John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

As they turned away, quickly, like thieves who had been challenged in the night, and before they had reached that point a few feet away where the metronome of the flesh would be buried by the night sounds of the Gulf, full confirmation came in the thin, raw cry of a woman, so like the daytime sounds of the terns, full of pain and triumph and self-mocking.

They walked quickly to the beach and walked three hundred yards without a word to each other. Then Shirley paused and walked more slowly up the slope of the beach and sat down at a place where a storm had cut into the beach sand, leaving an abrupt two-foot miniature cliff, as comfortable as a hassock for sitting. He sat beside her. She dug cigarettes and lighter out of her straw purse, lit his cigarette and her own. She snapped the lighter, a sound like a pistol being cocked in the darkness.

“Pretty,” she said, and her tone was not pretty.

“We don’t know for sure that it was Debbie Ann and—”

“For God’s sake, Mike! Why don’t you go make a formal identification? Take their fingerprints.”

“All right. We both knew it when they took off. Suspicion confirmed. Charming girl, isn’t she?”

“And he’s a doll.”

“I have a bad feeling, Shirley. I think bad things are going to happen.”

“Have happened, don’t you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean. All I know is Mary deserves a hell of a lot better from a husband and a daughter.”

“Juicy gossip for Riley Key.”

“Are you going to spread it?”

“How would you like a smack in the mouth, Rodenska?”

“I wasn’t accusing you. Settle down. I was just wondering how it would get around.”

“It isn’t any great trick to tell about a man and a woman when you see them together in public. It always shows. People always guess. They’re either too utterly casual with each other, or too tensed-up. Mary will sense it right away. It stinks, Mike.”

“It stinks.”

She shoved the burning end of the cigarette into the sand and stood up. “Now you have a longer walk.”

“How so?”

“I was sleepy enough to go right back. But that — tender little episode has made me restless. We’re going to walk right on by the Tennysons’. Okay?”

“All the way to the Club, if you want.”

“I’m not that restless.”

“Is conversation in order?”

“I’ll let you know when it is. Mike, I am being awfully irritable. I’m sorry. Give me a little while and I’ll be all right again. Right now I feel a little sewery, as if the girl on the boat was me. Could be me. I think I’ll stop being chummy with Debbie Ann. Not all of a sudden. I’ll taper off.”

“Sound idea.”

And so they walked in silence, not as quickly as before, walking where the sand was hard-packed, past the Tennyson house and on down the long wide empty beach. The night was utterly still. Palm fronds were cut out of black metal, striped with silver along the edges from half a high-riding moon. The beach was gypsum, left over from an alpine movie of long ago, held in place by a wrought-iron Gulf that infrequently, casually, lifted and thudded against the sand.

Mike had begun to recover his composure as premonitions of disaster faded. She walked neatly and placidly beside him, their moon shadows black against white sand.

She made a small sniffling noise. When she made it again he looked at her and saw that she was walking with her head bowed, her shoulders slightly hunched.

“Hey!” he said softly and stopped.

She faced him, lifted her head reluctantly, and he saw the tear tracks on her face, rivulets of mercury.

“Hey, girl,” he said gently. Such gentleness was a mistake. It crumpled her face. It brought out of her a hollow yowl of grief and plunged her against his chest, clutching at him, sobbing and sniffling against his ear, shuddering within the circle of his heavy arms, so automatically and protectively placed around her. He heard the strangled gulpings, rasping breath, little cries of loneliness. The top of her shining black head came to the level of his eyebrows. The straw purse thudded onto the damp sand.

He made the automatic and traditional sounds of comfort. There, there. And, Now, now. And, It’s all right. There, there. Take it easy, honey, patting her slim shoulders and back with a big earnest clumsy hand, supporting, against him, most of the weight of her.

A woman is soft and fragrant. A weeping, trusting woman is compellingly appealing.

The ape thing had been crouched back there in the brush, somnolent, half-dozing, scratching its hairy chest and belly, and peering from time to time at the females of the tribe. Suddenly he selected a female, stood up on knotted bandy legs, thumped a stone fist against a bass chest, grunted and came waddling out of the brush into the clearing where the female stood, curious, half-poised for fight...

Mike Rodenska could not pinpoint the precise moment of transition. He knew only that he had been standing trying to comfort a weeping young woman, and that he had been feeling fatherly and awkward as he waited for the storm to diminish. He had been glad, he knew, when it started to diminish. But somewhere along in there, things had changed. It was a new relationship. Perhaps their mouths had come together by accident. But there it was. Her mouth upon his in a raw, warm, soft, compulsive insistence, taking eagerly the weight of his mouth. His hands, moving not in comfort but in more intricate design, readying her. Her fingers stabbing into the meat of his back. Her hips beginning to pulse against him, her breasts hard against him, his right hand sliding down to cup her haunch as that great elemental force dizzied them, beseeching them to find a place, very near, to lie down and join themselves together.

The alarm bells were all going off in the back of his mind, and there was a little man back there, very busy, running around stuffing rags between the clappers and the bells, deadening the clamor. She ripped her mouth away and made a convulsive sound and thrust so hard against his chest she pushed herself back and away, off balance, almost falling, but recovering to stand six feet away, breathing deep and hard, black hair wild across her face.

“My God, God, God!” she said, panting.

“I didn’t... I wasn’t... I didn’t mean to...”

“Oh, Mike.”

“Look. Don’t cry again. Just do that. Don’t cry.”

“I won’t cry.”

“This was just an accident that didn’t happen. Okay? Nobody’s fault.”

“I’m an accident walking around looking for a place to happen. Looking for a person to happen to. Me and Debbie Ann. Oh, Christ!”

“Feel sorry for yourself. It sounds dandy. I didn’t start it. You didn’t start it. My God, would we want to? What the hell is this place tonight, a convention hotel, maybe? Listen, Shirley. Look around. Moonlight, tropic night, beach, and a couple or three drinks. You can figure that a lot of people have got carried away under much worse conditions. So who are we? Invulnerable? You broke it up. I didn’t. I knew I should, but I kept telling myself I’d get around to breaking it up in just a minute or two. Sure! Like maybe by dawn. You broke it up, so select a medal. But don’t go bleating around about being sorry for yourself, or being just like Debbie Ann.”

And suddenly, astonishingly, she was laughing. Genuine laughter. Not a trace of hysteria. He felt abused and indignant. Don’t laugh at the little bald man, honey. It ain’t polite. Then he sensed that she was laughing at both of them, and he saw how funny it was, how it was funny in a very special way, so he laughed too, and it felt good to laugh. As they walked back toward the Tennyson house the laughter kept coming back, and each time it was a little less than before, and by the time they got there it was all gone.