Alison Lurie - Last Resort

When someone was handicapped in these other ways Wilkie was sympathetic, often generous. He gave money for the conversion of his books into Braille and tape, and he was kind to people with physical problems. A biologist friend of theirs at Williams had cerebral palsy, and at conferences and receptions Wilkie was always there to lift his wheelchair up steps or around obstacles, making a friendly joke of it.

About sexual abnormality, however, he had always been rather unreasonable. This unreason had been socially inconvenient in the past, and it was even more inconvenient now here in Key West, where several of the most interesting winter residents were homosexual. “I don’t really need to meet him,” Wilkie had said of a famous elderly biographer and critic. “You know I don’t get along well with fruits.”

Fruits—that was a strange term, without any apparent referent in reality, Jenny thought as she drowsed in the sun—a term nobody else she knew used. According to Lee, Jacko was “gay,” and the word made sense in his case, since he was usually cheerful. But nothing about him especially reminded her of fruit.

Though if Jacko were a fruit, she thought sleepily, it would probably be a peach, because of the warm tanned bloom of his skin, and the slight down on his arms and legs. Whereas if she, Jenny, were a fruit she’d be an apple: a Mcintosh, or one of those white-fleshed Cortlands that were so good in salad. And Lee would be something more exotic: maybe a papaya, or a South American melon like the ones they sometimes had at the Waterfront Market. They smelled heavenly, and weighed heavy and warm in the hand; and when opened they showed firm, brilliant rose-orange flesh and exuded a rich sweetness. As Lee might if—

Half-asleep, Jenny smiled. Then she sat up, shocked at herself. No, that was awful, she mustn’t think that way. Rising, she flung aside the thick flamingo-pink towel and plunged into the leaf-littered pool.

The first few inches, warmed by the sun, were pleasant; but below that the water was icy from over a week of bad weather. Jenny shivered with the shock, but fought the impulse to climb out. Maybe it would do her good: after all, cold water was traditionally believed to be a cure for unwanted sexual desire. Setting her jaw, she splashed out in a fast crawl.

As she came up for air at the deep end of the pool, with dead leaves in her hair, and turned to start back, Jenny realized that there was someone else in the pool enclosure: a man in white pants and a red shirt. She blinked, resubmerged, and started swimming back more carefully.

“Hello there,” he said, looking down from almost on top of her as she stood waist-deep in ice water, shivering and pushing sopping-wet hair and plant debris away from her face. It was Gerry Grass, holding some sort of large package.

“Oh, hi.” Jenny’s tone was flat. Wet, shivering, comparatively unclothed, and with her dripping hair on a level with Gerry’s dry sandals, she felt at an unfair disadvantage. She waded toward the steps and climbed them. Now at least she was on his level; but though she was wearing a modestly cut green bathing suit from Lands’ End, she felt naked. It’s the way he’s looking at me, she thought, that overfriendly smile. Deliberately, she walked past him, wrapped the beach towel around herself, and sat down.

“I’ve brought you a present,” Gerry said, following. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” He held out a large red heart-shaped box.

“Oh, really?” Jenny exclaimed. “I didn’t realize it was—” She laughed artificially “Thank you.” The box was heavily padded, and decorated with red satin ribbon. “I didn’t expect—It’s years since—” Over ten years anyhow, she thought, since Billy was young enough to give his mother a hand-made Valentine cut from red construction paper and trimmed with sparkles. She had five or six of them still in his folder, back home. Wilkie had never given her anything on February 14; it was not one of the holidays he recognized.

“It’s because you were so good to me at lunch,” Gerry said. “Listening to all my troubles.”

“Thanks, but it wasn’t—You didn’t have to—” Jenny mumbled. In her view, Gerry’s troubles were not of the first magnitude. His laptop was acting up, his publisher had let one of his books go out of print—the usual annoyances of the literary life, which even Wilkie sometimes suffered. It was also true that Gerry’s girlfriend had left him, but clearly that had been coming on for a long time.

Gerry, now looking quite untroubled, pulled another chair toward hers. “You can open it now, if you like,” he suggested, looking at the heart-shaped box.

“All right.” She eased off the satin ribbon and lifted the padded cover on a display of fancy chocolates in fluted dark-brown wax-paper cups. “Oh, how nice,” she said rather flatly. “Please, have one.”

Gerry reached, then retracted his hand. “Oh no; you first.”

Jenny selected a small almond-shaped chocolate and put the box on the footrest of her chair.

“Ah. Caramel,” he said with satisfaction, smiling and chewing.

“Have another. Have as many as you like.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Oh, go ahead,” she said, surprised at this wavering between greed and good manners in someone who after all was well over fifty and one of America’s best-known poets.

“But it’s your present,” Gerry protested.

“One’s supposed to share presents. That’s what my mother always said.”

“But it was hard, wasn’t it?” Gerry grinned and shook back his thick, graying curls. “Especially when you didn’t like all the other kids.”

“Well, a little,” Jenny admitted, smiling for the first time. It was restful lying here in the sun, having this totally childish conversation.

“That’s the kind of sick society we were brought up in,” Gerry announced. “Now what I believe is that you should share everything, but only with people you love and admire.” He reached toward the chocolates again, giving her a sideways grin. Politely, she pushed them nearer.

“I hope that means you love and admire me,” he said, plucking a cube wrapped in gold foil.

With difficulty Jenny restrained herself from moving the box away. “I never said I believed in your rule,” she replied coolly. But Gerry only laughed, showing a gold filling that matched the foil.

Why, he’s flirting, she thought; and he thinks I’m flirting back. Well, why shouldn’t he think that? He knows he’s an attractive man, with his broad-shouldered height and regular features. If I were to flirt with him, most people would think it natural, especially if they knew how strange Wilkie has been for months.

“You know what a friend of mine says,” Gerry mused. “He says that even bad experiences, like what happened between me and Tiffany, can be productive for a writer. Because it’s all fodder for poetry in the end.”

“Mh,” Jenny said, unconvinced and even a little repelled. The image of a large, fat workhorse appeared in her mind; he was standing in his stall, chomping greedily on the oats and hay of human unhappiness. She resolved even more strongly than before not to confide in Gerry, who might decide to feed her unhappiness, as well as his own, to that fat horse, whose name, according to him, was probably Pegasus.

“... It’s been good for me, being in Key West,” Gerry was saying when she began to listen again. “Now that Tiff’s gone I’m working really well. I was getting kind of stale back in California. Cynical, even. I hate that.” He frowned, lowering his untidy gray eyebrows; then smiled at her, leaning nearer; she could see the thick growth of gray-blond hair sprouting from his fire-red shirt.

“Yes?” she said, smiling very slightly back.