Slam the Big Door (10 page)

You know all the rationalizations it’s trying to force on you. Health. Quiet the nerves. Natural function. And that most devious rationalization of all, entitled; What Harm Would It Do? No objective harm, of course. She’s no hesitant virgin. She’d be incapable of attaching any emotional significance to it.

It’s the subjective harm, Michael. To be desperately old-fashioned, the loss of honor. It would be just a switch on the salesman and the farmer’s daughter. You were asked down to relax and mend. The services of the daughter of the household were not included in the facilities available. And, because you have years to live, and nobody cares deeply how you live them, and sons to raise, let’s beware of the sophistry that nobody gives a damn what you do. Because you
do
give a damn. When there’s nothing left but your own image of yourself, it somehow becomes a more grievous sin to smear it.

Okay. You’re noble. Go to sleep.

The shower stopped. He heard, at the limit of audibility, the tiny rusty sound of prolonged tooth-brushing. The other door to the bath closed quietly. And in the great emptiness of the tropic night he found sleep.

five

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK Mike had been on the beach over an hour. One week ago, at about the same time, he had been looking down from the high aircraft at the tiny chalk-scrawls of surf along the Atlantic beaches. And this Monday was another blandly superb day. A transistor radio, six inches from his head, canceled out any possibility of consecutive thought. He had a Havana station. It pleased him not to be able to understand the words of the singing commercials.

The sun glared red through his eyelids. Sweat ran down his ribs and the sides of his throat. When he become too uncomfortable, he could go into the water again. And when he became famished, he would go back to the house and eat. The present moments were reduced to the ultimate of simplicity.

But, a few minutes after eleven, Troy joined him on the beach. He brought a small ice chest containing cans of beer. He wore faded blue swim trunks and dark glasses. He settled himself beside Mike and said, “Got to replace the fluid you’re losing, chief.”

Mike sat up and said, “I’ll recommend this hotel to all my friends.”

Troy opened two cans, handed one to Mike. The beer was icy cold. Mike watched Troy. The glasses obscured his eyes. His hands trembled. He was tanned, but it wasn’t a healthy color. There seemed to be a tinge of yellow-green in it. Though there was still a hint of heavy-boned power about his body, the muscles were ropy and slack, the belly soft.

“I thought you’d be over in your sales office,” Mike said.

“I phoned Marvin early and went back to sleep. He can handle it. Things are slow right now. If he has to take anybody around, he can lock up and leave a sign on the door. I’ve been going slowly nuts in that place lately. Hell with it. I guess I was the belle of the ball last night.”

“I didn’t see you wearing a lamp shade for a hat. You just quietly folded your tent.”

“Gosnell makes a wicked martini. My seams came unglued. Mary is full of pregnant silences this morning.”

“How’d you get home?”

“It’s a dreary story, old buddy. I crawled aboard Bart Speeler’s Chris and went to sleep in the cockpit and the morning sun woke me up. I started wobbling up the beach and one of the Tomley kids picked me up in his beach buggy. Did you stay long?”

“We left a little before midnight.”

“Enjoy the party?”

“I think so.”

“Ah, we’re a gay mad lot here on the Key.” Troy finished his beer, scooped a hole in the sand and buried the empty can. He patted the sand down over it, smoothly, carefully, making a small and tidy grave. “Mike.”

“Right here, sir.”

“Yesterday, I was damn rude. I apologize.”

“I needled you.”

“Because I needed jt.”

Mike knew that in those few moments the old relationship had been reestablished. No more withdrawal. No more defenses. It made Mike feel glad, and in another way it made him feel weary, because the regained closeness implied an obligation he was reluctant to accept.

“I needed it a long time ago too, Mike.”

“You were in bad shape then. Not like now.”

“Maybe I’m headed for the same place again.”

“That sounds jolly.”

“Honest to God, Mike. I don’t know. I can’t even be honest with myself.” He kept smoothing the beer-can grave. “Asking you down here. I said it was… for you. Good old Mike. My turn to help. Christ! But all the time I was thinking—somebody to steady me. And I didn’t want to think I needed that. That’s why I was so damn nasty yesterday.”

“So it was a call for help?”

“I don’t like to think so. How goddamn weak can I get?”

“How bad off is your project?”

Troy drew a fingernail cross on the beer-can grave. “It’s like this. We rented twenty boards. Fifty dollars a month apiece. Three-year contract. The sign company got the locations and put them up. A thousand-a-month advertising expense. They’re good boards. They show a picture of the place the way it should eventually look. Hell, I pointed one out to you. So we’re behind in the rent. In the contract, when you get behind, the whole amount becomes due and payable. So Signs of Ravenna has turned it over to their attorney. They want twenty-six thousand bucks I haven’t got. If I don’t come up with it soon, they’ll lease the boards to somebody else and I’ll still owe the money—the corporation will. We’ve had to stop the newspaper ads. We can’t give clear titles unless the customer pays cash so we can turn it over for release of mortgage, so I can’t cut pre-development prices down far enough to move the lots to replace working capital.”

“Bank loan?”

“They won’t loan on land, only on our signatures. And only with personal balance sheets. And we’ve put everything into the kitty.”

“Everything?”

“But the house, the boat, the cars and a little cash.”

“How did you get into such a jam?”

“Too optimistic. Thought I could have all the engineering done at the same time. It’s cheaper that way.”

“Couldn’t you develop one small part of it at a time?”

“With what, Mike? With what?”

“How much would it take to get into the clear?”

“Two hundred and seventy-five thousand. That would handle the costs of finishing the Westport Road section, three hundred lots, and the merchandising. The take from that, after mortgage payments, would cover the next section.”

Watching him carefully, Mike said, “Rob Raines told me last night you were going to lose your shirt, and if anybody went in with you they’d lose their shirt too. He said if you asked me for money, he’d set up a date with Corey somebody and they’d educate me.”

Troy’s head had snapped up, his hand motionless over the beer-can grave. “So Raines is in it, too!”

“In what?”

“Haas would like to steal the whole setup. I’m not asking you to put your money in, Mike. I’m not asking you for a thing.” His face changed, mouth going slack. “I don’t think I give a damn. I don’t think I give a hoot in hell what happens.”

“Like New York?”

“Just like New York. I can always make three fast laps, but I fold on the clubhouse turn.”

“Self-pity.”

“Self-analysis, Mike.” He turned his head away. He dug his fingers into the sand, then squeezed until his knuckles went white. In a dull voice he said, “It’s like New York in another sense, Mike.”

“How?”

“Jerranna Rowley is in town.”

Mike felt as if he had been belted under the heart. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. I don’t know where she was. Out west someplace. There was an article about me in a building contractors’ magazine. Just a column. Small builder with new ideas. One of those things.” His voice was listless. “Just one of those things. She didn’t even see it until the article was a year old. She saw it about four months back, in a damn dentist’s office. So she got here in February. She’s in a place on Ravenna Key. Shelder’s Cottages. She phoned me at the office. I… I went to see her.”

“You damn fool! Have you been seeing her often?”

“I guess you could call it that. There’s a man with her. She calls him Birdy. Says he’s her cousin. Who can tell? I guess the shakedown is more his idea than hers.”

“Shakedown?”

“Nothing expensive. She’s into me for—I don’t know—six or seven hundred bucks.” He took the dark glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Mike. It’s about that time things started to go sour. When she got here. I was supposed to see her last night. That’s why I got drunk and didn’t. Defensive maneuver. It’s easier to get high than think about it.”

“Troy! Goddamn it, Troy!”

“I know. I didn’t want you to know about it. Pride, I guess. Right back in the same trap. Liquor, Jerranna and things going to hell.”

“How about Mary?”

“Why, I suppose she’ll get the same splendid deal Bunny got. Only it’s going to be a little rougher on her pocketbook.”

“Why wait for Halloween? You can soap dirty words on windows anytime. Be my guest.”

“Ready for a beer?”

“Thank you kindly. For God’s sake, Troy!”

Muscle bulged the corner of Troy’s jaw. “You think I’m enjoying it? You think I get a charge out of wondering if I’m losing my mind? And don’t think I don’t wonder. Often. Sometimes I think it’s as if…” His voice broke. He waited a few moments. “As if I wasn’t put together right. A sloppy assembly job. Some bolts and washers left out. I… don’t want to be what I am.”

“Easy, boy.”

“Isn’t beer for crying into?”

“Can you stay away from her?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying. I’ve tried before. I have the feeling this is my last try before I give up. That’s the sort of thing I should have married. I should have stayed away from ladies.”

“You told me a long time ago that if you ever saw her again, you might kill her.”

Troy shuddered in the hot sunlight. “I came close, Mike. I came damn close. She knew how close I was. I had her by the throat. She looked at me. She couldn’t talk. I could tell by her eyes she didn’t give a damn. She wasn’t scared. If she’d been scared, or fought, that would have done it. I was that close, believe me. I slung her away so hard she bounced off the wall and landed on her hands and knees and looked up at me with her hair falling down across her face and howled with laughter.”

“Does Mary suspect anything?”

“I don’t know. We don’t have much to say to each other. I was careful at first. Now I’m not so careful. It’s like I want to be caught, I guess.”

“I could go see the Rowley woman.”

“What the hell good would that do? What good did it do the last time?”

“Maybe she’s changed.”

“She’s changed. But not in any way that’ll help. Even if I want help.”

“Don’t you?”

“You must get awful damn sick of me, Mike.”

“I should be inspirational. You know. Be a man! Shoulders back! Eyes front!”

“I’m a man, Mike. In a limited sense.”

“There’s one thing about you. You get a compulsion to make a mess. Then you want to roll in it. Goddamn it, you enjoy it!”

Troy stood up. His glasses were back on. Mike could not read his face. He said flatly, “I’m enjoying every minute of it, every delicious wonderful minute of my life. I just couldn’t bear to have it end.” He walked away, his stride wooden.

When all of Ravenna Key was zoned in 1951, due to the dogged efforts of the Ravenna Key Association, every attempt was made to protect the future growth of the Key as a residential area. Based on estimates of future population, certain commercial areas were established which included most of the commercial enterprise on the Key so as to limit as much as possible the number of nonconforming businesses.

However one small business area, midway down the Key, on the bay side, suffered what the owners termed a cruel blow. They insisted that they were being deprived of their rights, that all zoning was socialism. Their particular area was zoned residential. That made the four little businesses non-conforming. Under the law a non-conforming business can continue to exist, but it cannot be enlarged. And, should it burn down, it cannot be rebuilt. It is obviously very difficult to sell such a business. And such a discrimination discourages even normal maintenance.

The four business enterprises, shoulder to shoulder, reading them from north to south, were Whitey’s Fish Camp, Shelder’s Cottages, Wilbur’s Sundries and Lunch, and Red’s B-29 Bar. Whitey’s Fish Camp consisted of a rickety shed where he sold bait, tackle, miscellaneous marine hardware and the random jug of ’shine. He had twenty ungainly scows, painted blue and white, an unpredictable number of five-horse outboards in running condition to be rented with the boats, a gas pump, a big compartmented concrete bait well for live shrimp and mutton minnows, a bewildering display of hand-painted signs, chronic arthritis, a vast moody sullen wife, four kids, an elderly pickup truck, and two ancient house trailers set on blocks near the shed. Whitey and his Rose Alice lived in one, and the kids in the other, and their septic-tank system filtered inevitably into the bay, where the blue and white boats were moored to sagging docks and tilted pilings.

Ma Shelder owned and rented out twenty box-like cottages, arranged in two rows of ten, with just enough space between the cottages in each row so that a car could be parked between them. They were a faded scabrous yellow, with peeling orange trim and green tarpaper roofing, and little screened porches in front. In keeping with the times, Ma called them efficiencies. This was, perhaps, apt, because it would take a high order of efficiency to live comfortably in one of them. There was a wide creaking dock that extended out into the bay so the tenants could sun themselves. Ma lived in a spare cottage, one larger than the others, and nearer the road. The total landscaping consisted of getting a man in to cut things down when the area got too overgrown. Ma, in her day, had danced on three continents and in forty of the forty-eight states. She had raised four children, all dead. At seventy she weighed two hundred pounds, despised mankind, spent most of her waking hours sneering at television, had over twenty-eight thousand dollars in her savings account and was implacably determined to live until she was ninety.

Wilbur’s Sundries and Lunch was a cinderblock structure that looked as if it had started out to be a two-car garage. Wilbur’s slattern wife ran the lunch counter, listlessly scraping the grill between hamburg orders. Wilbur paced endlessly through the stink of grease, straightening magazines, dusting patent medicines, counting the packs of cigarettes, sighing heavily. Whenever a customer was spendthrift enough to leave a dime on the counter for the bedraggled blonde, Wilbur, despite his high-stomached bulk, would swoop from a far corner of the store like a questing hawk before the screen door had time to bang shut. On those few occasions when she reached the coin first, he would twist her wrist until she dropped it into his hand, and then, snuffling, she would run out the back door.

Red’s B-29 Bar was a frame structure next door to Wilbur’s. Red had only a beer-and-wine license. He opened at seven to dispense cold packs of beer to Whitey’s rental customers, and remained open until midnight every night. He had draught beer, potato chips, salt fish, pickled eggs, aspirin, punch boards, a juke box, a bowling machine, a pinball machine, pay phones, a peanut machine, television, contraceptives, tout sheets, some crude pornography and endlessly boring accounts of his flyboy days when he was a C.F.C. gunner.