"It wasn't exactly easy."
"Thank you, ducks. That's some help. But, you know, you have left me in one hell of a condition."
"Go take a cold shower."
"There's romance for you. Well, I got tricky, and it didn't work, and I have only myself to blame."
I saw paleness move toward the door. She stopped at the door and said, "I hereby accuse you of probably being a pretty good man."
"Thank you."
"And I am not a very nice woman."
"You are probably nicer than you are willing to admit Teresa."
"Ho, ho, ho," she said and went out and the latch clicked as she quietly closed the door.
I went back to the bed. It was scented with her. My heart was still running a little fast. I laughed at myself silently. Mocking and derisive. I had defended my honor. Righteous prig. I knew what I should have done. Once I had suspected who it really was, kept my damned mouth shut. Saved astonishment until later.
How many times do you find yourself in bed with a legend? The three unholy McGees-the one I try not to be, and the one I wish I was, and the one I really am. Going ahead with it would have been the one I guess I try not to be.
But sometimes I wish there was less clown in the one I really am. I go about getting walloped with bladders, and setting my own nose on fire. Maybe I want to be a true hero. But whenever I hear that word, the only hero I can think of is Nelson Eddy, yelling into Jeanette's face. And wearing his Yogi Bear hat.
While considering a cold shower for myself, I dropped back into sleep.
Fourteen
THOUGH THEIR doctor lauded my health, I was not too content with it. The head wound was not too bad. I had hit the formica edge a slashing glancing blow across the hairline in front, and a four-inch flap of scalp had had to be stitched back into position. A few days later I acquired a pair of black eyes of such a deep hue and generous area that I resembled a large uneasy raccoon.
It wasn't physical damage which bothered me. It was psychic damage. We are all in a state of precarious balance, and it is difficult to realize how delicate that balance is until it is upset-either by emotions or clever chemistry. You do not quite trust all the perfectly reliable messages of the senses.
I found that I had a bigger emotional swing than I wanted. I would become vastly elated for no reason, and deeply depressed without warning. And sometimes I felt ludicrously close to girlish tears. The governor was out of kilter. I told myself I could not go about reacting like a Smith College sophomore, but I could not shake the feeling of emotional convalescence, of not being entirely certain of what I might do next. Though I stopped hallucinating, the world had lost its stability. It would give a vivid little hitch from time to time, like a brief cosmic hiccup.
I met Charles McKewn Armister and his wife. They were similar physical types-stocky, sandy, fit, outdoor people. Her attitude toward him was gentle and loving, protective and slightly apprehensive. They had employed a husky male chauffeur-nurse-valet-attendant to stay close to him and keep him out of mischief. Had I not known about him, I would have thought him a perfectly normal club-man bore. He had hearty and trivial conversation. He seemed in perpetual good spirits.
He pumped my hand and said, "We're indebted to you. Yes sir. Pretty ugly mess. Knew old Bay for years. Never thought he'd try any hanky panky. Got some good chaps running the show now. Reliable. Like Jo says, it's time for me to relax and enjoy myself. Travel, do some sailing, sharpen up the old tennis, hey old girl?" He put his arm around his wife's waist, gave her a hearty hug, slid his freckled hand down to her matronly rear and gave her such a massive pinch she leapt into the air, eyes bulging.
"Charles!" she said.
He laughed heartily.
He looked at me, smiling, and said, "They won't let me take a drink. Imagine that? They say I get too noisy. Matter of fact, I don't miss it. A man doesn't have to drink to feel good, does he?"
"Charles?"
"What, my dear? What?"
She looked at him with the loving earnest patience of a mother coaching a child. "Weren't you going to ask Mr. McGee something?"
"What? Oh yes, of course. Why don't you and little what's-her-name come stay with us for a bit out at the Island? Rest and recuperation, fellow. And recreation. Glad to have you. Indebted to you."
And with the smiling, absent-minded unconcern of any minor league outfielder, he reached his hand to the front of his beautifully tailored trousers and scratched his crotch.
"Uh. Thank you very much. But Miss Gibson and I are going down to North Carolina to see her brother. Perhaps some other time."
"Any time at all, fellow. Give us a ring any time."
"Charles, dear," Joanna said, "would you like to go down with Wade now and wait for me in the car?"
"What? Of course, old girl. Certainly."
Terry said, "I'll be out day after tomorrow to stay a few days, Charlie." She stepped to him to kiss him on the cheek. He chuckled, and before she could evade him, put his hands on her breasts and gave them a simultaneous squeeze like a clown honking a pair of rubber horns, and, still chuckling, went out through the door Wade was holding for him.
The moment they were gone, the sisters flew into each other's arms, and clung and wept, making their small soft sisterly sounds. I went to the windows and stood with my back to them, heard murmurous mutual comfortings, snifflings, nose blowings.
"Mr. McGee?" Joanna said. I turned toward them. They were under control, smiling, eyes slightly reddened. She dug into her purse and took out a folded envelope and held it out to me. As I took it, she said, "This is a token of our appreciation for trying to help my sister and me, and Charles of course, and some small restitution for what you... had to endure at the hands of a man we once loved and trusted."
"You don't have to do this."
"I want to. It's out of my own funds. They say we won't be able to touch anything of Charles's for quite a long time, until it is all straightened out. I talked this over with my attorney and he suggested that for tax purposes we both consider it as a gift. I will send you the same amount next year, and the same amount the year after. He said it would be better for both of us that way."
"I feel a little strange about this."
"For God's sake, why should you?" Terry said rudely. "If it wasn't for you, Charlie, bless him, would be dead. This broad is loaded and she's grateful. And you are permanently unemployed by choice, aren't you, McGee? What's with this hesitation? You seem to be rejecting all kinds of little gifts lately." She winked broadly at me.
I put the envelope in my pocket. Nobody had been able to find the stuff they had checked out of my hotel. So I was wearing gift clothing. Gift from Nina. I had given her the measurements--44 extra-long, 35 waist, 35 inseam, shoes 13 C, shirts 17-35 and she had scurried around harassing people to cuff the pants, and had even bought one of Abercrombie's better suitcases to put the gear in. She bought far more than I had wanted, but aside from slightly hairier fabrics than I would have chosen, everything was fine.
Joanna put her hand in mine. Her eyes were shiny. She said goodby and went down to join her jolly, happy, uncomplicated husband.
"If he wants to keep busy" I said to Terry, "he can always run for office."
"Oh, you are very very funny. When is the little designer coming after you?"
"Her name is Nina. Three o'clock. What are you going to do?"
"Today, or from now on? Today I am going to go out and buy, buy, buy. Gaudy, expensive, ridiculous things. I am going to bully the clerks, make scenes, and buy, buy, buy. It's my therapy, darling. As to from now on, I shall get sister settled down, then go back to Athens, then down to Montevideo for Christmas with a flock of other professional house guests, then Mexico in the spring, and summer near Cannes, and from then on plans are a bit vague. I expect I shall go right on being Terry Drummond."
There was a touching look of vulnerability about her.
"Good luck to Terry Drummond," I said.
"Sweetie, if you
try to feel sorry for me, I shall hit you flush in the mouth."
I took the envelope out and opened it and looked at the figure on the check. It was a ridiculous figure. It was unreal. I tucked it away, resisting the temptation to take it out for another look to see if I could have misread it.
After our baggage was checked aboard, and while we waited for the flight to be announced, I told Nina about the envelope at the hotel. I had gone there on the off chance, and found they still had it. I had to sign an affadavit about the loss of the receipt, and then tell them exactly what was in it, so they could check the contents-with my approval.
"It belongs to you," I said.
"I keep hoping I can have a lot of time with him before they operate, Trav."
"It's more cash than I usually carry around, honey."
"Do you think Mike is scared of the operation?"
He wasn't scared. The time we spent there was strange. We had a rental car and two rooms in a motel about six miles from the hospital. In the morning we would have breakfast in the motel restaurant and then I would drive her to the hospital. We would both spend a little time with Mike, and then I would leave her there.
It was cold gray November weather, with low clouds and a frequent misty rain. I had the days to myself. I had my own devils to wrestle. I worked at getting myself back into shape. When I forced exercises to the limit of endurance, I would think of the circus-girl look of Doris Wrightson and wonder what they were doing with her, and how they had managed to keep that sensation out of the public press.
At four-thirty I would go back and sit and talk with them for a half-hour and then take Nina back to the motel. We did not talk much. She seemed remote. We were not lovers. I had kissed her, but sensed a flavor of remoteness in her acceptance. She was too focused on her brother and, perhaps, on those evaluations of herself which came from all their talk. He was the only blood-closeness she had left.
Nightmares awoke me. In sleep, the things would come out of the walls again. The worst ones were the shiny ones which rattled.
She had those three days with him, and at the end of the third day, before they began to prep him for the operation scheduled for the following morning, after she had kissed him and wished him luck, he asked me to stay a moment. "Man-talk," he told her.
"She's gone?"
"She's gone, Mike."
There was a smile on his ruined gaunted face. "Kid sister. We had to break through that. We had to find each other as people. I'm glad there was time for that."
"So is she."
"Big brother. Shattered hero. She had to look behind all that and find out who I am. Without the deification impulse. Just a guy. Now we like each other for the right reasons, Trav."
"These Gibsons are good folks."
"You're uneasy. You think I'm going to saddle you with kid sister forever. We talked about you two."
"Mike, I swear, the way it happened between us wasn't..."
"Don't insult me with that crap, Sergeant. She's a woman. She's capable of making choices. And neither of you are very effete or bloodless. It got her over that Plummer thing. And over the bitterness. She's in love with you."
"Are you sure of that?"
"More sure than she is. She's suspicious of it. She thinks it might be physical infatuation. But now that I know her, I don't think she could be a purely physical person in any relationship. There would have to be more, or it wouldn't work for her. But she knows, just as I know, that it would be a very foolish business to try to permanently halter McGee. You are too much of a maverick, Sergeant. Too roving and restless. Maybe a little too self-involved."
"I could be getting over that, Mike."
"Are you volunteering to marry my sister, you cad?"
"What the hell, Mike?"
"Don't get jumpy, boy. I asked you to stay behind so I could make certain that out of a lot of vague guilts, if I don't make it through this cutting session, you two idiots won't make a sentimental and emotional gesture and get yourselves stuck with each other. Marriage makes a lousy memorial. Pack her along with you, with my blessing, boy, and use her well. Otherwise the two of you will be walking around with steam coming out of your ears. Six months from now, if it all still percolates, then make a decision independent of guilt or memorials to me. If it is yes, I shall stare down in disbelief from Valhalla."
"Twenty years from now, you silly bastard, we will probably be running here to get some advice from you about your teenage nephews and nieces. Bad advice."
He held his hand out toward me. I took it. "McGee, deserve the girl. And afterwards, be someone for her to run to when she gets bruised. And when she does want to get married, you be my eyes-you take a good long searching look at the son-of-a-bitch, and pry her loose if he can't cut it."
* * *
They kept him under the knife for six hours, and sent him back alive. Barely. He lasted for two days, and had a few moments of drugged consciousness, and when he went, there was a gloom around that great big place that you could feel. They said the words and put him in the ground, and I took the pale and hollow-eyed and silent girl down to Lauderdale, to Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, and installed her aboard the Busted Flush, my fifty-two-foot barge-type houseboat, diesel powered, offensively luxurious in all the right areas, and reasonably shipshape topsides.
A frantic phone call had barely kept it from being sold out from under me. I gorged a frail bank account with Joanna's check. I introduced Nina around to the permanent characters, the Alabama Tiger and Captain Johnny Dow and all the rest of them. She made a good impression. I set her to work keeping house(boat) and as a deck hand. I browned her on the beach, and told her gaudy lies and stories to make her smile, and kept her so active and busy that her slight office softness was trimmed down to firm and lovely flesh.
But all I could do was admire it. She had her own stateroom. She was not morose. She was not brooding. She was just very quiet and thoughtful, a little time of the deadness of the spirit. Sometimes there was an awkwardness between us when something accidental, some physical contact, would remind us that we were, quietly and deliberately, restricting our relationship to a casual basis.
I couldn't seem to throw off the nightmares. I felt very edgy at times. The Busted Flush never got so much earnest and dedicated maintenance. And I kept worrying about Christmas. It was coming along soon and I knew it would be rough for her.
She was the one who found the small item In the back of the Miami News. Mr. Baynard Mulligan had been given three years for embezzlement and tax evasion. He was appealing. The prosecution's case had been weakened when Mr. Mulligan had married one of the key witnesses against him, a Bonita Hersch, the secretary who had aided him in his raid on the Armister fortune, and who had been instrumental in his apprehension. Another secretary a Doris Wrightson, had given testimony very damaging to Mulligan.
With the first genuine glint of humor I had seen in a long time, Nina said, "I'll bet he'll end up wishing he'd settled for twenty years."
I studied her. We were in stasis. We both needed to be jolted out of this strange drabness of spirit which was spoiling the game.
I said, "Let's cruise this thing down to the Keys, honey."
She looked startled. "Do you know how to run it, all alone?"
"I'll have you to help."
"That's pretty scary. I don't know anything about ropes and compasses and things."
"We'll blunder along."
I really think it was a fish who brought my love back to me-a fleet, six-pound, goggle-eyed bonefish. Cool wind and weather had cleared away the bugs. We went chugging down Florida Bay. Once she stopped being apprehensive, she became almost nonchalant at taking her trick at the wheel, reading the charts, spotting the markers. And one misty morning partway down, she discovered fish.
She had never fished in her life. She was using one of my spinning outfits. The hard wrench at the line electrified her. It was a new world. She became a very intent, a very beady-eyed, a very dedicated fisherman. She lost some go
od ones and chewed herself out, and never made the same mistake more than twice. This was the first real sparkle of interest I had seen since Mike had died.
We went down into the Content Keys and found a sheltered cove and established residence. When we needed anything, we would take the dinghy and wind up the little limey outboard and chug on in to Ramrod.
It was a quiet Christmas. I gave her a spinning outfit of her own, with a little pink plastic tackle-box and a gaudy array of lures. She was enchanted. She gave me two bottles of excellent brandy, a superior yachtsman's hat, and a little transistor radio to replace the one she had managed to drop over the side. Merry Christmas.
Merry Platonic Christmas to all.
On a reasonably warm January afternoon, after we had taken a swim, she took the dinghy out alone to fish the flats. I was having a bad day. I stayed aboard. I had awakened exhausted by nightmares, listless, and without appetite.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 02 - Nightmare In Pink Page 17