A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  She came out of the bathroom with her dress over her arm. She gave him a broad, friendly almost casual smile and said, “Hello, there!” and went to the closet and hung her dress and coat on hangers. She was constructed like her sisters. Their long oval faces and the long slender necks, the narrow sloping shoulders, gave them a look of slenderness. Yet their legs were long and heavy, their hips wide, their lower torso fleshy. Frannie had a slightly sway-backed stance which made her buttocks look the more round, thrusting and muscular, yet her upper torso seemed almost too frail and narrow for the size and weight of the wide-spaced conical breasts.

  She came to the bed in such a matter-of-fact way, he was more convinced that it would not be anything worth remembering for either of them.

  But her skin had a silkier texture than he would have guessed, and, more importantly, she quickly proved that she was frankly and enthusiastically concerned with the pleasure she could get from it, enjoying her own sensations without pretense or artifice or coyness. She gasped her small instructions, and she gave little throaty chuckles of pleasure, and she made a running commentary on just how good everything was. Paradoxically, her apparent complete unconcern for him made it possible for him to lose all his anxiety about himself, and soon find himself sharing the same pleasures he was giving her, tasting them in ways he had not known for a long time. So when it had ended, and they lay in a sighing contentment, sharing a cigarette, their hearts slowing, their bodies worn and leaden, he felt both gratitude and a quiet pride bordering on smugness. Each time she sighed, there would be a little catch of her breath at the end of it, like a hiccup.

  “So nice,” she breathed. “So fine and nice. I like the way we are, Jimmy darling. I like us a lot.” Her hair tickled the side of his throat as she turned her face toward him. “What are you laughing at?”

  “Well, if at anything, at myself. There wasn’t any reason why anybody had to come over here to cover this hearing, you know. Borklund was trying to give me a change of scene. I was getting stale and jumpy and sour.”

  She kissed his throat. “Have you had a change of scene, dear?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “Are you still stale and jumpy and sour?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Then I must be good for you. You’re good for me. You’re the first one since I got married. I feel all over like warm marshmallow pudding. Darling, call the desk and ask them to wake us up at six.” She rolled toward him and snuggled close to him. “Then we’ll have a nap.”

  During the next two months he put a lot of mileage on his car. Every time he knew he would have enough time off, he would phone her and drive over. He stayed with her at her one-room efficiency. At first she didn’t want him there. She said the room was too full of weeping, but it turned out to be all right for them. During those two months she mended him. She rebuilt the pride which the Gloria situation had eroded. She made him a whole man. They seemed to sense, simultaneously, when it was time to end it, and so they ended it affectionately and well, before it had a chance to turn into quarrels and accusations.

  Later, at about the time of Van Hubble’s death, Frannie met a man named Worley in Miami, married him and came back to Palm City with him. He got a job with the Palm County Highway Department. When Jimmy Wing would see her on the street he felt a faint retrospective stir of pleasure, and he felt glad it had happened just at the time it did, and in the manner it did. Once he bought her drugstore coffee. She was carrying her third child, the first child of the new marriage. She seemed very happy.

  Whenever he thought of that two months and the fast narrow road across the Everglades, and her couch that unfolded into a double bed, and the warm sleeping weight of her leg across his hip, he would remember how they used to talk after they had made love—lie and smoke and talk in lazy intimacy of a hundred things.

  He had asked her once about the way Elmo Bliss had bought the Lemon Ridge house from the rest of them so cheaply.

  “Well, of course we resented it, Jimmy. But, later on, it seemed all right. Nobody even thinks about it any more. Now it seems as if … it’s just the way it should be.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Elmo is sort of in charge of the family, so it seems right he should be in the home place with Dellie. Three of the brothers-in-law are older than he is, but he’s the one everybody goes to. Sickness, jobs, trouble with the kids, anything. And all of us are free to come and go just as if it was still our house. It’s sure crowded sometimes.”

  “So the family approves of Elmo.”

  “Gosh, not at first. Well, you know the reputation he had and all the trouble he was in all the time. We didn’t want Dellie marrying him. She was only eighteen. But we couldn’t stop her. Dellie is a strange one. She’s never had much to say, but she’s always had this idea that she was going to have a lush life, like a queen or something. She just knew it was going to be that way. We used to laugh at her. But the way it worked out, she’s certainly living a lot higher on the hog than anybody else in the family, I’m telling you. We never would have guessed she’d get that kind of a life by marrying Elmo. He’s real good to her. I mean if you don’t count keeping her pregnant most of the time. She’s due for number six any day now, but I’ll say this, she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s got all the help she can use with the house and the kids, and she’s never up before noon, and she certainly keeps her figure. I guess he’s sweet to her, but … you know Elmo. I don’t know if she knows about other women. Or if … she’d let herself know, or let herself wonder. Dellie is a realist.”

  “So is Elmo, I guess.”

  “I don’t know what Elmo is. He has that way of talking to you. When he talks to you, you feel as if you matter more to him than anybody else on earth. He really listens to you. Not very many people listen. He seems to really care about you. I guess that’s what makes him so good with women. When a girl is with Elmo, she feels … I don’t know, more alive. You know it’s an act, but you can’t help yourself. You don’t ever really know if he likes you. Nobody knows. We talk about him a lot, in the family. The way he helps us all, that seems to be kind of an act too.”

  “When he sold off fifty of the sixty acres of the home place, Frannie, I guess he did pretty well.”

  “I guess so,” she said indifferently. “But he sort of sold it to himself, didn’t he? One of those corporation things he keeps doing?” He remembered that she had turned toward him then and said, in a huskier tone, “Now, why are we wasting all this good time talking about my brother-in-law, darling?” She had reached her sturdy hand to him and said, with exaggerated petulance, “But it seems too early to change the subject, I guess. Isn’t it too early? Gosh, you know, maybe it isn’t. Now I’m sure it isn’t. We’re changing the subject, darling, aren’t we?”

  He grinned at that memory of Frannie as he slowed for Elmo’s house. Eight or ten cars were parked in the field beside Elmo’s house, nosed up to the big redwood fence. He parked and got out of his car. He remembered the eagerness with which he had headed each time toward Miami two years ago. Yet no part of it had been as compelling as what he now felt toward Kat. It offended his sense of proportion that this should be so. It was a meager feat finding a woman who would come to his Cable Key cottage. He had tried to cure himself of what he privately called his severe case of Kat-fever by using himself up upon some amiable and competent women during the past year, but it had not diminished the fever by a fraction of a degree. He resented being the victim of what seemed an adolescent compulsion. As an adult male he knew that in the deeps of the bed the differences between women are less important than the similarities. So why should this particular hundredweight of flesh seem touched with magic? What could she do that others had not done?

  He walked through the open redwood gate and down the winding gravel path toward the pool, remembering the first time he had come to Elmo’s house, three years and eight months ago, on election night, without invitation. He had come on a hunch.…

  After El
mo had been married about five years, and Bliss Construction had become one of the largest home construction outfits in the area, Elmo had begun to devote considerable time to civic functions and duties. He joined service clubs and fund-raising ventures, and proved himself reliable and persuasive and dedicated whenever appointed to a committee. He had begun making sizable contributions to the Democratic County Committee, and had begun to electioneer on the behalf of Democrats running for county offices. Four years ago the top brass in the county organization had decided to give Elmo his first taste of running for office, so they put him up against Elihu Kibby in the primary. Elihu Kibby, Brade Wellan and Sam Engster were the ones who picked Elmo and talked him into it. Kibby was running for re-election to the Board of County Commissioners. It was to be his fifth four-year term, and everybody knew that it was an automatic re-election. Kibby would win the primary over anybody who was put up, and he would whip Stan Freeberry, the Republican opposition, handily.

  On the evening of the primaries Jimmy Wing went out to Elmo’s house at five o’clock. Elmo and a pack of friends and relatives were gathered in the big shed-type building beyond the swimming pool, the building Elmo called his workshop. It looked more like the main lounge in a rustic and expensive hunting lodge.

  Elmo got him a drink and got him off into a corner and said, “Now, why in the world you killing time coming away out here for, Jimmy Wing? There isn’t much of a news story out here tonight. You should be down to headquarters where the winners are all gathered round, slapping each other on the back.”

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day, Elmo, ever since I voted for you without really knowing why.”

  “You wasted a vote there, Jimmy.”

  “I wondered how many other people were doing the same thing. And then I thought about the big family you come from, and the big family you married into. I remembered how many people live in houses you’ve built, and how many people have worked for you over the past few years. I think it might all add up to a lot. It might just add up to enough.”

  Elmo had cocked his head, squinted his pale dancing eyes and grinned at Jimmy Wing. “Now, don’t you start scaring me, boy. Anything like that would be a terrible embarrassment. Old Elihu asked me to run out of the goodness of his heart, so the voters could get a look at me in case I want to run for something later on, in a serious way. I haven’t been hustling, have I? I’ve just been clowning around a little. I haven’t said one unkind word about old Elihu.”

  “You made a few jokes, Elmo. Like the one about Commissioner Kibby wanting more county commission meetings because the doctor told him that at his age he needed more sleep.”

  “Just in fun, Jimmy.”

  “I came because I think you might make it, and if you do, this is where the story is. If you make it, how will you feel?”

  “Let me see now. In your story, the way I’ll feel will be humble, proud, deeply touched, surprised, and real dedicated. You’ve done some nice stories about me the last couple months, Jimmy.”

  The returns were broadcast over local radio, WKPC. By six o’clock it was evident Elmo was the winner. After the initial furor began to die down, Elmo walked Jimmy out to his car.

  “Humble, astonished and dedicated,” Jimmy said.

  “Right. I’ll have to straighten old Elihu out. On the phone he was making out like I stabbed him when he wasn’t looking. Like I told him, Jimmy, I’ve got to lean heavy for advice on those wiser heads in the party for the next four years.” He took Jimmy Wing’s hand in a hard clasp and said, “You come back, hear? You make it a habit dropping by. There’ll be a lot of stories to write up in the next four years.”

  “Write them your way?”

  Elmo laughed. “Jimmy, let’s you and me write them our way, and see what happens. We’re going to get along better than ever.”

  “Kibby could lick Stan Freeberry, but what if you can’t?”

  He rocked back and forth, heel to toe, and cracked his fist into his palm. “Old Stanley? If I was ever to get really worried, I’d tell you all about a little ol’ Pigeon Town gal name of Darcy Miller, came and cooked and kept house for Stan about nine years ago, that time Miz Freeberry had to spend three months in California nursing her dying sister. I’d tell you about how this Darcy Miller has a slew of kids, and there’s a bright yellow eight-year-old one she calls Stanley and keeps dressed up fine on some money comes in a plain envelope every month, money sent local.”

  Jimmy had stared at him. “That’s if you get worried.”

  “If I get that worried. There’s other things before I’d have to use that. Just put it this way, Jimmy Wing. Tonight I’m over the worst hump. I’m not about to be stopped short by things easier to do than whipping Elihu Kibby.”

  Jimmy Wing had other cause to remember that same night. After he had filed his stories, he went home to find that Gloria, after over a month of perfect behavior, had suddenly fallen back into her black private world. She had pulled down all the shades, turned on every light in the house, stripped, packed herself with pins, buttons, pencils and other small household objects, rubbed herself raw on the sharp edges of the furniture, and then had lapsed into a catatonic state more nearly complete than any he had seen. She sat on a footstool in a corner, her eyes open, snoring with every slow breath, bleeding, ropes of saliva dangling from her chin, gone so suddenly and completely away, unreachable, unknowing. That time it had been three months before she began to recognize him when he visited her, and six months before he could take her away from the hospital for short drives through the surrounding countryside.

  By now he had been to the Lemon Ridge home of the county commissioner many times. He strolled through the humid night toward the lighted pool, hearing voices and laughter and music. There were always people around, friends, relatives, business associates, politicians. There was a protocol as rigid as any tribal ceremonial taboo behind the apparent casualness. Visitors were sorted into four categories. In the lowest group were the ones Elmo would talk to outdoors, usually by the pool, or, when the weather was foul, inside the “workshop” beyond the pool. The second category had access to the workshop in all weather. The third category were those whom Elmo would invite into his big study in the main house. The study had a separate outside entrance. Very close friends and relatives had the run of the house. Jimmy Wing was one of that group which could be invited into the study.

  The gravel crackled underfoot. The night jasmine had opened, vulgar and sensuous as pink lace garters. When the path turned, just beyond a thickety patch of yucca and flame vine, he came in sight of the big screened pool. He stopped there in the darkness, thinking it looked so much like one of the color advertisements in magazines it was artificial and improbable.

  The cage was so high the upper portion of it was in darkness. The screening had been recently extended to include the broad fan-shaped apron beyond the west end of the rectangular pool. The water was a brilliant, luminous green in the diffused radiance of the underwater floodlights. The pool lighting and the spotlights at the base of the plantings in the pool area made a reflected glow across the apron area where three men sat talking at an outdoor table. The double doors of the workshop were open, and the inside lights were on. He saw a couple inside the workshop, dancing to slow music, disappear and reappear. A big tanned girl in a white swimsuit made a lazy backstroke the length of the pool, her arms lifting, turning slowly. A Negro in a white shirt and dark trousers came from the workshop carrying a tall drink on a small tray. He bent over and placed the drink at the edge of the pool and said something to the girl. As he walked away, she rolled over out of her backstroke position and swam at an angle toward the drink.

  Jimmy Wing walked to the screen door and pushed it open. As was almost always the case, there were fewer people around than the number of cars would lead you to believe. It always seemed to him there must be some place on the property he had never been told about, some activity he could not share—but he knew this was not true.

  The gi
rl on the far side of the pool turned and stared at him. He did not know her. She had a young, blunt, sensual face, and the hair water-pasted to her head looked like a smooth silver cap.

  “Now, there he is!” Elmo said, his voice lazy and welcoming.

  Jimmy walked to the table where the three of them sat. He pulled a chair over from the other table and said, “Evening, Elmo, Leroy, Buck.”

  Leroy Shannard, the lawyer, was in his late forties, a long, limber, indolent man, with the deep tan of golf course and offshore fishing. He had white hair cropped so short the tanned skull showed through the stubble. He had a harsh predatory face, so muted by his lethargic manner he looked like a sleepy eagle. Most of his practice was in real estate work and estate work. He was in partnership with Gil Stopely, a fat, bustling, humorless younger man who was a very keen tax attorney. Shannard was descended from one of the earliest settlers of Palm County. He lived with his mother in an old bay-front house three blocks from the center of the city. He had the reputation of being one of the most tireless and successful seducers of restless wives in all of south Florida, but he gave mild denial to any such accusation. It was said that his caution was in part responsible for his success.

  Buck Flake was considerably more obvious. He was a relative newcomer to the area. He had been about twenty-five when he had come down from New Jersey ten years previously with some money he was supposed to have made in the scrap business. He had gone into some dangerous land speculation, saved his own skin with some tricky maneuvering, and finally traded himself into the huge tract which he had developed into Palm Highlands. He was loud, crude, huge and muscular, but now the muscles were softening rapidly as the belly expanded. His jaw was so wide and the space between his temples so narrow, he had an odd pinhead look. A good portion of his success had been gained at the expense of some of the unwary ones who had assumed Buck Flake was as stupid as he looked and acted.