John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“Mary says you practically grew up with him.”

“Now there’s an apt phrase,” she said, and smirked. He could see that she did resemble her mother, but in some strange way the character and passion and strength in Mary’s face became weakness and self-love and indulgence in the girl’s. “Want to hear about my reckless past?”

“Not so much I’m panting,” he said.

She moistened her lips. “I like you, Mike. Here’s how it was with me and Robert Raines. I was fifteen and he was nineteen, and he had a dandy little Thistle named Dizzy and I crewed on her in the Yacht Club races. We necked when we had a chance, and that was all. And one summer day — that was while Daddy was dying — it took him a long time to die — we snitched a bottle of white rum and bought two fried chickens and took Dizzy down the bay and out through Horseshoe Pass and down the outside — this key wasn’t built up the way it is now — and beached Dizzy in a very deserted place and had a picnic which turned into necking and, with some help from the rum, I suddenly found myself right in the middle of a fate worse than death. It scared hell out of both of us. I kept him handy until the calendar let me off the hook, and then I called him up and told him I never wanted to see him again. I was squeamish about boys for a year. Yes, we practically grew up together. And now he’s the promising young attorney and he can’t understand why I’m not in a fever to jump back into the sack with him. He hasn’t got marriage on his mind and neither, may I add, have I, and I can also add that I’m not what you’d call dead set against fun and games from time to time, but damn if I’m going to let him get away with assuming all he has to do is snap his fingers, just because he was the very first. He was actually indignant about my not letting him into our cozy little guest wing last night. And when he left he roared off like a jet, wheels spinning and gravel flying.”

“I dimly remember that kind of a sound.”

She rose lithely to her feet and smiled down at him. “The first dramatic chapter in the life of Deborah Ann, Girl Failure. Be good and I’ll tell you more.”

“The script will never sell.”

“Why not, sir?”

“I got the feeling it would be monotonous, I mean hearing all of it.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment before she regained her composure and made a face at him. She walked down toward the water. He watched the swing of her hips, the honey-brown of her shoulders, the narrowness of waist, the flex of calves. Sensing that she would look back at him when she reached the water’s edge, he lay back to deny her the satisfaction.

A bald old guy, he thought. But it doesn’t matter to her. It’s her kind of narrowness. There are businessmen and doctors and such — very dull guys who have no interest at all outside their work. So with her it’s sex. Vocation, avocation and hobby. Intentional and unintentional provocation. I wear pants so I’m an audience. Legitimate. Somebody to practice on. The girlish confession was provocation. So is the way she leaves the guest bath we share. Full of steam and perfume and soppy towels. Poor Rob. She’s a bad type, Rodenska. Don’t sleepwalk. Don’t get too hungry. And subtle rebuffs aren’t going to work, because she is really pretty stupid.

He thought of a way to give her a message. He liked it. So he got up, picked up towel, cigar case and lighter and, without a glance toward the Gulf, trudged back to the guest wing for his shower.

The large patio on the bay side of the Jamison house was half-roofed and completely screened. A small swimming pool, about eighteen feet by thirty, took up a third of the available space. There was a lushness about the inevitable planting areas, tree ferns, jasmine, Jatropha. A big broadleaf Monstera dreamed in a fat cedar tub, nursing its fibrous fruit. Part of the floor area was of compacted concrete block stained dark blue, and there were other areas of slab concrete broken by cypress strips into random rectangles, with broken beach shell set into the cement to give a pleasing texture. There was deck furniture of redwood with wide arms, chairs of tubular bronze, and small, unmatched, glass-top tables.

In the warmth of the April noon the glass doors that separated the living room from the patio had been rolled back on their aluminum tracks into the recesses in the walls on either side. There were bright cushions, sun-faded, on the apron of the pool.

There was a long table near the pool, with a white cloth, stacks of paper plates, and a pattern of sunlight and narrow shadows across the chrome and copper and ceramic tureens under which blue alcohol flames burned, paled by sunlight.

There was no sea wall along the bay shore. Mangroves grew there, and some had been cut away to provide vistas of quiet water and the mile-distant mainland shore speckled with pastel block houses. Just to the north of the house there was a sea wall and a boat basin where the Jamison cruiser, a thirty-eight-foot Huckins, sat hot and white at her moorings, glinting in the sun.

There was quiet music on the high-fidelity system, from speakers hidden in living room and patio.

Mike Rodenska, ravenous after showering and changing to slacks and sports shirt, ladled himself a plate so generous he felt guilty about it, walked over and sat in one of the big redwood chairs in an empty corner, and began to eat.

Two minutes later a round brown woman wearing orange shorts, a red shirt, straw slippers and a clattering jangle of junk jewelry came over to him, carrying half a large Bloody Mary.

“Now don’t try to get up, Mr. Rodensky. I’m Marg Laybourne. A neighbor. We live just down the Key. The pink house. I’m terribly sorry we couldn’t make the party last night. I’m one of Mary’s very closest friends.” She pulled a straight chair close and sat down. She had a breathless way of speaking. He had seen dark brown eyes like those before, and in a moment he remembered where. In the chimp cage at the zoo — an intent and liquid curiosity, full of malice and mischief. “Don’t you think these Sundays are a wonderful custom, Mr. Rodensky?”

“Rodenska. Mike.”

“Oh. Rodenska. Is this your first visit to Florida, Mike?”

“The first.”

“Please keep eating. Everything looks delicious. We’ve been down here five years now, nearly six. Charlie, that’s my husband, was in banking and he had a coronary and retired, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him now, but he does have to be a little careful, but not as careful as he should be, I keep telling him. Are you on a vacation, Mike? Oh, I’m sorry. That was a stupid question. Mary told me you lost your wife a little while ago and they’d asked you down here for a change. Mary said you’re in the newspaper business.”

“I was.”

“You and Troy got to know each other in the army.”

“Marine Corps.”

“Well, in the war anyway. Charlie was in the Navy in Washington on a sort of civilian thing. I guess this must be a really total change for you, Mike, coming to Riley Key.”

“After what I’m used to?”

“It is unusual here, don’t you think? I call it the last outpost of gracious living, and yet we’re not formal at all. I mean the homes along here, it’s more like a club. This whole north end of the Key. The Jamisons and Laybournes and Claytons and Tomleys and Carstairs and Thatchers. Gus Thatcher, and he is an old darling, bought up most of this land in the beginning and he’s been careful to sell it to the right people. And the Key Club is so handy. We usually all end up there Sunday evenings.”

“We do?”

“Haven’t you seen it yet? It’s a rickety old place, full of stuffed fish, but the food is divine, really.”