Lew stared at him, wide-eyed. “God damn!”
“Now this is secret and private, Lew. I shouldn’t be telling you. Christy has been trying to talk Leo out of doing anything stupid. She told me she’s been telling him that now they found each other, it makes everything different. But it doesn’t make it different enough, I guess. He’s enough man so that even if he has got a new woman, that doesn’t cancel out why he come here.”
“To kill him?”
“Maybe. She doesn’t know and I don’t know, and I don’t think Leo is too clear about it in his mind. But he just can’t go away with Christy and spend the rest of his life thinking about what he maybe should have done.”
“I’ve sure wondered why he was giving Rigsby the time of day.”
“She told me he got Rigsby to talk about the woman that kilt herself. She said it was a pretty spooky type thing.”
“Hell, yes.”
“I can remember just about exactly how Christy put it to me. She said she was scared. She said she’s found her guy, but now she’s afraid she might all of a sudden lose him because there’s one part of him she can’t reach. That’s the part about Rigsby. She says he’s getting more tensed up all the time. She’s afraid if he gets a little tight at the party, something is going to blow. And he don’t stand a chance in hell of beating Rigsby up. Hell, that time you and Rigsby met up nose to nose, it took you damn near an hour to lick him, and after you did, he wasn’t as chopped up as you were.”
“I don’t know. I was just fun-fighting. It’s different when a man has a reason big as the one Leo has. My, I’d like to watch that fight.”
“If we could be sure that’s all it would be, okay. Leo would get it out of his system, providing he didn’t get clobbered too fast. But maybe he’ll get a club or a gun and kill him like you kill a snake. And ruin everything for him and Christy. She shouldn’t be hurt bad again. You know that.”
“I know that. Yes.”
“Rigsby’s leaving day after tomorrow, and Leo knows that too. That’s why she figures he might make his move tonight. And she doesn’t know what it will be. She can’t get him to talk about it or promise he won’t do anything. You and me, boy, we better stay close as we can in case it looks like a good idea to bust something up.”
“We can take turns, like.”
“All right. But don’t you let on to Christy I told you all this, or we will have to go round and round.”
Lew grinned and closed his right hand effortlessly, crushing the empty beer can. “Let’s do that anyway, again some time. Been over a year. Just a little fun-fighting, Orbie. Stand-up, stuff, with no stomping and no gouging.”
“Next week, maybe, if I feel real good.”
Lew started out. He turned back and said, “You hear about Rigsby snufflin’ around Judy Engly?”
“Everybody knows that but Jack.”
“He make out yet?”
Orbie shrugged. “I’d say maybe no. Alice chewed her last week for having anything to do with him. She went all sulky and told Alice she wasn’t doing anything wrong, and what business was it of hers?”
“Now Jack could lick him for sure.”
“For surely sure.”
Lew left the houseboat, slowly and thoughtfully.
By two o’clock, an hour before post time, the party began to stir. It made its first evidence on the moored cruisers. Stan and Beezie Hooper, with several house guests, came down to the marina and started a small social gathering aboard the Fleetermouse, airing it out, opening the ports, setting out the chairs and rubber mattresses, setting up a self-service bar, and getting Billy Looby to bring out a supply of ice. Billy, as on previous years, had stocked a monster supply of ice in blocks and cubes—and raised the price.
This year he had improved the range of his service by laying in two cases of cheap bourbon and two cases of cheap gin. With each ice delivery to a boat he would wink and say, “Iffen you folks should run out of drinkin’ liquor …”
The breeze died. The high white sun leaned its tropic weight on the gaudy vacation strip of Florida’s East Coast, so that it lay sunstruck, lazy and humid and garish, like a long brown sweaty woman stretched out in sequins and costume jewelry. The sun baked the sand too hot for tourist feet. Slow swells clumped onto the listless Atlantic beach. The sun turned road tar to goo, overheated the filtered water in the big swimming pools of the rich and the algaed pools of the do-it-yourself clan, blazed on white roofs, strained air conditioners, turned parked cars into tin ovens, and blistered the unwary. A million empty roadside beer cans twinkled in the bright glare. The burning heat dropped a predictable number of people onto stone sidewalks, of which a predictable number died, drove the unstable further into the jungly wastes of their madness, exposed the pink tongues of all the dogs in the area, redoubled the insect songs in every vacant lot, set the weather-bureau boys to checking the statistics of past performance, and sent a billion billion salty trickles to flowing on sin-darkened skins.
At the Stebbins’ Marina, all exposed metal was too hot to touch. No one stayed below, except on the air-conditioned boats. The small boat traffic, back and forth from the basin entrance to A Dock, had a sleepy, buzzing sound about it, deadened by the hot mugginess of the air. Only the brownest and toughest ones stretched themselves out to endure the predictable agony of the sun. There was a dazed jumble of music, much of it Cuban, from boat radios and record players. Tall tinkling drinks turned tepid the moment the last sliver of ice disappeared.
At three-thirty, half an hour after the bar in the tent opened, Helen Hass made her first deposit in the office safe. She had toured the whole basin with her rubber stamp, ink pad, small counting machine and dark-eyed diligence. Each time she stamped a hand, she clicked the counter.
She pushed dark hair back off her damp forehead with the back of her hand, sat at the desk and counted the first batch. She had also caught some of the early arrivals who had come by car. Soon the lot would be full. A little over seven hundred dollars. It checked out. She put it in the safe and spun the dial.
Alice came heavily down the stairs. “Hi, Helen. That darn little window conditioner up there is making it hotter, seems like.”
“It’s terrible!”
“Getting any customers?”
“Not too many yet. They’re in the shade, drinking beer.”
“Don’t you work too hard, honey, in this heat. Suppose some do sneak in and don’t pay, does it matter much?”
“It does to me!”
“All right, all right. Guess I’ll go out and circulate a little. How do I look?”
“Wonderful!” Helen said. It would have been more accurate to say Alice Stebbins looked different. Her standard costume was blue jeans, a pair of raggedy sneakers, a man’s white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled high on her brown muscular arms. In the cold months she added a bulky maroon cardigan. In honor of the day she now wore a sheer white feminine blouse, a yellow skirt and high heels. Somehow it made her look older, heavier, rather drab and dull and ordinary.
“Is anything wrong?” Helen asked.
“Why do you ask, honey?”
“I thought you seem sort of … listless.”
“Just the heat.” They stepped out together into the yellow furnace. Three men were heading from the lot toward the docks. Helen darted out and stamped them and got their money.
At about quarter to four Leo Rice, in seersucker robe, carrying his toilet kit, started toward shore. Joe Rykler, lounging alone in the shade of the cockpit of the Ampersand said, “Whoa, friend.”
“For what?”
“A little stimulator. Does wonders for the endurance. Only takes a moment.”
Leo waited. It did not take long. Joe handed him up a small fat pewter mug, misted on the outside. “Thanks, but what is it?”
“A poor thing, but mine own. It’s a Marterror. That’s what you get when you start to make a Martini and make it too big.”
Leo looked at the mug dubiously. “Litt
le early to blast off, isn’t it?”
“My first one didn’t harm me a bit. Carry it along, old boy. Nurse it, if it alarms you. Just return the mug.”
“You look a little blurred around the edges, Joe.”
“It’s my leaky old heart that’s blurred around the edges, Leo. She utterly refuses to admit I’m unique, charming, loveable, tender, imaginative, sensitive, manly and indispensable. The woman is a fool. I can make no deal, on any terms, up to and including Platonic marriage, if that’s what she wants. Best legs in the whole Congressional district.”
“Keep trying. I’ll nurse this thing. Carefully.”
After Leo walked into the men’s shower room, he took an icy gulp of the Marterror and put the mug on the window sill. He took a long shower and another gulp, dried himself and gulped again, and had a few more gulps while he shaved. He was surprised when the final sliver of ice slid up the inside of the empty mug and clicked against his teeth.
He checked himself in the bleary mirror near the urinals, bulging his chest and shoulders, sucking his belly deep as he could. A hell of a drastic change from all that executive type flab, those old rolls of suet. “Fine figger of a man,” he muttered, and then grinned at himself in a shamefaced way. But, oh, so much better for all this that was happening with Christy than the way it had been before. Like preparing a gift for her without knowing that was what he was doing. Lean and brown for her. Strong for her. But he had been doing it for Rigsby. Getting ready for Rex. Then doing nothing about it. Delaying the inevitable. But you can’t delay it much longer and still live with yourself, or with anybody else. Or shave this face again.
When he put the robe back on and went out into the sunshine the world had that particularly vivid look which made it clear to him that Joe’s one Marterror had gotten to him. A lot more people had arrived. The slanting sun was not as vicious. The place was beginning to teem and ferment. The natives were restless.
He stood for a moment outside the shower room, looking at the idiot range of color and costume. Two men in swim trunks, straw sandals and coolie hats. Some men in crisp khakis, bleached almost white. A man in a cord business suit, with a violent tie. A girl in a white dress, with red hat, shoes and purse. A bulbous, barefoot, bleary old female type, in purple slacks and an orange shirt and gold hoop earrings. A stunning girl in a white strapless swim suit, laughing with a less happily endowed girl friend in a cotton sunback dress.
The people from the boats were beginning to mill around with the crowd. Sweating bartenders drew beer in the hot shade of the striped tent, handing it out to the three-deep crowd. Two girls in waitress uniforms were setting up the first installment of the buffet. Cars were parked thick in the lot and along the boulevard. Sid Stark had cut in his special music installation. The hi was very fi, and the tempo was tirelessly jump. Women laughed, showing their teeth and arching their backs. Already great exponents of comedy were slyly spilling dabs of icy beer on the bare feet of the unsuspecting.
As he started back out D Dock there was a gust out of the east, and then the beginnings of a gentle steady breeze. The entire east coast raised its elbows and said, Aaahh.
Just as he reached Joe’s boat, he saw Jannifer Jean standing on D Dock by the stern of Sid’s Pieces of Seven. Captain Jimmy was with her. And a group of males, some familiar to Leo, some not. Moonbeam attracted no sidelong looks or stolen glances. The group of awestruck men had braced their feet, faced her squarely, and were boggling at her. She had evidently fashioned her own Bikini, using three blue bandanas, knotted rather than sewn. The final touch was added by silver sandals with extremely high plastic heels. There seemed to be an almost alarming amount of Jannifer Jean. She was as improbable as any calendar. It brought Leo to a sudden stop.
Joe stepped up onto the dock, took Leo’s mug and handed him a full one, and said, “Hold any self-respecting asp to that bosom and it would call for help.”
Leo took a gulp of the new drink and said, “Captain Jimmy looks like the little gray duck who hatched the ostrich egg.” He looked down at the mug. “Hey! I didn’t want this.”
“You’re committed now, old buddy. Take it along and …”
“I know. Nurse it and return the mug.”
“Look!” Joe said.
Leo looked back at Moonbeam just in time to see one of her circle of admirers ease up behind her while Captain Jimmy was engaged in conversation and give one decisive and strategic tug at the blue knot between her sallow shoulder blades. Moonbeam’s reaction time was dim. The fabric fell to the dock. She looked stupidly down at it.
Captain Jimmy turned and saw his unencumbered bride, yelped and pounced toward the bandana halter, snatched it up and thrust it at her. Moonbeam took it and held it, turning it this way and that, trying to figure out how it should go. Captain Jimmy was trying to keep himself between her and avid eyes. But as the spectators were standing in a half circle, he was a very busy man. At last she held it against her. Captain Jimy did the knot job. And he made of it a rock-hard knot the size of a hazel nut. As he stepped back from her, one of the spectators turned dreamily away and walked off the dock.
Orbie Derr appeared beside Leo and said, “Looks like things getting off to a good fast start this year.”
Leo walked out to the Ruthless. The breeze made it bearable below. He put on a dark gray sports shirt and linen shorts in a natural shade, plaid canvas shoes with rope soles. By that time he had nibbled his way through three quarters of his second Marterror.
He walked to the Shifless, stepped down onto the stern deck, knocked at the curtained cabin door and heard Christy call, “Just a minute! Who is it?”
“Reo Lice,” he called, deliberately spoonerizing his assumed name.
A few moments later she swung the door open and stared round-eyed at him and at the pewter mug.
“One of those things Joe makes! Golly!”
“Everything is looking vivid, darling.”
“You’re starting mighty early, stranger. Come on in.”
“Need anything zipped or snapped, I hope?”
“No thanks. I just hope you’ll last.”
“I might. Joe won’t.”
She sat with her back to him, brushing her short hair, scowling at herself in the mirror. He liked the neatness and straightness of her back, the warm line from the narrow waist to the swell of her hips.
“I feel overdressed,” she complained.
“That can be rectified.”
“You hush up. I have to sing for the people, damn it. Maybe I ought to dress simple now and change later.”
“Happy to assist.”
She turned and looked at him. “Leo, you are tight already!”
“Got serious objections?”
“No. No objections. Are you going to get tighter?”
“Could be. Can’t tell.”
She sighed and got up. She went and pulled the curtains more carefully over the windows. She locked the door. “Helen will be too busy to come back here,” she said thoughtfully. She strolled slowly toward him, swinging her hips. “It’s times like these,” she said as he reached for her, “a girl has to think of practically everything.” And they clung together, with the clatter of the elderly air conditioning unit drowning out all but the most spectacular sounds of the growing party.
At the same time, Joe Rykler and Marty Urban were dealing with a highly indignant Billy Looby. With an emphatic spray of spittle, Billy was yelling, “You two cheats come pushing and shoving in here and not paying the fifty cents and I—”
“Hush, you dirty little old man,” Joe said. “We’re the inspection committee. We’ve got to see if your collection is worth fifty cents a look. If it is, we’ll promote it. You’ll make millions. What do you think, Marty?”
Marty stood staring at one photograph at eye level, “My, my, my,” he said, shaking his head. “The things some folks do for a living.”
Joe went over and looked at what had caught Marty’s fancy. “Hoooweee,” he said faintly.
“And that sweet little smile on her purty little face,” Marty said. “By God, Billy, where do you get this junk?”
“I got friends,” Billy said proudly. “You fellas could give me one fifty cents. You know, cut price.”
“Hey, Marty, look at this one,” Joe said.
“Hell, that looks like Moonbeam, only cleaner.”
That started them trying to find people in the photographs who looked like people they both knew.
The game came to an abrupt end when Marty, over in a corner, said, “Now this here one has got a built like that leggy Anne Browder you’re so hot on.”
Joe turned white and said, “How would you like it if I point out one that looks like your Mary Lee?”
Marty whirled. “You do that and I’ll plain kill you. It isn’t the same.” His eyes were narrow.
“To me,” Joe said, “it is exactly the same. Maybe you didn’t understand that before.”
Marty looked sheepish. “Hell, I’m sorry. I’m sorry all to hell, Joey. I shouldn’ta said a thing like that.” He set his half glass of beer carefully on the floor, locked his hands behind him and said, sticking his jaw out, “Take a free swing.” He closed his eyes. “Come on. I’ll feel better.”
Joe put his empty mug down and swung. Marty bounced off the wall with a thud that shook the shed, landed on his hands and knees, shook his head violently, spat blood and then grinned up at Joe and said, “Man, you got no more punch than Mary Lee. You’re plain pathetic.”
“So give me another.”
Marty got up and picked up his beer. “There doesn’t one of ’em look a bit like Anne. Not a bit.”
“She makes them all look like dogs.”
“Sure does.”
As they strolled out, Billy trotted after them, saying, “You goin’ to tell around how good it is this year, with the new stuff I got?”
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