John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 13 - A Tan and Sandy Silence

by A Tan

  "Are you going to check me with that knight? Go ahead. See what happens if you do."

  On the following Sunday afternoon, a Sunday late in May Meyer and I were over on the beach. When the wind died, it got uncomfortably hot in the sun, so we moved to a bench in the shade. I watched two lovely ladies approaching along the beach, consciously keeping shoulders back and tummies in as they strode along, laughing and talking. Elegant lassies. Total strangers. They were walking across the edge of my life and right back out of it, and I would never know them or touch them nor two million nor ten million of their graceful sisters.

  "Maybe I can put that problem into words now. But it's just a try. Maybe you can be patient?"

  "How often do you see me impatient?"

  "This starts with a word Rupe Darby used down in Grenada. A phrase, not a word. It designates a condition. Womaned out. He meant it in the physical sense. Total sexual depletion to the point where you think you never want to see another woman. I think I'm womaned out in a different way. All my love life is pre-Grenada, and that was a lifetime ago.

  "So. Womaned out but not in a physical sense. God, no. Those two who just went by created the intended reaction. And I keep remembering how neat and warm the thigh of the little Jesus singer felt under the nape of my neck. Physical capacity is just dandy. No, Meyer. I feel foundered and wind broke in some other dimension of myself. I feel sick of myself, as if the prospect of me in action would turn me off, way off."

  "How?"

  "Everything I thought I believed about making love to a woman sounds very stale. I hear myself talking to too many of them. There has to be affection, dear. Respect for each other. We must not hurt each other or anyone else, darling. There has to be giving on both sides and taking on both sides, honeybunch. Oh Meyer, God help me, it all sounds like a glossy sales talk. I was kidding them, and I was kidding myself. Look. I was holding out a package deal. And on the bottom of the package in small print was the guaran-goddamn-tee. Mary Dillon picked up the package. I didn't force it on her. I just left it around where she'd see it. She picked it up, enjoyed the product, and then married Harry Broll, and now she's buried in a washout behind a seawall under transitmix concrete. So something is wrong with the small print or the service contract or the damned sales force, Meyer. I just can't... I can't stand the thought of ever again hearing my own sincere, manly, loving, crap-eating voice saying those stale words about how I won't ever hurt you, baby, I just want to screw you and make you a more sincere and emotionally healthy woman."

  "Travis, Travis, Travis."

  "I know. But that's what's wrong."

  "Maybe there is some new kind of industrial waste in the air we breathe."

  "Fractionated honesty?"

  "Don't suffer all over me, McGee. You are a good man. There is no man alive who is not partially jackass. When we detect some area of jackassery within ourselves, we feel discontent. Our image suffers."

  "What should I do?"

  "How do I know what you should do? Don't make me an uncle. Go get lost in the Out Islands and fish for a couple months. Go hire onto a tug and work yourself into a stupor. Take five thousand of what was in that brown bag and lease the Hell's Belle all by yourself for ten days. Take cold showers. Study Hindustani."

  "Why are you getting sore?"

  He bounded off the bench, whirled, bent over, yelled into my face, "Who's getting sore? I'm not getting sore!" And he ran down to the water, bouncing hairily along, and plopped in and swam out.

  Everyone was not acting like himself. Maybe there was some new kind of guck in the air lately. By the time we had finished our swim, Meyer had gotten over his unusual tizzy. We walked slowly back across the bridge, and as we neared the Flush, I could see a figure aboard her in the shade of the sundeck overhang, sitting on the shallow little afterdeck.

  I did not recognize her until we were within thirty feet. She lay asleep in the deck chair with a tidy, boneless look of a resting cat. There was a big red suitcase beside the chair and a matching red train case, both well scuffed by travel. She wore a little denim dress with white stitching. Her white sandals were on the deck under the chair. Her sleeping arm clamped her white purse against her.

  Suddenly her eyes opened wide. There was no sleep-stunned transition. She leapt back into life and up onto her feet in the same instant, all smiling vitality. "Hey! McGee! It's me. Jeannie. Jeannie Dolan. I should have looked over on the beach, huh?"

  I introduced them. Meyer said he had heard nice things about her. He seemed to approve of the lively mop of red-brown hair and the quick glinting of the gray-green eyes.

  I unlocked the Flush, and we went in. She said, "Leave my stuff right there, unless you've got thieves. Hey, can I look around? Say, this is a great kind of boat, Trav! Look, is the timing bad? Am I in the way or anything? If you guys have something all lined up..."

  "Nothing," Meyer said. "Nothing at all."

  "Wow, what a great kitchen."

  "Galley." I said.

  She looked at me blankly. "Galley? They row those with big oars. And a man walking around with a whip. Do you row this thing, for God's sake?"

  "Okay, Jeannie. It's a kitchen," I said.

  "Does it have engines in it? I mean, it will cruise around and so forth?"

  "And so forth," Meyer said, looking happier.

  "Wow, would I ever like to go someplace on a boat like this."

  "Where's your friend?" I asked her.

  "Betsy? We got tossed out of that Casa de Playa by the bank that took over. Not we, just me. Because she was gone by then. She went back to cleaning teeth. For a widower dentist in North Miami."

  "Vodka tonic for you?" I asked her.

  "Exactly right! It's wonderful when people remember things, isn't it? What I'm going to do, I'm on my way back to Columbus. No, not back to Charlie, that creep. But I called my old job, and I can make enough money so I can save enough to fly to the Dominican Republic and get a quickie divorce, instead of beating my brains out down here."

  "Won't you sit down, Jeannie?" I asked her.

  "I'm too nervous and jumpy, dear. Whenever I impose on people, I get like this. I've got the bus schedule and all, and then I thought, oh, what the hell, I wanted to see that McGee guy again and never did. A girl sometimes has to be brassy or settle for nothing, right?"

  I looked at Meyer. He was wearing a very strange expression. I handed Jeannie her drink and said, "Sometimes a girl gets brassy at just exactly the right time, and she gets invited on a private cruise. What would you say to that?"

  "Aboard this wonderful shipl Wow! I'd say yes so fast-"

  "HOLD IT!" Meyer roared, startling her. He trotted over to her and with raised finger backed her over to a chair. She sat down on command, staring up at him with her mouth open.

  "I am going to ask you some very personal questions, Mrs. Dolan."

  "What's the matter with you, huh?"

  "Have you been in a lot of emotional turmoil lately?"

  "Me? Turmoil? Like what?"

  "Are you at a crisis point in your life?"

  "Crisis? I'm just trying to get myself a plain, ordinary, divorce-type divorce."

  "Mrs. Dolan, do you feel like a pathetic little bird with a busted wing who has fluttered aboard, looking for patience, understanding, and gentleness and love which will make you well and whole again?"

  She looked at me with wide, round eyes. "Does he get like this a lot, Travis?"

  "Pay attention!" Meyer ordered. "How do you relate to your analyst?"

  "Analyst? Shrink? What do I need one for? Chee! You need one, maybe."

  "Are you in love?" he asked.

  "This minute? Hmmm. I guess not. But I sort of usually am. And pretty often, I guess. I'm not a real serious kind of person. I'm just sort of dumb and happy."

  "One more question, and I must ask you both this one."

  "You answer him, honey," Jeannie said to me.

  "Would either of you two happy people mind too much if I spend the next few
weeks in Seneca Falls, New York?"

  "Speaking for the two of us, Meyer, I can't think of a serious objection, really."

  He trotted to the doorway to the rear deck and opened it. He picked up the two pieces of red luggage and set them inside the door, gave us a maniacal smile, and slammed the door and was gone.

  Jeannie stood up and sipped frowningly at her drink. Then she looked at me. "McGee?"

  "Yes, dear."

  "Everybody I know is acting weirder all the time. Have you noticed that too?"

  "Yes, I have. Meyer isn't often like that."

  "It's pretty weird and pushy for me to barge in on you like this. I'm not like this, really."

  "It does have engines."

  "That's nice. But do you feel like you've been maneuvered into something you'd just as soon not do, huh?"

  "The more I think about it, the better I like it."

  She put her drink down and came over and gave me one quick, thorough, and enthusiastic kiss. "There! Now it's just a case of getting acquainted, huh? Want to start by helping me unpack?"

  We carried the luggage back to the master stateroom. She asked me what Meyer had meant about her having a broken wing. I said he was one of the last of the great romantics. I said there used to be two. But now there was just one left. The hairy one.

  The End