John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

Okay. You’re noble. Go to sleep.

The shower stopped. He heard, at the limit of audibility, the tiny rusty sound of prolonged toothbrushing. The other door to the bath closed quietly. And in the great emptiness of the tropic night he found sleep.

At eleven o’clock Mike had been on the beach over an hour. One week ago, at about the same time, he had been looking down from the high aircraft at the tiny chalk-scrawls of surf along the Atlantic beaches. And this Monday was another blandly superb day. A transistor radio, six inches from his head, canceled out any possibility of consecutive thought. He had a Havana station. It pleased him not to be able to understand the words of the singing commercials.

The sun glared red through his eyelids. Sweat ran down his ribs and the sides of his throat. When he became too uncomfortable, he could go into the water again. And when he became famished, he would go back to the house and eat. The present moments were reduced to the ultimate of simplicity.

But, a few minutes after eleven, Troy joined him on the beach. He brought a small ice chest containing cans of beer. He wore faded blue swim trunks and dark glasses. He settled himself beside Mike and said, “Got to replace the fluid you’re losing, chief.”

Mike sat up and said, “I’ll recommend this hotel to all my friends.”

Troy opened two cans, handed one to Mike. The beer was icy cold. Mike watched Troy. The glasses obscured his eyes. His hands trembled. He was tanned, but it wasn’t a healthy color. There seemed to be a tinge of yellow-green in it. Though there was still a hint of heavy-boned power about his body, the muscles were ropy and slack, the belly soft.

“I thought you’d be over in your sales office,” Mike said.

“I phoned Marvin early and went back to sleep. He can handle it. Things are slow right now. If he has to take anybody around, he can lock up and leave a sign on the door. I’ve been going slowly nuts in that place lately. Hell with it. I guess I was the belle of the ball last night.”

“I didn’t see you wearing a lamp shade for a hat. You just quietly folded your tent.”

“Gosnell makes a wicked martini. My seams came un-glued. Mary is full of pregnant silences this morning.”

“How’d you get home?”

“It’s a dreary story, old buddy. I crawled aboard Bart Speeler’s Chris and went to sleep in the cockpit and the morning sun woke me up. I started wobbling up the beach and one of the Tomley kids picked me up in his beach buggy. Did you stay long?”

“We left a little before midnight.”

“Enjoy the party?”

“I think so.”

“Ah, we’re a gay mad lot here on the Key.” Troy finished his beer, scooped a hole in the sand and buried the empty can. He patted the sand down over it, smoothly, carefully, making a small and tidy grave. “Mike.”

“Right here, sir.”

“Yesterday, I was damn rude. I apologize.”

“I needled you.”

“Because I needed it.”

Mike knew that in those few moments the old relationship had been reestablished. No more withdrawal. No more defenses. It made Mike feel glad, and in another way it made him feel weary, because the regained closeness implied an obligation he was reluctant to accept.

“I needed it a long time ago too, Mike.”

“You were in bad shape then. Not like now.”

“Maybe I’m headed for the same place again.”

“That sounds jolly.”

“Honest to God, Mike. I don’t know. I can’t even be honest with myself.” He kept smoothing the beer-can grave. “Asking you down here. I said it was... for you. Good old Mike. My turn to help. Christ! But all the time I was thinking — somebody to steady me. And I didn’t want to think I needed that. That’s why I was so damn nasty yesterday.”

“So it was a call for help?”

“I don’t like to think so. How goddamn weak can I get?”

“How bad off is your project?”

Troy drew a fingernail cross on the beer-can grave. “It’s like this. We rented twenty boards. Fifty dollars a month apiece. Three-year contract. The sign company got the locations and put them up. A thousand-a-month advertising expense. They’re good boards. They show a picture of the place the way it should eventually look. Hell, I pointed one out to you. So we’re behind in the rent. In the contract, when you get behind, the whole amount becomes due and payable. So Signs of Ravenna has turned it over to their attorney. They want twenty-six thousand bucks I haven’t got. If I don’t come up with it soon, they’ll lease the boards to somebody else and I’ll still owe the money — the corporation will. We’ve had to stop the newspaper ads. We can’t give clear titles unless the customer pays cash so we can turn it over for release of mortgage, so I can’t cut pre-development prices down far enough to move the lots to replace working capital.”

“Bank loan?”

“They won’t loan on land, only on our signatures. And only with personal balance sheets. And we’ve put everything into the kitty.”

“Everything?”

“But the house, the boat, the cars and a little cash.”

“How did you get into such a jam?”

“Too optimistic. Thought I could have all the engineering done at the same time. It’s cheaper that way.”

“Couldn’t you develop one small part of it at a time?”

“With what, Mike? With what?”

“How much would it take to get into the clear?”

“Two hundred and seventy-five thousand. That would handle the costs of finishing the Westport Road section, three hundred lots, and the merchandising. The take from that, after mortgage payments, would cover the next section.”

Watching him carefully, Mike said, “Rob Raines told me last night you were going to lose your shirt, and if anybody went in with you they’d lose their shirt too. He said if you asked me for money, he’d set up a date with Corey somebody and they’d educate me.”

Troy’s head had snapped up, his hand motionless over the beer-can grave. “So Raines is in it, too!”

“In what?”

“Haas would like to steal the whole setup. I’m not asking you to put your money in, Mike. I’m not asking you for a thing.” His face changed, mouth going slack. “I don’t think I give a damn. I don’t think I give a hoot in hell what happens.”

“Like New York?”

“Just like New York. I can always make three fast laps, but I fold on the clubhouse turn.”

“Self-pity.”

“Self-analysis, Mike.” He turned his head away. He dug his fingers into the sand, then squeezed until his knuckles went white. In a dull voice he said, “It’s like New York in another sense, Mike.”

“How?”

“Jerranna Rowley is in town.”

Mike felt as if he had been belted under the heart. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. I don’t know where she was. Out west someplace. There was an article about me in a building contractors’ magazine. Just a column. Small builder with new ideas. One of those things.” His voice was listless. “Just one of those things. She didn’t even see it until the article was a year old. She saw it about four months back, in a damn dentist’s office. So she got here in February. She’s in a place on Ravenna Key. Shelder’s Cottages. She phoned me at the office. I... I went to see her.”

“You damn fool! Have you been seeing her often?”

“I guess you could call it that. There’s a man with her. She calls him Birdy. Says he’s her cousin. Who can tell? I guess the shakedown is more his idea than hers.”

“Shakedown?”

“Nothing expensive. She’s into me for — I don’t know — six or seven hundred bucks.” He took the dark glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Mike. It’s about that time things started to go sour. When she got here. I was supposed to see her last night. That’s why I got drunk and didn’t. Defensive maneuver. It’s easier to get high than think about it.”