Эд Макбейн - Guns

Colley envies them and hates them.

He wants a gin and tonic.

He wants the tall sleek blonde in the white string bikini.

He circles around through the trees, toward the diving-board end of the pool, working his way toward the big stone house. It has occurred to him that all these fat rich bastards out here are in swimming trunks. They are out here talking among themselves, ignoring their sleek tanned women, and they are in swimming trunks — which means their clothes are somewhere in the house. Or maybe in a separate pool house. Colley can’t see a pool house. He knows what a pool house looks like because he has seen movies in which people come out of a cabana is what you call them, these pool houses, and then jump in the water or lie in the sun. He has never swum in a private pool. He would like to swim in this pool with the tall blonde in the white string bikini. The only pools he has ever swum in are the Boys’ Club pool on 110th Street when he was living in Harlem, and the Jefferson Pool on First Avenue, also when he was in Harlem. And then after they’d moved to the Bronx he swam at Tibbetts Brook in Yonkers, and also at Willsons Woods, and once his brother Al took him to Playland and they swam in the pool there. He would give his right arm to swim in this pool with the blonde in the white string bikini. Rabies and all, he would give it. He would give his left arm for a gin and tonic. He would swim armless to the side of the pool and ask the nigger to hold the drink to his lips. The blonde would giggle at his marvelous stunt, an armless man swimming the length of the pool. He would be the first unarmed robber in history.

The trees completely surround the house, he is grateful to the landscaper. The back of the house is all stone, windows slightly higher than his head on the main floor, windows on the second floor some fifteen feet above that; high ceilings. He is looking for a door he can go in through. He keeps circling the house through the trees, and he finds a place where there’s a small courtyard, and on one wall in the angle where the walls join, there’s a door painted a pale blue. Brass knocker on it. Dutch door, top half open. Inside he can see a black woman puttering around.

He doesn’t know if the lady of the house is in the kitchen giving orders to the hired help, but he figures he’ll take a chance. He wants to get in that house and find himself some different threads. The trooper back there must have seen he was wearing blue pants and a white shirt. Even if the trooper didn’t see it, Marie sure as hell did. Very anxious to help the police officer, old Marie was. There he is, Officer, heading for the door at the back of the store. Thank you, Marie. You cunt. He comes out of the woods and walks nonchalantly across the lawn toward the kitchen door. Inside the kitchen, the black woman is humming. This is plantation time down South. She is probably cooking corn on the cob in a great big pot on the stove and she is humming old slave tunes. He walks right in the kitchen. The black woman is alone in there.

“Hi,” he says.

“Afternoon,” the woman says, and looks at him.

“I’d like to take a swim,” he says, which is most certainly the truth.

“Yessir,” the woman says.

“Where do I change my clothes?” he asks. This is the truth, too, more or less. He sincerely wants to change his clothes, or rather Sam Hollip’s clothes, for somebody else’s clothes.

“Top of the stairs,” the woman says.

“Thank you,” Colley says, and smiles pleasantly, and walks out of the kitchen into a carpeted hallway.

Everybody’s outside, the house is still and empty, there are dust motes climbing shafts of sunlight in the living room. A woman laughs, her laughter hangs delicately on the air and then shatters like broken glass. He climbs the carpeted steps. He has never been inside a house like this in his life. He wonders if the owner of the house, the fat man in the red trunks and black-rimmed glasses, keeps a gun. He would certainly like a gun. Once he gets himself a change of clothes, which he is sure to do in the room at the top of the stairs, the only thing he will then need is a pistol. Guy has a house like this one, he’s got to have a gun in it someplace, protect the turf. The door at the top of the stairs is ajar, Colley can see into it, can see one angle of the bed, and on it clothes neatly laid out.

He goes into the room and closes the door.

There are only men’s clothes in here, the ladies have probably changed in another room. There are trousers and shirts and undershorts on the bed, and on the floor around the bed, lined up in pairs, there are shoes with socks tucked into them. Through the two open windows in the bedroom, he can hear people laughing and splashing and talking outside. He has a crazy idea for a minute — if there’s a bathing suit someplace around, maybe in one of the dresser drawers, he’ll put it on and go join the party. Stroll over to the bar, tell the nigger he’d like a gin and tonic. Then find the blonde in the white string bikini, tell her she looks very familiar, didn’t he once drink beer with her in a television commercial? It was right after they won the stickball game, remember? She will laugh her laugh, it will hang on the air and tinkle like glass.

Most of the guys outside looked fat to him, he wonders now if any of these clothes will fit him. He is beginning to think that he will never again in his lifetime wear his own clothes. When they put him in his coffin in excruciating detail, hands folded over a rosary on his chest, he will be wearing a silk sports shirt and gabardine trousers and stretch socks and patent-leather shoes belonging to some fat rich bastard in New Jersey. He searches on the bed for a pair of pants that seem to be about his size, and he finds a good-looking pair of white slacks, and a shirt made out of a synthetic fabric, polyester and cotton it says on the label, blue-and-green pattern on it, long-sleeved. The long sleeves are good because dear Marie back in the drugstore is sure to have told the trooper the man had a bandage on his arm and was kidding about rabies. He feels a little funny putting on another man’s undershorts, used undershorts at that, but he puts them on and then slips on the white pants, Jesus, they fit like a glove. He puts on the shirt then and rolls up the cuffs just two turns. He leaves the shirt hanging out of the pants. The socks are a pale blue, the shoes are white patent leather. The fuckin shoes are too small for him. He goes through the shoes lined up around the bed, looking inside for sizes. His own shoe size is 10½B, he finds a pair of 11’s and puts them aside, and then he finds a pair of 10’s, and he tries on first the 10’s and then the 11’s and decides the 10’s feel better. They are brown shoes, and they don’t go too well with the white pants and the polyester shirt, but that’s life, sweetheart.

The door opens.

A woman comes into the room.

“Hi,” she says, and smiles.

“Hi,” Colley says.

“I’m looking for the loo,” she says.

She is wearing an orange beach coat and high-heeled cork-soled wedgies. Long tanned legs, hair like a rust-colored mop. She has brown eyes and she wears orange lipstick that matches the beach coat. There is green shadow on her eyelids.

“Leaving so soon?” she says.

“I just got here,” he says.

“I’m Lili Shearson,” she says, and sticks out her hand.

“Steve Casatelli,” he says, and takes her hand awkwardly.

“I’d love to chat a while,” she says, smiling, “but I really have to tinkle. Is that it?” she says, indicating a door, and going immediately to it, and opening it. She sighs in anticipated relief, does a sort of Groucho Marx glide into the bathroom, and locks the door behind her.