Elmore Leonard - The Big Bounce

“Sounds like fun.”

“We can go way out with it. I mean way out.”

“And do what?”

“Fish. Whatever you want.” He was staring at her. “I’ll have to take you out sometime,” Bob Jr. said.

“When?” Nancy asked. Like that, nailing it down.

After the first time, when he had to come in close because she didn’t know his boat, Nancy swam from the beach and Bob Jr. let the boat drift in to meet her, watching her nice easy strokes, then pulled her glistening out of the water, his stomach tightening and his shoulder muscles popping out.

Then heading out full throttle, Bob Jr. sat sideways at the wheel under the canvas top and Nancy stretched out in a plastic chair back in the deckwell by the 95-horse Merc, giving him something to think about when he was home with his wife from Holden and the boy eight and the boy six.

The third time out she gave him something to think about the rest of his life. While he was looking forward, watching the bow take the lake swells, Nancy took off the bra of her bikini and sat back again closing her eyes.

She would love to see his reaction when he looked around, but that wasn’t the way to do it. This was the way: eyes closed, very casual, a kind of natural innocence. Finally the motor was shut off and she could feel the boat drifting and his weight on the deck.

“Boy, you take a sunbath, you like to get it all over.”

She opened her eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“I’ve heard about topless suits-but, man.”

He was standing over her and now eased down to one knee and rested an arm on her chair. “You don’t realize how tan a person is,” he said, “till you see the difference, huh?”

“I’d like to be tan all over by the end of the summer.”

“Well, listen, go ahead. Nobody’s going to see you out here.”

“I don’t think I could.”

“Come on, who’s going to see you?”

“You would.”

“Me? Hell, you think I haven’t seen a girl without any clothes on before?”

“Sure,” Nancy said. “Your wife.”

Bob Jr. laughed. “Some besides her even. Hey, come on.” Serious again.

“Please,” Nancy said. “Let me get to know you a little better.” She smiled, almost shyly. She closed her eyes, leaning back and resting her head on the aluminum frame, giving him a good profile from nose to navel.

After a minute passed, she knew he wasn’t going to grab her. He wasn’t going to risk it. He had something here that had never been within his reach before and he wasn’t going to blow it by grabbing her the first time out.

They swam off the boat for a while and on the way back in Bob Jr. said why didn’t they do it again tomorrow? Nancy said she was sorry, she was expecting Ray to call. She avoided him the next few days, watching from the bluff as the boat came nosing in out of the deep water, then stepping back out of sight as he lowered the revs and rumbled close to shore.

The following week she pulled up next to his pickup at a Geneva Beach stoplight, seeing his vacant expression crack open into a big dumb grin as he looked her way and leaned out the window.

“Hey! Where you been, stranger?”

Going out the next day, Bob Jr. was relaxed and smiling, smoking one cigarette after another as he pointed out cloud formations and identified landmarks along the shore and commented on how nice the boat was handling.

“You know,” he said finally, cutting the motor, “I don’t think I ever met a girl like you before.”

“Maybe it’s just a feeling,” Nancy said.

“Sure it’s a feeling, a pretty good one.”

“Maybe I understand you better than your wife does.” She thought: And he says-

“You know, it’s funny you should say that.”

“I’ve never met a man quite like you before,” Nancy said.

Bob Jr. drew on his cigarette and flicked it over the side, way out, then looked at her again.

“You going to take your top off?”

“Not today.”

“What do you mean not today?”

“It’s too cold.”

“Too cold! For Christ sake, it’s eighty-nine degrees out!”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I must have a chill or something. Do you have a sweater?”

He didn’t say much on the way in. He kept looking at her sitting back there with her legs tucked beneath her and his sweatshirt down over her knees. She would smile at him every once in a while, letting him know that if he wanted her badly enough, it was going to take more than a boat ride, buddy.

Now, while Bob Jr. was still trying to find out what exactly it would take, Nancy had shifted her interest.

She had a clear mental picture of Ryan standing by Ray’s car showing her his muscle. She had met a few Jack Ryans before, in Florida, and she could see him at the dresser combing his hair, looking at himself in the mirror, or in the kitchen opening a can of beer: dark brown and stringy hard above and below the tan lines, thin and slow-moving, a poser.

But there was more to him than that, more to him than the posing and the police record-the resisting arrest and breaking and entering and what he did to the crew leader. Nancy had a feeling about Ryan. Not an emotional feeling, a girl-boy feeling, but a clearly focused zeroed-in feeling, a seeing-him-and-knowing-right-away feeling that Jack Ryan, or someone just like him, was the answer: her way out of here with a lot more than furniture and a few clothes.

The idea had come to her suddenly right after seeing him at the migrant camp. The idea was wild, so far out she had only smiled at first, thinking of what it would do to Ray Ritchie. But the more she thought of the idea, the more she liked it. It was fantastic, way out, and beyond anything she had ever done before. The trouble was, the whole thing would depend on Ryan. It would depend first on whether or not he was staying around Geneva Beach instead of going home, and second, it would depend on his nerve. She had a feeling that if he really wanted to stay, if he had a good reason to stay, he would.

If he didn’t have a reason to stay, she might have to give him one. Which shouldn’t be too hard. Then play with him to see what he was really like.

But the whole deal, staying and going along with her idea, both, depended really on how much nerve he had.

Which she would have to find out.

“HEY, YOU GOT TIME to have one with me?” Mr. Majestyk was swiveled around, heavy legs apart, his heels hooked in the rungs of the bar stool.

Ryan had noticed him, three stools away: the guy looked like an ex-pro guard hunched over the bar, leaning on his stubby arms and a dead cigar in the ashtray. He had been talking to the bartender about fishing, how the perch must have all been asleep today, and Ryan had listened because they were close and he could hear them. He was going to have another beer, so if the guy wanted to buy, it was okay. He could leave anytime he wanted. The guy moved over and it was funny how they got to talking right away: Mr. Majestyk mentioning the picture in the newspaper, Ryan with the baseball bat, and saying how he had recognized Luis Camacho.

“Sure, I see that spig before,” Mr. Majestyk said.

He had kicked Camacho and a girl spik off his private beach about two weeks before. “People walk by, that’s all right, along the water. But this guy spread out a blanket and him and the girl are laying there on private property. I tell him nice he’s got to leave, this is private property. And he gets abusive. Christ, you should hear the language. You’ve heard it, but I mean in front of the people staying at my place. I want to deck the son of a bitch, but how does that look? What kind of a place is this, the owner gets in a fight? You have to handle it better than that.”