The Beach Girls

by John D. MacDonald

  Then the calm, cool, lovely face broke into a dozen pieces. She put her head down on the table in the crook of her arm. I wondered how long it had been since she had cried. She didn’t make much noise crying. Once in a while I could hear her over the music. They were playing “Lullaby of Birdland.” Tears make it a sad tune indeed. I went around to her side of the booth. She didn’t shrug off the arm I put around her, so I left it there. The new drinks came.

  Finally she sat up, dug Kleenex out of her straw purse, dabbed at her eyes with it and honked into it. Pink and puffy around the eyes, but still lovely. I took my arm away. It was indicated.

  “Joe?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Joe, I can’t get over it. Ten months now. I’m no nearer being over it.”

  “You’ll have to give it more time.”

  “I don’t love that scared little man. I loved the man I spent the three years with. I still love him.”

  “Love is one of the big words.”

  “I knew I was waiting for one man. When I met him I knew he was the one. He was the first. And maybe the last. I don’t know. I’m scared.”

  “What should you be scared of, Annie?”

  She gulped her drink again, then laid ice cold fingers on my bare forearm. “Scared of telling you the reason why I came over here with you, Joe.”

  “There’s nothing scarey about me.”

  She looked at me with a discomfiting intensity, her head slightly tilted to one side, her eyes ten inches from mine. “Last May you went away for a week with that cute little girl.”

  “That seems to be one of the worst-kept secrets of our age.”

  “Why did you go away with her?”

  “You mean in addition to the obvious reason? Because you, Miss Browder, had gotten under my skin. You were making me nervous. I took her like a cure.”

  She frowned at me. “But what about the girl, Joe? Suppose she had taken it seriously. Suppose it hurt her?”

  “I didn’t want that to happen. That was a problem of selection. Francie was a nice kid. She had other plans for herself. They didn’t include me.”

  She bit her lip for a moment and then said, “So it was without love.”

  “When you net them by telling them you love them, it’s the worst kind of cheating, Anne. Almost any man can get away with that.”

  “If it was without love, wasn’t it … sort of messy?”

  “Messy? I don’t dig you, doll.”

  “Oh, just sort of coarse and greedy and empty.”

  “I didn’t notice it was. Hell, it was fun. We provisioned the boat in Marathon and I went a way north into the islands, hundreds of them. We fished and told corny jokes and went skinny dipping over the side by sunlight and moonlight, got tan all over, ate like pigs and made love whenever it seemed like a good idea. There was no talk of love and eternity.”

  “I wondered if you did that because of me. I had to ask. But, Joe, how did it make you feel?”

  “Relaxed. It took the tensions out. Francie was a dandy girl.”

  “Joe?” She looked down and drew a small slow pattern on the back of my hand with the tip of her finger. “Joe, suppose I’d gone with you instead of that Francie.”

  “Wait until my heart drops back out of my throat. If you’d been the one, it would have been the same only more so. A hell of a lot more so. I mean it would be like the man says—accepting no substitute.”

  “Get me another drink, Joe.”

  I signaled the waiter. I expected red welts to pop up on the back of my hand where she had drawn her shy little design.

  “Anne. Anne. Do you mean what I think you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t want it to mean anything to you, Joe. That wouldn’t be fair, because it wouldn’t mean anything to me. You understand it wouldn’t mean anything to me. It would be like pretend. But I wouldn’t want it to be messy. I couldn’t stand that. Or a stranger. It has to be somebody I like. I want it to … change what I am, just a little. To put … that brick wall further away from me. Further back. You know? I could see the edge of a window. Thirty-one bricks down that edge. In the office we had to be very remote with each other. They frowned on that sort of thing. It was a big legal office, as hushed as a church. Dark suits and white blouses and not too much makeup, and no costume jewelry. They preferred pearls. But in our place I could wait, my hair tousled, musky with perfume, pacing and waiting. He could manage one night a week in the city, sometimes two. I bought one thing for us that I keep thinking about. A little Japanese shadow box, only so big, with a glass front and a place for a little light. It was a garden, a man standing with arms folded, a woman on her knees before him. Symbolic of us, I thought. When I closed the apartment I put it on the bathroom floor and smashed it to bits. The head broke off the little kneeling woman. Joe, I’m going to cry again.”

  “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  “Be good to me. Be gentle and careful. Is that an asinine thing to say?”

  “No. No, darling.”

  “He got so mean and scared and nervous. He turned into a little man. You must understand this, Joe. There isn’t any excitement in me about this. Just a sort of … dread. When I was little, an aunt brought me up and she had a thing about castor oil. Don’t be hurt, Joe. I had to hold it a long time before I could make myself drink it. They would put it in orange juice, prune juice. Nothing helped. There isn’t any wanting in me, Joe. Every day I wish I was dead.” She picked up her glass.

  “Keep knocking them off like that, and you are going to go out like a light.”

  “I can’t feel them at all. You won’t talk about me, Joe, to anybody?”

  “For God’s sake!”

  “All right, but that’s part of it. Being sure of that. This is such a crazy thing.”

  “When did you start thinking about it?”

  “A month ago, I guess. Trying to be cold about it, not be a coward. Thinking if it should be Orbie or Lew or Rex or you. It came out you because you’re the only one I can explain it to, really.”

  For months she won’t talk at all, and then she hauls you into the damndest dialogue since the Greeks. I was voted the most palatable brand of orange juice. But she was drilling a nerve.

  And suddenly I heard myself saying, “Maybe it isn’t a smart thing for you to do, Anne. Really.” I would make a nifty bandit. I’d keep slamming the safe door on my own hand.

  She looked at me for three or four thousand years and said, “You couldn’t have said anything better to me. Now I know I’m right.”

  I took her hand. It was still icy. Nervousness. “Then, to coin a phrase, honey, I’m your boy. I realize that you’re asking me an enormous favor. But I’ll do almost anything for my friends.”

  For the first time I saw more than a careful smile. It was a grin, practically, that squinched her eyes and wrinkled the princess nose, but was a little lopsided. “Keep making jokes,” she said. “Make it light and unimportant. As if I were Francie.” The grin went away and her eyes looked shadowy. “But don’t be too hurt if … I find out I just … can’t. Forgive me, if that happens. And if I can, I may be—no good”

  “So we’ve made an executive decision on the policy level. The next step is to appoint a ways and means committee to handle the practical aspects of this matter, Miss Browder. Let’s throw the peanuts on the floor and get these monkeys down off the walls.”

  She looked down at her fist, clenched and resting on the edge of the booth table. Her lashes were long. I had to lean a little closer to her to hear her say, “—don’t want to wait and feel nervous and self-conscious. I thought the drinks would help a little.”

  “Pardon my crudeness, lady, but are we thinking in terms of a motel?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Oh, no! I thought—your boat—”

  So I overtipped a waiter enough to visibly startle him and walked out with her, following her out. Once upon a time, in Mexico with Wife One, we sat at an outdoor table and drank dark beer and I bought a lottery ticket. I bou
ght a paper the next day and checked my number. I had to look at it at least five times before I could comprehend that I had really and truly won ten thousand pesos. With much the same feeling of incredulity combined with exaltation, I walked behind those lithe legs, behind the rhythmic clench of the pink shorts. Something, of course, would happen. Some clown would bash into the Volks. Or my boat would have sunk at her mooring. Or I would get the blind staggers and fall off the dock.

  D Dock was asleep. Even Sid Stark’s big Chris was dark. Sid, in a prolonged evasion of civil actions in Jersey and California, lives aboard the Pieces of Seven with crew, tame clowns and sycophants and a busty starlet named Francesca Portoni. He throws parties for odd theatrical-looking types. Late, late parties. But the Pieces of Seven was dark tonight.

  We walked quiet as thieves. She whispered she would be back in a little while. Amy’s normal sleep is more like a coma. I went aboard my Ampersand and became furiously busy trying to make it look less like a hall closet. I grabbed armfuls of clutter and stowed them in random places. I stripped the bunk and remade it with fresh sheets. I turned on the quiet little fan in the forward cabin. The corner light seemed too damn bright. After a few minutes of experimentation, I found that draping it with an orange hand towel made the proper effect. I fingered the day’s stubble and wondered if I should try to get in a quick shave. I wished I had champagne on ice. Cold beer didn’t seem suitable. I decided she wasn’t going to come back. I needed a haircut. I wondered if I ought to put pajamas on. I felt like a bride. She wasn’t going to come back.

  Just as I plumped the pillow for the third useless time, I felt the slight shift of the boat as she came aboard. In hurrying to meet her I managed to nearly fracture my thigh on the edge of the table across from the galley.

  She came in and looked at me solemnly in the dim, dim light. She wore a hip-length pale blue terry robe, belted so tightly around the slenderness of her high waist that it flared out around the tender circle of her hips. I sensed that the only thing under that robe was Anne, and I knew she had done that deliberately, to make it that much more difficult for her to change her mind. Her eyes were huge.

  “Did Amy wake—”

  “Don’t talk. Please,” she whispered.

  I led her forward to the tiny sleeping cabin. Even in my altered light, the bunk with the top sheet turned neatly down looked far too crass and methodical. So I grabbed her with great clumsiness to keep her from staring at the bunk. Noses and knees got in the way. It was as deft as a first dancing lesson. When I found her mouth, her lips were firm and cool, and I felt her tremble. I continued the nothing-kiss, wondering what the hell to do next, until she pushed me away. With frozen face and desperate bravado, and the haste of panic, she slipped the robe off and threw it aside. She stood for a bold moment, not looking at me. The perfection of her stopped my breath. Ice maiden, with a pearly translucence, so immediate she seemed unreal. Sacrificial. I realized I was feeling humble, and it seemed like a brand new emotion.

  She turned the sheet further down and sat on the bunk and, still not looking at me, she lifted her arms and undid the coronet braid. Her breasts lifted with her arms. She sat with knees and ankles primly together. When her hair was undone she combed it with her fingers until it fell long and gleaming to her shoulders. She bent over and slipped her sandals off. Only then did she straighten up and look directly at me. Her mouth was trembling, her eyes uneasy, her face waxy-pale.

  A most curious analogy slipped across the surface of my mind. The timid little bull finds itself in the arena and looks forlornly at the men with their pics and banderillas and the sword that kills—and the little bull knows that despite its tremblings this is what all the imitators of Hemingway call the moment of truth and it must comport itself with bravery.

  “The light,” she whispered. I turned it out.

  We were there together possibly two hours. I tried. God knows I tried. And she did too. I am sure of that. But when she shuddered in my arms I knew it was neither excitement nor passion, but rather the reflexive tremor of the sacrificial animal. Though she tried to pretend, I could sense the regret, the remorse, the quiet despair—and the consciousness of shame. And when her breathing was rapid, it was merely the result of effort. Her rhythms had that erratic imbalance of contrivance rather than need. And when finally, in an admission of defeat, I went on to my own completion, it was but a sour spasm, lonely, meaningless and unshared. We lay deadened in the empty darkness until she gave a great sigh and climbed over me and found her robe and put it on. I got up and pulled my Bermuda Walking Shorts on, and turned on the light. Even muted, it was far too bright. We avoided each others’ eyes.

  We walked aft to the dark cockpit. With a special irony the skies showed twice as many stars as usual.

  She touched my arm and whispered, “I’m sorry, Joe. I’m terribly sorry.” And she didn’t have to explain what she was sorry about.

  “If at first,” I said, “you don’t—”

  “No, Joe. That’s no good. I learned something about myself. And found another dead end.”

  With an effort of character, I avoided the obvious pun. “A cruise is great for the inhibitions, Annie.”

  “It would be the same,” she said hopelessly. “I guess, for me, there has to be love. And if there was, that would make it meaningful, and that isn’t what I want.” Her whispery voice tightened. “I wish to God I could be trivial.”

  She stepped on the transom and up onto the dock. We whispered good-night. I watched her walk along the dock, disappearing into shadows and then reappearing briefly under the pale dock light on its high gooseneck stanchion fifty feet away, walking in a weary way, her head slightly bowed, a night wind touching her fair hair.

  And my heart burst. The tired old Rykler heart. Burst and sprayed acid into my eyes, misting the stars. I wanted to spend the next thousand years with her. So I tried to cope with the unexpected, unwanted invasion of Cupid. The little winged bastard had given up his bow and arrow and snuck up on me with a bazooka.

  So I opened a beer and lit a cigarette and sat in my rickety fighting chair under the stars and talked sense to myself. You are a very cynical fellow, Rykler. You bear the wounds of two horrible marriages. That is a nice leggy blondie and you had the acquisitive urge to roll her over in the clover, and you did. Mission accomplished. End of incident. Love is a word on greeting cards. Love is not for you, Joseph. Eternity is a dirty word. She probably leaves hair in the sink, burns the toast and has a loose filling.

  She is glorious. She is what it is all about.

  She doesn’t want an involvement any more than you do, boy. And tonight proved you are not her plate of crumpets. She did everything but yawn.

  I sat there. Sleep was impossible. After a while, I don’t know how long, the eastern sky began to look as though Bimini was on fire. A red sun came up and turned from rose to gold. I went below. Fragrances of her were caught in my pillow, and I buried my silly nose in the pillow and felt a great sad joy.

  I was hooked again, this time worse than ever before.

  This time made the other times seem like the difference between a full orchestra and a penny whistle. I was on the edge of both tears and laughter.

  I heard the gutsy blast of heavy marine engines and knew it was Lew Burgoyne going out on charter in the Amberjack III. He likes to rev them up for a long sleep-shattering minute before taking off. Crazy, black-bearded pirate. But if he is anything he is a …

  THREE

  Captain Lew Burgoyne

  … damn good fisherman, even if I say so myself. But too stupid to be fishing commercial the way I should be. It’s dull hard work. No laughs in it.

  I guess I was looking for laughs when I took Leo Rice on. Funny damn thing. It happened last Tuesday. Rice had come in on Friday in that crappy Higgins. Kept to himself. Didn’t try to buddy up to anybody. We get tourists coming in here who think just because they own a boat they can come barging right into a group of us like old friends. So we give them the c
hill.

  Anyway, I had a charter last Tuesday and Ron Lamarr was going to crew for me and he didn’t show up. I should know better than to depend on that crazy kid. Anyhow, I was outside the men’s shower room bitching to Billy Looby about having no help. This Rice was in the shower room and I guess he heard me through the window. He came out and said he’d be willing to help if I could use him.

  I looked him over. He seemed to be in good shape.

  “What do you know about it?” I asked him.

  “Absolutely nothing,” he said, staring me in the eye. “If you explain what I have to do, I’ll try to do it. It’s a chance for me to learn more about handling a boat.”

  I looked at him and I wanted to laugh out loud. This was the same type joker who gave me such a hell of a rough ride in the Navy. Gold on their damn sleeves. Looking at you like you were some kind of new animal. Hated the bastards, every one.

  “You last a whole day and you get a buck an hour, Rice.”

  “You don’t have to pay me.”

  “If I pay you, you’re working for me. I’ll pay you. See you over on the boat in two minutes, buddy.”

  The charter was four guys from a supermarket convention. Rice was purely a mess around a boat. I was yelling at him before we got clear of the dock. He didn’t even know how to cast off a line.

  On the run out to the edge of the stream I set the pilot and went back and taught him how to rig tackle and sew bait. He was all thumbs. We got into a mess of dolphin. Those supermarket boys were tougher than they looked. And they weren’t feeling any pain. They yelled and whooped, and most of the time for maybe four hours we had two on at once. I worked the rear end right off that Leo Rice. I wanted to see him quit. There was something about his eyes, something uneasy, that made me think he’d quit. And about the set of his mouth.

  He chopped his hands to hamburg on the raw ends of the leader wire he didn’t break off right. He busted his back and blistered his hands gaffing big angry dolphin and releasing them. He untangled snarls and sewed bait and opened beer while the sun burned him and the chop bounced him around and the sweat ran into his eyes. In mid-afternoon the chop got worse and two of the supermarket guys got sick and only one made it to the rail, so that was a mop job for Rice. They wanted to come in so I brought them in. Soon as they paid off and left, I had Rice wash the boat down, and then I showed him how to rinse and lubricate the gear and stow the tackle.