Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“But...”

“Let me tell you the whole thing, dear. I told you we would be dreadful sneaks until I am sure. And that gives you an opportunity to have your cake and eat it too, you know. I was wondering if that is the kind of man you are.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Have you forgotten the long talk we had in the middle of the night? I guess you could call it the confession hour. As I understand it, if you weren’t lying, I’m the second woman in your life, and Betty was the first. Did I say ‘was’? Excuse me. We’re keeping us a secret from the world, for a little while. And from Betty. That gives you quite an interesting life, doesn’t it? Two women saying yes to you. Does it give you a sense of power, Oliver?”

“Crissy, believe me, that wasn’t anything like...”

“Correct me if I read you wrong, dear. You said that you and your dear little Betty have been going steady for three years, and two years ago you — ah — slipped. Wasn’t that the word you used? And you vowed, both of you, it would never happen again, but it did. And you finally, after you’d slipped enough times, decided that as you were to be married eventually anyway, you might as well enjoy each other.”

“But it isn’t...”

“Perhaps I’m jealous, darling. Do you mind terribly? When you aren’t here with me, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t be lifting her little skirts. She’s probably very attractive. And quite a lot younger than I am.”

“It was just kid stuff. I know that now, Crissy. It didn’t mean anything.”

“And you’ll never touch her again?”

“Never. Honest. I swear I won’t.”

“Thank you, dear. But I do think you should put temptation out of your path.”

“What do you mean?”

“Break it up, dear. End it. I don’t care how you manage it, but I think it should be all over within — three days. If you are going to get a hundred and ten percent of me, I demand a hundred and ten percent of you. I don’t share, dear. I don’t believe in sharing. You might be tempted to — find out if she is just the way you remember.”

“That’s — awful fast. What will I say to her?”

“My God, haven’t you two ever quarreled at all? Don’t you know by now what she gets mad at? Get into a brawl with her and walk out. Or just tell her very coldly you’ve out-grown her. There must be dozens of ways.”

“It’s going to hit her pretty hard.”

She thought, picked her words carefully. “I love your gentleness, and your kindness. But I want my man to be strong. If I can’t ask you to do such a small thing as that, how do you think it makes me feel? Secure? Loved? Perhaps — you’re not really ready for the big leagues, dear, where the grown-ups are. Maybe you’d be better off with your little Betty person after all.”

“No! Listen. I’ll do it. I just said it’s going to be hard on her. She thinks we’re — you know. All set. There — there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

She lowered herself, dug her face into his throat, sighed comfortably and said, “We have to be strong, dear. Both of us. Strong and selfish. We have to remember that there isn’t anybody or anything else in the world that means a damn, not really. We’re all that counts. You and I. Oliver and Cristen. Hold me, darling.”

Soon, in an automatic and almost absent-minded way she began the little trickeries of arousing him, thinking as she did so that he would get rid of Betty just as he had promised. It was the first small test of how strong his infatuation was becoming. It was astonishing how compulsive the flesh could become when it was their first affair with a mature woman, rich, ripe and skilled, and so startlingly without shame or reserve, so unexpectedly frank in the giving and taking of pleasure, so impatient when her cues were misunderstood or overlooked. Then, as their clumsiness and timidity diminished, they were made ever more blind by sensation until, finally, it was such a necessary thing for them to keep experiencing, they would sacrifice everything else in the world to sustain it, and, finally, would reach that stage wherein all of life outside the bedroom walls was a vagueness, a dream-walking hallucination, a place of those shifting shadows which had once been real people, real objects, real goals and ambitions.

The practices demanded only a portion of her attention, and her thoughts ranged far as she pleasured the boy. There was one daydream that was becoming more real to her each time she experienced it. It happened a long time from now. It happened after everything had gone just as she had planned it, and after she was safe, and far away. There would be the years of heats and wanting, and at long last that too would be all burned away, and peace would come to her.

It will be a faraway place, she thought, a house above a lagoon, and I shall be old. I shall be wise. I will have young servants, brown and beautiful and smiling people who love me. There will be legends about me, none of them true. When the fires are burned out, then what is left will be goodness and kindness, and I will be able to forgive them all...

The boy slid into the heaviness of spent sleep, and she got up and freshened herself, went back and set her alarm for six thirty and was soon napping comfortably beside him.

By noon of that same Friday, Samuel Boylston had been in Nassau forty-eight hours. He had not been able to get away as quickly as planned, hoping each hour would bring word of the fate of the Muñeca, and had arrived Wednesday noon by Pan Am from Miami.

Before he left he had received a wire from Jonathan Dye saying that he was staying at something called the Harbour Central House on Victoria Avenue. Sam had arranged to have a rental car reserved for him and waiting at the airport. It was a small Triumph sedan, weakly air conditioned. The rental clerk gave him a Nassau map and he studied it for a little while before driving off. He had been in Nassau at other times for both business and pleasure, and it did not take long for him to refresh his memory of the layout of streets, and it took no longer than the trip from Windsor Field to the city for him to adjust his alarm system to driving on the wrong side of the street.

He found the Harbour Central House two blocks up the hill above Bay Street and parked in front just as Jonathan came with long loose lanky strides up from Bay Street. He was a big knuckly young man with coarse black hair and that variety of tough, underprivileged-looking skin which remains pale despite all exposure. He had a calm dignity which Sam interpreted as an infuriating kind of self-approval.

Sam got out for the awkward measure of the handshake and said, “Any word yet?”

“No sir. It’s sort of — slacking off.”

“How?”

“There’s only about so much area to cover. I can show you on the chart I’ve got, sir. It’s not they’re not anxious to do everything. There’s the Aircraft Crash and Rescue people, a lot of them volunteers. And the commercial aircraft people. And the Marine Operator telling all the pleasure boats to be on the lookout. The people at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs have been wonderful. But the weather has been perfect, and they know exactly when the Muñeca left Nassau last Friday morning, just 5 days ago today, heading for Little Harbour in the Berry Islands. They didn’t take off until maybe ten thirty in the morning, and Mr. Kayd didn’t call in at nine on Saturday morning. They cruised at sixteen miles an hour and usually got where they were going before dark. So the search area wouldn’t be more than a hundred and twenty or thirty miles across. But they’ve covered three times that much area, sir. The wind has been out of the east and the northeast just about every day, and they’ve allowed for drift. They haven’t said it to me, and they won’t say it to you, but you get the feeling — they think that somehow it sunk in deep water. They’re going through some motions still, but...”