Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

It gave her a sour amusement to let him believe Fer had left her enough money to live in the same style as when he was alive. She had him take her cruising alone, knowing she was wasting money because of this foolish game of impressing her own hired captain, yet reluctant to end it. For a time she sought to solve the problem by making the job so unpleasant for him he would quit. She gave him the most menial chores and complained constantly about everything he did. But he refused to let it upset him and did all she asked with that amiable tolerance of someone humoring a child or a sick person. She learned, by talking to other boat people, why Staniker endured the abuse. He had captained the Odalisque for two years and more. And it was on his record that he had lost his own vessel in the Bahamas. Without a solid and impressive reference from the owner of the Odalisque he could not hope to find another position as good.

She stopped persecuting him. Weeks passed and she felt caught in a strange lethargy. She would not look directly at her future, at the step she would eventually have to take. While she still had the money to finance the venture, she would have to go hunting, posing perhaps as the stunned and tragic widow, going alone to some likely resort area where she could find a man of years and means and loneliness, a man who would believe every detail of the history she would invent, and who would marry her.

At her age she knew marriage was far safer than any other arrangement. She had no doubt of her ability to find such a man and, having found him, capture him completely regardless of all protestations by relatives and advisors. But she would be trapped then, for good. The contract would have to be honored, because her past could not stand the close scrutiny it would receive if any divorce action was brought. And the old man, she suspected, would live forever. She had not felt trapped in her arrangement with Fer. But he had not been with her day and night. She knew she needed the sense of freedom, whether she used it or not. Her mirror told her that she was attractive, vital and exciting. Yet she knew in her heart that when her looks began to go, they would go very quickly no matter how desperate her efforts to save them. She could not settle for less than marriage, and, in marriage, for less than what Fer had planned to give her.

In her mood of listlessness, in April, three months after Fer had died, she had Staniker take the Odalisque on down to the keys. In a bemused, half-hearted way she seduced Staniker, overcoming a suspicious reluctance on his part that it might be a trap, an excuse for firing him. She had not been with a man for months, nor with a man like Staniker for years. Yet he was just as she had expected him to be, a powerful, sensuous and domineering animal, very knowing and skillful, lasting, heavily built, quickly resurgent. She matched his pace and needs, and they remained at anchor in the secluded bay for a week, using each other up, dwindling at last into that softened drowsy lethargy of the slack and emptied faces, the smudged eyes, the little sorenesses and stiffnesses of the flesh.

For a time she amused herself by seeing if she could turn his simple carnality into self-destructive infatuation. But he was an old dog who had trotted down a thousand alleys, and had learned that some of it was good and some of it was better. She knew that in their topside roles of owner and captain he was totally aware of her as Crissy Harkinson. But down in all the tumble of the broad bunk in the master stateroom, he was aware only of Female, of her as an anonymous volunteer in an ancient army, a familiar ritual of arms, heat, gasping, holding and bursting, varying from all the others in such minor detail of skill, endurance, demands and size he was not aware of any difference at all, and aware only of himself after all.

The episode made it seem pointless to continue any pretense with Garry Staniker. On the way back up Biscayne Bay she told him she had to get rid of the Odalisque, that she couldn’t afford it, or him, and she was going to take her personal belongings off it and turn it over to a broker. She said she would pay him through the month of May. The abruptness of it soured him, but she saw him work to bring his temper under control and guessed he had remembered the recommendation he would need from her.

Three days later he stopped at her house to pick up the promised letter. She was irritated at the broker’s pessimism. He had said, “It’s a good make and a good year. It’s in good shape. Two months ago, if you’d brought it in then, I could have moved it in maybe a week. But now — I don’t know. Things might not perk up until the season starts again. It’s hard to say. And you’re asking top dollar on it, you know.”

“I checked around. I looked at what they’re asking for boats like mine.”

He had shrugged. “Sure. They’re asking that. And the boats are right there waiting for a customer, right? I’ll do the best I can.”

She was further displeased to learn she would have to pay a monthly fee covering dockage, insurance and maintenance. It was considerably less than her costs had been, but she had not realized there would be any expense at all.

Her mood was not improved when Francisca woke her from a nap to tell her Staniker was in the living room. She had forgotten to write the promised letter. She went out and said, “Come back tomorrow, will you?”

“But I need it now, Crissy. Please. I can wait. You take your time. I’ll wait right here. Okay?”

She went back to her bedroom desk and started to write the To Whom it May Concern letter. After writing a paragraph she stopped, tore it up and took a fresh sheet of her note paper.

“Should anyone wish to know the reason why Captain Garry Staniker is no longer employed by me, I shall be happy to explain it over the telephone.” She wrote her phone number and signed her name. She took it to him and, smiling, handed it to him. He started to thank her, then stopped in the middle of a word.

“What kind of a letter is this?”

“You can read, Captain. It’s the very best kind.”

“But the way it sounds...”

“But it’s so much more personal than a letter, Garry. Really! I’m not good at letters. But when someone phones me about you, I can give you all kinds of marvelous recommendations.”

He was dubious and suspicious, but he had no choice but to accept her way of doing it. An elderly man phoned her at noon the next day and put his wife on an extension so they could both talk to her. They started off quite enthusiastic about Garry Staniker. But at the end the life had gone from their voices, and she knew they would not hire him. Yet she could have repeated every word she had said and Staniker would have approved. What he could not know was the timing and the intonation.

“Did you ever have any problem about drinking on the job, Mrs. Harkinson?”

“... No?” The long pause then a thoughtful No with a slight question. “No. None at all. I would say... no problem at all.” Very emphatic, yet with another curious pause.

The game amused her. After she hung up she had a fleeting sense of mild guilt, but she shrugged it off. Let Garry sweat it out too. This was the year for it. The Senator was gone, and the party was over. Why should anybody land on their feet? Mary Jane Staniker had found a job at Parker’s Marina. It wasn’t as though Garry would have to stop eating.

When she came back from a shopping trip in the late afternoon he was waiting for her, pacing up and down the terrace.

“What did you tell the McMurdies?”

“Don’t yell at me, Garry. It annoys me.”

“It annoys you!” She carried her packages into the bedroom, and he followed her in, talking all the way. She dropped the packages onto the chaise and turned to him and said, “Did I ask you to come in here, Captain?”