Pale Gray for Guilt (26 page)

"A little?" he said wonderingly. "A little? You cut my venture capital right down to the nub, friend. You fixed me so I'm associated with any new stock issue and it never gets off the ground. Sting me a little! God damn you, I might never take up the slack you put in me. And all of this was over some… dreary little smalltime buddy of yours?"

I leaned over and slapped his face sideways and backhanded it back to center position.

"Manners," I said.

I moved back to give him a chance to come off the couch. He thought it over. Then he took out a frostywhite handkerchief and patted the corner of his mouth and examined the dappling of blood.

I turned to Spartan. "Tell him how he stands if it checks out that I've never owned a share of Fletcher."

"Well… it would eliminate one possible way to ease the present situation."

I turned back to Santo and looked for that tinge of gray under the barbered, lotioned, international complexion. Saw a little. Not like LaFrance. Saw enough of it, and enough slump of resignation. He dabbed at his mouth again and got up.

"Come on, Spartan," he said. He stopped so close in front of Mary Smith's chair there was not room for her to get out of it.

"You're fired, you stupid bitch!"

"But you heard him say I didn't-"

"You didn't do what you're overpaid to do, which is to stick close and check every little thing out. You could have saved me going into the tank for enough to buy five thousand of you for a lifetime. And that makes you too damned expensive. I'll have your office stuff packed and dropped off at your place. I'll have your check mailed. I couldn't look at you again without feeling sick."

"Gary, you just don't know how mutual that feeling is."

His arm came halfway up. "Uh uh!" I said. He lowered it and left swiftly. Spartan hurried behind him, and gave me a single despairing glance as he left.

She slumped in the chair. "Hooo, boy." she said wearily. "They told me there'd be days like this." She gave me a look through the emerald lenses. "Thanks heaps, McGee."

"I didn't exactly intend it that way Mary Smith."

"But that seems to be the way it is. In many respects that was a very very very nice job, lad. It did have its cruddy intervals. You know, I didn't realize how much enjoyment I'd get out of seeing the great Gary Santo get clouted around. Funny. In three years he's popped me in the face three times. And I told myself that one more time, brother, and that's it. Would I have quit, though? I wonder? I am going to believe I would."

"Will he send any muscle around to teach me I can't do that?"

She looked at me, head cocked, wearing a little frown. "I'd say not. I mean if he thought you were absolutely alone in this, I think he would. But when he thinks it over, he's not going to believe that a person of your type could con him so completely. He'll think you're a front man, and I think he'll leave well enough alone. Besides, he's got a lot to think about."

"Do you think I'm a front man?"

"I am inclined to doubt it somehow. How about buying an unemployed girl a drink and then some lunch? You know. Like no hard feelings. You know, this is quite a setup you've got here, McGee. I couldn't tell much from the outside that time."

"Bourbon straight, water with no ice on the side?"

"Exactly."

As I was fixing the drinks Johnny Dow hallooed and stuck my mail under the corner of the deck mat. I gave her her drink and went out and brought the mail in, flipped through the customary junk and came upon an airmail one from Chicago in Puss's broad, round scrawl.

"Excuse a little mail-reading?"

"Sure. I'll just sit here and plan my future."

Old dear darling, I said one time that I would write it down to get it straight for you, and so I have and even have the eerie idea you might be able to read all the words between the words. The name was right. I lied about that. But the town wasn't, and Chicago isn't the town either. And there was no divorce. And I love Paul very dearly and have all along, and love you too, but not quite as much. That lousy Meyer and his lousy Law. Get a pretty girl to kiss Old Ugly and tell him he was absolutely right. You see, my dear, about six months before you met me on the beach with that living pincushion stuck into the sole of my foot, they took a little monster out of my head, maybe as big as an English walnut almost, and with three stumpy little legs like a spider. Half a spider. And the men in white dug around in my head to try to find every little morsel of the beast, because he turned out to be the bad kind. So… I got over confusions and got my memory all straightened out again, and my hair grew back, and I pinned an old buddy of mine to the wall of his office and he leveled because he has known me long enough to know I have enough sawdust to keep me solid. His guess was one chance out of fifty. No treatments possible. Just go off and get checked every so often, bright lights in the eyes, stand and touch the tip of your nose with your fingertip while keeping the eyes closed. That stuff. And pens drawing lines on little electric charts. I could accept it, my dear, because life is very iffy and I have busied up my years in good ways. But I could not accept the kind of life that went with the waiting. Dear as Paul is, he is a sentimental kraut type, and we had the awareness of the damned time bomb every waking moment. So life became like a practice funeral, with too many of our friends knowing it, and everybody trying to be so bloody sweet and compassionate during a long farewell party. I began to think that if I lucked out, I'd be letting them down. So I finally told Paul that if it was the end of my life, it was getting terribly damned dreary and full of violin music, and I am a random jolly type who does not care to be stared at by people with their eyes filling with tears. So I cashed in the bonds for the education of the children I'll never have, and I came a-hunting and I found you. Was I too eager to clamber into the sack? Too greedy to fill every day with as much life as would fit into it? Darling, I am the grasshopper sort, and so are you, and, bless you, there were dozens of times every day I would completely forget to sort of listen to what might be happening inside my redheaded skull. Be glad you jollied and romped the redheaded lady as she was coming around the clubhouse turn, heading for the tape. She loved it. And you. And how good we were together, in a way that was not a disloyalty to Paul! He is one of the dogged and steadfast ones. Can you imagine being married, dear, to Janine, great as she is, and having her know you could be fatally ill? She would mother you out of your mind until you ran. As I ran. But there was the little nagging feeling I was having it all too good. I kept telling myself, Hell girl, you deserve it. And then hairy old Meyer and his damned Law about the hard thing to do is the right thing to do. I suppose you have been wondering about me and maybe hating me a little. I had to run from you exactly when I did and how I did, or I couldn't have left at all. You see, the dying have a special obligation too, my dear. To keep it from being too selfish. I was depriving Paul of his chance of being with me, because it is all he is going to have of me… all he did have of me, and I was forgetting that I had to leave him enough to last him long enough to get him past the worst of it at least. The darling has not done the interrogation bit, and if he thinks or doesn't think there was a man in the scene, I couldn't really say. You would like each other. Anyway, the female of the species is the eternal matchmaker, and I have written the longest letter of my life to Janine, all full of girl talk, and about living and dying, and I have, I hope, conned her into spinning a big fancy pack of lies about the Strange Vacation of Puss Killian, because I am leaving her name and address with Paul, saying that she could tell him how I was and what happened among people who didn't know. It is a devious plot, mostly because they would work well. He is a research chemist, and perhaps the kindest man alive. Anyway, last week all of a sudden the pupil of my big gorgeous left eye got twice as big as it should, and they have been checking and testing and giving me glassy smiles, and I am mailing this en route to the place where they are going to open a trap door and take another look. So they may clap the lid back on and say the hell with it. Or they may go in there and without meaning to, speed me on my journey, or they may turn me into a vegetable, or they may manage to turn me back into me for another time, shorter or longer. But from the talk around the store, the odds on that last deal make the old odds seem like a sure thing bet. Do you understand now? I'm scared. Of course I'm scared. It's real black out there and it lasts a long time. But I have no remorses, no regrets, because I left when I had to, and Meyer got me back in good season. Don't do any brooding because if I can try to be a grownup, you ought to be able to take a stab at it. Here's what you do, Trav my darling. Find yourself a gaudy random gorgeous grasshopper wench, and lay aboard the Plymouth and the provisions, and go fun-timing and sun-timing up and down the lovely bays. Find one of good appetite and no thought of it being for keeps, and romp the lassie sweetly and completely, and now and again, when she is asleep and you are awake, and your arms are around her and you are sleeping like spoons, with her head tucked under your ugly chin, pretend it is…

Puss, who loved you.

"Is something wrong?" a voice said.

I looked at Mary Smith, realizing that it was not the first time she had asked me.

"Wrong? No. Just a letter from an old friend."

"You looked funny."

"I guess it was… because the old friend decided to cancel an old debt." I got up and got the bottle and refilled her shot glass.

She lifted it in toast. "Here's to vacations without pay. Oh, Christ, that was such a great job! Such a sweet lush life, dear. But you know, sometimes you get an instinct. I think other things are going to go bad for Santo. I think he's going to strain too hard to catch up, and he'll choke, and he'll lose his style, and in a couple of years he'll be one of those whatever-happened-to people."

Puss's letter said, It's real black out there and it lasts a long time."

I could feel my heart fall. It dropped a certain distance and there it would stay.

I could look at Miss Smith as if I'd never seen her before. She sat with a little inward smile of satisfaction, thinking of what she wished for Gary Santo. She dipped at the shot glass for her little butterfly sips. The edge of the minitent came to mid thigh. Exquisite legs, honey-tan and matte finish, were crossed. The light of early afternoon came through the window ports, highlighting the lustrous brown-auburn fall of hair, a healthy pelt. The secretive lashes half veiled the vivid plastic green, the secret half smile curved the corners of the plump mouth.

She got up and wandered over to look at the titles on the sleeves of the records on the shelf by the player. "Do we get music with the booze?" she asked.

I went over dutifully and when I stood beside her, I realized she had suddenly fixed her attention elsewhere, so totally that she was unaware of me and unaware of the music. She was standing looking diagonally through the starboard aft port toward the dock, and following the direction of her intent gaze, I saw Hero ambling along, looking for fresh game, the meat of his shoulders slowly rolling, one thumb hooked into the tightness of the broad leather belt.

I looked down at her face, saw that the lips, now parted, looked almost swollen. Breathing deeply and slowly through parted lips, eyelids heavy, head nodding slightly, she watched Hero.

Then she turned to me and it seemed to take her a moment to remember who I was. In a voice pitched lower than usual, and with a huskiness, she said, "Darling, forgive me if I uninvite myself for lunch? Thank you for drinks and entertainment Thank you for saving me from a shot in the mouth. I think I'll… look up those friends I have here. Some other time, dear. You have a lovely boat."

She put on her huge black sunglasses and put the empty shot glass down, and smiled and left. I went out on the afterdeck and watched her go hastily in the direction Hero had taken. Swing of the purse. Quick clip-clap of the sharp little heels on the cement. Rapid bouncing of the weight of the rich brown mane. Unseen, tented hips swinging. And, I could guess, a crawly butterfly awareness of the silky brushing of the softening thighs together, awareness of the prickling tickle of erectile tissues, of labial weights and thickenings, and a feeling of being unable to take a breath quite deep enough-as she went tocking and bobbing in her scurry to fall under the brutalizing, tireless, impersonal hammer of the Hero, to be once more the bed-beaten shoat, to be spent and lamed and emptied as before.

So I walked slowly to Meyer's boat and sat on the bunk with my head in my hands while he read Puss's letter. He finished it and coughed and honked and wiped his eyes. So I told him that we were going to take his little cruiser because it could take more sea than a houseboat, and we were going to take the Munequita in tow, and we were going to go as far down the Exuma Cays as the range of his boat would allow, and then we were going a lot further down in the Little Doll. I told him I was sick unto death of miniwomen, miniclothes, miniloves, minideaths and my own damned minilife. I wanted empty cays, gaudy reefs, hot sun, swift fish, and maybe some talk when it was time for talking.

And Meyer said, "So give me a hand with the lines and we'll take this crock over to the gas dock and top off the tanks."

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23/08/2007

LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/