Evan Hunter - Far From the Sea

“How’d I get so infected all of a sudden? I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”

“Well,” David said.

“I forgot to dot the i,” his father said.

“What?”

“On that thing they gave me to sign. I forgot to dot the i in Morris.”

“That’s okay, Pop, don’t worry about it.”

“They’ll think somebody forged my signature.”

“No, they won’t think that.”

“Maybe you ought to get it back, so I can dot the i.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“The ayes have it,” his father said, and suddenly twisted his head on the pillow. “Where’s my jaw?” he asked.

“Your jaw? Right there, Pop, where it’s supposed to be.”

“My jaw, my jaw .”

“What do you mean?”

“Half of my jaw is gone.”

“No, Pop, all your...”

“How am I supposed to chew, if I ever get anything to eat here?”

“Your teeth, do you mean? Your dentures?”

“My jaw,” his father said, and nodded.

“They’re right over there in the tray. On the sink there. Do you want to see them?”

His father nodded.

David went to the sink. He picked up the pink plastic tray in which his father’s dentures rested. He carried the tray to the bed.

“Okay?” he said.

His father nodded. He kept nodding. He seemed very tired all at once. “They steal things, you know,” he said. “To put on the shelves.”

“Well, I don’t think they’ll steal your teeth,” David said, carrying the tray back to the sink.

“They’ll steal anything ,” his father said.

“They’d get about thirty cents for them,” David said, smiling.

“More than that,” his father said. “For the jawbone of an ass? At least a buck and a quarter.”

He took his father’s hand between his own.

“Pop,” he said, “you’re going to get better after this operation, you’ll see. They’re going to fix you up this time.”

“They fixed me up last time,” his father said. “They fixed me up just fine.”

“I mean it,” David said.

His father nodded.

“I have to go,” David said, looking up at the wall clock opposite the bed. “I want you to get a good night’s...”

“That thing keeps going around,” his father said.

“What thing?”

“On the wall.”

“The clock, do you mean? The sweep hand on the clock?”

“No, no.”

“What then?”

His father pointed to the wall. His finger rotated in a small circle.

“The wallpaper? The design in the wallpaper?”

“No, no. The thing they have. The shelves with all the stuff on them. It goes around and around, so the people can see the goods.”

“Pop, don’t worry about all that, okay? You get a good night’s sleep.”

“Fat chance of that.”

“Well, you try to sleep, okay? And tomorrow, once they finish the operation, you’re going to feel much better. I promise you.”

“Who are you to promise me?” his father asked, and then abruptly said, “Did I give you Josie’s address?”

“Josie? Who’s Josie?”

“A friend of the family,” his father said, and David remembered when they used to call his grandmother’s boyfriend “a friend of the family.”

“I don’t know her,” David said.

“I know it by heart. Her address. Write it down.”

“Josie who?”

“Write it down,” his father said.

The Cuban nurse appeared in the doorway. “I’m sorry, swee’heart,” she said, “your son has to go now.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” David said. “Right after the operation. I’ll be here at eleven, waiting for you to come down. You get a good night’s sleep, okay?”

“You can write it down tomorrow,” his father said.

“I will.”

“Bring a pencil and paper. They don’t have any paper in this cheap hotel. Why don’t you get some paper in here?” he asked the nurse.

“We ha’ paper, darlin’.”

“Bring a mirror, too. I want to see what I look like.”

“You look beautiful, swee’heart.”

“I’ll bet. Mirror, mirror, on the wall...” his father said, and then his voice drifted.

David leaned over the bed. He kissed his father on the forehead. His flesh was hot and damp.

“Good night, Pop,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well, okay?”

His father nodded and closed his eyes.

It suddenly occurred to David that he might never see him alive again.

He called home at seven-thirty and got the answering machine. Molly’s cool voice: I’m sorry, we can’t come to the phone just now. Will you leave a message when you hear the beep? He left word that he was going down to dinner and asked that she call him later tonight. He debated whether or not he would need a jacket for dinner, decided against it, and left the room. The fifteenth-floor corridor was empty. He rang for the elevator and waited. He could hear it whining down the shaft. The doors opened.

The British girl was standing against the far wall. Tonight, she was wearing white slacks, high-heeled sandals, and a shrieking-red blouse. Her blond hair was loose. He stepped into the elevator.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Good evening,” she answered.

The elevator doors closed.

They rode in silence for a moment.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she said, “Wasn’t that comical last night?”

“The empty dining room, do you mean?”

“Last Year at Marienbad,” she said, nodding.

Her voice was soft, well modulated, very English. She was wearing an Elsa Peretti heart on a gold chain around her neck. I almost bought you a heart at Tiffany’s, he thought. There were freckles across the bridge of her nose. She had taken a bit too much sun today. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were almost as bright as the blouse she wore. Her eyes, he noticed, were intensely green.

“I felt as if the Russians had dropped The Bomb,” she said, smiling, “and no one had bothered to tell us. We were the last two people on earth, but we hadn’t been informed.”

The elevator doors opened.

“Is this the lobby already?” she asked, surprised.

“Yes,” he said, and held his hand over the electric eye while she walked past him. He detected the faintest scent of mimosa.

“Well, good night,” she called over her shoulder.

“Good night,” he said.

At the front desk, he handed the clerk his key and then asked if there was a good restaurant close by. He did not want to eat in the hotel dining room again. The clerk told him there was a French restaurant on Collins Avenue, just a few blocks north, but he had never eaten there.

“Have you tried our restaurant, sir? They serve a nice veal parmesan.”

David thanked him and went out into the street.

The air was hot and humid; it smelled of fetid things rotting in the sun. The stretch of Collins Avenue along which he walked was lined with souvenir shops, lingerie shops, stores selling bathing suits and inflatable rubber rafts. He remembered floating inside his inner tube, the vast blue sky overhead. “Watch out for horseshoe crabs,” his Uncle Max used to say. He would have to call his Uncle Max. After the operation tomorrow, he thought. An Englishman wearing a white T-shirt and wrinkled blue shorts, brown walking shoes and white socks, strolled past, savoring Miami Beach. David guessed he was an Englishman. His wife wore wrinkled yellow shorts and a purple tube top. Their pudding-faced children were eating chocolate ice cream cones. He caught a cockney accent. Lower-class Englishmen sitting on jackasses to have their photos taken. He wondered how accurate the description of Clovelly had been. He and Molly had never made it to Covelly, only one of the many places they never seemed to have made it to. How does it go by so fast? he wondered.