An elderly tourist who had been walking by came to a dead stop near the bench and stared at the running women. He wore a Truman shirt, Bahama hat, Bermuda shorts, blue sneakers. He watched them make the sweeping curve toward the parking lot and disappear. He turned and stared questioningly at Kirby.
“ ’Til this very minute, son, I prided myself on twenty-twenty vision.”
“Sir?”
“Mind telling me what just run by?”
“Uh—two young women.”
The man moved closer. “Son, what would you say they were wearing?”
“They didn’t seem to be wearing anything.”
The old man peered at him. “If I was your age, son, I’d be right with ’em, running like a deer. You don’t seem even interested. You sick?”
“I—was thinking of something else.”
“I got down here from Michigan day before yesterday. Maybe I got the wrong idea. Maybe that ain’t so unusual a sight around here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“Good day in the morning, here comes another one!”
She was a small sunburned redhead, with a transistor radio in one hand and a thermos bottle in the other. She was near the end of her endurance, wobbling from side to side as she cantered along.
After she, too, was out of sight, the old man sighed heavily. “One thing I give you, son. You picked the right place to set. Is it a new fad, you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope it catches on.” He shaded his eyes and peered up the beach.
Suddenly Bonny Lee was close enough to touch and there was a pile of paper money on Kirby’s lap. It spilled onto the bench and onto the sand. She laughed once and was gone.
The old man whirled around. “Son, you got a high laugh on—ain’t you spilling something?”
“Oh, this?”
“Money, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Kirby said heartily. “It certainly is.” He grabbed at the bills that started to blow away.
“I think the sun has got to me,” the old man said. “I think I better get the hell out of it.” He plodded away.
Some other people had moved near, staring curiously at the money. Kirby gathered it up quickly. She hadn’t bothered with one-dollar bills and there were only a few fives. It made a wad so thick that after he had folded it once, he had difficulty putting it in the side pocket of the borrowed slacks. He picked up Bonny Lee’s clothes and walked away from the bench, north along the beach, knowing that she could always find him. While she was in the red world, he would be motionless to her. He became aware of a vast traffic jam in the drive behind him. He heard sirens in the distance. He came upon a man walking in a slow thoughtful circle, hitting himself in the forehead with his clenched fist.
Suddenly Kirby had a new pipe in his mouth, a bouquet of roses tucked under his arm, a gold ring with a big yellow diamond on the little finger of his left hand, and Bonny Lee in her pretty undies striding along with him, chuckling. He made a frantic grab for her, but she danced back, fiddled with the watch and flicked out of his world. He looked at the place where she had disappeared and saw blurred shallow footprints heading north. The fact that they were blurred and now perfect meant she had already reappeared somewhere else. He realized that inasmuch as his world was static to her, in relation to his time, she had to reappear somewhere else the instant she disappeared in front of him.
Later he was to learn that, during the fifteen minutes she was on the loose, she spent, as near as she could remember, about four subjective hours in the red world, four hours until she tired of the games and could think of no more.
Later he was to learn, in more detail, of the bewildering calamities which befell all those unfortunates among the thousand and a half people enjoying that stretch of Atlantic beach.
As Bonny Lee told him, “There they were, all them broads, naked as the law allows, strutting it around to work up the guys, and I figured it would be a lot more honest they should unwrap the merchandise entire and see how the guys reacted then. That’s before I was working it so good, before I learned you can do it okay one-handed, just push down with your thumb and give it a little bitty twist. So all the ones in the right positions so I could get at their suits and halters and stuff, I went to work, where they were gathered thickest, and honess, sugar, I worked like a horse, maybe a half-hour, peeling that stuff off them and carrying it down and tossing it out over the water—pushing it out. When everything is red, you can’t throw anything. It kind of stops.”
“I know.”
“Nine outa ten, I swear, they looked a hell of a lot better with the suits on. A lot of those guys got a bad shock. Anyhow in that one patch of beach I got maybe forty stripped entire, and got the top half off I guess twenty more. And what good is a joke you can’t see it, hey? So, seeing how I was dressed, I thought I should sort of hide, then I realized compared to them sixty broads, I was overdressed. So I just went to a spot where nobody was looking right at me and pressed the dingus.”
“How did you find out about doing that?”
“Anybody smart enough to make a cute thing like that is going to make it so you can use it and not be waiting around for the time to run out. So I tried turning it and tried pushing it and found out how.”
“Oh.”
“Shees marie, Kirby, you shoulda seen! Out of sixty, maybe three or four took it cool. The rest went straight up in the air, screeched like to bust your ears, scrabbled around for towels, but I’d got rid of them too. Then they tried to find something to hide behind or under. But a beach is damn empty, you know. Those guys had their mouths hanging open and their eyes bugged out, and the broads milled around, yelping, and then all the ones could swim, like those lemming things somebody told me about once, they went into the ocean on the dead run, maybe seven guys with good reaction time right after them. And the ones couldn’t swim, they headed every which way, the smart ones heading toward where I hadn’t gathered the towels and stealing them from other folks. I laughed until I had the hiccups, and then two guys started closing in on me so I went back into the red place, put two big sand buckets over their heads and took off.”
“How about the money?”
“The money?”
“The money you dumped in my lap.”
“Oh. That. Oh, that’s from when I went over into all those stores over there. Ever’ time I went by a cash drawer, I took some. But carrying stuff is a drag. You gotta kind of push it or pull it along. In the department store I found a hell of a thing, you know? An old lady had tripped or something right at the top of the escalator and there she was, tilted way out, her hands out in front of her, her face all screwed up. That’s when I found out you can move people, too. I went behind her and got her around the waist and braced myself and first I thought I couldn’t. But if you give a real steady pull, they come along. I pulled her back and straightened her up and there she was, about eight inches off the floor. So I got in front of her and pushed her about six feet, and pulled her back down onto the floor. Then I picked her packages out of the air over the stairs and put them in her arms. I had her holding them funny, but I didn’t want to try bending her arms. I was afraid I’d break something. So then I went to the racks and got a dress and put it on and went back and stood by her and turned the world back on. She gave a big jump and dropped all her packages. She wore the damnedest expression, sugar. She stared at the escalator and then she picked the packages up and stared at the escalator again and dropped them again. Then she picked them up and shook her head and started walking toward the elevator. It was right after that I found out something else funny.”
“What was that?”
“In the sports part—I was still wearing the dress off the rack—there was a little bit of a boy throwing a basketball to a clerk. It was in the air. The clerk had his hands out, grinning. The ball was in the air and in my way, so I just shoved it toward the clerk as I went by. A second later time ran out on me. I forget all about time in a store anyhow
. And I heard this thud and this horrible gagging sound and something falling. I looked around and the clerk was rolling around on the floor hugging his stomach, and making them sounds, and the little boy staring down at him, and the little boy’s mother.
“ ‘Honey, you threw it too hard,’ she said to the little boy. They helped the clerk up and his face was a terrible color. The woman said she was sorry her little boy had thrown it so hard. The clerk told her she was missing a great opportunity. He said she should take the little jerk out to spring training and by October he’d be in the series, making big money. The woman started yammering and the little boy started crying and the clerk started yelling, so I turned the whole thing off and got out of the damn dress and got rid of the purse I took to carry your money in, and came back. I think it was right after that I got into the softball game.”
“The softball game?”
“No. First I took car keys. Gawd, sugar, it’s funny walking in those cars knowing if you push the dingus, they’re suddenly going like hell. I was going to reach into those and take the keys, but I didn’t rightly want I should get nobody killed, so I took the keys out of the cars stacked up for the red light. There was a big convertible so I climbed into the back and turned the world on, after I pushed all the keys into the trash basket on the corner. Every yuk in the world starts blowing his horn and nobody can move. The guy at the wheel looked around and saw me and I smiled pretty at him and he shut his eyes and turned pale white. So before he could open them, I turned everything off again and went and got all the keys out of the cars stacked up the other way, since the light had changed. Everybody in such a damn hurry, sugar, it’s good for them to take a little time out.”
“I’m sure they enjoyed it.”
“Then I got into the softball game, way down the beach. A big old muscly lunk was showing off for his girl, busted into a ball game of little kids, smacking that ball way down the beach. So I found me a girl way off and took her cute little short shorts and her little halter and come back and practiced some until I could stop everything when that ball was just out in front of the plate, and then I’d go out and push it up six inches or down six inches, and the little boy pitching turned out having the biggest-breaking curve strike you ever see, and the big bassar—he like to sprained his back swinging, his girl laughing at him—got so mad he slang the bat at the little pitcher. But I stopped it in time, pushed it back toward him too hard I reckon, and he hadn’t ducked would have whomped his head clean off whistling by. He shaky like an old man, his girl leading him away.”
“You kept busy.”
“I would have said it got to be way late in the middle of the afternoon, but a little bit of time here goes a long way there. Took food I wanted offen a picnic, taken it to a quiet place and ate fast. Found me a brute man cuffin’ his little wife around, and I sure God played hell with him.” She smiled in fond reminiscence. “Park fellas painting a restroom close by. Ended that brute man up buck naked, painted bright green, mouth packed full of sand, sobbing like a big old fat baby.”
“Good Lord!”
“Found me a big-jaw, mean-eye wife blasting her little husband for staring at girls, him lying on a woolly blanket nearby looking heartsick, so I give her something to work on for sure. Towed over a mess of pretty little girls, one at a time, and like to clean covered him up. Turned the world back on and that woolly blanket was like onto a bucket of worms afore they could all get untangled and take off ever’ which way. She screamed for sure, but I don’t think he heard a word, just sat there wearing a funny little smile. Got up and walked clean away from her, still smiling. Never had so much fun in my whole life entire.”
But all that came later. At the time she gifted him with the pipe, the ring and the roses, he wasn’t certain he’d ever see her again. And that very probably wasn’t what Uncle Omar had planned for him—if, indeed, the old man had arranged things in some pattern he had yet to discern. He put the ring in his pocket, flipped the pipe into some plantings and jettisoned the roses in a trash basket. The continuous blare of horns from the expanding traffic jam was making the day hideous. There seemed to be a lot of women in swimming, screaming instructions to people on the shore. Suddenly he realized that an impressive number of police had begun to appear on the scene, blowing whistles, yelling at each other and expressing confusion.
As a tall young officer came hurrying by, Kirby turned away too quickly. The cop stopped abruptly and came toward him, staring at him intently. “Take off them glasses, buddy,” he said.
“But I’m only—”
An ugly-looking revolver was suddenly poised, aimed at the middle of his chest. “Hand over some identification, real slow and easy. Make me nervous and I twitch. My whole hand twitches something awful. Trigger finger and all.”
Kirby placed his wallet in the cop’s hand, very, very gently. The cop flipped it open, took one quick glance at it and began to grin and bounce up and down on his toes. “Oh, you fine handsome ten thousand bucks! Oh, you pretty package, you! What you say is that Corporal Tannenbaumer collared you. You keep mentioning that, hah? Promise me now, or I bust those teeth off at the gum line. Can you remember the name?”
“Corporal Tannenbaumer.”
“Now grab the back of your neck with both hands. That’s nice. Harry! Hey, Harry! Come see what I got!”
Harry, too, was lean and bronzed, with that look of eagles marred only slightly, as was Tannenbaumer, by a minor look of adenoidal vacuity.
Harry glanced at the wallet identification and said, “Honest to God, Tanny, you could fall in a sewer and come up wearing a gold bridge. Want I should go get the Sergeant?”
“No, Harry. For one grand you ignore the Sergeant. For one grand we take him in all by ourselves, and let the Sergeant worry about all this other crap.”
“For two, Tanny.”
“One and a half tops.”
“We got to walk him a hell of a ways, Tanny.”
“So cuff him to me.”
“Why not to me?”
“Because for ten grand, Harry, you would sap me and leave me face down here in the cruddy sand, so don’t squirrel around with me. What’s going on down the beach there anyhow?”
“The report said there was a lot of naked broads, Tanny, and there are a lot of naked broads. And the other report said like forty guys lost their car keys in traffic, and the tow trucks are working on it. And there is one guy painted green they’re still trying to catch. But the way it figures, some smart-ass crowd set up all the confusion so as they could clean out them stores across the way. The hell with it, Tanny. We got a good day’s work right here.”
“I got a good day’s work. You got one and a half, after I get mine. Hustle them cuffs, Harry.”
Tannenbaumer moved beside Kirby and held out his left wrist. Kirby, by instruction, held out his right wrist. Harry got the cuffs out and looked at Bonny Lee’s clothing on the sand. “What’s that stuff?”
“Girl clothes, for God’s sake. So what? Maybe he was figuring on disguising himself. Are you stalling for the Sergeant to get into the act? He’ll take the full ten and give us a couple cigars and a day off. Hurry!”
Harry made as though to snap the cuffs on the two wrists and suddenly he was standing there with both his own wrists handcuffed. Tannenbaumer stared at him. “How the hell! Harry, you cruddy thief, you’re stalling!”
“What are you arresting him for?” Bonny Lee demanded.
Harry and Tannenbaumer turned and stared at her. Tannenbamer said, “We got an ordinance underwear ain’t allowed on any public beach in Dade County. You go get some clothes on, kid, or you get took in.”
“Get these off me, Tanny,” Harry said plaintively. “The key’s in my shirt pocket.”
“You run while I’m busy, Winter, and I blow one of your knees into a bag of pebbles.”
Tannenbaumer unlocked one of the cuffs, and then it was on his own wrist. “My hand musta slipped,” he said apologetically. “Where’s the key?”
&nb
sp; “You got the key, Tanny.”
“I had the key.”
“It musta fell in the sand, huh?”
“Harry, I think the Sergeant is headed this way. You, kid, you got to go get out of that underwear.”
“I’m not bothering anybody,” Bonny Lee said.
“I wasn’t so busy, Tanny, she’d be bothering me. How about you?”
“Shut up. Look, Harry. What we do now is, we cuff him to my other wrist, and we go in like this.”
“Won’t it look a little funny, Tanny?”
“We can’t help that.”
“How will we drive the car, Tanny?”
“We’ll all sit in the front. Hold your wrist out, Winter. Harry, I hand you my gun?”
“You didn’t hand it to me, Tanny. Hey, girl, you see him hand me the gun?”
“Leave her out of this. Give me your gun, Harry.”
“Hell, they musta both fell in the sand. Tanny, we’re not making this arrest very good, you know?”
“If they fell in the sand, where are they?”
“We been moving around, Tanny. Maybe we kicked sand over them.”
As they were both looking behind them at the sand, Bonny Lee sidled quickly over to Kirby, put the watch and chain into his hand and said swiftly, “Carry me outa here, sugar. I can’t carry you.”
Tannenbaumer turned around and yelled, “Get away from—” And was suddenly a red statue in the eerie light of a dying sun. Kirby looked at the watch. He had flipped the silver hand back twenty minutes. He was impelled by a feeling of haste until, by an effort of logic, he realized he was occupying an instant of no-time, and thus had all the time wanted to take. He stuffed the watch into his pocket and bent the pocket back around it. He put his arms around Bonny Lee’s waist. She felt like a stone statue covered with a layer of tough rubber. With a slow and steady effort he was able to lift her off the ground. He lifted her a couple of feet into the air and released her. He went around behind her, braced both hands against the rounded rigidities under the blue-green nylon and, his feet digging into the sand, moved her a dozen feet away. He was gratified to know he could get her away from there, but it was a rather disheartening effort.
The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything Page 13
