George made a grab for his drink and spilled it into his mouth. It dribbled over his chin and splashed his shirt and trousers. He lurched heavily and almost tipped over. He shot out a foot and steadied himself. “That’s better. Just us boys together. Drink up, Mike.”
Mike looked at him coldly. His hair had fallen over his eyes. His lips and chin glistened wetly. His shirt was wet and wilted. He swayed in his chair. Mike shook his head slightly in response to a question that had formed in his mind. Had he really supposed that this wreck represented some secret value, some criticism of conventional success? He looked across at the ruin of his friend from the rampart of his large bank account, his numerous profitable interests, his celebrated and important friends, his efficiently luxurious establishments in New York and Hollywood, his nearly one million dollars’ worth of uncompleted contracts and he knew that even if he were inclined to sentiment, he would scarcely feel sorry for him. There wasn’t enough left to feel sorry for. George had made his bed. He had helped all he could, but the money would surely offer only a brief reprieve from the final inevitable collapse.
“I think you’d better go home too,” he said. “If Sarah will let you in. I wouldn’t if I were she.”
“Wouldn’t you now? A fat lot you know about it. God, what a prick you’ve turned into. Sad.” With Sarah gone, his venom flowed freely over Mike.
“If you’d look at yourself in a mirror, you’d see something truly sad. But I don’t think it’s worth discussing. Let’s call it a day, George.”
“Good idea. Let’s call it a day. I don’t think dinner would really be much fun. You should find plenty to amuse you around town. Sarah thinks you’ve got the hots for Jeff. Don’t try anything or I’ll have you run off the island.”
“Christ. Little Napoleon. Another crack like that and I may just have that check stopped.”
George lifted his hand and fumbled for the lock of hair that hung over his eyes and tugged it. “I forgot I was your indentured slave.”
“Since we knew each other when we were kids, I suppose it’s natural for us to revert to this schoolboy nonsense but I don’t really find it amusing.”
“So frightfully sorry. I must go have my head shrunk. God, what garbage.” Let it all go, he thought. Throw away the past. Stamp on affection and gratitude. He wanted to hold out his hand to Mike and weep with him.
“Will you ask that child how much all this is? I want to go.”
George clapped his hands and the boy came running. He wept within himself while Mike paid the bill. Would there be a chance at the end to salvage at least some talisman of the old love?
“Well, that’s that,” Mike said. “I’ll count on that letter from you. There may be other papers you have to sign to help create the fiction that you’re capable of having an idea worth fifteen hundred dollars. My lawyers will take care of it.”
That finished it. That snapped the final tie. “I know you mean that as an insult, Mike, and your intention is noted. But truthfully, if I thought I were capable of writing the sort of crap you do, I’d turn in my typewriter and go get an honest job.” He chuckled happily to himself.
Mike rose, rigid and tight-lipped. “I’ll wave to you on my way to the bank, funny man.”
George was alone. He sat, breathing heavily, not thinking but aware of the thing building up in him again that made his body feel too small. It would surely crack under the strain. He gripped the straw seat of his chair and wondered if he should have another drink. It would do no good. Drink helped when he had to confront others, but he was alone now and must confront himself. He felt suddenly terribly conspicuous, indecently exposed in the midst of this brightly lighted, laughing, convivial crowd. Somebody might try to join him at any minute. Yet moving would require a superhuman effort. He had to make it. He had to get away. Mustn’t crack in public.
Slowly he pulled himself up and steadied himself for a moment against the chair. The first step was the tough one. After that he would be all right. He took it, lurched as he had known he would, righted himself, and then began to thread his way through the tables. People called to him in the accents of half a dozen nations. Hands reached out to him, but he eluded them. Darkness was his goal. Each step threatened to bring him crashing ignominiously into a chair or table. He began to chuckle softly as he thought of the havoc he would create if he ended up in a tangle of legs and broken bottles and overturned tables. He gained confidence as he went along. He was perfectly all right, really. He’d just been sitting down too long.
He got clear of the café without mishap and headed out around the port. He didn’t know where he was going. Anywhere where it was dark. American jazz blared at him as he passed the tourist bar. He hugged the edge of the quai, staying as much as possible in shadow. In another few moments, he had passed the last buildings and was in the clear, climbing the road that led up and around to the swimming platforms. Away from the lights of the town, the sky was suddenly unfolded above him, thick with stars.
At the fig tree, he turned off the road down steps and stumbled across rough terrain until he came to the first platforms. He stayed up away from the sea, following the ramparts of the old fort toward the place where he knew now he had intended to go all along. The ramparts curved back and joined the massive retaining wall of the road which continued to rise high above him. He went on, his left hand maintaining a light contact with the wall. The tumble of rock on his right narrowed gradually so that as he advanced the sea came closer to him, until he came to a ledge little more than a yard wide, backed by the wall, with a sheer drop of a hundred feet down to some semi-submerged rock outcroppings and the sea. Here, he lowered himself carefully, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up under his chin, his feet only a few inches from the edge of nothing. He had made it.
He laid his head back with a sigh and looked up at the sky. Stars throbbed and whirled against his eyes. In quick succession, three of them were dislodged and hurtled blazing fireworks across the heavens. It was as unnerving as watching the Creation. He looked down at the sea, dark below him and motionless. Small islets, humped or jagged, rode on it. Opposite him, the mainland was a flowing line of dark hills. A world of beauty which stirred vague yearnings and an intimation of peace.
The soft breathing of the sea sent eddies of warm air whispering around him. He was alone between the dark sea and the blazing sky, totally alone. His mind felt quite sober, with the tired confusion of awakening. Proportion swayed and dissolved as he felt himself shrinking to the small handful of matter which was his consciousness, a poor thing, easily disposed of. He had only to get up suddenly and the very momentum would carry him over the edge. Or he could simply go to sleep in this position and he wouldn’t even have to make the choice. His body would pitch forward and over and away.
And why not? What would be lost? His life had reached an impasse; there was no way out. He had known that money had nothing to do with it, despite today’s exaggerated anxiety.
He was rather vague about the transaction he had just concluded with Mike, but the point was that money had turned up at the eleventh hour, as it generally did. When he had told Sarah he was taking the money and leaving, where had he thought he was going? Back to the States? He told himself that it didn’t matter, but he felt a hard knot of resistance in him. He could go back only when he was in complete control of the circumstances, his independence guaranteed. He would never accept Mike’s conditions, using people and being used to ends he didn’t believe in.
The yawning gulf at his feet exerted a stronger pull. Provisions had been made. He didn’t remember if there were suicide clauses in the various policies, but nothing could be proved. He often walked along here seeking a secluded spot to swim. Drunk, he could easily slip and fall.
The alternative was to stay. Stay in a place where every stone, every vista, the air itself evoked a few unthinking words spoken by an hysterical boy. The struggle of these months, as he passed through layers of pride and shock and hurt in an effort to reach
the living nerve of his need and love for her, praying that it would take charge of his body, had been dishonored. He had felt at moments that he had almost reached his goal. A ravaged dream. Surely she had known or guessed, felt somehow his long slow voyage toward reunion. She could at least have waited with him. Drink had made it possible to avoid any overt rejection of her. Because their lives had always been so closely attuned to each other, she had drunk with him. Anesthetized by liquor, they had dodged the issue she had created. What more did she want? The answer to that was plain enough. Legs spread, she panted for her emptiness to be filled. Happiness? He had offered her happiness and she had rejected it in favor of a quick immediate thrill. It required too much effort to sustain happiness or to reconstruct it when it was lost.
How did one exorcize love? After all that had been done and said, it was still there, gripping him in an unrelenting, paralyzing vice. He couldn’t command his release any more than he could command his body to perform its function. He had almost fought his way back to her once; it was a struggle that couldn’t be repeated. He had reached the point he had known awaited him: if he couldn’t live with her, he couldn’t live without her. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. His mind drifted. Something about a dog. Mike’s dogs. No, a dog that talked. A dream? A dog that possessed the secret key to life but enunciated badly. What would a dog know? Mindless devotion? Wagging tail? There were no secrets, only unrecognized truths.
His eyes closed. His head slipped sideways against the wall. He slept.
Peter’s walk was jaunty, but his thoughts were troubled as he turned away from George and Joe to let them get on with their business with the police. He was worried by not finding Costa; he hadn’t realized how important it might be until a light had flashed on in his mind regarding Jeff’s visit and the odd ambiguity of his attitude toward his date with Dimitri. Had Jeff discovered that Dimitri had stolen his father’s money? It would explain the coincidence of Dimitri’s agreeing to go to bed with him on this particular night; it would be his way of keeping Jeff on his side. Jeff’s tormented manner required a more convincing explanation than sexual ignorance. Conflicting loyalties were more like it.
Peter couldn’t work out a very convincing scenario for the actual theft but it wouldn’t take a Raffles to rob George these days. By last night, everybody on the island knew that he had received the money by a bank courier. Dimitri had probably been to the Leighton house and knew his way around in it. Jeff might have caught him in the act.
It didn’t quite hang together, but it was more convincing than casting Costa as the culprit. If Costa knew or suspected, he would be the last person to help George unravel the mystery. Costa’s fundamental kindness would impel him to protect George from making any disagreeable discoveries about his son. Peter felt confident of being able to worm it out of Costa, equally confident of being able to handle Dimitri and Jeff thereafter.
When he reached the quai, he turned toward home but after a moment circled around and headed in the opposite direction. Dimitri might be at his bar; a chance word might help fix or dispel his suspicions.
In this pre-drink hour before the sun finally released the port from its punishing glare, there weren’t many people about, but he kept a lookout for the girl of noon. He very much wanted to see her again. Unless she left on the afternoon boat, he was bound to run into her sooner or later.
Sooner.
She was just rounding the turn in the quai that would bring her straight toward him. Here she was, moving closer with the serenity of beauty. He could see now that she had the kind of figure he liked a girl to have (boyish, of course, he thought with a smile) with slim hips and breasts that didn’t strain exaggerately at the patterned shirt she was wearing but nestled, round and firm, within it. His pace slowed and he adopted a collision course.
Her head was turned inland, the exquisite profile lifted, the lips slightly parted as if she still expected a kiss (he touched his own lips with his tongue as he looked at them), apparently searching for something among the shops and taverns that fronted the harbor. She kept glancing in front of herself to make sure of her footing.
They were within speaking range when her glance included him. He could look her full in the face at last. Her eyes were as beautiful as he had known they would be, exquisitely shaped, dark, velvety, with long lashes. His heart gave a leap as he realized that her glance wasn’t sliding past him noncommittally, but that their eyes were holding. A slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She was going to speak to him! He wondered if she was going to ask him for a light. His answering smile became a grin.
They came together as if they knew each other. He found it difficult not to kiss her immediately on her expectant mouth.
“You are Peter Mills-Martin, aren’t you?” she asked Stunningly. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
The accent was unmistakably American but there was none of the harshness in her voice which he regretted with so many of his compatriots. Now that she was in front of him, he saw that she wasn’t a girl but a young woman in the full bloom of beauty, probably in the late twenties. No untouched virgin. He felt a blithe stirring in his loins. “I’ve been dying to meet you.” He smiled delightedly and nodded down the port. “I saw you this morning. I’ve been thinking about you ever since. How do you know my name?”
“That’s a long story. I wonder——”
“The longer the better.” Peter took her arm and turned her around and led her back toward Dimitri’s bar. “Let’s see if we can find a long drink to go with it.”
“Don’t you want to know who I am?” She looked up at him with amusement but no flirtatiousness in her lovely eyes.
“It doesn’t matter so long as you look the way you do.”
She laughed with composure. “My name is Judy Menzies.”
A very down-to-earth name for such a glamorous creature. “You don’t look like a Judy. Miss or Mrs.?”
“Miss.” She shot him an easy, knowing smile. “A female on the loose. Be careful.”
“I’ll be very careful not to let anyone else get you.” He had already come to the conclusion that her beauty masked a shrewd and businesslike nature. Although she didn’t look it, he had already revised her age upward to the early thirties. She had an air of cool, experienced competence, as well as a sensible awareness of the potency of her looks that took her out of the twenties.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Just since this morning. It’s extraordinarily beautiful. Actually, I came to see you.”
“What a wonderful idea. Are you an art collector?”
“In a sense—for the time being.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it.” He led her into the shade of the Meltemi’s awning. The place was deserted. He called through the door into the dark interior and a homely young man appeared. Dimitri permitted no competition on the premises. They settled on ouzo. “With ice,” Peter ordered. Dimitri somehow provided ice cubes, although the island’s electricity was shut off for most of the day. They sat in Dimitri’s comfortable outdoor chairs. The proprietor’s absence absolved Peter of giving any more thought to the money mystery. Instead, he admired Judy Menzies’s pretty legs as she crossed them. He looked at her hands and saw that they were shapely and delicate. Everything about her delighted him.
“You’ve read about the Bertin art robbery, of course,” she said.
He sat up. “Funny coincidence department,” he said. “I’ve just had a letter from Raoul Bertin this morning.”
“It’s no coincidence my being here. I told you, I came to see you.”
“Oh, dear. Don’t tell me you’re an international art thief. I’ll never be able to turn you over to the police.”
She smiled. “I’m Timothy Thornton’s secretary.” As she spoke, she straightened her shoulders slightly and leaned forward, her head tilted, and looked into his eyes.
His heart stopped. Not even the mention of Tim’s name could divert a flicker of his attention from
her. His sex did things that made him cross his legs. It was the attitude that had taken his breath away this morning. The tilt of her head, the line of her neck and shoulders, the look in her eyes, everything about her seemed to make an offering of herself, meltingly generous and unstinting. He managed to breathe again. “Who were you with when I saw you this morning?” he demanded.
“This morning? Oh. Sitting over there? Just a girl I’d talked to earlier.”
“A girl? In that case, there should be a law against your looking at people like that. You make me feel I’m the most sensational man you’ve ever laid eyes on. You looked the same way at that girl. It’s not fair.” He thought he detected a blush under her tan as she sat back in her chair. She gave her head a little toss to settle her hair back from her brow.
“You’re very disconcerting,” she said. “And quite sensational, too. But you’re right. I mustn’t go about giving people devastating looks. Nobody’s ever told me before.”
He smiled at her as he sipped the ouzo that had been put before them. “That’s better. If you stay like that, I can look at you adoringly without wanting to fall on my knees in front of you. Where were we? Timothy Thornton. How is old Tim?”
“Fine. The company that insures the Bertin collection is a client of his.”
“Aha, as they say in the detective stories.” Tim was a highly successful lawyer and a pillar of respectability, but twenty years ago he had almost won Peter away from Charlie. When Charlie’s marriage had collapsed, Peter had been living with Tim, had been presented with the choice, and had found it briefly difficult. Peculiar to think of having a life with Tim. He had married a very rich woman rather older than himself and kept a succession of young lovers in the deepest secrecy. He wondered if Judy Menzies knew about them. “Well, it’s nice to know you’re on the side of law and order.”
“Oh, yes.” She smiled at him enchantingly, revealing perfect teeth. “It isn’t always the winning side. The police apparently aren’t getting anywhere. I was here on vacation—at Mykonos, to be exact. Mr. Thornton cabled me asking me to go to Athens to see if I could find out anything. He has an exaggerated opinion of my abilities. I hadn’t a glimmer what he expected me to do—slouch around low bars picking up tips from gangsters? He even insisted on providing me with a yacht. For thrilling chases across the Aegean? It’s over there. The third one in from the end. That power cruiser or whatever you call them.”
The Peter & Charlie Trilogy Page 84