Джон Макдональд - All These Condemned

He was still for a little while and then said, with shock in his voice, “Noel, too?”

“Consider us both nonplused, Paul pal. I lay it to brandy. Or to atavism. Or obscure revenge on hubby. Or urging by one Steve Winsan. In any case, I say to hell with it. I feel like this is a conversation we should have over a back fence while hanging out the wash. There was chatter about getting back to Mother Nature. Though I am used to appearing before the public without benefit of dignity, I’m still a shy girl at heart. I draw lines. I get all crawly. I think about the decadence of modern society. See, I’m a thinker, said with no trace of a lisp.”

“Where were you when it happened, Judy?”

“I really don’t know, because no one seems to have any precise idea of when it did happen. Somebody started calling her. I think it was Mavis. Then we all listened. Then Gil Hayes started bellering her name so big it echoed off the other side of the lake. And we all listened. No Wilma. So Steve came roaring up to put on the lights, giving his playmates very little time to get decent. I heard the mad scrambling. Steve must have donned shorts while at a full gallop. You entered the scene at that point, from the wings, looking like something pried out from under a stone. And then your executive talent asserted itself. Order out of chaos.”

“My God, I wish Mavis would shut up.”

There was no answer to that. I wished she would too. I looked at the back of his head. I liked the funny boyish way his uncombed hair grew in a sort of swirly thing on the crown of his head. Poor bear. Great big guy with an integrity you could sense. Maybe his claws and teeth were sharp enough in the world of business, but in a setup like this he was a toddler. Types like Steve and Wallace Dorn and Randy and Wilma and — go ahead, admit it — Judy the Jonah could disembowel him with a flick of the wrist. I guess this is the difference: We learn, maybe too early, that the deadliest battlegrounds are the cocktail parties, the dinner parties, the theatre parties, the quick drink before lunch. For a man like Paul Dockerty such things are supposed to be relaxation. So here he was in the midst of wolves, burdened with that silly wife who has — I should say had — that severe crush on Wilma, that silly wife without enough experience of the world to even sense the subconscious reason for that crush, though Wilma certainly knew the score. And, had she lived, I wouldn’t have put it past her to lead Mavis just far enough so the girl would one day get a pretty godawful look at herself and her motivations.

Poor bear. Poor decent bear. Nice guy with a rugged face, bewildered by his lady, and more than half disgusted with her. Judy, my girl, it is a luxury you can’t afford, but oh, how nice it would be to take off the mask once more and hold the big bear in your arms, hold him safe and sweet, because it’s a long, long time between loves.

“They seem to know what they’re doing down there,” Paul said.

There did seem to be a sort of orderliness about it, in the sweep of the boats back and forth, up and down. The wind began to come up and it was unexpectedly chilly. My robe began to feel thin.

“I’m going to go put clothes on,” I said.

“Good idea. They aren’t going to find her in a hurry. They keep getting hung up. It must be a rock bottom.”

“Do they go... right to the bottom?”

“I understand they do. Then, if they don’t find her, after a few days decomposition creates enough gas to bring the body to the surface. They used to fire off cannon to bring the body up. I’ll be damned if I know why.”

It made me shudder so hard my teeth chattered and I got up hurriedly. Noel and Randy had the next room. I heard his voice, harsh and high-pitched with strain, saying over and over, “Omigod, omigod, omigod.” Then I would hear her voice, softer and lower, quieting him. There was a boy with a problem. A juicy one. Nor did I envy Noel.

My suit was still sodden. I peeled it down and stepped out of it, took one of the big thick luxurious towels, and rubbed until Judy glowed. It made me feel so good that I heard myself humming a little thing in time to the toweling. Like a damn pussycat, I thought. Everything gone thoroughly to pot and all of a sudden you feel just dandy. Pot made me think of pot, so I sucked in my midriff as far as it would go and turned in profile to the mirror. It made me stick out upstairs and protrude in the cellar, but tummy was nonexistent. Hell, I could hum, couldn’t I, if I had my health? Twenty-nine, and I took off on my first road trip at fifteen. One more year of it and it would be half my life. At fifteen I’d looked eighteen. At twenty-four I’d looked eighteen. I got a good many good years out of that eighteen. A stupid lovesick fifteen, lying about her age, traipsing off to sing with a real tired band just so she could be near Mose, who could tear such sweet notes out of that battered horn.

Whooo! All the years of fried food and riding the bus all night, and the well-cockroached hotels, and the booking agents with one fat hand on your knee. Golly! Those prom stands, and the big-wheel collitch lads, and Mose finally marrying me, and stepping up from tea to horse, keeping it quiet, cutting his throat in Scranton after Mitch dropped him, leaving me the legacy of one battered horn and three songs he couldn’t get published. That weird winter in Chicago on a sustaining show, and that crumby room shared with that Janet character. Came back and found her in jail for fishing out the window, for God’s sake. A borrowed rod and scraps for bait, and hauling the yowling alley cats up to the window, three flights up, selling them for two bits apiece to the medical school. Baby, baby, you were ’way, ’way down before you started up, before Dandy Adams, bless his black soul, saw the capacity for comedy and started you on those first good routines. A long way down there, and, knocked off the top, you can’t fall that far, can you?

But I’m just so tired.

I want to curl up with a nice bear.

I patted old friend — old flat tummy. I got into a pleated Irish tweed skirt and the floppy frayed old cardigan that goes everywhere with me for luck. I thought of how cold it was and so I headed for the other wing, for the kitchens. I found José and used some of the kitchen Spanish I picked up during that season in Mexico City. It seemed to please him. He knew the señora was dead. The fact had been examined and accepted. I didn’t think any one of the three of them would do any major weeping. I told him the men would be cold. I suggested he make a lot of coffee and take it down there. He said he would.

I went out the back way. Paul came across the gravel toward me. Window light touched his face as he walked through it. Good sober face. I felt as if somehow I had been hung out in space for a long time away from a lot of good things. He was the trunk of a tree. I wanted to swing so I could reach him and untie myself and climb down to where there was a place to plant your feet.

I stepped out of the shadows, startling him. I put my hands on his arm. “Look, Paul, I’ve been running in midair. It’s a good trick. It’s a clown trick. You make your feet go like crazy and... you make faces and...”

Then something broke behind my eyes, and damned if I was going to cry, so I shut my teeth hard against it because there was no reason to cry, and out came this thin terrible sound from between my clenched teeth, a sound that came up through my throat like files. He took hold of me. I felt his uncertainty as I kept making those inexcusable misery noises, just going sort of “nnnnn nnnnn nnnnn” through my teeth, thinking, My God, Judy, you sing because a towel feels good and now you stand out here going crazy. He turned me and led me toward the cars. I walked along bent over, because crying without making noise, without making much noise, sort of doubled me up. I stumbled but his arm was around me. He got me into a new-smelling car and got the doors shut and rolled the windows up and put his hand on the back of my head, pushing my face against his jacket, and said, “Now let it go.”