The Beach Girls

by John D. MacDonald

  Joe shook his head sadly, “It isn’t anywhere near as good as last year, Billy.”

  “We couldn’t rightly recommend it,” Marty said. “I’m sorry all to hell.”

  “Look at all the new customers!” Joe said.

  “What’ll we do now?”

  “I’m going to switch to beer, to extend my effectiveness over a few more hours, and then go boat-hopping. Come on.”

  “I better go hunt up Mary Lee afore she goes weasel-eyed on me. Anyhow I see enough of boats all day long to last me.”

  Rex Rigsby, in a white mesh shirt and pale blue shorts that set off the dark tone of his thick muscular legs, stood apart from the throng in the shade of a storage shed, sipping a Scotch and water and watching the younger women, assaying, with the cool appraisal of the expert, the merit of a golden thigh, the telling sensuousness of a mouth, the tilt and texture of a breast.

  When they were aware of him, he was immediately aware of their awareness and could then index them on the basis of age, income level, probable experience and the ease or difficulty of acquisition—much like a cattleman at a stock show making an educated guess as to a specified blood line and placing his bid by a deft signal with pipe or program. He saw nothing he could not index, nothing that could possibly astonish him.

  When he finally saw what he had been waiting for, he felt a strengthening of the pulse in his throat, felt his neck and shoulders bulge. She was strolling toward the tent with her husband, Jack Engly. He was holding her hand. Judy wore a rather prim little outfit, a yellow blouse and white skirt, with a wide shiny cheap-looking green belt.

  This particular magic had happened to him many times before. He could see her flaws readily—the too-round childish face, rather dull and sulky, her plump, long-waisted, short-legged build, with too much width of hip and sturdiness of thigh and calf, the suggestion of a double chin, the thick stubby hands, the pigeon-fullness of her breast—but even her flaws excited him. He knew that even without the evidence of the wild night-howling that her rangy young husband could so readily induce, he would have known she was one of that rare minority, a woman so deeply and blindly sensuous that little else in life had any meaning to her. With those few, their special dedication is an almost visible aura, a plangent musk, a textured pungency.

  But she was being far more difficult than he had expected her to be. She now knew what he was after, and even though there was a provocative air of willingness about her, she had sidestepped all his careful arrangings thus far. When he had been with her over at the public beach, her conversation had been so crashingly inane that it had almost cooled him off. “So that’s what you think.” “So it’s a free world, ain’t it?” “Geez, Rex, you say crazy things, hones’.” But when the brown eyes looked directly at him, feral and aware, they spoke a private language, making unthinkable promises.

  He looked closely at Jack Engly. The big young man wore a slightly stupefied grin, and he ambled along with the looseness and carelessness of several drinks. Rigsby saw Judy notice him, standing there. She gave him a long, sidelong, sullen stare until suddenly, with a symbolism so blunt, a clue so meaningful that he felt his heart turn completely over, she yanked her hand out of Jack’s. He did not seem to mind. He brought two beers from the bar. Judy stood half facing Rex, thirty feet from him. She held her glass in both hands like a child as she drank, and all the time she drank she kept staring at him, full of her unspoken, insolent questioning.

  He knew then how his night would end.

  ELEVEN

  Happy Birthday to You

  The sun went down. The western sky flamed into rose and faded to bloody gray as the first stars came out. Billy Looby, lopsided and jangling with coins, worn out with the endless trundling of ice to the boats, hoarse from explaining his gallery to the incredulous, turned on the switches that made it a different party.

  Up until that moment there had been an outdoor picnic flavor about it. There had been few incidents, none of them serious. No one had been thrown out as yet. There had been the incident of Jannifer Jean’s exposure, which might have become more drastic had Captain Jimmy detected the man who had conducted the experiment in the process of yanking the knot loose. A young lawyer from Clewiston had found himself unable to resist the impulse to place his hand on the satiny concavity of the waist of a young woman in sun halter and shorts, a young woman he had never seen before. Unfortunately for the lawyer, she was the brand new twenty-year-old wife of a career Marine who had recently retired at thirty-seven and was taking a night off from tending bar. The lawyer never saw the blow that clicked his teeth, lifted him high onto his tiptoes, and dropped him peaceably onto his face in the dust beside the buffet. A man who liked to keep things neat rolled the lawyer under the buffet table and made himself another ham and cheese sandwich.

  One of the limber dollies off the Texas yacht, Do Tell, heard sounds that enchanted her and, by following them to their source, was able to join a small group of devotees who, in the fading light, were bouncing green cubes off the side wall of the office. She lost the forty dollars she customarily wore tucked into her bra, went twice to the yacht and borrowed a hundred, only to lose it each time.

  She waited patiently for her turn at the dice and then, with the avid glitter of the compulsive gambler, announced that she was wagering herself. It took them some time to understand what she meant. As she would not let several of them cover the bet, claiming it was not only ladylike but illogical, it turned, for a time, into an auction. When she rolled, she rolled against a hundred and fifty dollars wagered by the manager of a local supermarket who could not really decide whether he’d made a good bet. She rolled eleven, verbally withdrew her original stake, and let the one fifty ride. The supermarket man covered and she threw a seven. She let the three hundred ride. He could only take forty of it.

  Others came in. She threw a three-one and followed it immediately with a deuce-deuce, which was greeted by groans. She left the six hundred in. It was all covered. But after her next eleven, there wasn’t enough money left in the group to cover twelve hundred. She griped about having to drag out over four hundred. It took her longer, rolling, in order, eight, four, six, nine, ten, three, five, ten, ten, six, eight, thus ending the game.

  With the unthinking generosity that only a citizen of that most hospitable of all states can comprehend, and, believing that he had brought her luck, she smuggled the disconsolate supermarket man aboard the Do Tell and, with a jubilant heartiness, a joyous deftness, made him the happiest of men, treating him with more consideration and versatility than he would have received had he, in fact, won.

  Also, before the lights went on, George Haley, using Darlene Marie Moyd to the same effect that a magician uses his scantily clad assistant to divert the eye of the curious, sold a seven thousand dollar building lot in Delightful Heights to a large bemused druggist from Kilo, Kansas, who had the quaint idea that Darlene Marie went with the deed. They whipped him in jolly fashion down to the office, opened up, prepared a deed and took his down payment. Darlene Marie had become a notary the week before.

  Back at the party, just as the lights came on, the large druggist made a minor and quite furtive attempt to verify his claim. Smiling dazzlingly, mistily, incomparably up at him, Darlene Marie swung her dainty shoe against his shin. It would have easily been a field goal from the forty-yard line. When he wiped away the tears that blurred his vision, Darlene Marie was gone. But he had a lot in a new subdivision and a pronounced limp.

  The floods and spots turned the docks and much of the shore line to blinding white. But there were areas of shadow. There were lights on the boats, in the beer tent, on the buffet. Bugs swarmed eagerly to bunt their brains out on the hot lenses. The party tempo increased. Over on the beach the penny candy neon flared bravely. On Sid’s hi-fi at maximum volume, Dinah Washington brayed “Love For Sale,” slurring it and belting it. Lew Burgoyne and his volunteer patrol began to be more heads-up about looking for trouble.

  The first casualty w
as a woman who stuck a high heel down between the dock boards and managed, somehow, to sit heavily on her own beer glass, sustaining lacerations more dramatic than dangerous. The second casualty was a young hotel bellhop who, confident with much beer, made his first attempt to pick a pocket, a Texan’s pocket, and sustained two broken fingers, the two he had inserted in the hip pocket. The more normal mishaps were not counted—such as the eight or nine, two of them female, who passed out early—or the three, including the Clewiston lawyer, whose social mistakes had been corrected with sudden violence.

  Joe Rykler had taken a short nap on the cockpit floor of the Ampersand and awakened much refreshed. Christy and Leo sat in the fighting chairs aboard the Ruthless and talked of many things. Amy Penworthy was trotting around worrying if the talent show was going to be put on too late or too early. Helen Hass, running around with a flashlight to shine on the backs of hands, had stuck sixteen hundred and forty dollars into the safe. Bud and Ginny Linder sat up in the bow of their schooner, holding hands and watching the party from the shadows as though all the people were on a big stage.

  Anne Browder lay in darkness in her bed aboard the Alrightee, slowly consuming the biggest deadliest drink she had ever dared make herself. Tears stood in her eyes. The base of the glass was cold on her bare tummy. Joe had come aboard and knocked and hollered twice, waited and gone away. Alice Stebbins talked to old friends, and grinned and drank much beer, and felt sick and dead inside. Gus Andorian, encouraged by a shy sweet smile, pinched a plump matron with such enthusiasm that she went up into the air and landed cantering, her eyes bulging. When he came stalking after her, beaming, she showed surprising acceleration. He scowled and growled and trudged back to the Queen Bee for another drink.

  At eight o’clock the music stopped abruptly. A lean, grinning, weasel-faced man in a grotesquely padded sports jacket stepped to the mike on the flush rear deck of the Pieces of Seven, whuffed into it, and then, in a piercing, carefree snarl, and with a lot of business with the eyebrows, and in the unmistakable accent of the Jersey nitespot circuit, he yelled, “Ladees an genemen! Your attenchin. Your attenchin, please! The big show is about to begin. Gather round, kiddies. Gather round.” They came hurrying around from charterboat row. They packed D Dock and C Dock and the shoreline. Buffet and beer business eased slightly.

  The smirking weasel introduced himself as Lonnie Guy, “fresh from the real live spots of the ennatainmint worl, inclusive of televishin. As Milty was telling me the other night, Lonnie, he said, Lonnie I love ya material. I love it so much, I use it alla time.”

  He paused for a laugh, heard a muted snicker, shrugged and went on. He welcomed the guests. Somehow it made it sound as if Sid Stark was putting on the party. He said, “Now we’ll get this rocket off the pad with some a my own stuff.”

  He did an imitation of Mort Sahl, newspaper in hand. He did an adequate imitation of the Voice, gestures and delivery. But two things were wrong. He wasn’t funny, and perhaps ten people in the whole group knew who the hell Mort Sahl was.

  He then signaled one of Sid’s people to put on a record, and he did a pantomime, fitting his gestures to the voice of Doris Day. It went over like concrete.

  He did a fairy routine, and it fell flat.

  “Can this maybe be Philadelphyuh? So laugh tomorrow.”

  In desperation, he told a joke so blue that six customers left immediately. The throng began a cadence clap. He couldn’t make himself heard over it. He shrugged, sneered, and walked off. George Haley appeared squinting and blinking and grinning in the floodlights, leading Darlene Marie Moyd by the hand. She wore a white sheath top, a flaring pink skirt, gold slippers, as gleaming as her hair. She was gloriously beautiful, demure, yet confident. They got the roar of applause the weasel had been seeking.

  “On this happy occasion of the birthday of somebody we all know and love, I want to present to you, my secretary, Miss Darlene Marie Moyd, the most beautiful little ole gal I’ve ever laid these tired ole eyes on. You all can see her any working day at my office on Broward Boulevard, Deal Daily with Haley. Darlene Marie has won herself not one, not six, but fourteen beauty contests. Lordie, I can’t remember all of them, tell the truth. But tonight she’s going to display the talent she showed the judges.”

  “Take it off!”

  “Now that ain’t the right attitude, Cal Steckle. I recognized your voice, and you keep quiet from here on. Darlene Marie is going to give a dramatic reading, like she did in all those contests.”

  There was resounding applause as he stepped back and Darlene stepped up to the microphone and composed herself.

  Leo and Christy were on the edge of the crowd, out near the end of D Dock.

  Darlene gave a gentle smile, cleared her throat, tilted her chin up and began to declaim:

  “Ef yew can keep yo haid when all about yew air a-losin’ they-yurs an a-blaimin’ it on yew?”

  Her voice came droning directly from the bridge of that perfect nose. It was one of those horrible, flat-land, piney-woods voices that can make three syllables grow where there was only one in the beginning.

  “Good God!” Leo whispered. “Is she serious?”

  “Deathly,” Christy said. “She’s gorgeous. If she could even twirl a baton, she’d have made Miss America—or at least Miss Florida. She makes most women look like Moonbeam. But that—excuse the expression—talent! Wow!”

  “I have the opinion,” Leo muttered, “that her best talent couldn’t be displayed to a panel of judges.”

  “You have a gloriously dirty mind, darling.”

  It was a curious agony to watch Darlene Marie. She declaimed with gestures. Sweeping, dramatic gestures which threatened to lift her up out of the last strategic half inch of the sheath top. Her large audience maintained a rapt, respectful silence.

  As she neared her closing line, the weasel made another and more serious mistake in his evaluation of his audience. He came slinking up behind her with exaggerated stealth, carrying a slender stick. He ignored the low growl of protest and warning.

  She swept both arms high and went onto her tippy toes for her final line. Just as she had almost completed it, he touched the stick to the tenderest curve in the rear of the pink skirt. It was one of those electric wands, highly favored by street corner Legionnaires on convention.

  “Yew’ll be a may-yun, my YOW!” she cried, and achieved an impressive elevation above the improvised stage, and landed whirling, spitting, slashing and weeping. Lonnie darted back out of sight. She faced her audience with a gesture of helplessness, and the great raw sound of applause squared her shoulders, dried her tears and restored her radiance.

  “My goodness,” Lew said to Orbie.

  “You know,” Orbie said, “when this here show is over, I wouldn’t be surprised the boys go grab that fella and take him over in the dark past the charter boats and purely beat the livin’ hell out of him.”

  “Caint let a terible thing like that happen,” Lew said.

  “No sir. We’ll have to bust that up.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ll go right on over there and protect that fella.”

  “Might get a little thirsty on the way over,” Lew said.

  Orbie nodded. “We can always stop and have a brew.”

  “Sure thing. Give us a chance to talk over just how we’ll get him away from those boys that’ll be beating on him by then.”

  “Doesn’t do to rush into things. Hey, where’s Leo?”

  “Way up there with Christy.”

  “Better get my guitar. You keep an eye on him while we’re on.”

  “How many times you told me that?”

  Darlene Marie was followed by a quartet of local fishermen whose diligent practice was somewhat nullified by the sodden condition of their tenor, but their selections were loudly appreciated. George Haley had somehow taken over the M.C. chore. Next came a violent acrobatic tap dance performed by a local tavern waitress in a red leotard while her brother played a strenuous accordion. Nex
t came a strong-man act, then a solo accordion.

  Christy swallowed and said to Leo, “I’m all right?”

  “You’re lovely.”

  “Oh, sure.” She had decided to go all out and had put on a silver-blue evening dress. “See you, honey.” She began to make her way through the close-packed crowd on D Dock. He followed, so as to watch her from a better vantage point.

  When the accordion was finished, Billy Looby fussed importantly with the lights until he’d cut them to one spot. George Haley introduced her, saying, “And this year Christy tells me she’s going to be real dignified. I don’t have to ask you to give her a hand.”

  She walked to the mike. Orbie, carrying a chair and his guitar, set himself up behind her and struck a few experimental chords. She began to sing “My Man.” Her voice was a husky croak. But it was true, and her timing was almost professional.

  She cast such a special, intimate spell over Leo that it was some time before he realized the crowd didn’t share his pleasure. They were restless. Applause was more polite than enthusiastic when she finished.

  “Thank you. And now I’m going to sing “Body and Soul.”

  Before she could start, somebody started a cadence clap. Leo wanted to worm through the crowd and bash him. But others picked it up.

  Christy held her hands up and said, “What’s the matter?”

  At least a dozen people yelled different requests simultaneously. Christy scowled at the crowd. “Don’t you lint-head folk dig culture?”

  They yelled at her again.

  “All right, all right! I’ll do just one of those ranchy things one time. Sorry, Leo darling. They’re twisting my arm. No, that’s not the title, but we could get a song out of it.” She turned and said, “Orbie, you remember that thing we worked up for this festival of dampness last year. I’ve still got all the words.” Orbie hit some chords. “That’s it. You have it, Mr. Derr.” She turned back to the mike. “The song I am about to sing is entitled, ‘I Was Just a Poor Fisherman’s Daughter, But the Boys All Thought I was Bait.’ It’s a sort of a narrative type thing. Kinda tragic in a way.”