are you?”

  “About to get up.”

  “Feel okay?”

  “Feel good. I had a very funny dream.”

  “Hey, tell me!”

  “I wish I could. All I can remember is how I laughed.”

  As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, she went and got his robe from the nearby chair to hold it for him.

  23

  GUS GARVER HAD to wait over an hour at the Athens Airport for the Eastern flight out of Atlanta to come in. He recognized Sam Harrison at a considerable distance, taller than the other passengers, sun-bronzed, wearing a faded khaki bush jacket and a white canvas hat, carrying a disreputable flight bag and walking toward the terminal with that limber swinging stride he could keep up all day long in all kinds of terrain.

  When he spotted Garver he smiled, teeth white in his tan face. He dropped the bag and shook hands. “How you, Mr. Garver?”

  “Making it, Mr. Harrison.”

  Sam Harrison took off his hat, wiped his forehead with a heavy forearm and laughed and said, “Meaning I get to call you Gus?”

  “Now you aren’t working for me anymore, Sam.”

  “I thought that’s what I came down for.”

  “It’s a long story. You don’t have any other luggage?”

  “Just this thing is all.”

  “Car’s over this way.”

  On the way through the city and on out to the key, Gus explained the situation. “When they scraped that acreage behind Golden Sands bare it began to make me uneasy. Now they’re doing the dredging and draglining on the yacht basin. Hell, I couldn’t afford you. I’m retired. There is an old joker named Messenger on the top floor. Seven-A. He looks next door to dead and probably is. But where most of the other people in the building have fried mush for brains, this Messenger has got very good machinery between the ears. He can talk my language and yours, and probably languages we never heard of, and he is big rich. All the signs are there. I told him wh
y I was worried and what I was worried about, and he said, Let’s get the best.”

  “Very nice that you should think—”

  “Don’t scuff any shy foot with me, Sam. I’m just glad you’ve got some time between jobs. What was this last one?”

  “A new tower design for deep offshore drilling, up to two thousand feet. My end of it was how to guy the tower for security in all kinds of wave action. Not enough background information to run good computer models. And as I don’t have to tell you, Gus, the scale-model approach is no good when you are dealing with forty-foot waves versus structural steel. It’s some help, but not much. The oil company wants to give it too much mass and strength. My approach is that it has to give. It has to sway and bob and weave. I made my final report and got paid off, and God only knows what they’ll decide to build.”

  “Where next, after here?”

  “New Zealand. Tasman coast of the South Island. Breakwater for a harbor for a mining project. They’ve put in two and lost both. One wild son of a bitch of a sea comes slamming in there. You know, I can’t think of you as retired. Don’t you get the itch?”

  “Never,” he said firmly.

  “Sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “One of those things.”

  “Should I stop in and see her, maybe?”

  “Thanks for suggesting it, Sam. She always liked you. But there’s no point in it. I don’t even know if she knows who I am. I think she does, but I can’t be real sure. About all I can do is make sure she’s comfortable and treated nice. And I make sure.”

  “Where’ll I be staying?”

  “Right at Golden Sands. I might even feed you.”

  “The rate just went up.”

  “For five hundred a day and expenses, you can choke it down.”

  “Want to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “You’re the big marine civil engineer. You’re the wave-action specialist and hydrologist and what-the-hell not. What I’ll tell you is that Golden Sands is a marginal structure on questionable footings. Do your own investigating. I don’t want to slant you in the wrong direction.”

  “Even to save time?”

  “I’m not paying for your time.”

  “The maximum time I can spend here is two weeks.”

  “Which is seven thousand, plus travel and miscellaneous.”

  “When do I check in with the man who’s paying me?”

  “Soon as we can arrange it.”

  Sam Harrison shrugged. At the next traffic light, as they waited for the change, Gus looked sidelong at him, noting the small changes. Sam’s hat was off, and his hairline had receded at least a full inch and the brown hair had turned gray at the temples. He looked thicker through chest and shoulders, but just as lean around the middle. He had the blunt features and the wind and weather wrinkles of the outdoor laborer. His hands were huge and looked clumsy, but Gus remembered the precision and delicacy of the drawings Sam would make to illustrate a point in argument. There was a new scar, a dimpled pinkness in the side of his cheek.

  “Some husband shoot you in the face, Sam?”

  Harrison grinned and put his fingertips to the spot. “Piece of reinforcing rod slid out of a bundle on a sling, bounced once and popped me. Went in here and smashed three teeth and knocked me cold. Very lucky. It could have hit three inches higher or three inches lower, and I am a dead engineer.”

  “Or it could have missed you.”

  “Why? Nothing ever does.”

  “Where are the guys lately? I know Dirty Eddie and Fix are in Alaska. How about Stover?”

  “Iraq. Buster retired on disability. His back finally quit for good. Lindy is working a big one in Canada, good for three years at least. Those are the only ones I know about. I’ve been out of touch.” They went across the bridge and turned south on Fiddler Key. Sam Harrison sat straighter and peered at the high-rise condominiums. “Jesus God, Gus. They are built practically in the water.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Have they figured the hundred-year crest here?”

  “Thirteen feet above high tide. That’s the government stipulation of the floor level of dwellings to be eligible for high-water insurance protection. But most builders go after exceptions and get them.”

  “And the builders don’t have to live in the houses with the exceptions.”

  “Right. But Golden Sands is pretty much okay on that thirteen-foot elevation. The violation is the manager’s apartment on the ground level, where the parking is, plus some utility rooms and storage rooms and the laundry room.”

  “But it would knock out your heating and air conditioning and electric and phone?”

  “Probably. But here we are. See, it’s on the bay side, and those two structures there would probably break down the wave action, so by the time it got to us it would have lost its punch.”

  Gus Garver drove around and parked in back. They got out of the car and looked toward the bay, broad and clearly visible across the scraped marl where the jungle had been.

  Sam Harrison shaded his eyes and looked at the tethered shabby blue-and-yellow dredge. The jointed pipe, attached to floats, came ashore off to the right, spilling mud, sand, weed shell and small marine creatures into an area where the bulldozer had pushed berms into position to retain the solid matter and let the bay water run off. A yellow dragline was walking its way out from shore, building up sandbars and oyster bars into a broad curve of filled land which would encircle one side of the yacht basin.

  “Eight-inch dredge?” Sam asked.

  “I think so.”

  “All the approvals in order? Environmental impact, Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, and all the others?”

  “Don’t need them.”

  “The hell you say!” Sam said, incredulous.

  “You see, it’s a minor work permit. They are just scouring an existing channel and repairing erosion damage.”

  “Bullshit!” said Sam Harrison.

  “I know. But the plans were submitted as a minor work permit, and the commissioners approved it as a minor work permit, and some county clown comes out every day and inspects it to make sure it is proceeding as a minor job of scouring and repairing. See the markers out there in the bay? That’s the Inland Waterway. They are going to scour out an existing channel out to that channel, with a five-foot depth at low tide.”

  Harrison strolled north to a point where he could see beyond the shoulder of Golden Sands, out toward the open Gulf. He turned and looked toward the bay. He sat on his heels and stared first east and then west. He poked a stick into the sandy soil and stood up and sighed and shrugged.

  After they left Harrison’s gear off in 1-C, they went up to LeGrande Messenger’s apartment on the seventh floor. Barbara Messenger opened the door and came out into the hallway, leaving the door barely ajar.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Garver, but he started to have quite a bit of pain about an hour ago and finally he had to give in and let me give him a shot. He was very anxious to meet Mr. Harrison.”

  “I’ll be around for a while. I can talk to your father when he feels better.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him, and he detected her mild amusement. He realized what a handsome creature she was, beach-brown and glowing. “He’s my husband, Mr. Harrison.”

  “I have this hoof-in-mouth disease. I thought Mr. Garver introduced you as Miss.”

  “It’s perfectly all right. Actually he has a granddaughter not too much younger than I am. Neither of us is sensitive about age. If I were to guess about when would be a good time to see him, I would suggest about six this evening, but do call me first, to make sure.”

  “I’ve got the unlisted number,” Gus said. “Are you coming to the big meeting today, Mrs. Messenger?”

  “Lee asked me to attend and take notes. Mrs. Schmidt will stay here with him.”

  As they walked toward the elevators, Harrison said, “Pretty lady.”

  “Sure is. I did a con job on them, sort of. If t
here was any real trouble here, it could play hell getting Messenger out safely, especially if he was sedated. He’s a big old boy, not fat. Just pretty big even if he has dwindled a lot, which you can see he has. And I could guess he’s got money he can lay out whenever his self-interest is involved. So I went a little way into what’s troubling me, and he said yes as fast as I thought he would. A lot easier than trying to take up a collection. You know, a lot of these people are really hurting. The monthly assessment on this place more than doubled a couple of months ago. That, plus inflation, and the little expenses you didn’t count on.”

  “You making it okay?”

  “Sure, sure. What’s your program, Sam?”

  As they got off at the first floor and walked toward Gus’s small apartment, Sam said, “Rent a car. Go make friends at the courthouse. Find out where I can find aerials and depth charts and surveys.”

  “The state university system has started a Sea Grant Program. They’ve published a few studies on coastal problems. Have you given any thought to some kind of cover story? If it looks as if you’re out to bring Marty Liss’s new project to a screaming stop, you won’t get access to anything. He’s pretty well connected politically, and with the banks and the Chamber of Commerce. Also, the construction people are making a big public outcry about the way new permits have fallen off.”

  “Maybe I better look as if I’m bird-dogging for some big outfit. Which means I better not stay here. You don’t know me, Gus.”

  “Down the key below the village is a place where a rich bird dog would stay. The Islander. Ask for a beach cabana. You can get your car delivered there. I’ll drive you down.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Mile and a half.”

  “I’ll walk it, down the beach. Learn more. This thing has a shoulder strap.”

  At high noon Sam Harrison walked down the broad white beach of Fiddler Key. He had stuffed his bush jacket into his carry-on bag. He wore his big oval sunglasses, with his white canvas hat tipped well forward to shade them. He walked slowly, sweating mildly in the noon heat of July, walking on the hard white sand exposed by the outgoing tide. The beach was very broad, and above the high-tide line were the small signs indicating that the uplands sand, with its foot-dimpled patterns, its groupings of folding chairs, its thatched sun shelters, was for the exclusive use of the condominium owners and their guests, owners of apartments in the Port Belleview, Imperial Beach, Seville, Tahitian, Bright-waters, Azure Breeze, Captiva, Surf House, Enchanted Shores, Patrician Sands, Regency Beach, Mariner Towers, Martinique Manor, Gulf Way, Silvery Sands, Beachcomber Reef Club, Polynesian Breezes, Regal Shores, Tropic Towers, Vista del Sol, Casita del Mar, Buccaneer Bay, Aloha Shores, Sea Grape Estates, Sand Dollar Dunes, Magic Horizons, Serenity House.…