Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

But if he could never understand, and could not alter some inner perfectionistic coolness, some chronic insistence upon a world of reasonable cause and effect, why could she not accept the flaw for the sake of the rest of it? A presentable man, of scrupulous marital fidelity, fair in his dealings, achieving through all the long shrewd hours of work a position of status, social and professional, and the income to give her a life without want or drudgery. Father of her healthy son. Would she prefer a sickly romanticism, a variant of a Jonathan, baying his lover way across the Grand Bahama Bank? She could not seem to understand that it was a world wherein, if you faltered, They ripped you down quite casually and went on Their way.

Yet Lydia Jean was not a dreamer. She had that practical streak, that capacity for acceptance of the things she could not change. If he was forever incapable of change, she would not be so merciless. It meant she believed in something within him which he could not identify. And it meant that she believed that if he could grasp it, use it, the benefit would be as much his as hers.

It was paradox, and as so many times before during the months of their separation, it seemed to spin faster and faster in his mind until a kind of centrifugal force flung it out and away.

He looked out at the pool. The other two had left. The brown chunk solemnly practiced dives from the low board. He had bought the trunks and gone swimming because his body had begun to feel stale. He was accustomed to exercise. The chunk had challenged him to a race. He had heard her friends call her Toby. The races had given him the excuse to extend himself, the challenge to stretch the long muscles, empty the bottoms of the lungs. When it was just two lengths, she could beat him in free style, most of her advantage coming from the quick racing turn she knew. Three lengths was the best for them, a tossup. When they had tried four lengths, he had won as decisively as she won in the two-length competition.

Then he had gone in and phoned Lyd. Optimism born of exertion. But it hadn’t worked out.

He watched the Toby girl. She was trying swans, and getting good elevation off the low board. She would eel out of the pool, climb up onto the board, stand at a measured distance from the end, use both thumbs to hook her pale wet hair away from her eyes, stand very still, then take her steps, land at the very end, and take a maximum spring from the fiberglass board. In the sealed room with the air conditioning humming, it was a silent performance out there.

Her suit was black and white, formed of two panels, front and back, with red lacing up the sides across the two inch gap between the panels, brown healthy young flesh bulging in diamond patterns against the tension of the lacing. Her thighs were too heavy. Her hips and breasts were hearty, shoulders broad, waist narrow and limber. The muscles of her back, contours softened by the little layer of woman-fat under the wet brown hide, moved smoothly and with precision.

Drowsy from exertion, depressed by Lydia Jean’s response, he drifted into erotic fantasy. He brought the brown girl into the room, drew the transparent blue draperies across the window wall, pressed the night-lock button on the door. He would take her gently out of the suit. Her body would be wet, scented with soap, chlorine, and the healthiness of flesh. Tremblingly apprehensive, goose-pimpled, pleading softly while he pressed her gently down and...

Outside, as if on cue, the Toby girl went halfway out the board, turned around, sat and stretched out, face turned toward the sun. A great grinding spasm of lust catapulted him up out of drowsiness, a wanting that was as vivid as great pain, obliterating everything but itself, as pain does. In the constraint of the built-in support of the cheap swim trunks, he bulged hard as marble. Shocked by the intensity, he sat up and caught his breath and took a derisive look at the lonely man far from home. The chunk could not be more than sixteen years old. Under the ragged edge of the bangs which half concealed her eyebrows was the round uncommitted face of childhood. A real conquest, fella. They’d come after you with a net.

But as the hotness of immediate and overwhelming need faded he was uncomfortably aware of the residue it left in the back of his mind, an urge to pull down all the walls, tumble them in upon himself, go plunging out into the streets and commit acts of such vileness and terror and pointlessness that when at last they brought him down, all his chances would be gone forever, all careful things undone, all accomplishment forgotten. And then, because it would be past rebuilding, no one would ever expect him to even try. And he would be free. There were other ways to be free. To disappear so cleverly he could never be found. Or to find that hiding place, where they had hid from you long ago, and looked as if they were inwardly smiling at how easy it had been. They were like tinted wax. Scent of a thousand blossoms. Dark wood and silver handles, organ playing as the people came in, making little rustling and creaking sounds as they sat down. They coughed. And then the man came out from the side with the book, and put it down, opened it, looked out at all of them and cleared his throat...

“You could on sudden impulse harm yourself,” Theyma Chappie said, as clearly as if she sat there beside him.

Again, on cue, he saw one of the motel maids, in white uniform, a Negro, walk across his line of vision on the far side of the pool, passing in front of the cabana directly across from him. She was much darker than Theyma, but he saw, perhaps made more evident to him by the uniform, the same slenderness, the same high-hipped, gliding walk, saucy bulge of rump.

He reached for the nearest reality and had the operator make the call person-to-person to Mr. Taylor Worth, Boylston and Worth, Harlingen.

“Things are beginning to pile up, Sam,” said Worth. “I got a postponement on the Gianetti thing, but hizzoner was a little puckered. How long do I have to stall?”

“I don’t know. Not much longer, maybe. I can’t say for sure. I appreciate your holding the fort by yourself.”

“People are wondering about some kind of ceremony for Leila. You know how many friends she had. Sorry to bring it up, but there’s a big memorial service for the Kayds tomorrow. People keep phoning up. Anything you want me to tell them?”

“Just that it will have to wait until Jonathan and I get back, and that’s indefinite at the moment. Tay, have you heard any locker-room gossip about Bix?”

“Well, there was a hell of a lot in the beginning. You know how it would be. A pretty shifty type. Then when they finally got the whole story and that captain was cleared, it all died down. Now it’s beginning to pick up again.”

“Why?”

“You should be able to figure that out, Sam. Because you’re still hanging around that area. Why? As a special personal favor tell me why.”

Sam Boylston reached quickly and found a plausible answer before the silence lasted too long. “I was checking around when I first got to Nassau, before we found out what happened. I came across the bits and pieces of a deal Bix was putting together. Of course the structure fell apart, but the pieces are still lying around.”

Taylor Worth chuckled. “And that offends the Boylston sense of order?”

“And greed.”

“The ultimate motivation.”

“Keep it quiet. Later if I can find a way to put the pieces together, we can pick up some blocks of that Sunshine thing of his, then let the news leak out a little.”

“You awe me, Samuel. Keep me posted. I’ll keep stalling. Right now I’ve got to run.”

As he was taking his shower, Sam found himself thinking that it could be done without any deal. Just quietly pick up Sunshine Management at depressed prices over-the-counter, then leak word that Sam Boylston was getting into the act. The golden touch should be good enough to average out maybe three points if the holdings were unloaded again carefully enough. It would make the shareholders feel right at home, he thought. The same kind of a deal Bix would have rigged — and Sam couldn’t stomach.