The Beach Girls

by John D. MacDonald

  I looked over at Cindy. I could see her taking new heart. She got herself a beer and, with an epic casualness, turned it into a group of four. I watched them. She sat beside Joe, hugging her knees. Soon she was leaning her knees against him. When he made a joke she threw her head back and laughed hugely at the stars. Joe’s back was toward me. I got up and …

  NINE

  Christy Yale

  … quietly walked away. I wonder why she did that. She has been acting strange lately. Maybe I should say she has been acting stranger than usual. More curious. She and Joe. Like lovers who have quarreled. But that is impossible, knowing Anne.

  When she first came, Joe vectored in on her like a one-man air force. He put on all his acts. He tried everything short of clubbing her over the head and dragging her away, but nothing worked. You could tell when he gave up, regretfully.

  But this is not like that. Before, he had all the cheery optimism of a small boy chinning himself for a new girl in the neighborhood. Now he’s jumpy and sour and moody. And she does not seem to be so carefully controlled. Ever since that night they went out together, surprising all of us, and probably Joe most of all.

  Could it be possible that they …

  Christy, my girl, you are all nose lately. Don’t fuss with other people’s problems. Content yourself—as somebody said—with the terrible geometry of your own.

  And why should I think of Leo when I think of my own areas of concern? Possessive little wench.

  But he’s been so good to talk to and be with. And what in the foolish hell have we talked about these evenings we’ve been together? The right kinds of bait, and how birthdays were when you were little, and how far away the stars are, and why are cars so big, and how firm should we be with Russia, and what is a white lie, and why the sack went out, and why waterfront should cost so much.

  I don’t clown for him, or when he’s around, and I don’t get the same bang out of my little acts when he isn’t around. I feel guilty, somehow. And—pathetic as it may seem—I am getting terribly girlish these days, trying to do something human about my hair, and pondering what to wear as though it was something crucial. I respond to him, because he’s so damnably nice.

  Not a word said yet about why he’s here. But I know it has something to do with our Rex.

  I don’t think anybody else suspects Leo isn’t exactly what he seems to be, a businessman taking a vacation for the sake of his health. But when he clued me that something was up, I was alert. That nose again. Such a pathetic little button of a nose, too.

  First I had suspicions, and then I got the confirmation last Monday night, when I got my hand held and he didn’t even know he was holding it. He nearly mushed it like stepping on a cookie, too.

  Like this. I’d heard he’d buddied up to Rex. Apparently nobody had given him the message about that louse. And I was going to make it my business. Leo crewed half a-day for Lew on Monday. I had to work late at the old C of C, so late that I ate in town, and it was dark when I got home to D Dock. Helen, for once, was home aboard the Shifless, but no company because she was studying her Spanish idioms. It was either get out or wind up holding the book and prompting her. I changed to shorts and a blouse and went out. Went ashore, if you’re a nautical type. I wandered out toward the Ruthless. Casual little old me. Not really a pursuit, like the Tiger Lady looking for meat. Damn it, I like to be with the guy, and it seems reciprocal.

  No lights on the Ruthless. The end of the dock has no light at all. Hasn’t for months. Billy hasn’t gotten around to putting in a new bulb.

  Just as I turned sadly back, he said, “Hey, you!” He was sitting out on the fish box, scene of Rex’s humiliation that time. With an enormous effort of will, I kept myself from jumping in the air and clicking my heels.

  I went and sat beside him and said, “Am I pursuing you, sir?”

  He laughed softly. “Haven’t seen you batting your eyelashes.”

  “You know, Leo, when I first started reading everything I was big enough to pick up, that phrase, batting her eyelashes, worried me half to death. I used to wonder if genuine sirens carried a little stick they used. And I learned some mighty big words. Chaos was one I learned. Only in my mind I pronounced it chowse. So one day I showed off in history class. ‘Europe is in a state of chowse,’ I said. ‘Chowse?’ the teacher said. ‘Complete chowse,’ I said firmly. So she made me spell it. Then she practically had to be helped from the room. It was mighty humiliating, I can tell you true.”

  “I remember putting my mother into a state of semihysterics with the word bedraggled. I told her one morning at breakfast she looked a little bedraggled. Only I pronounced it bed-raggled.”

  “Oh my gosh! There was another one I—”

  Just then Rex came up onto the dock off the Angel and stood and fired up his pipe. He smokes a pipe as though he were posing for a picture of the author on the back of a novel.

  “Hi, Rex,” Leo said.

  “Oh, hello there, Leo,” Rex said with that patronizing joviality of his that makes me want to spit. He strolled out toward us. When he got close enough to recognize me, he dug his heels in. He wants no part of me.

  “Sit down, Rex, sit down,” Leo said. “Christy, Rex has been telling me some of his adventures.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  Rex sat down, but on the other side of Leo, and with a certain reluctance.

  “We were talking about Nassau the other day, yesterday I guess it was.”

  “Charming spot,” Rex said, a bit of limey creeping into the A in charming. “Quaint, clean, romantic. I tie up there often. Yacht Haven when I have a charter. Hurricane Hole across the way when I’m paying the bills. Makes a difference. Inconvenient on the other side, though. Have to dinghy over after the mail and so on.”

  “I suppose though,” Leo said casually, “it could be a dangerous place for a woman alone.” It was said very casually, but something in the timbre of his voice brought me to attention. It was like walking through a sleepy glade and hearing the celluloid whir of a rattler not far away.

  “I don’t see how,” Rex said. “Marvelous police force.”

  “I guess I mean emotionally dangerous,” Leo said. And, in a way that I knew was entirely unconscious, he took hold of my hand in the darkness and held it tightly. “Friends of ours in Syracuse. Acquaintances, I guess you’d call them. The Harrisons. Last year Lucille Harrison took a vacation in Nassau, and killed herself there.”

  “That’s the damndest thing!” Rex said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Small world department, Leo. Tell you about it.” He took his time getting his pipe going again. “I knew the lady. Quite a handsome brunette, was she?”

  “That’s right.” His grip was becoming uncomfortable.

  “Heavy drinker, though. So many of them are. She and a friend of hers chartered the Angel.”

  “They did?”

  “They certainly did. But it was cut short. The girls had a terrible quarrel. Liquor and so on. I had to put the blonde ashore on Eleuthera and take Mrs. Harrison on back to Nassau. Yes, I heard she did herself in. I’d forgotten that.”

  “Would you have any idea why?”

  “Not the foggiest. She seemed like a sort of disorganized kind of person to me. Do you know, she came down to Yacht Haven half drunk and began whining to me about money I was supposed to owe her. Made a scene that nearly lost me a charter. She thought that because the charter ended before it was supposed to, she should have a refund or something. But I gave up another charter to take them, and I am definitely not in business for my health.”

  “About that quarrel, Rex. Could it have been over you?”

  Rigsby chuckled. I could tell from the sudden movement of Leo’s body that Rex had nudged him. And when Rex spoke, there was delicate slime on every word. “I wouldn’t care to say right out, you understand. But you can guess how it is, old boy. They take their little marital vacations, and what they have in mind they make abundantly clear to a
n old sea wallah. It’s a bit of a change for them after their businessmen husbands. One has to oblige, you know. One might even say it’s part of the charter.”

  Leo’s hand clamped on mine with such force that I couldn’t even yell. “Too bad about that Mrs. Harrison. Quite pretty. But awfully emotional.” He looked at the luminous dial of his mariner’s watch, and stood up. “Have to be getting on. Fine sort of an evening, isn’t it? Good night.”

  Leo said good night in a rusty voice. I couldn’t say a word. Suddenly the pressure on my hand was gone. I found my hand still worked, to my surprise.

  “Next time I want my hand held, I’ll get somebody to run over it,” I said.

  He didn’t answer. He sat like a clod. Suddenly he wrenched himself around, sprawled face down across the fish box, and began vomiting into the yacht basin. After two seconds of paralysis, I trotted to the Ruthless and went aboard, found the light and the towels. I soaked one in cold water and wrung it out, and took him that one and a dry one. He was almost through by the time I got back. He rested for a little while, then turned back and sat up. I gave him the damp towel. He muttered his thanks. He was shivering in the hot night. He sat with his face buried in the towel for a few minutes, knees on his elbows. I gave him the dry towel when he was ready.

  “Now what was that all about?”

  “A questionable hamburg,” he said. “Done in by elderly meat, by God.”

  If he didn’t want to tell, I wasn’t going to press him. I had my confirmation. And a sore hand. He sagged with a weariness I knew was emotional. I sent him to bed. I went back and helped Helen check herself out on the idioms.

  That was two nights ago. If I needed any further confirmation, which I don’t, I got it tonight. Sitting beside Leo, on the side toward Rex, I was aware of the intensity of his interest in Rigsby. When ole Rex was sweet-mouthing the Bitty-Beddy girl, Leo leaned closer to me. I was not overcome. He was trying desperately to overhear what Rex was saying to the girl. The interest was strong and abnormal and had a flavor of animal about it. It was a jungle interest that flattened his eyes and narrowed his mouth and bunched the corners of his jaw. After I decided Leo wasn’t hearing a word of my prattle, I checked it out by saying, in the middle of one of my C of C stories, “Two of my brothers slew each other with their hula hoops yesterday.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  Shortly thereafter Joe Rykler moved in on us, just moments after Rex eased off into the night with the queen of the Bitty-Beddy gals, when Orbie wasn’t looking. It surprised me to see Joe leave Anne alone and sit with his back toward her. She went away too, but alone. And calmly.

  The second best Bitty-Beddy gal moved in on us. Delicately. Like a home-made steam shovel. She had decided Joe was utterly nifty. Her approach was as subtle as Milton Berle. She merely leaned on him, breathing somewhat damply. Joe hitched away from her. She came along like she was attached. He tried again and couldn’t detach her. Joe wore a pained and alarmed expression, like an awkward dinner guest who discovers he’s been eating his neighbor’s salad. He looked back over his shoulder at the place where Anne had been, perhaps with the idea of appealing for help.

  “She’s gone!” he said.

  “Show me your cutey little boat, Joey,” the Bitty-Beddy blonde said, sugary as all get-out. “What’s the name mean anyhow? Ampersand.”

  “The printers sign for ‘and.’ That thing that looks a little like a capital S.”

  “And. That’s cutey. You and me, huh?” She nuzzled his shoulder like a kitten.

  Joe bounded up so suddenly she nearly toppled over into the vacuum. “I—I got to go make a phone call.” He walked away.

  Miss Comptometer of the Year glared after him. She lit her cigarette with a violent slash of the match, glowered at me and said, “What the hell is with the men around here, Sis?”

  “They’re horribly shy,” I told her.

  “I could end up with lousy morale. I could end up thinking I’m a dog’s dinner. My God, the passes I fight off in the office.” She looked speculatively at Leo. I saw her begin to light up for him like a four-dollar furnace.

  “Knock it off, dear,” I said gently.

  She sighed and got up and dusted the seat of her shorts. “They call this a vacation,” she said. “Orbie, I’m going to walk back to the motel and wash my hair. Then maybe I’ll go out and buy myself a drink and a sandwich. Big deal.”

  She walked down the dock toward shore, putting her heels down hard.

  “Thanks,” Leo murmured. “She was a little scarey.”

  I could sense the change in him. Before Rex left, I was just a nearby thing, like our inevitable tin washtub of beer, filled each night by public subscription according to each person’s estimate of his own capacity. Or like one of the dock lights, or one of the folding chairs. With Rex gone, the tension had gone out of him, the animal waiting, the oddly feral curiosity.

  “Welcome back,” I said.

  “What?”

  I didn’t have to try to explain, because at that moment forty feet of Custom Fisherman, handled with unmistakable smartness, came swinging between the markers, her running lights glowing, the big spotlight on the bow swinging across us and then focusing on the right slip over in charterboat row.

  “Sim and Marty,” Orbie said.

  “Who?” Leo asked.

  I stood up. “You haven’t met them. They’ve been off on a long Bahama charter. Come on over and meet them. They’re dolls.”

  Sim Gallowell and Marty Urban, co-owners and operators of the Sea Gal are the Crunch and Des of our little world. They have five kids between them, a duplex on the northwest edge of town, a pair of nice wives who take turns working while the other one takes care of the combined brood.

  As we walked around with the others, Sim whipped the Sea Gal quickly and delicately into her slip, as only a pro can do it, gave the engines a few bursts and cut them. By then Marty had the lines just right. Somebody turned on their shore-side floods for them, bathing the gray and white boat in brilliance. Sim started rigging the rub rails while Marty hooked up their house to wash her down. They were naked to the waist, a sea-going brown against the pale boat, grinning and kidding with the spectators.

  “How’d you really do?” Captain Jimmy asked. “I maybe got me a one-week charter for Bimini.”

  Sim straightened up from a crouch, fists on his hips, squinting in the lights. “I tell you, we left three happy guys off in Miami this afternoon. Out of the whole time we had three bad days, and that was weather. We hit it good everywhere we went, and it was best right off the Berrys, and second best down the Andros Shelf. We got one we’re checking through for a record. Forty-one pound Permit on thirty pound test.”

  “Rough coming back across the Stream?” somebody asked.

  “No place for anybody with a loose pivot tooth,” Marty said. “On the way down we kept a-meeting ourselves on the way back up. One time there Sim got the color of a dollar bill.”

  “Where’s your reception committee?” Lew hollered.

  Sim grinned. “This time it’s a surprise. They don’t expect us in until tomorrow.”

  The little crowd dispersed slowly. I waited with Leo while they hosed her down, snapped the cockpit tarps in place and came ashore with their gear and turned off their floods. They weren’t wasting any time. They wanted to pile into that junk jeep of theirs and head for home.

  “Sim, I want you to meet Leo Rice, a new member of D Dock. Sim Gallowell and Marty Urban. He’s been crewing for Lew off and on.”

  They shook hands. I saw Sim measure him and then give the grin that was the stamp of approval. I didn’t realize how anxiously I’d been waiting for that. “Anybody crews more than once for Lew, he’s either crazy or broke, and you don’t look broke.”

  “He’s eased up on me some,” Leo said.

  “Any special excitement around here lately, Christy?” Sim asked.

  “Moonbeam got chased naked all over the docks by a tourist lady with a fish knife, but tha
t’s too long a story to tell you now. Billy was the only one saw the whole show.”

  “Wouldn’t he be the one, now?” Marty said sadly.

  “The other thing is, Dink beat up on Leo here last Thursday night, and then Lew and Orbie finally took care of Dink. Orbie can tell you better than me. At the end, Dink wouldn’t get up when he could have.”

  “Wisht we’d got around to it first,” Sim said. “About time for it. How’s Dink acting?”

  “Quiet and polite, and we don’t see so much of him. Dave acts like it was all a special Christmas present for him alone. One of Gus’s daughters was here a while. Charterboat business has been holding up better than anybody thought it would. Orbie gets rid of this batch of girls from the North on Saturday. Everything else is the same. You boys can stop standing on one leg now. I’m through talking. Glad you had a good charter.”

  “It was the customers made it good, Christy. Three sweet guys. Nobody quarreling, nobody sick, nobody stinking. A lot of laughs. And solid fishing,” Marty said. “You never saw bonefishing like we all had on those flats back of Frazier’s Hog Cay. They like to come up and chew the tip off the rod, I swear.”

  “Three good charters in a row,” Sim said. “Next time we’ll have sorry people and no fish.”

  “Come on, boy,” Marty said. “Those gals are lonesome and the kids are stashed in bed.”

  “Nice to meet you, Leo.”

  They turned off into the night toward the parking lot. I heard Sim laugh. It was a young sound, full of joy. My envy, God help me, was like a knife in my heart. Sim, Marty and Jerry were best friends, went through school together, drank and fought and hunted and fished together. We triple-dated together when it was all clear that Sim would marry Gloria and Marty would marry Mary Lee and I’d marry Jerry. When I think of them it’s like having your nose flat against cold glass, looking into a warm place full of candy.

  “They’re nice,” Leo said.

  “They’re both all man,” I said as we strolled back toward the reassembled group. “Not all man the way Dink thinks he is. Or even Orbie and Lew. There’s a gentleness, Leo. Plus the kind of spirit that can’t be broken.” I stopped by the old bench in the darkness where I used to see Jess sitting in the sun, years ago.