A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

“They’re expressing an opinion about bird lovers,” Jimmy said.

  “Take me to the nearest bowl of kitchen whiskey, driver.”

  At eleven they went back to Mitchie’s beach apartment. It was tidy and spotless. She put a stack of records on and turned the volume low. She pulled the draperies open so that the only light in the small room came from the reflected glow of the floodlighting around the pool area, shining through the window wall. She fixed their drinks, then changed to a brief fleecy cabana coat and came back to sit close beside him on the broad low couch facing the wide window.

  “This is the Class A treatment,” she said. “This is for the very good friend of a very good friend. McClure Enterprises, a significant contribution to a vacation economy. No muttonhead conventioneers here, hon, because this is where I live.”

  “Nice,” he said absently. He wondered how many drinks he’d had.

  “It’s worth more than I paid for it. It’s co-op, you know. I had the sense to buy it with the settlement, and the stinking little alimony is the plus factor. I could sell it tomorrow.”

  “Very nice.”

  “The expensive ones stare out at the Gulf. Actually, I’d rather look at the pool.”

  “Sure.”

  “I like the way you keep yelping with sheer pleasure.”

  “I’m sorry, Mitch. I’m a drag. That drunk at the bar, I’ve known that guy for six years, at least. I did him a pretty good favor one time. So tonight he wanted to see if he could smash my face in. He was eager. He acted as if he was doing no more than would be expected of any good citizen. And he had some things to say to you, just for being with me.”

  “I didn’t learn any new words, Jaimie. And he kept repeating himself. It was very dull.”

  “So who got asked to leave? Me.”

  She put her glass down and turned deftly to lie across his lap, looking up at him. All he could see of her face was a pallor of her hair, a bright highlight on her eye, another highlight on a moist lip.

  “Rather be there than here, huh?”

  “No, Mitchie.”

  “Darling, I still think you could be cheered up somewhat in a very ordinary old-fashioned way. So you should give it a small try, don’t you think?”

  After several minutes she moved away from him and sighed and picked up their empty glasses. “I guess we’re down to one vice, hon.”

  “I’m sorry, Mitchie, I just …”

  “Jeepers, Jaimie, don’t get abject about it. At a time like this it isn’t exactly a definitive test of manhood. If I thought it was necessary to your morale, boy, I would persevere, but we’d be up to our hips in raggedy nerves. Honestly, I don’t feel at all scorned or spurned or anything. I was just making a small scorched offering anyhow.”

  She carried the glasses into the kitchen and turned the light on. She hummed along with the gentle music as she pried ice cubes loose.

  “Mind if I use the phone?” he called.

  “Your house, your phone, your woman,” she said, and came in and turned the music off, turned the small lamp on beside the phone and went back to the kitchen.

  Brian Haas answered and said, “I just came through the door, Jimmy. I didn’t note any fistfights in the audience, and I didn’t see anybody hanging from a tree when I left, so I guess you didn’t attend the festivities.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Like hot buttered wax, friend. First off, our Elmo gave a humble little address. He had been slandered. An irresponsible report had been published without the knowledge of his great and good friends, Mr. Ben Killian and Mr. Borklund. A retraction would be published. But, in view of the doubt it might have created in a few minds, he was abstaining from voting on the issue after the public hearing. Long, loud applause.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Next came the Reverend Coombs. He too had been slandered. And then he proceeded to slander all the Save Our Bayers. Slur, sneer, smear innuendo. Gist of message as follows: The soft weak do-gooders, the so-called liberals are gutting the strength of this great capitalistic God-fearing nation, and it doesn’t take any secret organization to put them down, because the common man, in his wisdom, will rise up as a multitude and smite them down. There is no place in our grrreat community for irresponsible, pleasure-seeking, Godless parasites and so on. Poor Tom got his turn next. Believe me, not one single word was audible. Same with a scared professorial type from Washington, from some national conservation group. Then Kat Hubble went up onto the stage and faced the animals. Couldn’t hear a word of that, either. My God, she is a lady. She is brave and true. That decency was like a banner in the sunlight. Then came the perfect timing. Burt Lesser scolded them for being so rude. He made his pitch. Then the golden voice of the Chamber of Commerce made a financial pitch that had them all breathing heavy. That was all. The commissioners called a short recess to determine if they would vote on it at once. They so determined. They voted yes. Gus Makelder gave a little sermon on the need for harmony, forget old differences, hand in hand into the golden future and so on and so forth. Not a peep out of the Costex people. The proponents had the sense to trim the presentation way down. With the S.O.B.’s whipped before they ever got started, there wasn’t any need for the customary parade of talent. It was hot in that auditorium, Jimmy. Hot, sweaty, noisy and a little bit dangerous. They went swarming out with some steam left to release. When the hot dry winds blow, the natives get restless anyway. So we’ve had a little flurry of alarums and arrests tonight. Fistfights, car thefts, rapes and other little evidences of high spirits.”

  Mitchie handed Jimmy his drink. He said, “How are things at the zoo?”

  “Your desk is empty. I’ve got your stuff in a carton in my car, and your check in my wallet. I’ll stop by your place tomorrow before I go in, okay?”

  “Fine, Bri. Thanks. How does that retraction read?”

  “It makes you look like a thug, a liar and a person of unsound mind. Other than that, you’ll love it. Borklund keeps staring at me the way the house cat watches the parakeet. He hates the news end. It complicates the money machine. I think he’s wondering how he can cover the local scene without using human beings. You want to stop by and use our crying towels? You sound down.”

  “Thanks, no. And thanks for the report.”

  Jimmy hung up and turned the phone light out. The fresh drink was tall and strong. Mitchie had reversed the stack of records. She sat at one end of the couch, wedged some of the cushions behind her, and had Jimmy stretch out. He made small changes in his position until the nape of his neck was perfectly fitted to a curve of her bare strong thigh. Her fingers were gentle, smoothing his eyebrows, stroking his hair.

  “How did Brian get that terrible scar? In a war?” she asked.

  “In a saloon in Kansas, from a broken bottle. No fracas. He fell on it.”

  “Are they happy?”

  “Huh? Nan and Bri? I guess so. Sure.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “You know what the worst thing of all is? Really the worst thing of all? It’s when you do some idiot damn thing, drunk or not, and later there’s nobody you can go to and say you’re sorry. It’s when you can’t disappoint anybody. Oh, the hell with having somebody to please. The worst is having nobody to be cross with you because you let them down. If they didn’t have anything else, they’d have that.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Jaimie, it’s like that old problem of the tree falling in the middle of the forest. If nobody heard it, did it make any noise? If you do a wicked, evil thing, is it really wicked and evil if nobody gives a damn? Or does it just happen in a vacuum?”

  “Mitch, honey, I’m not exactly up to philosophical speculation.”

  “But this is heading someplace.”

  “Is it?”

  “It might get roundabout, but if you don’t fall asleep, you might find out how it comes out. My little girl was ten years old a week ago Tuesday.”

  “Uh … Carol?”

&n
bsp; “Thank you for remembering her name.” She leaned down and kissed him, then leaned back again. “When you’re emotionally upset, you can do yourself a hell of a bad turn, you know? I really think my lawyer was playing footsie with his lawyer. I got careless, you know. When the dust blew away, there I was with my clothes and my car, a sixteen-thousand-dollar settlement, and two hundred a month until the moment I remarry. But he had complete custody of the kid. I told myself I didn’t give a damn. He has the kid, and I am costing him less than seven dollars a day. For God’s sake, our phone bill used to run more than that! But because I got careless—because I’d stopped giving a damn—they had me in a bind, and it was sort of take the offer, or nothing. I took it and came home. I can’t see her, but they let me write to her. I write to her care of a lawyer. I guess they get together and fumigate the letter. Once a month is often enough, they’ve told me. I get formal, dutiful, polite little letters back from her. She sounds like a bright kid. When she gets to be eighteen, I guess she can decide whether to meet me face-to-face.”

  “That’s a sad sort of …”

  “Hold the sympathy, Jaimie,” she said, touching his lips. “I’m making no appeal on that basis. I’m just buzzed enough to be terribly stark about all this. I make an appeal on a different basis. It goes like this. I’m not happy. I accept that. I don’t expect to be. But I’m not having much fun.”

  “I thought you were.”

  “Now let’s get to the stark part, and take the cold appraising look at Mitchie McClure. First for the deficits. I’m a party broad, Jaimie. I’m not on call, but I’m in scads of little black books. Buster, old buddy, if you get to Palm City on this trip, I want you to look up a pal of mine named Mitchie McClure. Here’s her address. Tell her you’re my friend. She’s a lot of laughs and she’ll show you the town, and whether or not she puts out depends on you, old buddy. She’s no bum. Got the picture? Right. So there are the drinks and the dinners and the little gifties that piece out the budget. Sometimes a gift of money, tucked in a shoe or a drawer or a purse. The first few times that happened, it made me feel crawly. But we’re talking deficits, aren’t we? Okay. The girl is in the semipro league, and she drinks much too much, and she’s letting herself get too heavy.

  “Now for the assets, and leave us not indulge in any vulgar puns. She is selective, which I suppose is the dreary excuse and justification of all the semipros. She is reasonably pretty, and she is getting very bored with drinking these days, and even more bored with being horizontal, resort-type recreation for good old Buster and Charlie and Jack. She’s clean, and reasonably intelligent, and she could hoe fifteen pounds of meat off those hips in a month or so, if she had reason to give a damn. And I think she has a capacity for loyalty which has never had a proper workout.”

  “Where are you heading with this?”

  “Shut up. Jaimie, tell me true, does it mean anything to you that you were my first and I was your first? Can you feel any … tenderness toward those two love-dazed clumsy kids, the you and me of a long long time ago, full of dreams?”

  “You know it means something.”

  “You know, I’m this here woman, this party broad, and I’m also the fifteen-year-old girl you used to take up into the storeroom over Getland’s boathouse, both of us breathing so hard we sounded like marathon runners. We told each other it wasn’t wrong, because we were going to spend our whole lives together.”

  “We squirreled the money up there behind a beam.”

  “Eighty-seven dollars it got to be. Runaway money, but Willy decided not to loan us the car. Jaimie, do you still love that girl a little bit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want you to love me. That would be a hell of a thing. Sooner or later you’d get awfully damned bitter about Buster and Charlie and Jack. But it wouldn’t hurt to love that boathouse girl. She can’t hurt either of us. You see, it was the sweetest part of my life. We invented how to make love. Nobody had ever done it before. We discovered it, and the rest of the human race couldn’t know what they were missing. Oh, Jaimie, bless you, what happened to us?”

  “Sundry things, here and there. But where is this taking us?”

  “Don’t be dull, hon. I’m proposing, of course. Stay right where you are! Don’t get tense. We both know you’re going to have to leave here, for the ordinary dreary reason you can’t make a living here. No. Let me finish. If I list this place at eighteen, I can move it within two days. I’ll go on the wagon. We’ll trade in our two exhausted little cars on something big and new and sexy, winnow our belongings down to the minimum, and take off and keep going until we find a place to try new things in. A trial escape, Jaimie. Not a marriage. My two hundred will keep coming in. So you won’t have to make a lot to keep us. Suppose we do get along. Then we can play it by ear. If we should decide we could live up to having kids, then we could see if we could start one, and then chop off my two hundred a month. You see, hon, what we’d have would be somebody to try to please, and somebody to say ‘I’m sorry’ to, and somebody to hold tight to when the nights are too black. And we start with that … that residue of tenderness from a long time ago. I think we know each other pretty well, and I think we’re both gentleman enough not to prod the other guy where it might hurt. I would try very hard to be good for you, and keep things light and fun and unpossessive, and I know you’d be good for me. And I have just one last thing to say. This didn’t just suddenly occur to me. It happened a couple of weeks ago, after I cried in the rain and came back to bed and you were gentle with me. I started thinking about it then. Since then, Gloria died and you’ve lost any reason to stay here. Jaimie, what do you think?”

  He sat up and drank and settled back again. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “Christ, it isn’t exactly what you’d call the chance of a lifetime. You know, though, you wouldn’t have to work for a while. You could get yourself sorted out.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “Yes, indeed you do. I’m neat. I make a lot of my clothes. I cook pretty well.”

  “But terrible coffee.”

  “I know. I know. So make your own.”

  He sat up. “It isn’t every day I get propositioned.”

  “It isn’t? I do. Oh, I’m sorry, hon. That’s the kind of joke I won’t make any more.”

  “Mitch, I want to think about it.”

  “I didn’t expect you to tear home and start packing.”

  “But I do think I’ll go on home.”

  “You could stay here. Please stay here, Jaimie.”

  “I have to go. I couldn’t even tell you exactly why. Don’t be sore.”

  “I’m not sore. It’s perfectly all right. Really. Just drive with care. I can’t afford to lose you too many times, my Jaimie.”

  He stood just inside her doorway and kissed her. Barefoot, she seemed small. She tiptoed up snugly against him, her arm around his neck. Her solid weight moved him back against an angle of the wall by the door. His right hand, under her fleecy coat, traced the soft and heated planes of her back, down to the padded ledge of hip. At the end of the kiss he held her there, her lips at the base of his throat, her forehead pressing round and hard against his jaw. He looked beyond her and saw the palm fronds and the fat leaves of dwarf banana swaying violently in the inaudible wind.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered and turned away from him. He let himself out. He had to cross the pool area to get to his car. He looked toward her big window from the far side of the pool, looked into the dark room. She was standing at the window. Only the pale short coat and the lesser pallor of her hair were visible.

  Twenty-four

  THROUGHOUT THE NEXT WEEK Jimmy Wing spent more time at his cottage than ever before. Mitchie stopped to see him a few times. At first she was confident and enthusiastic, but she became uncertain the more she became aware of his lethargy.

  “So it was a dumb idea,” she said at last. “So it was a dream, Jaimie.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

/>   “You don’t have to say it, dear. Your enthusiasm speaks for itself.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t thought it out.”

  She stood up and went to the door. He followed her more slowly. She turned, with a sad, wise smile. “It’s one way to give me the message.”

  “It isn’t like that, Mitch.”

  “Isn’t it? Anyway, I’m off your back. You know where I am. Give me a ring sometime.”

  “Sure,” he said too heartily. “I’ll do that.”

  When the rackety sound of her little car was gone he searched himself for some feeling of relief, but, as during all the recent days, he felt nothing. He knew that it was implausible, and perhaps even dangerous, to have so little discernible reaction, but he could not summon up any sense of alarm.

  The days were strange. Loella, the motel maid, had ceased coming over to clean the cottage, and it seemed too much effort to find out what had happened. The cottage grew increasingly cluttered. He had no routines, ate when he was hungry, slept often and heavily, sweating profusely in his sleep, dreaming of beasts and fleeing. He wondered how much money he had left in his account, but did not want to make the effort of reconciling his checkbook. He guessed it was about four hundred dollars.

  He wrote to friends in far places, asking about the chance of a job. Usually the letters were too long, and he did not mail them. He tried to make a beginning on a half dozen ideas for magazine articles, but the prose seemed flat and artificial and he quickly lost interest.

  The phone rang quite often that first week. He seldom answered it. Once, when he answered, a man offered him a free trip to Cape Coral and a free airplane ride over the new development, where hundreds of fine building lots were available, adjacent to the best fishing grounds on the west coast of Florida.

  Another time a woman with a high, mad, whining voice chanted obscenities at him, terming him a Commie dupe.

  He could not determine which of those two calls seemed more unreal.

  He saved personal letters, unopened. One afternoon he decided to read them and looked all over the cottage for them and could not find them, and had to assume he had thrown them out accidentally.