by Alison Lurie
None of your business? her guardian angel remarked, appearing suddenly in Polly’s mind; she was a tall stern marble figure like a Greek statue, probably the Artemis of Artemis Lodge. Where’s your female solidarity, your sympathy with your own sex? You don’t have to see him again tonight.
It’s just for a few hours, Polly explained. Then she can have him back.
“I’ll drive you home now,” Mac said, opening the door for her. “Then I can pick you up in about an hour at the guest house, okay?” He smiled as if sure of her answer.
“Well. ... Okay,” Polly said.
As dusk fell the low clouds thickened; flushed indigo and purpled gray, they billowed over the island like O’Keeffe’s giant dark flowers. The wind that had started up that afternoon was blowing stronger.
“Yep, that storm the TV promised is on its way,” Lee said, smiling, nodding. She had already congratulated Polly on the discovery of Lorin Jones’s missing paintings, and promised to borrow a Polaroid camera for her. When Polly let on that she was going out again that night with Mac, Lee grinned knowingly. “That’s right, honey,” she said. “You can’t work all the time, not in Key West.”
“Well,” Polly said. “This is work in a way; it’s research. I’m hoping he’ll tell me something about Hugh Cameron.”
“I’ll bet.” Lee’s wide flat Polynesian lips spread in another grin. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing anyhow.”
“Oh, I do, don’t worry,” Polly lied — because what the hell was she doing? What had she done already?
Well, one useful thing: she had called Jacky Herbert at the Apollo Gallery to report her discovery of the two lost paintings. After all, even if she hadn’t found Hugh Cameron, this trip to Key West had been a kind of success.
In more ways than one, she thought now, looking sideways at Mac, who sat next to her at the outdoor bar of an oceanside restaurant called Louie’s Back Yard. The wind, stronger here, shook the trees overhead, sending down a scatter of tiny leaves; it flung a succession of spotlit creamy green waves against the sea wall. Most of the other customers had retreated to a higher and more sheltered deck or gone inside.
“You want to try a piña colada?” Mac suggested. “It’s the local specialty.”
“Sure.”
The bartender, a long-lashed Michael Jackson type, squirted syrups and shook them in a blender, then placed before Polly what looked like a tall vanilla milkshake, with its own pink paper umbrella. She sipped the sugary froth warily.
“Too sweet, maybe?”
“Well, kind of.”
“Don’t drink it then,” Mac said. “Have something else.”
“All right. I’ll have a spritzer.”
Mac waved and ordered. “Listen, I don’t want you to give up on Key West. Tomorrow we’ll go to the Full Moon Saloon; it’s a kind of funky place, but they have good conch chowder and real Key Lime pie.”
“You think I’m having supper with you tomorrow,” Polly said, trying not to smile.
“What’s the matter, can’t you make it?”
“I’m not sure. I just wondered —”
“Yes?”
“What about that woman you told me you were living with?”
“That’s my problem.” Mac’s voice went cool, then uneven. “Does it bother you?”
“Not really,” she said, equally cool.
“Okay then.” He stared out over the darkening, churning sea.
It might not bother me, but it bothers you, Polly thought. You feel guilty because you’ve slept with another woman. And I feel guilty because I haven’t. It’s a joke, really.
“The thing is, Varnie and I, we’ve been having some rough times lately,” Mac said after a pause. “She’s a real eighties type: what she’s looking for is security, and a father for her kid. She has this four-year-old daughter, see. She wants to get married and set up a nuclear family, but I’ve been dragging my feet.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Last night, I didn’t even go back up there. I stayed at the house we’ve been working on, here in town.”
“Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “You don’t want to get married,” Polly said finally.
“No.” Mac shook his head several times. “Not to Varnie anyhow. I know what it’d mean. Life insurance, holidays with the in-laws, what they call a job with a future, and sleeping with somebody twice a week because you promised the State of Florida you would. That’s not my scene.” He pulled his gin and tonic toward him, but instead of drinking took the plastic straw out of the glass and, holding one finger over the top, released two drops of liquid onto the straw’s crushed paper casing. The paper caterpillar squirmed, expanded, collapsed.
“I haven’t seen anyone do that since sixth grade,” Polly exclaimed.
“Want to try it?” He grinned.
“All right.”
As her caterpillar in its turn rose and subsided, she realized for the first time what it resembled. The other kids must have known all along: that was why they had giggled and shoved each other so.
“Hey,” Mac said. “Do you really have to go back to New York Sunday morning?”
“Well, I was planning to.”
“Why don’t you stay awhile? There’s a lot here I’d like to show you. And I’ve got the whole day off Sunday. We could go out to the reef, if this storm blows over.” Mac glanced again at the waves, now spotlit to a milky aqua. “You ever been snorkeling?”
“No,” Polly admitted.
“It’s beautiful under the water. Literally out of this world.” He leaned toward her, stroked her arm. “I bet you could change your ticket.”
Don’t do it, Artemis cried, suddenly reappearing with a swirl of stony draperies. You’ve had your fling; if you don’t watch out you could become emotionally involved with this unsuitable person.
“Well; I could try,” Polly said, stubbornly refusing to listen to this inner voice. “But I’ve got to be back by Wednesday, I have an interview scheduled then.” What does it matter, she argued; it’s only three more days. I just want to get him out of my system. Yes, Artemis remarked. That’s what addicts always say. One more fix. Get it out of my system.
“Great.” Mac leaned farther toward Polly; he touched the side of her face.
“I said I’d try, that’s all.” In spite of her resolve, she smiled. Okay, she admitted. I like him. I could love him, even. What’s the matter with that? It’s stupid and dangerous; you’ll get hurt, Artemis replied, but her voice was shrill and faint.
“Great,” Mac repeated, putting his hand on her arm. The wind blew harder; the thick pale green lace-trimmed waves churned under the deck. He and Polly gazed at each other, half smiling.
“Hey,” he said finally. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“Okay.” She laughed.
“It’s, uh. This bastard that you’re looking for, Hugh Cameron. ... That’s me. I mean, I’m him.” In the gathering dark his expression was impossible to read.
“What?”
“I’m Hugh Cameron.”
He’s kidding, Polly thought. It’s another catch-the-tourists tale, like the Sea-Cow Ranch and the five-foot pelicans (both already refuted, with hoots of laughter, by Lee). “Oh, you are not,” she said. “You already told me he’s in Italy. And you’re not anywhere old enough to be him.”
“I’m forty-eight.”
“Yes, well.” She smiled, though it was a few years more than she’d assumed. “If Lorin Jones were alive now she’d be nearly sixty. When she left Wellfleet with Cameron she was thirty-seven; that’s twenty-two years ago, and you would’ve been only —”
“Twenty-six.” Mac nodded solemnly, keeping up the joke,
“Right.” Polly smiled. “Besides, Hugh Cameron is a poet — he was a college professor.”
“Yeah. He was a professor, but he didn’t get tenure, so now he’s a contractor in Key West.” Mac still did not smile; his expression could almost be called grim.
Polly stared at him. “Prove it,” she said.
“Okay.” Mac sighed; then he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and took out a worn pigskin wallet stitched with thongs, such as Stevie had once made in Boy Scouts. “Here. Driver’s license, library card, food co-op, Visa —” He fanned them out on the damp wooden bar.
Cameron, Hugh Richard. H. R. Cameron. Hugh Cameron.
“Oh, my God,” Polly said slowly. Then a crazy laugh came out of her. She shoved her stool toward the ocean, away from him.
“I tried to tell you before, back in the house. Only I couldn’t. I knew you’d start asking a lot of questions, and I don’t like talking about those years now. It was a bad time in my life.”
“Yes?” Polly said half-consciously. I was right this afternoon, she thought, feeling disoriented, as if she had made it happen.
“And besides, I figured you wouldn’t sleep with me if you knew. You were so down on Cameron, that bastard, that creep, that shit, you kept saying.”
“Jesus.”
“Y’know, after I saw you on Frances Street, I kept kicking myself for losing my chance. When you turned up again on Mallory Dock, I thought somebody up there loved me.” He pointed at the sooty lowering clouds. “Then when I got to Billie’s I found out you were the woman from New York that’d been hounding me, so I decided to get out of there fast. And I started to leave, right?”
“Right,” Polly echoed, dazed.
“But the thing was, you looked so great, sitting there. I couldn’t let you go. I thought, what the hell, it’s karma, as my friend Sandy would say. You’ve got to play it out.”
“You’re Hugh Cameron,” Polly said, finally taking this in.
Mac nodded.
“So that was your house.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not for rent; you live there.”
“Yes — no. It’s rented all right, from tomorrow.”
“But nothing else you told me is true.” Now she was trembling, furious. “You’re not living with a woman called Varnie; and I suppose your name isn’t even really Mac.”
“Most of it’s true. I was living with her, till yesterday anyhow. And Mac is what everybody calls me down here. I never liked the name Hugh, I don’t know why I stood it for so long. Back in Nebraska, where I come from, it was a sissy name. I had to take all these jokes at school. ‘Who? Who Cameron? You, Cameron.’ ”
“You lied to me,” Polly said, paying no attention to this story.
“Well, yeah. But it was in a good cause.” Mac grinned, but nervously. “Anyhow, you lied to me too.”
“I did not.”
“Sure you did. You told me you were a lesbian.” Mac was smiling now. “Last night when I took you back to the Artemis Lodge I was almost scared to kiss you. I let go real fast, in case maybe you’d hit me.”
“I should have hit you,” Polly said, with a short hysterical laugh.
“Come on. It’s not as bad as all that. I’m the same guy I was this afternoon.”
“No, you aren’t.” You see, the tall winged goddess said in her mind. You rushed into this like a greedy, sensual fool. Now you are punished.
“I didn’t have to tell you,” Mac protested. “I could have kept quiet. Only I thought we should start out straight.” He grinned awkwardly.
“It’s a little late for that,” she said, with an angry tremor in her speech.
“Better late than never.”
Polly did not trust herself to answer. She turned away from Mac, staring out over the ocean, milky green near the deck, but dark and shaky beyond the lights, like some kind of poisonous Jell-O.
“Hey, baby.” Mac leaned toward Polly and put a strong hand on her arm. “Let’s give this a chance. You don’t know anything about me really.”
“I know enough,” she replied, casting a miserable glance at him and then looking away over the churning Jell-O toward other countries full of folly and deception.
“Hell, what do you want? Do you want me to take you back to the guest house?”
“I don’t know.” Polly’s voice shook. “Maybe you’d better.”
“Okay.” Mac stood up.
“I have to think.”
“Okay. You want me to call you tomorrow morning?”
“Yes — no. All right.”
14
“THAT’S REALLY WILD,” LEE exclaimed, laughing aloud as she chopped tomatoes and peppers for a gazpacho and fed them into her blender. The machine’s low-pitched pulsing roar syncopated with the snaredrum spatter of rain on the roof of the veranda; the storm she had been predict ing had arrived. “And you never had any idea who he was?”
“I did think of it for a moment,” Polly said. “But then I decided I was crazy.”
“You really liked him, too, huh? You thought he was a nice guy.”
“Mh,” she admitted.
“Hell, maybe he is a nice guy,” Lee shouted over the sound effects.
“He lied to me,” Polly said stubbornly, accusing the guest-house manager of moral laxness.
“Still —” Lee broke off. “Well, anyhow you got to see something of Key West. ... Right, honey?” she added, grinning and starting on a red onion.
“Mhm,” Polly agreed miserably. She had spent a hot restless night, broken by thunder, flashes of sheet lightning, and finally the crack and boom of a bursting tropical storm. Again and again Mac’s face appeared before her, and his body. You’re really a slow learner, Polly dear, she heard Jeanne’s voice remarking.
Toward morning, the drenched flashlit leaves outside took the form of Lorin Jones’s last photograph, which now wore a mocking lizard smile. You thought he might be yours, but he’s mine, this reptilian Lorin said without moving her lips. Still mine, always mine.
“So overall you’re ahead,” Lee continued. “All you have to do is get the facts out of the guy this afternoon.”
“I wish I never had to speak to him again,” Polly said with emphasis, trying to convince herself of this.
“Now, honey.” Lee turned off the machine with a sinewy brown hand. “I understand how you feel. But after all, if he’s got the data you need —”
“And if he’ll give it to me.” Polly sighed. The rainstorm suited her mood, which was one of streaming depression. She felt like crying, but maybe it was only the onion.
“Why shouldn’t he?” Lee threw in a bunch of peculiar-looking herbs: dark blood-red basil and loose uncurled parsley.
“Because he didn’t want to in the first place, that’s why.” Again Polly sighed, almost groaned.
“So what’re you going to do now?” Lee asked, pouring oil into the machine and muting its tone to a rumbling whir.
“I d’know. Maybe I’ll go look at some more galleries.”
“You might as well. There’s not much chance of a swim today, for sure.” Lee turned off the blender; the spatter of the rain continued, heavier and more insistent. “I’m sorry about the weather, honey,” she said. “But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The lesson for today, Polly thought, as she tramped through a dense foggy downpour that afternoon toward the current Revivals Construction project. Last night’s lowering clouds had sunk even farther over the island, drenching the loose-leaved unnatural trees, the peeling white-frame houses, and the potholed streets. Expect trouble, don’t trust anyone — that was the lesson.
Though it looked finished behind its eight-foot board fence, the house Mac and his crew were remodeling was only a shell. Within, it had been gutted down to the beams and siding; its roof joists were exposed, and its interior walls were mere scaffoldings of two-by-fours snaked with electric cables. The whole back side of the house was gone, covered now only by a sheet of dirty translucent plastic down which the greasy rain slid, giving the skeleton rooms the air of a stage set under construction. A table saw and a jumble of tools and boards sulked under other plastic covers, and a leak over the front door dripped sourly into an orange paint bucket.
“Sorry this pl
ace is such a mess,” Mac said, spreading Polly’s dripping poncho over a stack of boards, above which a bare, lit bulb hung from the end of a cord looped around a roof beam. “I’d like to take you out somewhere, but I’m still waiting for a call from the supplier. I sent the other guys home; there’s nothing more they can do until we get a delivery of sheetrock. Here, sit down.” He pulled a paint-spattered folding chair toward her. “Like some coffee?”
“All right,” Polly said; trying to speak neutrally, She had resolved not to lose her cool or waste time in recriminations.
“So how’s everything going?” Mac crouched on the floor to spoon coffee into a battered percolator.
“All right,” she repeated.
“Still angry, huh?” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder.
“And why shouldn’t I be?” Polly asked, striving to keep her voice light. “After all those lies.”
“I could give you a couple of reasons.” Mac stood up; he looked at her knowingly, sensually. Then, registering her lack of response, he stopped smiling. “What the hell,” he said. “I came clean, didn’t I? And talk about lies, you’ve probably heard some whoppers about me from Garrett Jones and those other New York types.”
“I’ve heard about you, yes,” she replied, setting her jaw.
“From Jones?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“And you assume he always tells the truth, huh.” He grinned.
“It wasn’t only him.” Polly glanced at Mac/Hugh, noting with misery that he was still smiling, that he was still infuriatingly good-looking.
“Okay, who else?”
“Well. Mr. Herbert, at the gallery. He told me a few things, too.”
“Great. A cuckold and a ponce.” Mac rummaged among some hardware on a trestle table and came up with a bag of sugar and a carton of half-and-half. “That’s what an art dealer is, you know. When a guy like that watches a painter at work, he doesn’t see something beautiful being created. What he sees is shit flowing out of the end of her brush and turning into money.”
“That’s not fair,” Polly exclaimed. “I know Jacky Herbert — and Mr. Carducci, too — they honestly admired Lorin Jones’s work.”
