A Tan and Sandy Silence

by John D. MacDonald

  “What did Joshua say?”

  “Thanks.”

  “No questions about the kind of help you asked of him?”

  “Just one. He said that before he took the name of Joshua, he had clouted cars to feed his habit. He said all he wanted to know was whether, if we had committed a sin, we repented of it. I said that even though I didn’t think of it as a sin, I was going to pray for forgiveness. That’s when he nodded and said thanks and riffled the stack with his thumb and shoved it into the saddlebag on the trail bike. I walked out of the airport parking lot, and he drove the bike out and waited for me down the road from the airport. Long way around coming back here, too. I had the idea you’d be dead when I got here.”

  “Meyer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get me home. Get me back to the Flush. Please.”

  “Let’s say goodnight to the tribe.”

  I did a lot of sleeping. I was getting to be very good at it. I could get up at noon, shower, work up a big breakfast, and be ready for my nap at three. The gray fog rolled way back into the furthest corners of my mind. People left me alone. Meyer made certain of that. He passed the word. McGee has pulled the hole in after him. And he bites.

  Meyer would come over during that part of each day when I was likely to be up and about.

  We’d walk over and swim. We would come back and play chess. I did not want to be among people. Not yet. So he would cook, or I would cook, or he would go out and bring something back.

  The longer we delayed the decision, the easier it was to make. The random parts fell together in a pattern we could find no reason to contradict. Harry Broll had grabbed his three-hundred-thousand loan in cash and fled with Lisa, the girlfriend he had promised to give up. Except for some irate creditors nobody was looking for him diligently. Harry’s wife had been reported missing in the Windward Islands, presumed drowned while swimming alone. Paul Dissat was missing too, possibly by drowning, but in his case it would more likely be suicide, emotional depression, and anxiety over some kind of disease of the blood. He had requested sick leave.

  Jillian had been astoundingly sweet and helpful and had even lived up to her promise to ask no questions. She had flown down to Grenada and stayed a few days and with the knowing assistance of an attorney friend had obtained my packet from the hotel safe and my other possessions from their storage room.

  The favor was, of course, Jilly’s concession to apology, to regret. When she and her new friend got back from Grenada, she came over with him to give me back my belongings. They had a drink with us, and they did not stay long. Meyer arrived before they left.

  “I keep forgetting his name,” Meyer said later.

  “Foster Cramond. Still a close personal friend of both his ex-wives.”

  “Rich ex-wives.”

  “Of course.”

  “Likable,” Meyer said judiciously. “Good manners. No harm in him. Good at games, what? Court tennis, polo, sailing. Splendid reflexes. Did you notice the fast draw with that solid gold lighter? Twelfth of a second. Interesting phenomenon when they looked at each other.”

  “What? Oh, you mean the visible steam that came out of her ears? And the way he went from a sixteen collar to an eighteen? Yes. I noticed.”

  “Travis, what was your reaction when you met her new friend?”

  “Relief at not running into some big fuss about breaking my word to visit her for a week. And … some indignation, I guess. In all honesty, some indignation.”

  “And you wished you could change your mind again?”

  I let his question hang in the air for a long time, for three moves, one involving tightening my defense against his queen’s bishop. I found a response that created a new problem for him. While he was studying it, I leaned back.

  “About changing my mind. No. My instincts hadn’t turned bad when Harry came here. He had no intention of shooting me. So let’s suppose I’m slower by a half a step or a full step. Maybe I’m old enough and wise enough to move into positions where I don’t need the speed. The only thing I know is that I am going to run out of luck in the future, just as I have in the past. And when I run out, I am going to have to make myself some luck. I know that what counts is the feeling I get when I make my own luck. The way I feel then is totally alive. In every dimension. In every possible way. It wouldn’t have to be Jillian. I could lay back, watch the traffic, select a rich lady, and retire myself to stud. But that would be half-life. I have an addiction. I’m hooked on the smell, taste, and feel of the nearness of death and on the way I feel when I make my move to keep it from happening. If I knew I could keep it from happening, there’d be no taste to it at all.”

  Meyer gave that a lot of thought, and then he gave the game a lot of thought. Finally he said, “When in doubt, castle.” He moved his king into the short corner, the rook standing guard. “Travis, I am very very glad that you were able to make us some luck. I am glad to be here. But …”

  “But?”

  “Something else is wrong with you.”

  “I dream some rotten things. I’ve got my memory almost all straightened out. Picked up nearly all the cards off the floor and put them back in the right order. But I have real rotten dreams. Last night I was buying a shirt. The girl said it was made in the islands, and they weren’t sized correctly and I should try it on. When I put it on and came out, I realized that it was exactly the same print that Lisa had worn that first night I knew her. A dashiki. As I started to tell the girl that I didn’t want it, she came up to me quickly, and she reached out, and she snapped something onto the front of the shirt. It made a clack. It was a big, round, white thing, too heavy for the front of a shirt. I turned it around, and I saw that the sound had been the lower jaw of a skull being closed with the fabric caught between the teeth. It was a very white, polished, delicate skull, and at first it looked feral, some predator’s skull. Then I knew it was Lisa’s skull. I tried to get the girl to take it off, but she said it went with that particular shirt. No other shirt. Just that one. And I woke up.”

  “Good Christ,” Meyer whispered softly.

  “But usually I don’t dream at all.”

  “Be thankful, Travis. Is something else wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the words for it yet?”

  “I think it’s getting to the point where there will be words for it. When there are words, I’ll try them on you.”

  “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 lov
e 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 after-deck.

  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 ship! 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 the one left. The hairy one.

  BY JOHN D. MACDONALD

  The Brass Cupcake

  Murder for the Bride

  Judge Me Not

  Wine for the Dreamers

  Ballroom of the Skies

  The Damned

  Dead Low Tide

  The Neon Jungle

  Cancel All Our Vows

  All These Condemned

  Area of Suspicion

  Contrary Pleasure

  A Bullet for Cinderella

  Cry Hard, Cry Fast

  You Live Once

  April Evil

  Border Town Girl

  Murder in the Wind

  Death Trap

  The Price of Murder

  The Empty Trap

  A Man of Affairs

  The Deceivers

  Clemmie

  Cape Fear (The Executioners)

  Soft Touch

  Deadly Welcome

  Please Write for Details

  The Crossroads

  The Beach Girls

  Slam the Big Door

  The End of the Night

  The Only Girl in the Game

  Where Is Janice Gantry?

  One Monday We Killed Them All

  A Key to the Suite

  A Flash of Green

  The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

  On the Run

  The Drowner

  The House Guest

  End of the Tiger and Other Stories

  The Last One Left

  S*E*V*E*N

  Condominium

  Other Times, Other Worlds

  Nothing Can Go Wrong

  The Good Old Stuff

  One More Sunday

  More Good Old Stuff

  Barrier Island

  A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974

  THE TRAVIS MCGEE SERIES

  The Deep Blue Good-by

  Nightmare in Pink

  A Purple Place for Dying

  The Quick Red Fox

  A Deadly Shade of Gold

  Bright Orange for the Shroud

  Darker Than Amber

  One Fearful Yellow Eye

  Pale Gray for Guilt