Alison Lurie - Last Resort

“Hey, that’s an unusual tree—it has two different kinds of flowers,” Gerry remarked, stopping to drag down a branch. “What’s its name?”

“Hibiscus tiliaceus. Mahoe, they call it here,” Wilkie replied automatically, noting the low, apelike placement of the thumb on Gerry’s hand. Genetic, or a throwback? “The flowers come in yellow, then turn dark red.”

The serious problem was, how to elude Gerry once they got into the water. If he could put some distance between them fast enough, maybe he could still carry out his plan. Gerry was ten or twelve years younger; on the other hand, there was a stringy look to him; he didn’t have the solid build and smooth muscles of a swimmer.

As they came in sight of the beach, Gerry shifted topics and began to complain of his lecture agent. The guy wasn’t getting him interesting jobs anymore, and the fees had fallen. Maybe he needed to change agents. Who handled Wilkie? he wanted to know, and would he recommend this person?

“Well, that depends,” Wilkie replied grudgingly, striding across the street. “We’ll have to talk about it.” You poor sucker, he thought. You’re on your way down too. The world is getting tired of you, only you don’t know it yet.

The sun was low in a pink sky as they reached the pier, and there was the usual complement of sunset watchers. Followed by Gerry, he descended the slippery wooden steps, plunged into the cool, foamy, bulging and retreating sea, and struck out for the horizon.

But though Wilkie put forth his best effort, his unwanted companion kept alongside with an awkward, splashy crawl. The problem was, he realized, swallowing a mouthful of thick briny water, that though he’d swum almost every day for weeks, he’d never gone very far. He had deliberately avoided increasing his speed and distance, realizing that the greater his endurance, the longer the whole thing would take, the more chance there would be of an unwanted rescue.

“Great, isn’t it?” Gerry shouted.

Wilkie did not reply; it had become clear that if he showed any sign of drowning, Gerry would be close enough to officiously try to save him. For the first time in his life he felt the temptation to commit a capital crime other than suicide. Maybe I could take him with me, he thought. We’re far enough out now; there won’t be any witnesses. A quick choke hold from behind, and if I’m lucky we’ll both go under. Let him find that unity with nature he was gabbling about last night.

A cold surge of excitement lifted Wilkie higher than the oncoming wave, then dropped him. The plan was too risky. If it failed, Jenny might be faced not with a tragic accident, but with a half-drowned husband accused of attempted murder.

Gerry, splashing onward, showed no strain, but soon Wilkie’s breath was coming short; the waves felt icy as they slapped his head and arms. If he didn’t turn back now, he could be in trouble. He might even, ignominiously, find himself actually being rescued by this fuzzy-minded anthropoid ape.

6

AT THE SO-CALLED KEY West International Airport, on a cool, windy February evening, Perry Jackson (known locally as Jacko) was waiting for his mother’s plane. The shabby lime-green cinder-block structure, with its airline and car-rental counters and racks of tourist brochures, was crowded. Beside the travelers, and people meeting them or seeing them off, there were taxi and van drivers, airline and car-rental and coffee-shop and gift-shop and janitorial employees. There were also a number of unemployed and unemployable persons just hanging out.

Except for the passengers, everyone was dressed casually; most in shorts or jeans and T-shirts. The T-shirts of the natives tended to recommend various off-island commercial products. Several departing tourists, on the other hand, wore T-shirts advertising local businesses or promoting Key West as a vacation spot (New Moon Saloon, Waterfront Market, Island Paradise, etc.).

Jacko, in a faded red T-shirt with the logo of a well-known plant food, leaned against the wall by Gate 2, which was in fact the only gate at the little airport. He was chatting with two acquaintances and looking casually beautiful but preoccupied. Three days ago he had been discharged from the Key West hospital after a short but intensely unpleasant episode of viral pneumonia. Antibiotics had wiped it away in forty-eight hours, but though he felt okay physically, his mind was troubled. This virus, he suspected—no, knew—was the first signal from the other and more fatal virus he carried. A signal from disease, from death. He pictured a small, very ugly man all in black, his pale face marked with purple splotches, getting off a black plane and walking toward him, through Gate 2.

Trying not to think of this, Jacko turned his attention to an acquaintance whose problem was snails in his ferns.

“Beer,” he advised when the guy paused for breath. “You put out saucers of beer at night, and they crawl in and get drunk and drown. Blissfully.”

“Aw, you’re kidding me.”

Jacko shook his head. For a bad moment, he visualized the viruses in his bloodstream as sluggish, half-drunk snails.

“What kind of beer?” Jacko’s friend raised his voice to compete with a loudspeaker announcing the arrival of Jacko’s mother’s flight.

“It doesn’t matter. Van thinks they like Miller’s best, but mine’ll drink anything. Hey, I gotta go. See you later.”

As the passengers filed in they could be sorted into two distinct species. A few were local residents who had been away briefly: they were relaxed and healthy looking, lightly burdened with luggage and lightly dressed for Key West’s perpetual summer. The rest were tourists from the north, pale and weakened by months of cold and darkness and hours of air travel. They were weighed down with carry-on bags, and struggling under layers of heavy dark coats and jackets and sweaters and scarves. Already, in the unaccustomed heat, some were beginning to sweat and look faint. They reminded Jacko of the homeless, hopeless people he had seen in northern cities, dragging or pushing their possessions and wearing their entire wardrobes.

Smiling, he stepped forward to embrace one of these sad souls: a small, pretty but faded woman in her early sixties, with curly gray hair and a sweet, anxious expression.

“Mumsie! You made it.” In a traditional gesture, Jacko picked her up and swung her round—as he had first done, triumphantly, on his thirteenth birthday, when at last he was taller than his mother.

“Oh, Perry darling,” she gasped as he set her down gently. “I was so scared you wouldn’t be here.”

“Of course I’m here,” Jacko said, unruffled. His mother did not know that he was ill, or had been in the hospital, but sometimes she appeared to know things she had not been told. It was also characteristic of her to express small, senseless fears.

“It’s just that so much can go wrong, you know, with airplanes. Oh, thank you. Barbie’s got my little bag—” She gestured.

Jacko turned. Behind him stood a large, fair, sturdy young woman in an unbecoming powder pink quilted raincoat, whom he recognized with surprise and without pleasure as his cousin, Barbie Mumpson Hickock.

“Hi, Perry. Uh—I came too. Mom wanted me to kinda, you know, look after Aunt Dorrie. I mean, she thought—It was sorta a last-minute thing, see?”

“Yeah, I see.” Jacko hardly smiled. “Well, welcome to Key West.”

There was no point in protesting now, he thought as he led his relatives through the crowd to the baggage area, or asking why he hadn’t been informed earlier. His aunt Myra, his mother’s awful sister, had sent her daughter here deliberately. And not at the last minute either, whatever Barbie thought.

Again, as so often in the past, Aunt Myra had managed to off-load Jacko’s boring girl cousin on him. His childhood memories were full of such incidents: scenes in which Barbie Mumpson, two years younger than he and congenitally clumsy, had cluttered up his life. Stumbling after him and his friends on hikes; getting in everyone’s way in volleyball; and striking out on his team at family reunion baseball games. Through the years, her sad round face had been preserved at various ages in his mother’s photograph album: often streaked with tears, or marred by mosquito bites, poison ivy, or acne.