“But I happen to know that somebody …”
“Oh, I wouldn’t deny that some idiot probably called him up and woofed at him. And that’s precisely the sort of thing Di would ignore, unless he was looking for an out. You’re too naive about these things, Kat, darling. It’s a precious quality and I adore it, but it really isn’t very realistic. Di will come back after it’s all died down, and by then you’ll forgive him, because by then it will be perfectly obvious that if he had stayed around, he couldn’t have changed the outcome in the slightest degree.”
“Sally Ann, sometimes you make me so darn mad I want to hit you!”
“People trying to live in a dream world always resent hard facts,” Sally Ann Lesser said patronizingly.
“Set point!” Wilma Deegan yelled. She served to Carol. Carol patted the ball back to her. Wilma drove it into the far corner, past Angela. It hit a good eight inches past the base line.
“Beautiful!” Angela called. Carol Killian looked dubiously at her partner.
“We whupped ’em, pal!” Wilma said to Sammy. She gave him a sweaty hug and they all came off the court, breathing hard, picking up towels, wiping their shining faces.
Angela, the permanent house guest, smiled at her sister-in-law and said, “Willy, you’re putting a lot of top spin on that ball. It comes over real heavy.” Angela was a graceful blonde with sturdy legs and ingratiating manners.
“But she wants to powder everything on our side of the net,” Sammy said, and laughed.
Wilma stopped smiling. “I want to what?”
Sammy stopped laughing. “I meant you got an aggressive spirit, Willy.”
“You’re the one wants to cover the whole damn court.”
“Just half of it, pet. Just half of it.”
“So let me see you cover all of it for a while, darling. You and your sweet sister get on out there and show us some fast singles.”
“Honey,” Sammy said patiently, “it’s almost too brutal a day for doubles. I’m dragging, and I’m sure Angie …”
“But I’d learn so much just watching you and your sister,” Wilma said in a grave tone.
Angela finished her drink, stood up and picked up her racket. “Come on, Sam,” she said and walked out onto the court.
Sammy Deegan hesitated, then followed her. Kat glanced at Sally Ann, and looked away quickly when she saw Sally Ann smirk and wink.
Carol Killian, with her customary lack of contact with the world around her, said, “Golly, I don’t see how they can want to play again so soon. I’m so positively pooped I feel faint almost. They must be in wonderful condition.”
“They’re natural athletes, dear,” Wilma said.
“I’ve never been good at games,” Carol said sadly.
“You’ve never had to be,” Sally Ann said.
Carol looked at her blankly. “Have Sammy and Angie had to be good at games?”
“It’s been a big help to them,” Sally Ann said.
“Get off my back,” Wilma said gently to Sally Ann. She turned and smiled at Kat. “I don’t see you for weeks on end. I hear there’s a big broohah about Grassy Bay. Just don’t propagandize me, dearie. I’ve had to shut Sally Ann up about it. It’s too hot in the summer to get agitated about anything.”
Kat stood up. “I wasn’t going to mention it, Willy. I just dropped off for a drink on my way home.”
Carol stood up quickly and collected her gear. “I’ll walk with you, Kat. I’m so hot and tired I could die. All I want is a bath and a nice nap.” She called goodbye to Sammy and Angela. They waved rackets at her. Kat and Carol walked down the road.
“I didn’t want to play tennis but everybody else wanted to. Mostly Wilma,” Carol said. “What I am mostly is thirsty, and there isn’t anything except that rum stuff Sally Ann makes. I had two cups of it, and honest, I’ve got such a buzz my mouth feels numb.”
Carol stopped to fix her shoe. Kat looked back. Sammy and Angela were agile figures in white, bounding and racing dutifully in the afternoon sun. Wilma and Sally Ann sat on the bench in the shade of the umbrella, two brown women with gray curls, looking like sisters, one stocky and the other scrawny, two monied women who had ordered their world to their own liking, and seemed to spend most of their time wondering if they really liked what they had wrought.
Carol straightened up and began walking. “I should do more things like that to get tightened up. I’d like to be like Angela. She’s hard as a rock. She’s got dumpy legs, but she’s in wonderful shape. Do you think if I swam more it would help?”
“Swimming is good exercise.”
“You’re real trim, Kat. But I guess you’re naturally slender, aren’t you? I mean you don’t have to work at it. I weigh just the same as I did when I was nineteen, and my measurements are almost the same, but if I don’t watch it every minute, my hips blow up like a balloon.”
“I gain and then I take it off.”
“Gee, Kat, I don’t know about my spending so much time with them. There always seems to be some kind of a fight going on that I don’t understand. But who else is there to be with this time of year? And Sammy is real odd, you know? I never know if he’s making a pass at me, the way he kids around.”
“I don’t think he is, really. I think it’s just his manner.”
Carol frowned. “I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t want him really making a pass at me. I mean, it would be awkward. I’ve got nothing against passes. It makes you sort of confident, you know? Even if a girl doesn’t want an affair, it’s nice to know men think about it. I couldn’t pull such a dirty trick on Ben anyhow. But I think a husband should know other men find a girl attractive, don’t you?”
“I guess so. Will you come in and have something for that thirst?”
“No thanks. I think I’ll go home. Uh … Sally Ann says Sammy is making passes at me. She says it’s obvious.”
“Sally Ann is a liar and a trouble-maker, Carol.”
“Well. I guess so. Will you come over and have dinner with us some night?”
“I’d like to, after all the bay fill thing is over. It might be awkward right now, considering the stand the paper is taking.”
“Oh, Ben doesn’t have anything to do with that! That’s all Mr. Borklund doing that.”
“But Ben owns the paper. Mr. Borklund works for him.”
“All Ben cares about is designing those darn boats and building them and selling them for a loss.”
“Then the paper should stay neutral like the last time.”
“Oh, Mr. Borklund explained how they can’t do that again. He had a list of the advertising they’d lose. It was a lot of money. And there was something about zoning, something that might happen to the boatyard unless the paper came out in favor of it. Ben was mad for a week. He kept telling me he didn’t want to be pushed around. Mr. Borklund was at the house almost every night, and he’d bring men with him and they’d argue. Finally Ben just said the heck with it. He won’t even talk about it any more.”
“What was that about zoning, Carol?”
“I don’t understand that stuff. It was something about taxes and nonconforming. They could do something to him he wouldn’t like.”
“I guess the invitation had better wait until this is settled.”
“Sure, Kat. If that would be better for you.”
It was a little after five when Kat entered her house. As she started to close the door she watched Carol Killian walking away in her little white shorts, her gray-and-white-striped sleeveless blouse, carrying her racket and towel and little zipper bag, hair shiny-black in the sun, slow golden legs scissoring, hips flexing. She was, Kat estimated, about thirty-four, a curiously teenage thirty-four, childless, placid, a simplified, undemanding woman. Ben had provided her with a handsome home, a full-time maid, a new sports car every year, charge accounts, shopping trips. It had been Van’s sardonic opinion that Ben Killian had acquired exactly what he wanted when he had married Carol twelve years ago. She was decorative, faithful, unde
manding, unquestioning, healthy and as unabashedly sensual as any Micronesian maiden. She was always there when he wanted her, and she could be readily ignored when he did not.
Her days were without event. She slept late. When she got up she had the sober problems of what to do with her hair, how to fix her face, what selection of clothing to make from the yards of closet in her dressing room. There was music in the house, and daytime television to keep her amused. Too many drinks made her sick to her stomach. She loved oils and lotions and scents, naps and deep hot baths. She had her own bathroom, with a large sunken tub and many mirrors. She lived like a pretty cat on a cozy hearth. She had her own bedroom, all quilted and cozied and dainty, with a deep salmon rug, tinted mirrors and a draped canopy over the bed.
Ben Killian was a remote man, complex, a listener who made the more articulate ones uneasy through the uncommitted quality of his listening. People were always asking him, somewhat plaintively, if he agreed, and he could say yes in a way that made it sound like no. His grandfather had started the paper late in life. His father had driven the competing paper out of business and had died early, when Ben was still in college. Ben had spent every possible hour of his childhood afloat, and had planned to become a marine architect and designer. But the brother, Arnold, the one who relished the newspaper business, died in a war in an unpronounceable village in Burma, and Ben was elected by circumstance to publish the Palm City Record-Journal. He went through all the necessary motions until he finally found J. J. Borklund, and then he went through less of them. Gulfway Marine Designs took more and more of his time and energy.
He was, as Van had once noted, a man constructed of spare parts. He had the heroic torso of a beef-cake western hero, the long leathery durable arms and curled thickened hands of a dirt farmer, the domed head and large bland unfocused bespectacled face of professorship, a pair of thin, stringy, tough, bowed little legs. He was in constant demand to crew for the ocean racers because he could do twice the work of younger men with half the fuss and many times the knowledge of the sea and the winds. He could cut, shape, drill, fit and finish fine wood with the loving skill of a master boatwright.
His attitude toward Gulfway Marine Designs was one of utter dedication. His attitude toward Carol was avuncular, gentle and slightly amused. His attitude toward the paper was one of slight but evident embarrassment, as though it was an affliction, a congenital deformity which strangers might notice and find distasteful.
Kat walked thoughtfully through her house, sat on the edge of her bed for a little while, thinking of what Carol had told her, and then phoned Jimmy Wing at the paper. When they told her he was out, she tried his cottage. Just as she was about to hang up, he answered.
“This is Kat. Are you in the middle of something? You could call me back.”
“I was at the end of a shower. When I turned the water off, I heard the phone ringing.”
“Oh dear! I hate to do that to anybody.”
“No strain. I’ve been doing my public-relations job for Palmland Isles, and I’m going to take it in in a little while. Not much chance to stick any flies in the ointment, which I hope you and your buddies will understand when they see the by-line. I reported what Tom said about the model being out of scale, but that’s no guarantee it will get by Borklund. Actually, it’s a hell of a big local news story, Kat. The biggest we’ve had in some time. I can’t legitimately underplay it.”
“I understand that, Jimmy, and the others will too. What I called about, I was talking to Carol Killian, and she said something interesting, about why Ben is going to be in favor of the fill this time.”
“I can think of a lot of plausible reasons.”
“She said it was something about zoning, something to do with his boat works, about taxes and nonconforming. Would you know what she was talking about?”
“I think I do. He’s got a very nice chunk of land there, just south of the Hoyt Marina, about three hundred feet of bay front adjacent to the channel. When the county was zoned four years ago, I think the commercial zoning extends down from the causeway onto Sandy Key to include the Hoyt Marina. But it doesn’t include Gulfway Marine Designs. So that makes it nonconforming. Actually I think it’s in Residential B.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he can’t expand, and if it burned he couldn’t rebuild it, and if he sold it, he’d have to sell it as nonconforming. But he’s got all the buildings he wants there, and it isn’t likely to burn down, and he certainly doesn’t want to sell. Actually, it’s fine for him the way it is. It was probably one of those favors local government does for newspaper publishers. He pays taxes on a Residential B basis. He loses money on that operation anyway, so the lower taxes are a help.”
“How much help, Jimmy?”
“All I can do is guess. Three hundred feet. I’d say if they zoned him commercial it would cost him about eighteen hundred to two thousand a year more. His land goes all the way through to Bay Highway.”
“That isn’t enough to bother him, is it?”
“Not that alone. I wouldn’t think so. Probably Carol didn’t get the whole picture. He’s got a lot of little things scattered around, and he’s probably getting the best possible break on all of them. If they went into rezoning and reassessment on all of them, they probably could bruise him pretty good. And he couldn’t use the paper to fight back because all he would be doing would be disclosing the fact he had been getting some breaks.”
“Carol said he was complaining about being pushed around.”
“He probably was a little slow making up his mind, so they leaned on him. They’re not taking any chances, Kat.”
“But isn’t it something you can use, Jimmy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you sort of … track down what happened and let people know these Palmland people have blackmailed the paper?”
“Kat, are you comfortable? Can you listen to a lecture?”
“I’m stretched out across my bed,” she said, “but don’t you want to dry off?”
“I brought my towel along. Feet on my desk. Cigarettes handy. Now listen carefully, dear. You’re an intelligent woman. I went into journalism out of a sort of idealism. I fell in love with a glamorous gal called the newspaper game, and after I’d lived with her a few years I found out she’s a whore. She talks big sometimes, but she’s bone-lazy, cynical, greedy and perfectly satisfied with herself. Do I sound like a college sophomore?”
“Maybe … a little.”
“So let’s look at the facts. I think these figures are close. There are seventeen hundred and sixty-one daily newspapers in this country. Sixty-one of them are in cities with more than one newspaper. The other seventeen hundred are monopoly papers. The Record-Journal is a monopoly paper. Now here is the crazy thing about a monopoly paper. It is the only form of monopoly not subject to regulation. Regulation would be interference with the freedom of the press. The A.N.P.A. would never let that happen. So, in seventeen hundred cities of America, including this one, the publisher decides exactly what he will give the public. We present the cheapest, dullest possible coverage of national and international news, and all the bargain syndicate items. In contrast, our local news coverage is maybe a little better than average. But the publishers—Ben Killian included—look on news as a tiresome but necessary evil, and they resent the public for expecting it. It’s the only game in town, Kat, and its main, basic, primary, unchangeable purpose is to sell advertising and make money. Follow me?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“Actually this is a better paper than the average, because Ben Killian doesn’t have any particularly strong opinions. Our political stance is conservative Democrat on a local level, Republican on national issues, which precisely reflects the point of view of the advertisers. Suppose, as is true in many unhappy areas, Ben Killian was a confirmed John Bircher, a witch-hunter, an oppressor of every variety of liberal thought and viewpoint. Then, with no regulatory checkrein, no hol
ds barred, he could make happen here what has been happening in, for example, Boulder, Colorado. He could have an outraged citizenship, indomitably ignorant, purging their community of everything which did not fit their standards of mediocrity. But Ben and Borklund have merely the simple touching desire to make the maximum amount of money with the minimum fuss. To do this, the paper must go along with the viewpoints of the advertisers. So, if Ben showed any sign of deviation, it is natural that the advertisers would arrange to move against him in the direct way of cutting their budgets for newspaper advertising as much as they dare. Because they can’t cut it completely and survive themselves, they move against him in other ways, through the pressure they can generate through their indirect control of the agencies of local government. Clear?”
“It sounds so … cut and dried.”
“It is. The only thing about that zoning thing which surprises me is that Ben hesitated so long they had to use it. And there’s nothing there I can use, certainly. I work for Ben Killian. I am an agent of his policy. What if I want to expose this whole mess? What do I do? Go on the air? He owns thirty percent of WKPC. And the men who own WEVT in the south county are certainly not interested in giving me a platform. I can’t use Ben’s paper to expose him. I couldn’t get it past Borklund. Can I quit and go someplace else and expose the whole conspiracy? The next town I go to would have another monopoly publisher, and a readership vastly uninterested in what happens in Palm County. Do I start my own paper here? I don’t have the million dollars required, and if I did have it and did get a paper going, neither paper would be profitable because the shopping area is too small. Do I still sound sophomoric?”
“No, Jimmy.”
“So it’s a little late for me to change professions, Kat. I have to go right on living with this lady I thought was so exciting. I’m an assistant advertising salesman. If I call myself a pimp, I sound too dramatically cynical, I guess. Put it this way. She isn’t what I thought she was, but I’m used to living with her now. I’m good at what I have to do. If somebody else did it, it wouldn’t be done as well, and the lady would be that much worse off. But don’t ask for crusades, Kat. No lance, no armor, no horse. We come out strongly in favor of motherhood once a year, in May. We’re in favor of peace, education, public health, the right to work, church-going, weak unions, lower taxes …”
A Flash of Green Page 28
