Elmore Leonard - The Big Bounce

Today he had waited until 5:30, giving Mr. Ritchie plenty of time to start back to Detroit. If Mr. Ritchie had still been here, Bob Jr. figured he could always say he’d come to check on the boat. Mr. Ritchie did that a lot on Sunday: he and Nancy would go out and fool around a couple of hours then tie up at the house instead of the yacht club so Mr. Ritchie could change, get right in his car, and head for Detroit. Then Bob Jr. would have to call the yacht club for somebody to come over and pick up the boat-a beauty sitting out there now, a thirty-eight footer, white with dark green trim, white and pickle green, like everything Mr. Ritchie owned: white house with a green sun deck over the lower level, green shrubs, green tile around the pool, green Mustang, green Lincoln, all the farm equipment green, a green and white Swiss-looking hunting lodge up back of the farm property. It was all right, Bob Jr. had decided, if you liked green and white, but his favorite colors, personally, were blue and gold, the colors of the uniforms they had worn at Holden Consolidated.

She came out in a light blue crew-neck sweater that looked nice with her dark hair, taking her time and not carrying a bottle or glasses, damn it. It was strange she walked so slow, a girl as itchy-bitchy as she generally was.

“I thought I had another set of keys,” Nancy said, “but I don’t.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you use the pickup.”

“That son of a bitch. He expects me to sit here all week waiting for him.”

Bob Jr.’s head was turned to watch her. “Isn’t that part of the deal?”

“The deal, Charlie, is none of your business.”

“Why don’t you get us some drinks?”

“I want to do something.”

“Well, let’s see,” Bob Jr. said. “We could go out in the boat.”

“I’ve been out in the boat.”

“What do you do out there?”

Nancy stood with her arms folded, looking out past the edge of the bluff, at the lake that reached to the horizon. She didn’t bother to answer him.

“You do some fishing?”

She gave him a look.

“I know what. You go swimming bare-ass and then he chases you around the boat.”

“Right,” Nancy said. “How did you know?”

“Come on, let’s go out. Just till dark.”

“Your wife will be wondering about you.”

“She went down to Bad Axe to visit her mother.”

“With all the little kiddies? While Daddy-what do you tell her Daddy’s doing?”

“Come on, let’s go out in the boat.”

“I don’t want to go out in the boat.”

“Then, get us something to drink. Hey, some Cold Ducks.”

“I want to do something.”

“That’s something.”

“I want to go out.”

“And ride some boys off the road?”

She was looking at him now. “You wouldn’t have enough nerve.”

“I know something better to do.”

“You wouldn’t have the nerve to take me out,” she said then. “Would you? You’ll sneak in here when Ray’s gone, but you wouldn’t take me out, would you?”

“Like where?”

“ Out . I don’t know.”

“There’s no reason. You got everything you want right here.”

“I want to go out,” Nancy said. “Do you want to go out with me or do you want to go home?”

It was almost seven by the time they reached Geneva Beach. Bob Jr. said well, tell me what you want to do, you want to do something so bad. Nancy told him she’d let him know.

“Well, if we’re going driving, I got to get some cigarettes.” Bob Jr. angled-parked near the drugstore and went inside.

Nancy waited in the pickup truck, her gaze moving slowly over the people who idled past on the sidewalk. After a minute or so she sat up on the seat and began combing her hair in the rearview mirror. When she stopped, the comb still in her hair, she edged to the side, looking past her own reflection. For a moment she sat still. Then she turned so she could look at them directly: Jack Ryan and the heavyset man standing by the restaurant across the street. They moved along the sidewalk, waited for the Shore Road light, and crossed over toward the Pier Bar.

When Bob Jr. came out of the drugstore, her hair was combed and she said to him, “I know where I want to go.”

WHEN NANCY HAYES was sixteen she liked to babysit. She didn’t have to babysit, she could have had a date almost any night of the week. She didn’t need the money, either; her father sent her a check for $100 every month in an envelope marked PERSONAL that came the same day her mother received her alimony check. Nancy babysat because she liked to.

It was while she and her mother were living in Fort Lauderdale in a white $30,000 house with jalousy windows and terrazzo floors and a small curved swimming pool in the yard, not quite seven miles from the ocean. Not far from them, on the other side of the Ocean Mile Shopping Center, the houses were larger, on canals, some with cruisers moored to the dock. The people who lived here were not year-round residents but stayed usually from January through Easter. They went to several parties a week and those with young children, if they were lucky, got Nancy Hayes to babysit for them. They liked Nancy: really a cute kid with the dark hair and brown eyes and cute little figure in her T-shirt and hip-huggers. She was also polite. She stayed awake. And she usually brought a book.

The book was a good touch. She would bring one of the Russians or an autobiography and leave it on the coffee table by the couch until it was time to go, moving her bookmark thirty or forty pages before the people came home. What Nancy liked to do the first few times she sat for someone was look through the house. She would wait until the children were asleep, then she would begin, usually in the living room, and work toward the master bedroom. Desks were good if they had letters in them or a checkbook to look through. Kitchens and dining rooms were boring. Florida or family rooms had possibilities only. But bedrooms were always fun.

Nancy never found anything really startling, like letters from a married man under the woman’s underwear or dirty pictures in her husband’s drawer. The closest she came to that was a copy of a nudist magazine beneath three layers of starched white shirts and-one other time-a revolver in with the socks and handkerchiefs. But the revolver wasn’t loaded and there weren’t any bullets in the drawer. It was usually that kind of letdown, expecting to find something and not finding it. Still, the actual looking was fun, the anticipation that she might , one of these evenings, discover something good.

Another thing Nancy liked to do was break things. She would drop a glass or a plate in the kitchen every once in a while, but the real bounce was breaking something expensive, a lamp or figurine or mirror. Though it couldn’t be two houses in the same neighborhood or more than once in the same house-or at all if the child she was taking care of was old enough to talk. The best way was to sit on the living room floor rolling a ball to the two- or three-year-old, then pick the ball up and throw it at a lamp. If she missed, she would keep trying. Eventually she would shatter the lamp and little Greg would be blamed. (“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Peterson, he was pulling on the cord and before I could get to him-“) Gosh, she was sorry.

Another thing that was fun she did with the fathers when they drove her home. She didn’t always do it, or with all the fathers. To qualify, the father had to be in his thirties or early forties, a sharp dresser, good-looking in a middle-aged way and at least half in the bag each time he drove her home. To do it right required care and patience over a period of months, during a dozen or so rides home. The first time she would be very nice, her book in her lap, and not speak unless asked a direct question. If asked a question, it was usually about the book or how’s school. Somehow, then, in answering-telling her grade in school or describing the book, which seemed pretty deep for a young girl-she would let him know she was going on seventeen. During the next several rides home she would be increasingly more at ease, friendly, outgoing, sincere; she would come off as a serious reader, a bright girl interested in what was going on in the world, especially the teenage world with its changing fads and attitudes. Sometimes the discussion was so interesting they would arrive at Nancy’s house and, parked in the drive, continue talking for another ten or fifteen minutes. Sooner or later then, usually between the fifth and eighth ride home, talking as they pulled into the drive, she would zap him.