John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“All right. It isn’t the end of the world. I’ll buy that. But it’s a filthy relationship. Shameful.”

Her smirk didn’t quite come off. “Moral judgments so early in the morning? Come now, Mike. Loosen up. It was just one of those proximity things. That’s all. Nobody’s fault. It’s been building for a long time. That ole black magic. And sooner or later it was going to happen, and it did. A little debauch, to clear the air. It isn’t really meaningful, Mike.”

“To Mary?”

“Her marriage is bitched up beyond all recognition, and you know that as well as I do. What did she lose by what we did? Nothing at all.”

“I keep wondering what she’d think of you.”

“Oh Mike, really. Can’t you guess? If she ever finds out — and I don’t see why she has to — I know just how she’d react. Even if I gave a detailed confession, she wouldn’t listen. It would be her poor baby trying to conceal a case of drunken rape for the sake of the family honor, to avoid scandal. I’ll say to you that it was a little sneaky, and mostly my fault — hell, entirely my fault — and probably it shouldn’t have happened, but it did and it’s over and it might happen again and might not, and who can tell? But you don’t have to act as if I’m a criminal or something.”

He frowned at her, studying her. “I guess I don’t understand. You seem more mischievous than vicious. But you can perform a vicious act of seduction, a dangerous, damaging act, and have no more idea of the meaning of that act than a sand flea. You can even defend that act.”

“And why not? It’s a big busy world, Mike. Lots of things go on.”

“I guess it’s because you’re empty,” he said. “Empty in a way you don’t comprehend. It’s like being a psychopath. You have no basis for morality, do you?”

“That has the reek of church talk, doesn’t it?”

“All right. You are godless. A reincarnation of the same scented bitch that has appeared and reappeared in history. I thought they were evil women. Consciously evil. I didn’t know they were just empty. It’s kind of disappointing in a way. It takes the drama out of it. They weren’t overthrowing kings and princes and kingdoms out of malice after all. They were just satisfying a little clitoral itch, and when things started falling down they probably looked around and said, ‘Who, me?’ ”

She stared at him with a flat, surprising malevolence. “ Now I get it.”

“You get what?”

“All this literate lecture routine. You didn’t make out with McGuire, did you? So you get righteous about the whole thing. I’m real nasty. And if you’d made it, my friend, you wouldn’t have one word to say, would you? I’m so sorry, dolling.”

She laughed, and he sensed she was trying to make her laughter sound completely genuine, but her eyes were not right for laughter. There was a wariness in them. The laughter sounded more artificial after it had stopped.

“We can’t communicate,” he said. “Words don’t mean the same things to us. It makes me scared about my two boys. I don’t want them to get as far away from reality as you are, Debbie Ann.”

“Reality! If anybody is living in a dream world, it isn’t me.”

“You sure of that?”

“Positive.”

He stood up and looked down at her. The sun was bright on the table and on her hair. She looked up at him politely, with an assured half smile.

“Honey,” he said. “Just you hope nothing happens to wake you up. Because if you ever wake up, you’re going to have to look in a mirror. And you won’t like it. That is my message.”

He sensed that had he been within range, she would have raked his face with her nails. “It must be comforting to be so holy. What has anybody ever done for me? I’ll do anything I damn please. I’ve got no obligations to anybody.”

“You have to eat scraps and they beat you and beat you. Things are rough everywhere.”

“I can’t understand all this fuss over...”

He didn’t hear the rest of it because he had walked away, feeling sickened. He went to the guest wing and washed his hands. He was annoyed at himself for even trying to talk to her. Something was happening to people. To the young ones. Maybe, he thought, we’ve taken something away from them and haven’t given them anything to replace it. Maybe human nature does change every thousand years or so, and this is the time of change. I don’t like it. They figured out what made the dinosaurs extinct. A batch of fast little mammals sprung up, and they lived off dinosaur eggs. They didn’t give a damn for dinosaurs. They just loved those eggs. Wonder what happened to them when there weren’t any more eggs.

He had alerted Durelda, but it was not until two o’clock that she came out onto the beach and told him Mr. Troy was up. Debbie Ann had gone boiling off somewhere in her car. Somehow the word had been spread that the Sunday routine at the Jamisons’ was finished. There was pedestrian traffic up and down the beach, but nobody stopped at the house for the buffet brunch.

He gave Troy a few minutes and then went up to the house. Troy sat on the patio drinking black coffee. He was clean-shaven, dressed in fresh slacks and a crisp sports shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and he had the shakes so badly it was difficult for him to light a cigarette.

Mike sat at the table and said, “Another nice day.”

“Certainly is.”

“Lot of people on the beach.”

“Are there?”

He made Mike feel uneasy. There was a curious remoteness about him. There was too long a delay before his automatic replies. His eyes had a curious staring look, a look almost of blindness. Mike suddenly realized where he had seen that same remoteness before. He had seen it in cases of shock. Once he had arrived at the scene of an accident after it had happened. A man had skidded into a light pole. It had struck on the passenger side, crushing the man’s wife to death. There had been a stack of folded pamphlets in the car, advertisements for the small business they owned. The pamphlets were widely scattered on the wet street. The man had gotten out of the car. His right wrist was grotesquely broken. With his left hand he was slowly, carefully, picking up the pamphlets, one by one. When Mike had gone to him to stop him he had looked up with much the same expression Troy was wearing.

“I guess we never got around to that therapy you were talking about last night, Troy.” Mike heard his own voice, curiously jolly, elaborately casual.

“... Therapy?”

“You were going to drink yourself back to that moment of truth or whatever you call it.”

“... Was I?”

“Yes. I guess it didn’t work.”

“... No, I guess it didn’t.”

“Are you all right?”

“... Me? I’m all right. Why?”

“I don’t know. You seem listless.”

“... Hungover, I guess.”

“What are the plans for today?”

“... Plans?”

“What are we going to do?”

“... I don’t know.”

“Will you join me on the beach?”

“... On the beach? No. No, I don’t think so. I’m... I’m going away.” Troy got up, turned rather slowly and walked into the living room, toward the master bedroom. There was a jerkiness about his stride, a lack of coordination, a somnambulistic quality.

“Where are you going?” Mike demanded. Troy did not answer. Mike followed him into the bedroom. Troy took a suitcase out of the storage wall and opened it on Mary’s bed. He went to the bureau and began to select things from the top drawer.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here.”

“Why?”

“It’s time to get away from here.”

“Troy. Troy! Hold it a minute.”

Troy put a pile of shirts into the suitcase and straightened up. “You can’t stop me.”