Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“River sand,” he explained. “This sand here is coral, it’s powdery, they don’t like to use it for mixing up cement. So that boat there goes back and forth, usually brings sand, sometimes gravel. All by sail-power, no engines.”

“How long does it take?”

“Five to six hours out, four to five back. They’ll shovel it out tonight, head back early in the morning, load it up again when they get to the mainland, lay over the night, and head back this way day after tomorrow.”

She looked out again at the sloop, now beyond them, making better speed than it looked. “Shit,” she said, “and I thought it was romantic.”

“It is romantic,” Kirby said.

She thought about that. “I see what you mean,” she said.

“Just sailing and sailing,” Kirby said. “A few hours shoveling at each end, that’s not much of a price to pay.”

“No price to pay at all,” she said, sounding bitter. “When all you got to shovel is sand .” She knocked back her drink and looked at him. “How about you, Kirby?” she said. “You romantic?”

“Very,” Kirby said, and a hoarse voice shouted, “Tandy?”

Daddy was back, with three San Pedrans carrying cardboard cartons. Daddy barked orders and distributed U.S. greenbacks, while Tandy took Kirby’s glass and her own and made fresh drinks in the galley. Daddy and the drinks were finished at the same time, and Tandy made introductions: “Daddy, this is Kirby Galway. I just picked him up in the bar there.”

If that was supposed to be provocative, Daddy ignored it. Sticking his hand out, staring at Kirby hard , he said, “Darryl Pinding, Senior.”

“How do you do, sir?” (It seemed to Kirby that Darryl Pinding, Senior, would enjoy hearing “sir” just once from a younger man.)

“I do fine, Kirby. And yourself?”

“I have nothing to complain about,” Kirby told him.

“Good. Tandy, did you make me a drink?”

“I will now.”

She went off to do so, and Darryl Pinding, Senior, gestured at the blue vinyl, saying, “Sit down, Kirby, take a load off. What business you in?”

It was fun talking with Darryl Pinding, Senior. He was a rich man who thought his money proved he was smart. He knew a lot about three or four things, and thought that meant he knew everything about everything. He liked to spray his imperfect knowledge around like a male lion spraying semen. He was a big man in his 50s, probably a football player in college, now gone very thick but not particularly soft. Sun, sea, high life, and skin cancer had turned him piebald, particularly on his broad high forehead, where Kirby counted patches of four separate shades of color, not counting the liver spots.

Tandy grew grumpy when it became clear that Kirby was not going to cut short the conversation with Daddy. She threatened to leave, then left, while Kirby and Darryl (they were both on first-name terms now) chatted on.

It was established early that strict legality had never been an absolute prerequisite in Darryl’s life; a plus. Somewhat later it was made clear that Darryl had done a bit of smuggling for profit in his life — a boat like this, why not? — and had enjoyed the raffish self-image as much as the money; another plus. Treading slowly, Kirby established that Darryl did know something about pre-Columbian artifacts, though by no means as much as he thought he knew. Darryl also understood vaguely that the southern governments were trying to stem the flow of antiquities northward, and he thought they were damn fools and pig-ignorant for taking such a position; a major plus.

But then came the down side: “Let me tell you something, Kirby,” Darryl said four or five drinks later, hunkering a bit closer on the vinyl. “My son is a faggot. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

“Uhh, yes.”

“I don’t know how it happened. God knows he didn’t have a domineering mother or an absent father, but there it is. Darryl Junior is gay as a jay.”

“Ah,” said Kirby.

“He’s an artist,” Darryl said, with an angry sneer in his voice. “Out in San Francisco. Artist. These pre-Columbian things, statues, all this stuff. You know what it all is?”

Kirby looked alert.

“Art,” Darryl said. “It’s all art.”

“I guess it is,” Kirby said.

“I hate art.” Darryl nodded. “Nuff said?”

“Nuff said,” Kirby agreed.

He had dinner at El Tulipan with a girl named Donna who ran one of the gift shops in town. They had drinks after at Fido’s, listening to Rick play the piano, Rick announcing to the world at large, “I’m getting drunk, but I never make mistakes.” Donna had to retire early, so Kirby roved on, not expecting much, having used up his psychic energy on Darryl Pinding, Senior, just fooling around now.

Back at Fido’s around midnight, there was Tandy at the bar, talking with two American college boys. She left them, carried her glass over to Kirby, and said, “You and Daddy all talked out?”

“Your father’s a forceful personality,” Kirby said.

“I didn’t see you fight him off much,” she said.

Kirby looked at her. “Honey,” he said, “if you haven’t got ahead of him in thirty years, how do you expect me to do it in an hour?”

She blinked. She frowned. “Twenty-eight,” she said, and knocked back some of her drink.

“My apologies.”

“The sun ages you,” she said, forgiving him. “Every fucking thing ages you, come to that. Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere yet.”

Surprised, she managed to focus on him, saying, “You don’t have a hotel room?”

“Not yet.”

She laughed, a throaty chuckle that suggested the baritone she would be in 20 years. “You’re a damn beach bum!” she said.

“I told you earlier,” he patiently explained, “I flew in this morning, thought I might fly out again this afternoon, never got around to it.”

“That’s right, you’re a pilot, I forgot. Come on and sleep on the Cow.”

He considered that. “Daddy?”

“When Daddy sleeps, Daddy sleeps. That’s one place, Kirby, where I will not put up with trouble.”

He gave her an admiring grin. “Tandy, you’re an interesting woman. You have depths.”

“Check it out,” she said.

If Daddy slept through all that, his subconscious must have thought they were sailing through a hurricane. Tandy’s elegantly cramped quarters were below, a long isosceles triangle beneath the foredeck, while Daddy slept in the convertible sitting lounge above. A small air conditioner competed with the capacity of two active human bodies to generate heat, and lost. Everybody’d had a bit too much to drink, Tandy refused to permit any light at all, and The Laughing Cow bobbed and rolled in its mooring in arhythmic sequences that Kirby could never quite adapt to. The whole thing became as much an engineering problem as anything else, but one well worth the solving. Slippery rubbery flesh slid and tumbled, muscles moved beneath the skin, arms and hands reached for purchase and slid away. “I think it goes like this,” Kirby said.

“Oh, Jesus. That’s the way, that’s the way.”

Kirby chewed on a nipple that tasted of salt. Breath in his ear sounded like far-off surf. The rhythms of sea and man merged and separated, merged and separated. “God, I’m thirsty!” Tandy cried, and collapsed like a sail, in the calm after a storm. Kirby had never heard a woman say precisely that in such a situation before.