John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

I went back knowing that whatever had been wrong with me, any restlessness, irritability, mooniness, had come to an abrupt end. Seeing him hanging and turning so slowly had brought me back to the fullness of life, probably just because his was so evidently gone. I was full of offensive cheer, bounding health, party plans.

Three months later, on a windy gray afternoon in January, Bridget Pearson appeared. She apologized for showing up at Bahia Mar without any advance notice at all. She said it had been an impulse.

She came aboard The Busted Flush and sat in the lounge and took neat small sips of her drink and seemed to smile too quickly and too often. The weeks had gaunted her down and in some eerie way she had acquired that same slightly haggard elegance that Helena had evidenced at the time we sailed away in the Likely Lady . The long legs were the same, and the way she held her hands, and I knew that all of her was so much the same that it would be like an old love revisited.

She told me that she was restless, wondering what to do with herself, thinking maybe she might go on a trip of some sort. She said she kept coming up with strange little inconsistencies in her memories of Tom Pike. They bothered her. As if there had been something warped and strange that she had been too close to. Was everything the way she believed it had been? Could I help her understand?

Why, now, don’t you trouble your purty little head about a thang, little sweetheart. Why, for goodness sake, ol’ Uncle Trav will take you on off a-cruisin’ on this here comfortable and luxurious ol’ crock houseboat, and he’ll just talk kindly to you and comfort you and love you up good, and that’ll put the real sunshine back in your purty little smile.

I thought of what it would do to her eyes and to the shape of her mouth if I ever told her how it had been for her mother and me aboard the Likely Lady in that long-ago Bahama summertime. I tried to sort out the intervals. I am X years older than this lovely young lady and I was X years younger than her lovely mother.

No, thanks. It was too late for me to take a lead role in a maritime version of The Graduate . And even had it been possible under my present circumstances, I did not want to astound myself with the unavoidably queasy excitements of an incestuous sort of relationship.

I let too many long moments pass. I could sense that she had thought it all over quite carefully and had come with the definite purpose of opening the door a little way, thinking that I would take over from there. The half-stated offer was withdrawn. We made a little polite talk. I told her I had not seen anything particularly inconsistent about Tom Pike. And that was the truth. She said she was going to meet some friends in Miami and she had better go. I told her I was sorry she couldn’t stay longer. She turned when she was halfway along the dock and gave me a merry wave and went striding on, out of my life.

I went back below and freshened my drink and mixed some Plymouth with some fresh grapefruit juice for the lady.

She was sitting on the side of the big bed in the master stateroom, filing her nails. She wore a big fuzzy yellow towel wrapped and tucked around her. She lifted her head sharply to toss her dark hair back and looked at me with a twisted and cynical smile.

“A wealth of opportunity, McGee?”

“Or it never rains but it pours.”

“Let me see. Finders keepers, losers weepers. How did she seem?”

“Gaunt. Haunted. At loose ends.”

“Wanting comforting? How sweet! And did you tell the poor dear thing to come back some other day?”

“Any show of jealousy always comforts me,” I said, and gave her her drink. She sipped it and smiled her thanks and reached and put it on the top of the nearby locker. I stretched out behind her and propped my head up on a pair of pillows.

“Sorry I was here?” she asked.

“Been the same thing. I would have had to go with my instinct. And it said no dice.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“And rich. And talented.”

“Hmmm!” she said. The file made little rasping sounds. I sipped my drink. “Mr. McGee, sir? Which really surprised you most? Her showing up or me showing up?”

“You. Definitely. Looked down from the sundeck and saw you standing there and nearly choked to death.” I reached an idle finger and hooked it into the back of the wrapped and tucked towel. One gentle tug untucked it and it fell, pooling around her. She slowly straightened her long, slender, lovely back. She reached and picked up her drink and took half of it down, then replaced it.

“May I assume you are quite serious, Mr. McGee?”

“It is crummy weather out there, and you have an extraordinarily fine back, and you were pleasantly bitchy about Miss Pearson, so I am serious, my dear.”

“Shall I bother to finish these last three fingernails?”

“Please do, Mrs. Holton.”

“I shall try to finish them, Mr. McGee. I think it would be good for my character, what little I have left.”

So I listened to the busy little buzz of the nail file and admired her, and sipped the drink, and thought about the way she had looked that day I had watched her spray-painting that old blue metal chaise.

And then I heard the wind-blown January rain move in from the sea and across the beaches and the boat basin and roar softly and steadily down on the weather decks of my houseboat.