Evan Hunter - Far From the Sea

Ah, Molly, Jesus, what a face!

In close-up now (you were standing no more than a foot or two from me, your hands unmasking your face as the thunder receded), the eyes seemed greener, the freckles more pronounced, a riotous bloom of pointillist dots. You took a tissue from your bag, and wiped smudged mascara from your eyes and your cheeks, and said — I don’t remember now. Do I look all right? Am I all right now? Something like that. And I said, I must have said, Yes, you look fine. The storm faded and was gone. There was sunlight £gain. We walked together, out from under the awning, onto the puddled boardwalk. I said (did I?), I said, “You’ve lost your girl friend,” and you said, “I seem to have, yes.” That I remember. The odd construction. I seem to have, yes. There was another flash of lightning, far out over the water. You didn’t flinch this time.

I was David Weber, twenty-six years old in that August of 1957, about to enter my second year of law at N.Y.U., my education interrupted by the Korean War. And you were Molly Regan — of course, what else could you be, the map of County Cork all over your face, eyes like shamrocks, hair like lager, those runaway freckles, what else , an Arab? A nurse, you told me. (Of course , a nurse.) At New York Hospital. Almost twenty-two years old, as fresh as the wind that blew in off the sea.

Were we ever that young?

But there were still surprises then. Back then, there were still surprises.

He fell asleep listening to the sound of the ocean.

He had left the window and the drapes open, and a faint breeze was blowing in off the sea. He imagined teeming life under the water.

In the middle of the night, he dreamed that someone was complaining about the plumbing in their New York apartment. Someone leaned over the bed and shouted, “You don’t know how to fix anything!” The white lampshade on the bedside lamp became a person’s face. The person shouting was a woman wearing dead white powder on her face. The woman shouting was Molly.

He screamed himself awake.

Sunlight was streaming through the window.

He looked at his digital watch. It was a little past 6:00 a.m. The room was still hot. He didn’t know whether he should close the drapes, blotting out the sunlight but also the air, or simply get up to face the day. It was almost five hours before he could see his father again.

He got out of bed.

He was naked, he always slept naked. Molly went to bed wearing a T-shirt and panties. Never just the T-shirt alone. He kept asking her if she was expecting a rapist in the middle of the night. She always answered, “Well, what business is that of yours?” That first time on the phone in Rockaway, she told him she was wearing a white T-shirt and blue bikini panties, WQXR lettered across the front of the shirt. She still listened to classical music a lot. He had never developed a taste for it.

He went into the bathroom and sat on the bowl to urinate. Whenever Molly asked him why he sat to pee, like a woman, he told her he was resting. More and more, over the past few years, he had felt the need to rest. He thought about the case he had just lost. The plaintiff rests, Your Honor.

He flushed the toilet and then looked at himself in the mirror. He rarely studied his face in the mirror, except when he was drunk. When he was drunk, he looked at himself long and hard and said aloud, “You’re a damn fool, Counselor.” He thought it sad that the times he could remember most vividly were the times he’d made a fool of himself. Molly kept telling him he was guilt-ridden. All Jews are guilt-ridden, she said; that’s why so many Jews become lawyers. He honestly could not see the connection.

He looked at himself in the mirror now.

He studied himself for a long time.

Then he went into the shower.

He was waiting for room service to bring his orange juice and coffee when he saw the girl crossing the tiled area around the pool, fifteen stories below. The pool was empty, the entire area was empty, this was still only seven in the morning. The girl was surely the same one he’d seen in the restaurant last night, tall and slender, her blond hair loosened now to fall below her shoulders. She was wearing a scanty black bikini. Her skin was very white. She strode across the tile in high-heeled sandals. At the steps leading to the beach, she took off the sandals. With the sandals dangling in one hand, she stepped down onto the sand. He watched her as she crossed the beach to the edge of the sea. Sandals still in her hand, she began walking along the shore. He watched her for a long while, until she was very small in the distance.

He had smoked almost a full pack of cigarettes by a quarter to nine. He had watched a morning talk show on television. He had finished his coffee and ordered another potful. He looked at his watch again. He did not want to call Kaplan until after nine. The digital seconds ticked away, the minute indicator changed. The room-service waiter brought the second potful of coffee.

“Another scorcher,” he told David.

“Have they fixed the air conditioning yet?”

“Still working on it. Place feels like a tomb here, don’t it? Six hundred rooms, we only got sixty booked. Mostly English people. But we got a big party of South Americans coming in next week. Should be a lot livelier then. You here on vacation?”

“No,” David said.

The waiter offered him the check and he signed it.

“Have a nice day, anyway,” the waiter said, and went out.

David poured himself a cup of coffee and dialed Kaplan’s number. The answering service told him she would make sure the doctor got his message. On the television screen across the room, a talk-show host was leading a group of fat women through an exercise class. Legs moving like scissors. Thick thighs. Leotards. David sipped at his coffee. He looked at the phone. Across the room, the women on television were doing pushups now.

He went to the window and looked down at the pool. A handful of people were in the water. Mostly English, the waiter had said. He remembered a conversation he’d had with a London barrister (or solicitor, he never could get them straight) when he and Molly were planning a side-excursion to Clovelly. “You won’t like Clovelly,” the man had said. “All you’ll find there are a great many lower-class Englishmen sitting on jackasses to have their photos taken.” He wondered now what kind of Englishmen came to Miami in the month of June.

They were younger then, he and Molly, much younger.

Time weighed heavily in this room.

He debated going down to sit by the pool before it was time to go to the hospital. Or perhaps a walk along the beach. The sea was calm today, it was a season of calm weather. But what if Kaplan called? He supposed he could leave word that he was at the pool. He decided against it. He lit another cigarette. He smoked too much, he knew he did. Molly was always nagging him about how much he smoked. Molly nagged him about his drinking, too. His father drank only in moderation. His father rarely smoked more than three cigars a day, one after each meal. His father watched his diet. His father was careful to get enough exercise. But his father was lying in a hospital, unable to heal properly.

He poured another cup of coffee.

He sat watching the television screen.

They were all laughing on the television screen.

He looked at his watch.

Kaplan did not call until a quarter past ten.

“Mr. Weber?” he said. “Dr. Kaplan.”

His voice was soft and tired, somewhat sad. For a frightening moment, David thought the doctor was calling to tell him his father was dead.

“How is he?” he asked at once.