The Best of Joe Haldeman

by Joe W. Haldeman

  Castle seemed a little harder and more serious in this world than the last, not only from his terse moodiness in the pickup, but from recollections of parallel conversations. John wondered how shady he actually was, whether he’d been honest about his police record.

  (He hadn’t been. In this universe, when Lena had asked him whether he had ever been in trouble with the police, he’d answered a terse “no.” In fact, he’d done eight hard years in Ohio for an armed robbery he hadn’t committed— the real robber hadn’t been so stupid, here—and he’d come out of prison bitter, angry, an actual criminal. Figuring the world owed him one, a week after getting out he stopped for a hitchhiker on a lonely country road, pulled a gun, walked him a few yards off the road into a field of high corn, and shot him point-blank at the base of the skull. It didn’t look anything like the movies.)

  (He drove off without touching the body, which a farmer’s child found two days later. The victim turned out to be a college student who was on probation for dealing—all he’d really done was buy a kilo of green and make his money back by selling bags to his friends, and one enemy—so the papers said

  DRUG DEALER SLAIN IN GANGLAND-STYLE KILLING

  and the police pursued the matter with no enthusiasm. Castle was in Key West well before the farmer’s child smelled the body, anyhow.)

  As they rode along, whatever Lena had or hadn’t done with Castle was less interesting to John than what he was planning to do with her. Half of his self had never experienced sex, as an adult, without the sensory handicaps engendered by scar tissue and severed nerves in the genitals, and he was looking forward to the experience with a relish that was obvious, at least to Lena. She encouraged him in not-so-subtle ways, and by the time they crossed the last bridge into Key West he was ready to tell Castle to pull over at the first bush.

  He left the typewriter in Castle’s care and declined help with the luggage. By this time Lena was smiling at his obvious impatience; she was giggling by the time they were momentarily stalled by a truculent door key; laughed her delight as he carried her charging across the room to the couch, then clawing off a minimum of clothing and taking her with fierce haste, wordless, and keeping her on a breathless edge he drifted the rest of the clothes off her and carried her into the bedroom, where they made so much noise Julio banged on the ceiling with a broomstick.

  They did quiet down eventually, and lay together in a puddle of mingled sweat, panting, watching the fan push the humid air around. “Guess we both get to sleep in the wet spot” John said.

  “No complaints.” She raised up on one elbow and traced a figure eight on his chest. “You’re full of surprises tonight Dr. Baird.”

  “Life is full of surprises.”

  “You should go away more often—or at least come back more often.”

  “It’s all that Hemingway research. Makes a man out of you.”

  “You didn’t learn this in a book,” she said, gently taking his penis and pantomiming a certain motion.

  “I did, though, an anthropology book.” In another universe. “It’s what they do in the Solomon Islands.”

  “Wisdom of Solomon,” she said, lying back. After a pause: “They have anthropology books at JFK?”

  “Uh, no.” He remembered he didn’t own that book in this universe. “Browsing at Wordsworth’s.”

  “Hope you bought the book.”

  “Didn’t have to.” He gave her a long slow caress. “Memorized the good parts.”

  ~ * ~

  On the other side of town, six days later, she was in about the same position on Castle’s bed, and even more exhausted.

  “Aren’t you overdoing the loving little wifey bit? It’s been a week.”

  She exhaled audibly. “What a week.”

  “Missed you.” He nuzzled her and made an unsubtle preparatory gesture.

  “No, you don’t.” She rolled out of bed. “Once is plenty.” She went to the mirror and ran a brush through her damp hair. “Besides, it’s not me you missed. You missed it.” She sat at the open window, improving the neighborhood’s scenery. “It’s gonna need a Teflon lining installed.”

  “Old boy’s feelin’ his oats?”

  “Not feeling his anything. God, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. Four, five times a day; six.”

  “Screwed, blewed, and tattooed. You asked for it.”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I haven’t had a chance to start my little act. He got off that train with an erection, and he still has it. No woman would be safe around him. Nothing wet and concave would be safe.”

  “So does that mean it’s a good time to bring in Pansy? Or is he so stuck on you he wouldn’t even notice her?”

  She scowled at the brush, picking hair out of it. “Actually, Castle, I was just about to ask you the same thing. Relying on your well-known expertise in animal behavior.”

  “Okay.” He sat up. “I say we oughta go for it. If he’s a walkin’ talkin’ hard-on like you say ... Pansy’d pull him like a magnet. You’d have to be a fuckin’ monk not to want Pansy.”

  “Like Rasputin.”

  “Like who?”

  “Never mind.” She went back to the brush. “I guess, I guess one problem is that I really am enjoying the attention. I guess I’m not too anxious to hand him over to this champion sexpot.”

  “Aw, Lena—”

  “Really. I do love him in my way, Castle. I don’t want to lose him over this scheme.”

  “You’re not gonna lose him. Trust me. You catch him dickin’ Pansy, get mad, forgive him. Hell, you’ll have him wrapped around your finger.”

  “I guess. You make the competition sound pretty formidable.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s outa there the next day.”

  “Unless she winds up in love with him. That would be cute.”

  “He’s almost twice her age. Besides, she’s a whore. Whores don’t fall in love.”

  “They’re women, Castle. Women fall in love.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just like on TV.”

  She turned away from him; looked out the window. “You really know how to make a woman feel great, you know?”

  “Come on.” He crossed over and smoothed her hair. She turned around but didn’t look up. “Don’t run yourself down, Lena. You’re still one hell of a piece of ass.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled into his leer and grabbed him. “If you weren’t such a poet, I’d trade you in for a vibrator.”

  ~ * ~

  15. in praise of his mistress

  Pansy was indeed beautiful, even under normal conditions; delicate features, wasp waist combined with generous secondary sexual characteristics. The conditions under which John first saw her were calculated to maximize sexiness and vulnerability. Red nylon running shorts, tight and very short, and a white sleeveless T-shirt from a local bar that was stamped last heterosexual in key west—all clinging to her golden skin with a healthy sweat, the cloth made translucent enough to reveal no possibility of underwear.

  John looked out the screen door and saw her at the other door, struggling with a heavy box while trying to make the key work. “Let me help you,” he said through the screen, and stepped across the short landing to hold the box while she got the door open.

  “You’re too kind.” John tried not to stare as he handed the box back. Pansy, of course, was relieved at his riveted attention. It had taken days to set up this operation, and would take more days to bring it to its climax, so to speak, and more days to get back to normal. But she did owe Castle a big favor and this guy seemed nice enough. Maybe she’d learn something about Hemingway in the process.

  “More to come up?” John asked.

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to help. I can manage.”

  “It’s okay. I was just goofing off for the rest of the day.”

  It turned out to be quite a job, even though there was only one load from a small rented truck. Most of the load was uniform and heavy boxes of b
ooks, carefully labeled LIT A-B, GEN REF, ENCY 1-12, and so forth. Most of her furniture, accordingly, was cinder blocks and boards, the standard student bookshelf arrangement.

  John found out that despite a couple of dozen boxes marked LIT, Pansy hadn’t majored in literature, but rather Special Education; during the school year, she taught third grade at a school for the retarded in Key Largo. She didn’t tell him about the several years she’d spent as a call girl, but if she had, John might have seen a connection that Castle would never have made—that the driving force behind both of the jobs was the same, charity. The more or less easy forty dollars an hour for going on a date and then having sex was a factor, too, but she really did like making lonely men feel special, and had herself felt more like a social worker than a woman of easy virtue. And the hundreds of men who had fallen for her, for love or money, weren’t responding only to her cheerleader’s body. She had a sunny disposition and a natural, artless way of concentrating on a man that made him for a while the only man in the world.

  John would not normally be an easy conquest. Twenty years of facing classrooms full of coeds had given him a certain wariness around attractive young women. He also had an impulse toward faithfulness, Lena having suddenly left town, her father ill. But he was still in the grip of the weird overweening horniness that had animated him since inheriting this new body and double-image personality. If Pansy had said “Let’s do it,” they would be doing it so soon that she would be wise to unwrap the condom before speaking. But she was being as indirect as her nature and mode of dress would allow.

  “Do you and your wife always come down here for the summer?”

  “We usually go somewhere. Boston’s no fun in the heat.”

  “It must be wonderful in the fall.”

  And so forth. It felt odd for Pansy, probably the last time she would ever seduce a man for reasons other than personal interest. She wanted it to be perfect. She wanted John to have enough pleasure in her to compensate for the embarrassment of their “accidental” exposure, and whatever hassle his wife would put him through afterwards.

  She was dying to know why Castle wanted him set up. How Castle ever met a quiet, kindly gentleman like John was a mystery, too—she had met some of Castle’s friends, and they had other virtues.

  Quiet and kindly, but horny. Whenever she contrived, in the course of their working together, to expose a nipple or a little beaver, he would turn around to adjust himself, and blush. More like a teenager, discovering his sexuality, than a middle-aged married man.

  He was a pushover, but she didn’t want to make it too easy. After they had finished putting the books up on shelves, she said thanks a million; I gotta go now, spending the night house-sitting up in Islamorada. You and your wife come over for dinner tomorrow? Oh, then come on over yourself. No, that’s all right, I’m a big girl. Roast beef okay? See ya.

  Driving away in the rented truck, Pansy didn’t feel especially proud of herself. She was amused at John’s sexiness and looking forward to trying it out. But she could read people pretty well, and sensed a core of deep sadness in John. Maybe it was from Vietnam; he hadn’t mentioned it, but she knew what the bracelet meant.

  Whatever the problem, maybe she’d have time to help him with it—before she had to turn around and add to it.

  Maybe it would work out for the best. Maybe the problem was with his wife, and she’d leave, and he could start over—

  Stop kidding yourself. Just lay the trap, catch him, deliver him. Castle was not the kind of man you want to disappoint.

  ~ * ~

  16. fiesta

  She had baked the roast slowly with wine and fruit juice, along with dried apricots and apples plumped in port wine, seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg and cardamom. Onions and large cubes of acorn squash simmered in the broth. She served new potatoes steamed with parsley and dressed Italian style, with garlicky olive oil and a splash of vinegar. Small Caesar salad and air-light pan de agua, the Cuban bread that made you forget every other kind of bread.

  The way to a man’s heart, her mother had contended, was through his stomach, and although she was accustomed to aiming rather lower, she thought it was probably a good approach for a longtime married man suddenly forced to fend for himself. That was exactly right for John. He was not much of a cook, but he was an accomplished eater.

  He pushed the plate away after three helpings. “God, I’m such a pig. But that was irresistible.”

  “Thank you.” She cleared the table slowly, accepting John’s offer to help. “My mother’s ‘company’ recipe. So you think Hadley might have just thrown the stories away, and made up the business about the train?”

  “People have raised the possibility. There she was, eight years older than this handsome hubby—with half the women on the Left Bank after him, at least in her mind—and he’s starting to get published, starting to build a reputation—”

  “She was afraid he was going to ‘grow away’ from her? Or did they have that expression back then?”

  “I think she was afraid he would start making money from his writing. She had an inheritance, a trust fund from her grandfather, that paid over two thousand a year. That was plenty to keep the two of them comfortable in Paris. Hemingway talked poor in those days, starving artist, but he lived pretty well.”

  “He probably resented it, too. Not making the money himself.”

  “That would be like him. Anyhow, if she chucked the stories to ensure his dependency, it backfired. He was still furious thirty years later—three wives later. He said the stuff had been ‘fresh from the mint,’ even if the writing wasn’t so great, and he was never able to reclaim it.”

  She opened a cabinet and slid a bottle out of its burlap bag, and selected two small glasses. “Sherry?” He said “Why not?” and they moved into the living room.

  The living room was mysteriously devoid of chairs, so they had to sit together on the small couch. “You don’t actually think she did it.”

  “No.” John watched her pour the sherry. “From what I’ve read about her, she doesn’t seem at all calculating. Just a sweet gal from St. Louis who fell in love with a cad.”

  “Cad. Funny old-fashioned word.”

  John shrugged. “Actually, he wasn’t really a cad. I think he sincerely loved every one of his wives ... at least until he married them.”

  They both laughed. “Of course it could have been something in between,” Pansy said, “I mean, she didn’t actually throw away the manuscripts, but she did leave them sitting out, begging to be stolen. Why did she leave the compartment?”

  “That’s one screwy aspect of it. Hadley herself never said, not on paper. Every biographer seems to come up with a different reason: she went to get a newspaper, she saw some people she recognized and stepped out to talk with them, wanted some exercise before the long trip ... even Hemingway had two different versions—she went out to get a bottle of Evian water or to buy something to read. That one pissed him off, because she did have an overnight bag full of the best American writing since Mark Twain.”

  “How would you have felt?”

  “Felt?”

  “I mean, you say you’ve written stories, too. What if somebody, your wife, made a mistake and you lost everything?”

  He looked thoughtful. “It’s not the same. In the first place, it’s just hobby with me. And I don’t have that much that hasn’t been published—when Hemingway lost it, he lost it for good. I could just go to a university library and make new copies of everything.”

  “So you haven’t written much lately?”

  “Not stories. Academic stuff.”

  “I’d love to read some of your stories.”

  “And I’d love to have you read them. But I don’t have any here. I’ll mail you some from Boston.”

  She nodded, staring at him with a curious intensity. “Oh hell,” she said, and turned her back to him. “Would you help me with this?”

  “What?”

/>   “The zipper.” She was wearing a clingy white summer dress. “Undo the zipper a little bit.”

  He slowly unzipped it a few inches. She did it the rest of the way, stood up and hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps and shrugged. The dress slithered to the floor. She wasn’t wearing anything else.

  “You’re blushing.” Actually, he was doing a good imitation of a beached fish. She straddled him, sitting back lightly on his knees, legs wide, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Uh,” he said.

  “I just get impatient. You don’t mind?”

  “Uh ... no?”

  ~ * ~

  17. on being shot again