Джон Макдональд - All These Condemned

I looked at Judy with gratitude, and with respect that she had sensed so quickly what was going on and how I could have made a fool of myself. Her face changed into the public Judy, and she gave me a distorted wink so vast I could almost hear it. Wallace Dorn gave his warning grunt and changed “own” to “clown” in such a way that the “c” changed “lean” into “clean,” and the “c” was on a bonus square.

After the game we both owed Wallace. We paid him. Judy yawned and said, “Not another. I know when I’ve been stomped, pardner. I am going to go stare at a star and then crumple into bed.”

“Need help looking at a star?” I asked her.

“You take half the light years and I’ll take the other half.”

We went by the dancers. They seemed unaware of us. We went down the stone stairway and out to the end of the left wing of the dock. Judy kept her hands shoved deeply into the big patch pockets of her wool skirt and scuffed her heels, shoulders a bit hunched against the night chill. There were almost too many stars. The red mat she had been sunning herself on was wet with dew. I flipped it over to the dry side and moved it near the edge. We sat down, dangling our legs toward the water. I lit her cigarette and turned and looked up over my shoulder toward the high terrace. The music was faint. Sometimes I could see them as far down as the waist when they moved near the edge of the terrace. Other times they were back out of sight.

“Pretty fancy tumbril to ride in,” Judy said.

It took me a moment to follow her. “How sharp is the knife?”

“Sharp enough. People have heard it being sharpened. So I got canceled out of a couple of guest spots on summer shows. And the gang is beginning to break up. Can’t blame them. They need a warm spot come fall.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m just so damn tired, Paul. I can always grow a new head. I’ve done it before. I’m a rough girl, Paul. I’m a fighter. So I keep telling myself. I could get a Vegas deal. But I’m just pooped. I don’t know. I’ve made it and I’ve kept more than most and it’s stashed where I can’t touch it, thank God. I’m supposed to react, I guess. Maybe she wants a down-on-the-knees response. I can always act, if it’ll keep her happy. Me for bed.” She got up. I stood up beside her. She put her fists up and began to wobble around the end of the dock, rubber-legged, lurching, snarling, “Yah, you never touched me, ya bum.”

I was suddenly aware of the very special quality of her courage. I took her by the arms, holding her arms tightly just above the elbows. I shook her a little. I said, “I like you, Judy. I like you a hell of a lot.”

“Leggo, or I’m going to cry right in your face.”

I stood out there and watched her walk back to the shore, up the steps, out of sight across the terrace. I finished another cigarette and then went up. It was after one. Steve and Wallace Dorn had disappeared. Wilma and Gilman Hayes sat on a low couch. They stopped talking when I came in. Hayes sat with his big arms folded, looking at the ceiling. He looked sullen and stubborn.

“Mavis went to bed,” Wilma said. We said good night. Hayes gave me a vague nod.

Mavis, just a shade unsteady on her feet, was getting ready for bed, humming one of the Latin numbers. She gave me a warm moist smile. We went to bed. She was very ready, with swollen and eager readiness that completely ignored our increasing coolness toward each other. There was nothing flattering about it. Gilman Hayes had readied her, and the alcohol had primed her, and the music had quickened her. I was merely a convenience. A perfectly legal and uncomplicated and available convenience. There were no words of love. It was all very sudden and very tumultuous and very meaningless.

Afterward I heard her breathing deepen and change into the breathing of sleep. The music was gone and the floodlights were out. There was a sound of water against the twin piers. She had managed to kill something. I did not know precisely how it was done. But I lay there and looked at the light patterns I could make when I squeezed my eyes shut, and I searched through my heart and could find no love for her. I was certain there had been love. But it wasn’t supposed to go away, like throwing away the pumpkins after Halloween. I looked for fondness, and found none. I looked for respect, and found none.

She slept beside me, and she was just a big, moist, nubile, healthy, sycophantic young woman, too damn selfish to start bearing the children I wanted, big in the vanity department, small in the soul department, a seeker of sensation, an expert in the meaningless, a laboratory example of Mr. Veblen’s theories. I wanted to be rid of her, and I wanted to cry.

Saturday was bright and hot and still. Breakfast was served in sections on the terrace as people got up, an affair of rum sours, huevos mexicanos , and Cuban coffee that was closer to a solid than a liquid. The combination melted mild hangovers. As people began to come to life it became pretty obvious that this was going to be one of those electric frantic days, with everyone galumphing about, working muscles, short of temper, drinking too fast, and playing too hard.

Gilman Hayes put on a pair of trunks of jock-strap dimension and was hauled up and down the lake on water skis by Steve at the wheel of one of the runabouts. Hayes looked like one of the lesser inhabitants of Olympus. Mavis ahed and cooed from the end of the pier. I guess Steve got tired of it. He made a bad turn and put slack in the towrope and yanked hell out of Muscle Boy. Muscle Boy got indignant. Steve told him to go to hell and stretched his stocky body out in the sun and yelled to José to make with the Scotch. Randy, at Wilma’s request, took over the towing job. Hayes instructed Mavis on how to stay up on the skis. There was much giggling and shrill yelps and the support of an arm like an Atlas ad.

I swam a little and drank a lot. Judy Jonah went through a regular conditioning routine, knee bends, back bends, holding one leg straight up, handstands. She had a trim figure. I enjoyed watching her. Wallace Dorn paddled around in the water between the two docks, looking as if he were enduring this indignity for the sake of mingling with the herd. Noel Hess sat fairly near me, ordering her drink freshened each time I did. I wondered about her. She’s dark and small and quiet. You never feel as if you know her. She seems to be watching you all the time. Yet you get a feeling of a lot of slow dark fire burning ’way down underneath all that placidity. She wore a yellow swimsuit and I noticed for the first time the almost textureless purity of her skin. The way she was built seemed to emphasize the ivoried intricacy of ankle joint and wrist and shoulder, making you conscious of the human form as something of delicate and vulnerable design. Wilma swam for a time, with a lot more energy than skill, and then waved in the trio off the lake and whooped up a game of croquet. She appointed Randy scorekeeper and referee, and the rest of us split into two teams of four.

I was teamed up with Judy, Wallace Dorn, and Noel Hess, with Hayes, Mavis, Wilma, and Steve as the competition. Wallace, playing with bitter concentration, and Noel, with an unexpectedly good eye, kept up our end of the score. Judy clowned it, and I was getting too tight to be much good. There were ground rules. If you captured a ball you could hammer it into the lake. The person knocked into the lake had to chugalug a drink, retrieve the ball, replace it on the edge of the parking area. Whenever one team had gone the length of the course, everybody had a drink. It got pretty blurred for me. They kept knocking me into the lake. The voices started to sound funny, as though we were all in a tunnel. The stripes on the wooden balls got brighter. The grass got greener. I remember Judy pleading on her knees, hands clasped, while Steve took a gigantic swing and, losing his footing, knocked both her ball and his own down the cliff into the lake. I don’t know who won. I think I had some lunch.