A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  “I don’t see what you …”

  “She could be trying to hide the fact it was actual old Tom Jennings seducin’ her. Two birds with one stone, you could say.”

  “Now wait a minute!”

  “I was just thinking out loud.”

  “But I don’t want anybody making it into more than …”

  “Hold it!” Elmo said sharply, raising both hands. “Lord God, what the hell kind of game are we playing here? Get yourself back in focus, boy. What are we talking about? Robbing the poor? We got a snotty little rich girl playing around with Burt Lesser’s innocent boy. And we got Dial Sinnat, with more money than Carter got pills, and a little cute-ass wife a quarter century younger than him. And they’re outsiders, boy! They come down here from Rochester, New York, or some goddam place like that. You and I were born and raised here. If they died here, they wouldn’t even be buried here. And if they decide they don’t like it, they can go any damn place in the world and live fat. You look at that committee list. There isn’t a one of them didn’t come here from some other place. What the hell right have they got telling us what to do with the landscape we were raised in? Boy, you act as if I’m going to skin those folks, salt ’em down and fry ’em. All I’m going to do is give a little bitty nudge here and there, just enough to make every one of them take a sudden disinterest in Grassy Bay. I want to do it nice and gentle, with your help. If you haven’t got the stomach for a little thing like this, a little job that’s going to work out fine for everybody, with nobody getting hurt bad, then I can have Leroy bring some folks in who maybe set their feet down a lot heavier than you and me. Now, I’m not going to do any more thinking out loud. I’ll maybe find a good way to use this, and maybe I won’t, but you don’t have to know about it if it makes you feel easier. This is the way the world works, boy. This is the way things get done. You should know that much by now.”

  “How do things get done, Elmo?”

  “Why, I was just now … Is there more to that question?”

  “I was wondering about Martin Cable the Third. And I was wondering about Eloise. How did you get things done with Eloise, Mister Commissioner?”

  “She’s a fine-looking woman.”

  “Lately she’s taking a big interest in local economics. Martin says she’s real bright about it.”

  “You know, you’re being real bright too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You ever see that shack Leroy has down in the Taylor Tract east of Everset?”

  “No.”

  “He calls it a shack, but it’s more a lodge, I guess. Fifty-some acres he’s got down there, gate and cattle guard and a little old windy road going in, so you’d never know he had it fixed up so nice back in there. It’s about the onliest place Leroy can get away from his maw. He’s got power going in there. He’s even got an unlisted phone. Real fine. I guess Eloise has been going down there off and on for six, eight months, little afternoon visits like. There were only three knew about it, them and me. Now it’s four. He’s been teaching her about business, you might say. Martin is a stubborn man, but when he won’t listen to her, she just won’t have anything to do with that poor man at all. And he’s been coming around to her way of thinking. Or Leroy’s way, you might say.”

  “Or your way.”

  “But she doesn’t know that. She’s just real anxious to help Leroy. Somehow she’s got the idea that unless this development goes through, Leroy is ruined. She’s got a tender heart.”

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “Leroy wouldn’t like you acting all that surprised, Jimmy. Women take to that old boy.”

  “It’s pretty stupid for her to get into something like that, isn’t it?”

  Elmo shrugged. “I don’t guess Martin is the most exciting fella in the world for a woman like that to be married to. Granting you it’s stupid for her to fool around at all, she’s doing better with Leroy than if it was some fathead who’d get all carried away and get careless and get them caught. Or take it too serious. A man like Leroy, he understands women like Eloise. They want a little spice on account they get bored, but they don’t want to take any chance on messing up their marriage. Leroy is careful, and he pleasures them nice and he talks the sweet way they like to hear. But if they try to take charge, if they get uppity with him, he takes a switch to them, and that’s something new and different for them too, not getting any of that kind of treatment at home. Leroy, he says he doesn’t see her as often as it could be arranged, because she’s one godawful strenuous woman. He took up with her because we had it figured out that she could help us out with Martin. And she’s done just fine.”

  Jimmy pictured Leroy Shannard, the thick white hair, the lean, hard, brown, sleepy face, the wise, remote, indolent eyes, the soft and cynical voice. He imagined Shannard with Eloise, and the match became more plausible—a cautious, civilized lechery appealing to her peasant shrewdness.

  Jimmy sighed and said, “I’ve been around. I know a hell of a lot of things I couldn’t put in the paper. But you are beginning to make me feel wet behind the ears, Elmo.”

  “Keep standing in the wind and you’ll dry off fast. The next one on the list, Jimmy, is that Doris Rowell. Next to Sinnat, she worries me the most. She does too good a job lining up those fish experts and erosion people. You get onto her next. Get her out of the picture, and maybe we won’t have so many people down here using big words and confusing the voters. But you get some sleep. You did fine on this, but you don’t look so good.”

  As Jimmy Wing was heading north on Cable Key toward his cottage, he looked at his watch and saw that it was ten minutes of two. The neon of the Sea Oat Lounge was just ahead, on his left. He was exhausted, but he knew his nerves were so raw he would not sleep without some assistance, such as a couple of quick strong drinks. He braked sharply and turned in and parked. There were three other cars in front of the place.

  He went in and sat at the bar, under the festooning of nets and glass floats. There was a noisy party of four in a corner, and one couple dancing, tight-wrapped and slowly, to the muted juke. There was a half drink and a woman’s purse on the bar three stools away. Bernie, the fat bartender, was checking the bar tabs against the register.

  He came over and said, “Long time, Jim. You off it?”

  “Not so anybody could notice. Beam on the rocks, Bernie. Uh … make it a double. Slow for a Saturday.”

  “We did our share, earlier on. We made new friends. We carried out a few.” He put the drink in front of Jimmy.

  “Move over here cozy,” a familiar girl-voice commanded. He turned and saw that the half-drink and purse belonged to Mitchie McClure. He grinned and moved to the stool beside her.

  “How’s the ink-stained wretching business?” she said. “Tuck the paper to bed, full of scoops and excitements?”

  Her voice had the drawling quality which drinking always caused with her. She had a ripely sturdy body, a bland pretty childish face, so unmarked, so much in contrast with the knowing eyes, the sardonic voice, that it had a masklike quality. They had known each other for many years. Her hair was bleached almost white, paler than he had ever seen it, and piled in a contrived tousling which curved to frame her face and curled down almost to her eyebrows in a silky fringe.

  “The hair is really something, girl.”

  “This week’s hair. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is shaving it off. Every time I get it done I feel like a new woman for twenty minutes.”

  “You alone? On a Saturday night?”

  “Shocking, isn’t it? There are clowns you can take and clowns you cannot take. I reserve the right to choose, Jaimie. I didn’t send this one on his way early enough. I should know by now. Stick with a friend of a friend. It’s when you get to a friend of a friend of a friend the system collapses. Look up good old Mitchie if you ever get down that way. God, what a boor! I’ll tell you something, Jaimie. It makes a girl treasure her stinking little inadequate alimony, because maybe without it, life would turn into a wilde
rness of boors. Ha! Adrift in a sea of dullards. I’m a lucky girl. Right, Bernie?”

  “Right, doll.”

  “One for the road, Bernie. And hit my friend again.”

  “Not right off like that,” Jimmy said. “We go to the matches.”

  “That’s my game. You can’t win.”

  He tore matches out of the ashtray book. She went first, calling two. Their clenched fists were side by side. They glowered at each other. He had one match in his fist. “One,” he said, displaying it. She opened an empty hand. “Horse on me,” she said. “Your call.”

  He decided to use bad strategy. He used all three matches, and called four. She waited a long time, guessed three, opened her hand and showed one.

  “You lucked out,” she said indignantly. “Your lucky day, eh?”

  “Sure. I’m up to here in luck, Mitchie.”

  She tilted her head and looked at him more closely. “I’ve seen you looking better, Mr. Wing. Much better. On the other hand, everybody used to look a lot better, every one of us. Right, Bernie?”

  “Right, doll.”

  “I took canoeing and boating at Sweet Briar,” she said. “It readied me for the world. Heavy weather. We run before the wind, Jaimie. No sea anchors.”

  The noisy foursome had paid and left. Bernie went and unplugged the juke. The dancing couple left.

  “You have the look of a man trying to close the joint, Bernie.”

  “Right, doll.”

  They paid, said goodnight and went out. Bernie went to the door and they heard the click of the latch behind them. The spray of sea oats in yellow neon went off. A car whined by. The Gulf mumbled against the dark beach.

  They stood between his station wagon and her ancient Minx.

  “Old Saturday night,” she said. “Sunday morning.”

  “One of each every week.”

  “You are down, aren’t you, dear?” She moved closer to him, put her hands on his waist and looked up at him. “Got all dressed up and ended up with no place to go. We could share a little gesture of friendship. I’m not being brazen. Just cozy. And it wouldn’t matter a hell of a lot either way.”

  He kissed the bridge of her nose and said, “Follow me,” and got into his car. Her lights followed him up the Key and down his long driveway. She saved out some breakfast eggs and scrambled the rest. They talked aimlessly for a little while and went to bed. Just before they went to sleep, she rubbed the coal of her cigarette out in the bedside ashtray, settled back down against him and said, “Who is she, Jaimie?”

  “Who is who?”

  “Don’t give me that. I told you my long sad story of unrequited love a long time ago, with tears and everything. Remember? Who is she?”

  “She’s somebody who isn’t going to work out.”

  “On account of Gloria?”

  “On account of a lot of things, Mitchie.”

  “She married?”

  “You talk too much, honey.”

  She changed position, put her arm across him, nestled more closely and sighed. “I know. Anyhow, I feel more even with you. People like us, Jaimie, we have two things we can go with. One thing, you can wake up in the morning and know you’re alive. That’s something, I guess. The other is this. Having somebody close to hold onto sometimes.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “But neither is really so much, is it, when you think about it?”

  “Go to sleep, Mitchie.”

  Toward dawn a great raw clangor of thunder awakened him. He heard the lisping roar of heavy rain moving toward the cottage, moving across water and tropic growth. He was trying to pull himself far enough awake to go see to the windows when he heard them being closed. He thought Gloria was closing them, and then he remembered Mitchie. The heaviest rain came. As it began to die away after ten minutes he heard a small thin whining sound. He was on the edge of sleep. He wondered if some animal was under the house. He tried to fall back into sleep and could not. Finally he sat up. The world was a drab dark gray. The rain was almost gone. Both the bedroom and the kitchen opened out onto the small screened porch on the back of the cottage. The door was open. He could barely see the pale figure of Mitchie standing out there on the porch by the screen, naked, making that stifled whimpering sound. He lay back. In a little while the sound ended. The rain was gone. He heard the sound of her bare feet on the wooden floor, heard the rattle of a towel rack in the bathroom. Soon the bed moved as she eased back into it. He rolled toward her, pretending to embrace her in sleep. Her skin was cool, freshened by the rain which had blown against her. He mumbled and held her and kissed her eye and tasted salt with the tip of his tongue. While they made love he wondered exactly what had been in her mind as she had stood out in the rain, crying. Perhaps she thought of nothing but her own tears.

  She woke him at eleven. She had gone back to her place to change, and she had picked up some fresh orange juice on the way back. When he finished his shower, the eggs, toast and bacon were ready. He was glad she had awakened him, but he wished she had done it by phone. He did not relish having her around, not in the morning. She came cheery and too bawdy and too much at home. She came down too heavily on her heels when she walked. Her hips looked heavier than he had realized they were as she stood at the stove in her chocolate-colored shorts and her yellow blouse. And she made weak coffee. She could not possibly be the same person who had wept in the dawn rain.

  She sat across from him with her coffee and said, “Cheer up, pal. I’m not here for keeps.”

  “It’s nice to have you here.”

  “And it hurt your mouth to say it, poor boy. But no matter how churlish you feel right now, you do look better.”

  “I haven’t slept this late in a long time, Mitch.”

  “We had a good rain. Did you hear the rain?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “When I drove to my place the air was wonderful. All clean and fresh and sweet. Now it’s like hot soup again. Are you in any kind of trouble?”

  He looked up from the paper. “Huh?”

  “Trouble! Are you in any?”

  “I’m with you. My sister wouldn’t approve.”

  “Laura is a dull, righteous frump, and she always has been. I remember you were about fourteen. I was eleven. You were teaching me how to throw a curve. I came over on Saturday morning. She chased me out of the yard with a rake. Called me boy-crazy. She was wrong. I was curveball-crazy. I wasn’t boy-crazy until I was twelve.”

  “That’s when you started teaching me how to throw curves.”

  “Not throw them, darling. Appreciate them. Oh God, remember how we were going to wing up to Georgia and get married? What was I then? Fifteen, I think. Look at us, honey. Could we have done any worse?”

  “I forget why we didn’t go to Georgia.”

  “Because Willy wouldn’t loan us his car. Anyhow, Jaimie, you were my first. Remember the guilt? God, how wicked we felt! We pledged our sacred honor we’d never slip again. And we didn’t, did we? Not for three whole days. Can you remember what we fought about?”

  “No.”

  “You went away to school. End of romance. And here we are again. But without the romance. I wonder what kind of life we’d be having if we’d … if Willy had been a little more generous with his car. Have you slept with her, Jaimie?”

  “What? Who?”

  “With the gal who’s messing you up.”

  “No. And it’s none of your business, Mitchie.”

  She poured more coffee. “Maybe that’s what you have to do. To break the spell.”

  “Get off it!”

  She made her eyes wide and round. “Ho, ho, ho, yet. So with my dirty mouth I’m soiling some princess? This is Grace Kelly you’re swooning over?”

  “Mitchie, for God’s sake!”

  “Are you a grown man? What kind of a kid-stuff torch are you carrying? Listen to the voice of experience, dear. I have been around. Oh, way way around, and back several times and out around again. I’ve still got my disposition, half
my looks, and twice my early talent. The bed part is pure mirage, until proven otherwise. Friendship is a bigger part of the rest of it than anyone will admit. One little smidgin is magical romance. Anybody who mistakes the smidgin for the whole deal is retarded.”

  He stared at her. “Mitchie, I am fine. I am nifty dandy.”

  “Then you got more on your mind than a girl.”

  “What I have on my mind is how late I’m going to be getting to the shop.”

  “I’d like to see you better adjusted to whatever the hell you’re adjusting to.”

  “I don’t cry in the rain, at least.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You know, you’re a bastard sometimes.”

  “You learned that a long time ago. You keep forgetting.”

  She stood up quickly, grabbed her purse and headed for the door without a word. She stopped suddenly. Her shoulders slumped and she turned slowly and came back to him with a small smile. She put her hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the mouth. “Enough old friends I haven’t got, Jaimie. Last night seemed sweet. Even the tears were sweet. If I had any luck left, I’d give it to you. You know it. I wish one of us was happy. It would seem like a better average.”

  He smiled up at her. “You make horrible coffee.”

  “It’s the only thing in the world I do badly, dear.”

  He sat and heard the rackety motor of the Minx start, and heard it fade as she drove out to the highway. He put the dishes in the sink and went downtown to work.

  Twelve

  KAT TURNED THE LITTLE CAR into her driveway just after dark on Sunday. Alicia was asleep in the backseat, collapsed uncomfortably across the big wicker picnic basket. Roy slept beside her, curled against the door. For the last half hour Kat had become uncomfortably aware of having burned herself again. It had been a long dazzle of day on the beaches of Sanibel, the sand like snow and diamonds, the Gulf like a stream of hot blue milk. In spite of the wide brim of her coolie hat, the shoulder scarf, the big black glasses, the continual oiling, the time spent in patches of shade, the sun had found her. Her thighs stung, her shoulders smarted, and there were little needles of pain in her back. The all-day sun had merely deepened the brown-bronze of the tough hides of her children.