John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“One time a guy on our street bought a dog. The dog didn’t adore him enough. So he got a stick and beat on it, but for some reason the situation got worse. He couldn’t understand it.”

“Pull up a cracker barrel and we’ll spit on the chunk stove to hear it sizzle.”

“I’m just homespun, Troy. True blue. She’ll be back, I suppose. But it won’t be the same deal you had.”

“Something precious has been forever lost?”

Mike studied him: “You’re a great guy, Troy. You’re a prince. You need that shrinker.”

“Anybody who doesn’t agree with you is sick?”

“Let’s say you’re scared, Troy.”

The word dented Troy’s mask of bland amusement, ironic arrogance. The word twisted his mouth. Mike watched him regain control.

“Scared of what, old buddy?”

“What’s happening to you. Because you don’t know why it’s happening. Or how it’s going to end. You know it’s going to end bad. You don’t know how bad. Nobody knows how bad. So everybody’s scared, Troy.”

“I’m scared. I’m sick. I’m a mess. So I need a drink. That’s indicated, isn’t it?” Troy got up and walked toward the house. Mike stood up and watched him. Troy strolled. He ambled along, scuffing sand. But his back muscles were rigid. Very casual, Mike thought. Like a thief walking past a cop. What gutted him like a fish? Mike wondered. What hollowed out the empty man?

Mike swam. He stood, winded, in the clear water. A fish the size of his thigh, wearing a black-and-white-striped suit, swam by with slow, purposeful dignity, heading north. You got lousy taste in clothes, Mike told him. A self-made fish. So you don’t know how to dress. You buy mail-order stuff from Playboy, and all your employees snicker behind your back. Find a good tailor, buster.

Mike waded out. He prodded his belly and told himself all this swimming was making him hard and lean and dangerous. Rodenska, soldier of fortune. They all wondered who the tanned stranger was, with that look of far places in his eyes.

Wait until Buttons sees...

He turned and squinted through the water in his eyes at the fat red dying sun. Go on down, he said. Don’t bother to come up again. Stay down. It isn’t worth the trouble.

So he went back to his room, and when he shut himself into the shower stall, he sang his shower song. Not exactly a song, without much of a tune. Up half the scale — boom, boom, boom, boom — and back down — bum, bum, bum, bum. It resonated well.

The alcohol was working on Troy. Mike nursed his drinks and listened. Good old maudlin garrulousness, he thought. Paddlin’ maudlin home. Every drunk has the conviction he is unique, and all drunks are alike. A few tears for Bunny. A few lies about the war. Tears for the daughter. Tears for Mary. Some jokes, badly told. Owlish laughter. The world is down on me. Nobody cares. The bad luck I’ve had. Jesus! Bathos instead of tragedy. Alcohol loosening the mouth, dulling the eyes, causing the expansive, uncertain gesture. Paralysis of the cerebral cortex. No judgment in choice of words or thoughts. The fumbling tongue. Mike watched him. This had been the lean and deft young officer, good at love, good at killing — full of a quickness. Now the chronological age was forty, the apparent age fifty. A pulpy drunk, bragging now of many conquests, some of them obviously imaginary.

When does life end?

Shirley and Debbie Ann arrived at eight. They were both in shorts and sandals and sleeveless blouses — Shirley in dark green Bermudas with a white-and-green-striped blouse and golden sandals — Debbie Ann in off-white shorts and a black blouse and red sandals. They had been to a large and informal cocktail party down the beach. They stood just inside a cone of light, both of a height, a dark one and a fair one, shapely, slightly flushed, close to laughter, twenty-five and twenty-three, the frosted cone of light picking up the highlights of perfect teeth and the fluids of their eyes and the fresh moistness of underlips, the slant of the light accenting the breasts hammocked in dacron, the both of them standing slightly hipshot with forward pelvic thrust and tilt.

I have been here before, Mike thought. This is an advertisement in full color. The plates cost a fortune. They have just stepped out of their convertible Spumoni in front of this Jamaican villa. Real clean women. Sixty-bucks-an-hour model fee.

But there was something a little out of key in the advertisement. These two lacked the scrubbed, vacuous sterility of ad models. They had come half-laughing out of the night, out of the hot night, slightly feral, with a moist and sensual pungency about them, their tanned roundnesses bespeaking their elemental service to the race. Toast lightly and serve with gin. He stared blandly and approvingly at the projections of breasts and narrowness of waists, at curved ripe mouths and lilting eyes, and thought, Which twin had the baby? No stranger could have told.

They both talked at once, the wee little voice of Debbie Ann alternating with Shirley’s gamin croak. “A hell of a big dull party... but with gaudy goodies, a long table full... And what is he celebrating?... Is this a party like...? Invite us, sir... I love smaller groups... Same poison, Shirl?... Let’s put on some music... The lights are lovely... Poor Troy’s got the wobblies.”

And so it became, in a somewhat limited sense, festive — with music and dancing girls. And a little later, with Shirley in a suit borrowed from Debbie Ann, swimming girls, accompanied in the small pool by Troy, while Mike located suitable ingredients and constructed a monster sandwich. The swim sobered Troy somewhat, and the girls, though they continued the martini route, seemed to maintain control — at least as much control as they had arrived with. The girls changed back to their shorts and blouses. Quieter music was stacked on the changer, and the volume turned down.

When Mike looked at his watch he was surprised to find it was a little after eleven. He had been sitting for some time in a double chaise longue affair with Shirley. They had circumspectly switched to beer. They were in a far corner of the patio, shadowed from the lights by the broad leaves of a clump of dwarf banana. He had enjoyed talking with Shirley. They had gotten off into obscure and esoteric areas of philosophy, such as why do the fattest women wear the shortest shorts, and how big can tail fins get, and could you market a cigarette that was eighty percent filter, with enough tobacco for three drags. Nothing personal, nothing weighty, nothing pretentious. No drunk talk. No flirtatious innuendos. Just a couple of people talking in the tropic night, finding it easy to make each other laugh.

So why should I feel guilty? Mike asked himself. So we are lounging here on this double deal, and those brown legs have a very sweet shape stretched out right there, ankles crossed. So she is somewhat slumped, and props her beer can on the delicate convexity of her little tummy. So with those black bangs and that pointed chin and all that mouth, she somehow keeps reminding me of a cat. (Her eyes tilt a little, no?) So she smells good and the jasmine smells loud around here. So she is thoroughly girl, and I am, as an unkind traffic cop would put it, slightly under the influence. Am I making passes? No. Am I thinking of making a pass? It is a subject for idle speculation. But there is no intent, judge. And who wouldn’t? What red-blooded American newspaper bum wouldn’t be thinking somewhat along those lines? Don’t feel guilty, Rodenska. Some days you tire me. Some days you are an old lady, indeed. Rodenska, dwell on this. The same year you found out what girls are for, she was missing her mouth with the pablum.

Troy and Debbie Ann were at the other end of the patio, beyond the pool, and they had been talking quietly and inaudibly together for a long time, and with a flavor of intensity that made Mike uneasy, though he could not guess why.