The Beach Girls

by John D. MacDonald

  He has a small income, I don’t know where from. The Angel is always available for cruise charter, specialty, the Bahamas. He generally picks up a deck hand at Bimini after taking it across the Stream by himself. He advertises a little in the yachting magazines, but mostly he bird dogs the charters himself. And he has some friends alerted to hand out his cards to the right sort of customers, with a kickback if it goes through.

  Rigsby picks and chooses. He won’t take honeymooners, or an all-male charter, or a middle-aged couple. Christy said one time that she’d figured out the ideal charter for Rigsby. Five rich, handsome, restless women, all on trial separation from their husbands, all generous, vulnerable and semi-alcoholic, and with no tendency toward jealousy.

  Sometimes the Angel will be gone so long we’ll begin to hope he’ll never come back. But he always does. It’s an inexpensive mooring. Sometimes he’ll lay over at Nassau and bird dog customers from there. He has the trick of getting himself invited on parties and house parties. It isn’t much of a knack. All you have to have is gall. Somebody says, “You must come and see us sometime.” Next thing they know, he’s either pulling up to their dock, or turning into their driveway. It means free food, free liquor, gambling winnings and, generally, free women.

  He’s a small-souled man, but picturesque. When he takes the Angel out, all sparkling in the sun, with him brown and adventurous at the tiller, you can practically hear the music on the sound track and see the cameras panning on him.

  His success with women who should know better is enough to make you sick. His score around here is only fair, however. Jannifer Jean, of course, which is about as much of a triumph as shooting a hen in a chicken yard. And Beezie Hooper, Stan Hooper’s wife. Stan Hooper owns the Fleetermouse and keeps it in charterboat row, and he’s licensed to run it as a charter fisherman, but that’s only a tax dodge. It’s too much boat to run it at a profit that way. And he lines up just enough charters a year to satisfy his accountants. He’s loaded, and they have a big waterfront house north of town, and they live fast and hard, and party a lot. Beezie is scrawny and beautiful and mostly drunk. Stan found out about it and tried to make an issue of it, and got the hell beat out of him by Rex. They’re the same size, but Rex’s intake is two drinks a day instead of a fifth.

  And he caught Amy Penworthy in a reckless mood. It had rained for three days and poor Amy was so blue she didn’t care what she did. So that hardly counts. And I’m not counting the women on the tourist boats. When three or four of them pull in, traveling together, and tie up close, and set up a party, Rex has a way of easing himself into the group, knowing that sooner or later, if he’s careful and patient, he can talk some gal into walking around onto D Dock and taking a look at the way he’s got the Angel fitted out below. Few men have ever had a better chance to combine their business and their hobby.

  But he has been smart enough to stay away from Ginny Linder. And he has scored zero with Anne Browder, Christy and Helen Hass. He came close to getting to Helen. But she’s such a serious, intense, humorless little thing, that it was taking him a long time to manage it—so long that the others caught on. Orbie and Lew went and had a little talk with Rex. They never let on what they said to him, but from then on Rex has stayed forty feet away from Helen. She looked wistful for a few days until she got over him.

  Anne let on right away that she wouldn’t dip him up a bucket of water if he was on fire. Christy played up to him. When she came up to my place with Gus and Orbie and Joe and told us about it, we all got laughing so hard we were crying.

  It was late night and it happened on the dock. She let him kiss her. She dropped her cigarettes and when he reached for them, she accidentally stepped on his hand. And apologized something fierce. They walked out to the end of the dock. He kissed her again, and then her foot slipped, sort of pitching her forward so the top of her head hit him in the nose. He had to go change his shirt and she got an ice cube and held it against the back of his neck. He kept trying to get her aboard the Angel. They went out and sat on the fish box at the end of D Dock. She said he sort of soft-talked her until all her reserve was gone and then she turned and kind of plunged against him. He gave one yelp and went over backward into the water, about a seven-foot drop because the tide was way down.

  She said that at that point she thought she could get one more chance at him, and having been raised with four older brothers, she had tricks he’d never heard of. It was just a case of keeping her voice under control while she apologized. But he floundered around in the water and said bitterly, “I’m wearing my new slacks and sandals, damn it all!” And that set her off. He got the message. He despises her. Nothing is so unforgivable to a tomcat man as to be laughed at by a girl he thinks has been taking him seriously.

  The next day he left and was gone for almost a month. It must have been a good month. When he came back he bought the little Triumph.

  No, I won’t miss Rex, not a damn bit. But some I’ll miss so bad it will hurt like an abscess. Gus, Orbie, Joe, Cindy, Jack, Jimmy, Lew, Amy. And I’ll be alone again. That will be the worst of it. Except for the farm, and that was so long ago, this is the only place where I’ve put roots down, this rackety old sun-bleached marina.

  I yawned. I felt sad and dead and old. I wished old Gus would chunk a pebble against my window so I could go down and let him in, so he could tiptoe up the stairs like a sneaky rhinoceros. It wasn’t that I felt heated up, but just wanting somebody close to hold on to, and not feel so lonely. Just to hold that sweet, sturdy old clown, the third man in my life, and the last.

  But that Annabelle daughter is in town with her husband and kids, walking around looking like she bit on something sour, taking Gus out to dinner every night and trying to get him to come live with them, and buying him old-man clothes. So he goes around looking solemn and grandpa-like, and he won’t come near me until they’ve gone.

  They want to take him back North and get him ready for death, but he isn’t ready yet. There’s youngness in him. A brawling, bawdy, roistering youngness. Like Christy says, Gus is like a Princeton freshman on vacation.

  Where will Gus go when I sell? Damn all progress. Damn George and the Decklins and the syndicate and all the booster businessmen who want this eyesore marina torn down so there can be big concrete docks and uniformed men hustling ice and supplies in little motorized carts, and a big fancy restaurant and cocktail lounge. Already it’s one city from Miami to West Palm, and they want every part of it to look like every other part. You can hardly find Elihu Beach right now, even when you’re looking for it.

  I went to my window to take the last look of the evening at my shaky little empire. Midnight. Sid Stark’s big Chris is lighted up again, all fifty-four of it. So they’ve come back to the boat after partying in town.

  Further out along D Dock I could see a bright light moving around and realized it was Rex Rigsby checking the Angel, inspecting his lines. One thing he does is keep that ketch in as good shape as he keeps himself. Tools of his trade. He can’t wait for daylight to check and see if Billy Looby did a good job of …

  SIX

  Rex Rigsby

  … sanding down and revarnishing the combing on this forward hatch. I told the old son of a bitch if it wasn’t done right, I wouldn’t pay for it. That’s why I checked those bills so closely, to be certain he hadn’t tried to put it through before I got a chance to look at it. It looks good. It looks as if he shaded it with a tarp like I told him.

  I straightened up and clicked off the hand lantern and looked up at the mast tip making a six-inch arc against the stars. I could feel the tiny contented movement of her under my feet. My Angel. The only loyal one. The only true one. With the stick bowed and the rail under, the sheet hard as a drum and the wind hollering wild music through the stays, you have your own song, your own graceful dancing. And you’re at your best when we’re alone, the two of us. When there are others aboard, you sulk a little, respond a little less quickly, concealing yourself from me. I sense your di
sapproval, girl. Your delicate jealousy.

  I went below, unpacked quickly and stowed everything where it belonged. Tapped the glass and watched it hitch up a half a tenth. Opened everything—she smelled a little bit musty below. Checked the battery level. It had held well with the new heavy-duty jobs. Tomorrow run the auxiliary and the generator, turn on the set and get the time signal and set the chronometer. Top off the water tanks and then check you over from bowsprit to transom, put a new shine on your fittings and sweeten the bilge.

  But don’t expect an early rising, Angel girl. Things have been strenuous. And profitable.

  I stripped down, yawning, and sat on the edge of my bunk and counted the money. Just shy of eight hundred, after paying the bill. Good pay for long hours. I estimate three hours sleep a night for six nights. But with a nap every day, thank God. Even though that Karen wench cut the nap short a couple of times with that corny line about awakening the sleeping prince with a kiss. A kiss flavored with gin and stealth. She made her contribution, then wanted to cut for double of nothing. But I had the ace crimped, and she came up with cash. Sometimes they’ll stop payments on checks.

  Karen wasn’t trouble. But that Maryanne was, after her Ralphie saw the way the ball was bouncing. I had to step lightly. Always remember that a house guest is unlikely to have a gun, but your host is very likely to have one around.

  He probably figured out, correctly, it had started in Varadero. But he cased it wrong when he assumed I was coming around for more. Poor Maryanne just isn’t that good, bless her. She’s getting a bit long in the tooth. Ralphie could have guessed it was his D and B rating that brought me on the run, not Maryanne’s whiney little love letters.

  Ralphie finally decided to react harmlessly by drinking big and consoling himself with that anemic-looking Gretchen whose hubby in turn sought the usual revenge by successfully pursuing little Ruth, whose young husband went home mad.

  All the familiar charades, poolside, beach and bedroom. The clumsy game of the idle rich. Musical beds. Sometimes I feel like a midget who, successfully impersonating a child, goes to all the birthday parties and wins all the prizes. Sometimes it seems too easy. Peek over the blindfold and pin the tail squarely on the donkey. There should be a pun in that somewhere.

  Karen was very liberal about Maryanne. Said it was good for her, but it was not true tolerance, only the itch of the voyeur, readily satisfied.

  And a charter came out of it too. Definitely a splendid charter. Louisa and her husband and her divorcee sister, for three weeks in September, with emphasis on Andros, Eleuthera and Spanish Wells. It was no trick to tell that Louisa had been properly alerted by her dear friend Karen. And perhaps has alerted her sister. The husband, whose name I cannot remember, is a dull man and an ardent fisherman. He won’t be happy trying to fish off a ketch, and so that is the wedge. All three of them have that rich warm smell of money. Sisters can be amusing. And I have the check for a third of the charter. Earnest money, he called it. I gave them the class A rate. And the sisters will make another little gift of money—one way or another. Plus kickbacks from the places I take them. September should be a joyous month.

  I turned off the light and stretched like a tiger in the wide comfortable bunk. My Angel sighed a little at her moorings as something went by on the Waterway and rocked her slightly. A few idle weeks coming up, before the charter. And two little games to play.

  One game named Francesca Portoni, which could be dangerous, considering the hoodlum look of Sid Stark and his friends. But possible, if the look she gave me wasn’t faked. And a second game named Judy Engly, chubby little Judy, she of the sensuous mouth and eyes of downcast sulky arrogance, she of the frantic ululations in the night, whooping and yelping—sounds of such great promise it prickles the backs of my hands and clinches the skin at the nape of my neck. Very possible, once she has been lured to a private place. It would not take words then—just hands and mouth and boldness. A game more desirable and less dangerous than the Portoni woman. The big mild fisherman husband was styled for the wearing of horns.

  No more of the others here. No more of tiresome Beezie Hooper, leathery from sun and diet, all painful teeth and nails and knobs of bone, as violent in what should be a gentler art as a small boy in a picnic sack race. Certainly no further interest in rainy-day Amy, freckled as a trout, complaining of somebody named Milton, and complaining of the weather and her job at the bank, making it all as conversational and unremarkable as though we were rowing around in a dinghy, chatting. Positively no second event with the soiled Moonbeam who smelled of sweat and cotton candy, then blandly demanded ten dollars and used language that would shame a teamster when she didn’t get it.

  And, Rex, my boy, no attempts to rectify the times you struck out around here. Not with Hass, unless you want to be chopped into chunks and used for chum in barracuda water. Or with Browder, who is solid ice from her eyes to her deceptively dimpled knees. Nor with the Yale woman, the clown bitch, the comedian. I would like to watch her drown. I would like to use my fists and my heels on her, and turn that mocking face into something a buzzard wouldn’t touch.

  Just Francesca and Judy, both worthy of the stalk. Plus a prowl on the public beach from time to time, and a tour of the lounges, and the women on the transient cruisers. Fair game in my private jungle.

  I should have felt a sense of anticipation for all the warm shy flesh of the girls in summer, honeyed by the sun, full of their fragrances, their transparent guiles and ploys. A youthful welcome change from the mannered decadences of the house-party wives with their veined hands, greedy eyes and fat pocketbooks, their frantic awareness of the passing of time, their emasculated husbands, their absentee children. At thirty feet they have the slimness and the bright hair and the vivacity of twenty-five. But the vivacity is the result of gin and tension, the bright hair is a dyed lifelessness, and the slimness is the result of constant hunger and dogged exercise. In the sleep of morning their heads lie heavily on the pillows, their faces are fifty and their bodies are stale and completely spent.

  But I could not, this time, pleasure myself with anticipation of the young girls of the boats and beaches and lounges. I felt old and sour and bored.

  And so, to hearten myself, I remembered how far I had come, how little there had been in the beginning. Not even the name. Drab section of a stinking Pennsylvania coal town. Hunky-Town they called it, and the name I had then fit the word. Six of us—God knows where the others are, and God also knows I don’t care—and the father killed in a union brawl, and the mother, sour and leaden and sprawling with drink, honoring us with a new “uncle” every few months until she became so ill they took us all and put us in the Home, and herded us to her funeral a month later. I hated her. I still hate her, even dead. She was filth.

  I went over the wall when I was sixteen, and I was on the bum for a year, a tough foul-mouthed clumsy quarrel-some kid before the Baron picked me up in San Francisco, cold, shabby and damn near starving. Maybe his title was good. Maybe he invented it. But he had the money to go with it.

  We went to the south of France. He had a villa. Bought me clothes. Hired tutors. Taught me how to walk and talk, eat and drink. Treated me like a son, except in one department, and that not often. He was a tall frail old man who wept easily. I learned how easy it was to make him cry, to make him buy me presents. He bought me my first boat, and when I learned to handle her, it was as if I had been set free.

  I was with him two years. When I found him dead on the bathroom floor—it was his heart—I cleaned all the francs and dollars and pounds sterling out of the safe. He never knew I had learned the combination. I buried the money in a zinc box in the garden and left the equivalent of a thousand in the safe so it wouldn’t look too funny. Then I called his doctor.

  His relatives threw me out of the place. They let me keep my clothes, but they took the boat. I moved into a little hotel. A week later I went back and got the money. I was nineteen but I looked older.

  I went to Paris. Th
ere I met a raddled old movie actress named Maria who was as rich as the Baron and believed herself to be still glamorous. She took me back to La Jolla with her, brought some of my old-fashioned manners up to date, bought me a car, boat and clothes and gave me an abundant allowance. It was a better boat. It could really fly.

  But she haunted me. She was after me every minute. She disgusted me. I kept telling her I was going to leave her. She would beg and cry and tell me how much she’d done for me. Finally she showed me her new will. She said her lawyer hadn’t approved. She had me down for a nice chunk. I kept thinking about that money. One night she got thoroughly boiled. She would do that every once in a while, usually after we watched one of her old movies in the little projection room in the basement. It was February. The newspapers on the coast were complaining about the worst cold spell in years. Crop damage and all that. She was mumbling so badly I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I went to her bedroom and found her sleeping pills and stole two of them. They were capsules. When she asked me to fix her a fresh drink, I dumped the contents of the capsules in it, stirred it up and took a sip. It was a little bitter, but not too bad. She drank it down.

  Fifteen minutes later I tried, and I couldn’t wake her up. I carried her to her bedroom, took her clothes off, and put her out on the little Spanish-looking balcony off her bedroom. Nobody could see her there. I shut the French doors to keep from cooling the house off, after I’d filled the big teakettle with cold water and wet her down good. Every hour I would go back and check on her and wet her down again. She didn’t look very good. And I was nervous about the whole thing, thinking of all the things that might go wrong.

  When the sky turned gray she had started breathing in an odd way. I carried her back in, dried her off, slipped her into one of her fancy nightgowns, tucked her into bed, and looked around, checking things. She had the script for every movie she’d ever made in a cabinet near the bed. She liked to read them after she was in bed. So I got one and fixed it so it looked as if she had been reading it. I turned off her light and went to my room and went to sleep right away. I was tired.