Alison Lurie - Last Resort

Jenny sat up abruptly, dislodging the magazine, which fell to the ground in a flurry of white pages. At least she could get some exercise, she decided. She would walk down to the beach and go for a long vigorous saltwater swim, just as Wilkie did every day.

Hot and impatient by the time she reached the ocean, Jenny plunged across the warm, coarse sand past the various cautionary signs that were posted there. She’d seen them before, including the amusing one that forbid “intoxicating beverages and dogs.” So she barely glanced at and dismissed a new hand-lettered placard that announced in red capitals:

DANGER: MEN-OF-WAR.

Taking a breath of warm, salty air, she strode into the cool salt waves. Yes, that was more like it! As soon as the water lapped over her knees she began to swim vigorously away from shore, her ponytail of pale hair streaming out behind her. The exertion, the cool caress of the heaving aqua-green sea, felt wonderful. Why hadn’t she come here before, instead of plowing back and forth in the overgrown concrete bathtub behind their house?

She turned onto her back and lifted her wet head. Pale sky above, wide aquamarine sea below, punctuated with white gulls and distant white handkerchief sails. And though the temperature of the water was perfect, there were no other bathers in sight; only sluggish tourists lounging or prone back on the sand. How indolent they look, Jenny thought, taking another strong stroke through what felt like a floating mass of seaweed.

Aow! A searing pain fastened itself on the back of her upper leg. Jenny screamed, tried to stand, and sank. She swallowed saltwater and came up choking and splashing, spitting ocean, gulping, thinking Sharks!, crying out against the burning biting sensation that grew worse every second. “Aaoo! Help!” she screamed.

“Here. Hang on to me.”

Somehow a long-haired woman had appeared close beside her. She had her strong arms round Jenny, was pulling her toward shore.

“Swim, damn it!”

“My leg,” Jenny choked. “I can’t—”

“This way ... Okay, you can touch bottom now.”

Jenny felt with her good leg and stood. Weeping, coughing, sputtering, leaning gratefully on her rescuer, she staggered through the last small waves and limped onto the sand.

“My leg,” she gasped. “I don’t know what—I’m sorry—” She bent sideways, trying to see the wound. “Was it a shark?”

“No, you just ran into a jellyfish,” the woman said. “Come on, I have what you need.” Supporting Jenny closely and warmly, she helped her up the beach.

“Wait here just a sec. Yep.” From the capacious basket of an old bicycle, she brought out a jar labeled Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer. “Okay, let’s see. Where does it hurt? Yeah, it really got you.”

Jenny twisted round and looked over her shoulder. There was no bite, no blood; but the back of her left thigh and most of the quarter-moon of buttock exposed by her new high-cut pale-blue bathing suit was an inflamed scarlet.

“Right. Hold still.” The woman sprinkled Jenny’s rump liberally, as if she were planning to roast it. “You’ll feel better in a moment.”

This kind, strong person is crazy, Jenny thought through her tears and pain. I’ve got to get away from her, find a doctor. “That’s all right, I’m all right now,” she lied ... and then, surprised, realized that the fire was easing. “Hey, it is getting better, really. Thank you. What’s in that jar?”

“Meat tenderizer, like it says.” She held out the jar. “It’s papaya enzyme, actually. I always carry it just in case. They say you can use a ripe papaya too, if you have one handy.”

“I didn’t know—Thank you.” Swallowing the last of the saltwater, Jenny looked at her now evidently sane rescuer. The woman seemed to be about her own age, but half a foot taller and more squarely built, tanned and striking-looking in an almost Gypsy style. She had thick, streaming-wet, dark hair and was wearing a fire-red T-shirt and cutoff jeans, now drenched with saltwater and clinging to her generous figure. “How did you—”

“I was out on the pier, I heard you scream. What the hell were you doing in the water, didn’t you see the sign?”

“Sign?”

“Men-of-war.” She pointed.

“Men-of-war is jellyfish?”

“Yeah. Where the hell have you been all your life?”

“In New England, mostly.” Jenny answered the rhetorical question. “I only got here about two weeks ago, I didn’t know—men of war—I thought that meant battleships.”

“You thought they’d put up a sign warning swimmers of battleships?” Her laugh, like her body, was strong and warm.

“I didn’t know,” Jenny repeated, beginning to feel cross and embarrassed as well as grateful. Then, ashamed, she added, “I mean, I heard there was a navy base here, so I thought—I’m sorry. My husband will think I’m a total idiot.”

“Don’t worry about it. How do you feel now?”

“Much better, thanks.” Jenny’s thigh and hip still stung, but no more than a moderate sunburn.

“Can you manage by yourself, do you think? I have to get back to the guest house so my desk clerk can pick up her kid at day care.”

“Yes, sure. I’m fine, really.”

“Okay. Here, take this. Have a shower when you get home and then put some more tenderizer on.”

“No, I couldn’t—”

“Don’t be dumb, you’ll need it. I don’t know where you’re staying, but somebody there should have warned you. Next time you come to Key West—Have one of these.” She dug in her bicycle basket again and produced a printed brochure.

“Thank you. Thanks for everything, you really—” But the woman had mounted her bicycle and was riding off.

Jenny turned the brochure over and read, in rustic capital letters, the words ARTEMIS LODGE.

In the pleasant study his wife had arranged for him—the last of many such studies, he thought blackly, and the least functional—Wilkie Walker sat brooding, waiting. There was nothing else for him to do here: no reason to spend all day imprisoned in the hot half-dark with the blinds lowered to shield his desk from the burning, indifferent Florida sun. But nevertheless his presence here was necessary. It was essential that he appear to be normal, and working normally, so that no one, especially not Jenny, should ever suspect that the death he was planning was anything but a tragic accident.

Though there was nothing to do in the study, Wilkie felt no wish to leave it and explore Key West. In his present state of mind the idea of such an expedition was exhausting, irrelevant, even repellent. For him the whole world was smudged and darkened. The bright scenery outside registered on his consciousness only dimly and dully, as through a clouded, dirty strip of film like the one he had held up to his eyes as a small child during an eclipse of the sun. The less he had to see of it the better.

He had been right to come to Key West, though, Wilkie thought. It was best for bad events to take place in neutral surroundings, so that they would not contaminate a house and a town thickly silted with good memories. Besides, in Convers he was constantly threatened with interruption from ex-colleagues and ex-students, not to mention possible visits from his offspring.

Christmas with Ellen and Billy had been hard. Knowing that he wouldn’t see them again, Wilkie had forced himself to spend time with the children, to speak with them in ways that they would remember as calm and upbeat and concerned in a fatherly way with their rather uninteresting lives. He didn’t enjoy the process and—he suspected—neither did they. For one thing, though he had tried not to say much about it, they must have seen that he was depressed by their choice of professions. He had approved of Ellen’s wish to become a doctor; but why should she choose a specialty like neurology, instead of pediatrics or obstetrics, where her knowledge might some day be of use to her family and community? And now Billy had declared an interest in what he called “computer art”—in Wilkie’s opinion, an oxymoron.