Alison Lurie - The Truth About Lorin Jones

You are interested in him, a voice said inside her, not in her head but considerably lower down.

I am not, Polly said.

“Here you are.” Lee returned bearing a rough-hewn wooden bowl heaped with brilliantly colored tropical fruit, and looking even more like a Gauguin painting. “I wish I could take you out myself, show you some of the town,” she said. “There’s a really good piano bar down on Duval Street. Trouble is, I have to stay in tonight, I’ve got guests driving from Miami, and God knows when they’ll turn up.”

She placed the bowl in the center of the table and, standing so close that her broad hip brushed Polly’s shoulder, ran one sinewy brown hand through her curls. “You’ve got really nice hair, you know that?”

That was all she said, but Polly was as sure as if it were spelled out in the complicated hand-weave of the tablecloth that Lee was attracted to her and, having just heard that Polly didn’t care for men, wanted to make something of it.

But since women were more subtle and tactful about these matters, if Polly didn’t respond Lee would make no further approaches, or certainly no overt ones. Lee would never grab her, or blurt, “Hey, let’s go to bed.” No one would be embarrassed, and no one’s feelings would be hurt. But it would be easy now for Polly, just by touching or complimenting Lee in return, to silently reply, Yes, let’s.

“Are those real mangoes?” she asked instead.

“That’s right.” Lee smiled as easily as if nothing had happened or been decided. And maybe it hadn’t, not yet. “Why don’t you try one? I should warn you, though, they’re kind of messy to eat.”

“Wow,” Polly said, gasping with surprise and also with relief as the door of the Sagebrush Lounge swung to behind her and Mac, shutting them into a warehouselike space hung with animal horns and antlers and vibrating with noisy air conditioning and amplified country-rock music. On their left was a crowded dance floor, on their right a long bar against which men in work clothes and cowboy gear were leaning. Mac’s costume matched theirs; he had traded his Revivals Construction jersey for a blue Western-cut shirt with pearl snaps. Polly still wore her rumpled Banana Republic jumpsuit; she wasn’t going to change as if for a date, especially not with Lee around.

“Didn’t expect anything like this in Key West, huh?” Mac shouted against the music. Waving to two men at the bar, he led her to a table.

“You can say that again,” Polly shouted back, taking another deep breath. The Sagebrush Lounge was on an ill-lit back street somewhere out near the airport, next to a swamp and across from a trailer camp. On the way there, though she had kept up a sort of conversation, most of her mind had been occupied by Lee’s remark about dark alleys, and the possibility, increasing as Mac drove farther and farther from the center of town, that he would turn out to be a psychopathic rapist. Her instinct told her he wasn’t; but how many women had been raped or even murdered because they trusted their stupid instincts?

“I figured you’d enjoy it, ’cause you appreciate country music,” Mac said, or rather yelled. “’Course, this is pretty mainstream stuff.”

“Those guys over there, they look like cowboys.”

“Yeah, it’s what they think, too.”

“Of course there’s no ranches in the Keys,” Polly yelled, determined not to seem a fool.

“Well, not down here. They’re further up, around Marathon.”

“Really? You mean actual cattle ranches?”

“Yep. The Sea-Cow brand, it’s famous in these parts.”

“I don’t believe you.” Polly laughed.

“Okay.” Mac smiled. “Have it your way. Like a beer?”

“I thought, maybe a white wine spritzer,” Polly yelled, aware that she’d already had nearly half a bottle of Soave at the guest house.

“I wouldn’t advise that here.” Mac grinned. “Take it from me, only the beer’s worth drinking; unless you go for the hard stuff.”

“I’ll stick to beer.”

“What?”

“Beer,” Polly screamed, thinking that in this clamor it wasn’t going to be easy to bring up the subject of Hugh Cameron’s present whereabouts.

“Right.”

Almost before she could catch her breath a bottle had appeared before Mac and a bottle and glass before her; sexual stereotyping, evidently. She poured the beer, resolving to drink it as slowly as possible: she’d need to keep her head in case Mac did turn out to be a psychopathic rapist. Maybe what she should do right now was make some excuse to leave the table, call Lee, and tell her she was in the Sagebrush Lounge with Mac — Mac who?

“Say.” Polly made an effort to breathe normally. “What’s your name, besides Mac?”

“Huh?” Under the pounding beat of the music she heard a fractional hesitation, which she put down to Mac’s reluctance to, as he would probably put it, get involved. “MacFlecknoe. Richard MacFlecknoe. Like the poet. But we’re not related, far as I know. And you?”

“Polly Alter.” The music had crashed to a romping halt, and her name sounded out abashingly loud. “Well, Paula really,” she said, moderating her voice. “Only nobody I can stand ever calls me that.”

“Then I’ll make sure not to.” Mac smiled slowly. “Hey. You know that guy you wanted to interview?”

“Hugh Cameron. Yes, of course.”

“I found out he’s in Italy for the winter.”

“Italy?” It came out almost as a wail.

“Yep. In Florence. I’ve got the address for you, right here.” He held out a scrap of folded paper.

“Oh, thanks.” Polly tried to look grateful, but it wasn’t easy. She had neither the time nor the money to follow Hugh Cameron to Italy, and even if she did there was no guarantee he’d agree to talk to her. All she could do now was get whatever information she could from Mac. Maybe he could give her the names of some of Cameron’s friends in Key West, people who, if she was lucky, had been here when Lorin Jones was alive.

“Like to dance?” The music had started again, just as loud but to a slower beat.

“All right,” she agreed.

But as Mac led the way onto the floor, Polly realized that the other couples had stopped jigging and shaking en face, and were now clasped together in swaying pairs. Uneasily, she allowed him to put his arms around her, and placed her hand on his shoulder. It was years since she’d danced the two-step with anyone — by the time she got to college it was already out of fashion.

The tune was simple, soupy, a childlike whine of lost love spun over a slow pounding beat. Mac held her at a polite distance at first, but soon he began to gather her closer. Annoying, presumptuous, but it was easier to move in sync this way, swaying together, almost soothing. She only liked it because it had been so long since she’d held anyone ... But this was a man, and a complete stranger. She should pull back, so as not to give him any ideas.

But she didn’t pull back. You can’t afford to get him miffed, you’ve got to remember your research, she told herself, easing her arm farther along Mac’s shoulder, feeling his muscles move under the cloth. First things first.

“That man whose address you gave me,” she murmured. “Hugh Cameron.”

“Mh.” Mac looked down at her.

“D’you know him well?”

He swung her around, then spoke. “Not all that well, no.”

“I understand he’s a real basta —, I mean, kind of a difficult person.”

“Oh yeah? He hasn’t treated me too badly.” Mac took a firmer grip on Polly, bending their joined hands behind her back and pulling her so close that the whole length of his body was pressed against hers.

Taking a long breath, trying not to notice this, Polly plowed on. “You’ve been working for him quite a while?”