John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“Never. A lot of them almost like her, but without that something added, whatever the hell it is.”

Mary kept at him to describe Jerranna more completely. But words merely made her sound totally unattractive, and made Mary feel baffled by the whole thing.

“I’ve had a chance to think about Troy,” she said, “and about the things you told me about him. I’ve been wondering something. I want to know what you think.”

“Go ahead.”

“Could a man... a man like Troy... have such a fear of failure, which could come from a feeling of guilt, have such a great fear of failure that through some sort of reverse, compulsive thing, he forces himself to fail? In two businesses and two marriages, probably the four most important things in his life?”

“It’s a thought. It could be right. The neurotic ambitious pitcher who can’t help serving up that fat pitch, that home-run pitch.”

“Oh, Mike,” she said in a lost voice, “I don’t know what to think.”

“Maybe it was just drunk talk. Just that.” He felt a sudden unreasoning contempt for himself and for his involvement in this thing. It was unreal to be here, sweating in the sun, talking to a brown handsome woman beside a tourist pool. “We all take the big swing with amateur psychiatry. What does it mean? What do we know? So Troy is another alcoholic, and we make a big thing out of it.”

“It’s a big thing to me, Mike.”

“I shouldn’t have said it that way. Hell. It’s the alcoholic cycle, isn’t it? Build everything up so far and then tear it all to hell down and start again. But how many starts does a guy get in one lifetime?”

“I better come home, Mike. Now.”

“I don’t know. I felt sure I was being smart. He’s trying to smash everything he cares about. So if you’re out of the way, I thought... now I don’t know what I think. I feel as if I’d been meddling. Maybe an occupational disease. Come home — stay here — how important is it to you?”

She looked away from him. A little muscle moved at the corner of her jaw, and her throat looked taut. She pitched her voice so low he found himself leaning forward to hear her. “I want to say... it’s terribly important. But that’s a pose, isn’t it? Noble Mary, forgiving and understanding. My own retouched photograph of myself. It... isn’t as important as it was. It never will be, Mike. Never again. That foul woman. He went from me, to roll in filth. So I wasn’t enough. Something inadequate.” She looked directly at him, her eyes brilliant, and said abruptly, “A lot of this warm protective desire to understand the poor sick man is crap, Mike.” She banged her fist on her naked thigh. “He hurt me! He made me ashamed! He hurt me! He hurt me!”

She bent forward from the waist, face in her hands, in a quiet agony. On the other side of the pool a sheep-faced woman stared, nudged her husband, spoke secretively to him, still staring, the explosions of rapid sibilants audible across the pool. He opened his eyes solemnly and the two of them stared at Mary. There had been a slight flavor of childishness in her outbursts, a little of petulance, but it was mostly a mature woman in that special area of pain reserved, in irony, for those who know how to give.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, but did not want to make the little scene more interesting to the couple opposite them. He sat in discomfort, thinking how easy it was to hurt the good ones, how impossible to hurt the bad ones. Vulnerability, he said to himself, seeking for that epigrammatic quality, is the curse of the thinking classes.

She lifted her face, fighting for, then achieving an illusion of composure, and said in a small weary voice, “I’m so damn tired of being so stinking decent about everything. It was easier to get away from him than you know, Mike. I... snapped at the chance, with a pretty show of reluctance. The least I can do right now is be honest with myself and with you.”

“Mary, this honesty thing is tough. The pretending is so easy. There is maybe about four of me, and only one is real, so once in a while, like for character or something, I have to go down into a hole with those three other guys and lay around me with a club so I’m the only one left. But they win sometimes. How do you tell the player without a scorecard? I’ll give you this. I admire you. I’ll do it up in needlepoint. You can frame it. Like home sweet home.”

“Don’t you make me cry, darn you.”

“Okay, let’s try a change of pace. Now I’ll tell you how I’m becoming a big land merchant. They call me Mike the Dealer. I’ve got the secret of this land-development kick. You’ve got to hate trees. A tree has to offend your sense of ugliness, so you bulldoze it the hell out of there, and asphalt the whole area. Then you put up eighty-six lousy little forty-thousand-dollar houses and you’re in.”

He told her about his adventures. He made her laugh. Laughter took the agony out of her eyes, made her visibly younger. It took so long to tell that he stopped while she went and changed to a yellow sunback dress, and then he drove her to a garden restaurant where, under a pink umbrella and with the pleasant distractions of a fashion show of beach wear and a small and tender filet, he finished it. She felt sorry for Corey Haas. She told Mike he was brilliant. He told her he had known that all along, but it was difficult to get anybody to perceive it. She told him that if he was actually, seriously considering risking his money, he needed his head examined. And that had a double meaning which put shadows back behind her eyes. He said he would risk it out of greed, maybe, having always wanted to see how a millionaire felt on the inside — smug or nervous.

So, after some silence, not particularly awkward, they got back to Topic A.

“I don’t want to go back right now,” she said with a certain defiance, “even if I felt he does need me, which I don’t quite believe somehow. I need myself. I’m getting re-acquainted with Mary.”

“Then the thing to do is stay.”

“But if I stay here, it leaves it all in your hands.”

“So I’ll try to cope. No obligation. Should I sit on the beach in mourning? There is a thing you should know about. Buttons called it the Curse of Rodenska. I’ve got used to it. I can explain it this way, Mary. Suppose I was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The day before they’re going to finish me off, the warden comes to the cell. He sits down and looks at me sadly. I’m all braced for words of compassion. So he says, ‘Look, Mike, I’ve got this problem I need your advice on.’ ”

Mary laughed. “Oh, Mike, honestly—”

“Everybody does it. Should you be different? If all I had to do was lie on your beach it would make me highly nervous.”

And so, promising to keep her up to date, he took her back to Lazy Harbor and drove back on down to Riley Key. It was nearly four when he arrived. He looked across the beach before he turned into the drive and saw Troy stretched out, alone, in the sun.

He changed to swim trunks and walked down onto the beach and sat on his heels beside Troy.

“You could even be human,” he said.

Troy rolled up onto one elbow. “It took until noon today. You’ve been to see Mary? Thought so. Spare me any play-by-play, old buddy.”

“I wasn’t going to present a report, old buddy.”

“The words would be familiar. I’m tearing her heart out. I don’t deserve such a fine woman. And so on.”

“For a nearly hundred-percent bastard, Troy, you run in luck. You not only get the friendship of a sterling type like me, but you marry real good women.”

“It’s a knack. I’m a great guy. I’m a war hero.”

“About Mary, set your mind at rest, war hero.”

“How so?”