Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“Yes, sure,” he said.

“If you want to,” she said. “And you think about Louisville, okay? About whether you really feel you should go, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

Her eyes lingered a moment longer, and then she turned away from him.

In the downstairs bar of the Louisville hotel, Jamie and Joanna struck up a conversation with a sloe-eyed brunette from Mississippi who told him she came up to the Derby each year with her daddy, not because she enjoyed the race itself (“It’s aftuh awl, onleh two minutes long”) but because she enjoyed all the excitement before the race.

They sat beside her listening. They were holding hands. This was the first time they’d been away together. Tonight would be the first time they’d ever made love in any bed but Joanna’s.

“When did y’all get here?” the brunette asked.

“Just a little while ago,” Jamie said.

“Way-ell, y’just about missed out on all the good fun,” she said.

It seemed that a Knights of Columbus dinner had taken place on Monday night, to which she’d been invited with her daddy, not because he was a Catholic (“We’ah both Methodists”) but only because he knew a man in Louisville who belonged to that order, and they’d also missed the bicycle and tricycle races out at the Fairgrounds Speedway, and the Pegasus Parade along Broadway (“With all those yew- mon -gous, goh-geous floats”), and the Great Steamboat Race between the Belle of Louisiana and Cincinnati’s Delta Queen, “and, oh, just scads of other excitin’ thangs.”

When Jamie mentioned that he was a photographer on assignment for Sports Illustrated and regretted having missed these eminently photographable events, she told him he should have been here last night, when the Thoroughbred Breeders of Kentucky gave their big dinner, because lots of sportswriters were invited to it each year, and whereas her daddy didn’t breed horses (“Though he sure can bet ’em”), she was certain he could have arranged for Jamie to have been invited because he knew the Louisville newspaperman who moderated the panel. She said all this in a boozy drawl that was sometimes unintelligible, her meaning sifting through a mist of alcohol fumes and a layer of treacle, and then ordered another martini.

Her daddy, she told them, owned a thousand acres of choice land in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, if they were familiar with that part of the state, upon which he planted cotton and soybeans. The property had been inherited from his mother, and he gentleman-farmed it together with his three brothers for an annual income she guessed was in the “hah six figgers.” Bonnie Ellen herself (“Mah name’s Scotch-Irish, but whose isn’t in the South?”) expected to be graduated this June from the University of Mississippi, where she was majoring in business administration, after which she planned to join the family enterprise at its headquarters in Monroe at a beginning salary of $34,000 a year (“Give or take a few pennehs”).

Listening to her, Jamie found himself wondering if Lissie was at this moment sitting in a bar someplace in Venice, talking to a pair of strangers, telling them why she had suddenly left home, telling them (perhaps) how much she missed her parents, confiding how eager she was to be flying back to the States again tomorrow. Listening to Bonnie Ellen, contrasting her seeming maturity with his daughter’s still childish (to him) behavior — but after all, Bonnie Ellen was several years older — he wondered whether Lissie would one day be graduating from a university in June, wondered if she would one day enter a vast and sprawling business enterprise at a salary of $34,000 a year, give or take a few pennies.

Wondering all this, he found himself unburdening to Bonnie Ellen all his fears and doubts, telling her that his eighteen-year-old daughter (“You surely don’t have an eighteen-year-old daughter!”) had been traveling all over Europe for what seemed like forever, even though it had only been since the middle of the month sometime, telling her how they’d heard from her only twice in all that time, once in a letter she’d written from London, and the next time only yesterday, from Venice, a phone call this time, to tell him she’d be coming home. He told Bonnie Ellen he’d arranged for a prepaid ticket to be waiting for his daughter in Venice, and told her too how eager he was to see her again. Bonnie Ellen spread her hand on his thigh and said, “You’re really a very genuinely deep nice man, aren’t you?”

In the elevator on the way up to their room, Joanna said, “How’d you like her hand?”

“Whose hand?” Jamie said, surprised.

“Bonnie Ellen Cornpone’s.”

“What hand?”

“The one on your thigh.”

“Come on, she didn’t have her hand on my thigh.”

“Another inch, and it would’ve been on your cock,” Joanna said.

“I didn’t even feel it.”

“Maybe you’re paralyzed, dollink?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Kidding? I wanted to kill her. ‘Y’all are really a very genuinely deep nahss man, ahn’t you?’ ” Joanna mimicked.

Jamie laughed. “I wasn’t even aware, I mean it,” he said.

She was silent all the way up to the third floor, silent as he unlocked the door to their room, silent as they undressed for bed. Then, lying beside him, she said, “You know what bothered me more than her fucking restless fingers?”

“Joanna, I really didn’t even feel...”

“Feel, shmeel. Why’d you spill out your life story to her?”

“Well, she... she made me think of Lissie somehow.”

“Who do I make you think of somehow?”

“Not Lissie, that’s for sure.”

“How come you never talk to me about Lissie?”

“I didn’t think you were interested.”

“I’m interested in everything about you.”

“I just thought...”

“Everything,” Joanna said, and reached for him. “The next time any woman puts her hand anywhere close to this thing,” she said, her hand tightening on him, “I’ll cut it off.”

“Her hand?”

“You’d better hope it’s only her hand,” Joanna said, and rolled on top of him, and looked directly into his face. “I want to share with you, Jamie,” she said.

“All right,” he said softly.

“Everything.”

“All right,” he said, and smiled.

He fell asleep content later, thinking his daughter would be home sometime tomorrow night.

He had told Connie where he’d be staying in Louisville, and had cautioned Joanna against answering the phone when the expected call came. It came at 4:30 P.M. the next day. He snatched the phone from the receiver at once.

“Hello?” he said.

“Jamie?”

“Yes, hi, Connie.”

“She’s not on the plane.”

“What?”

“She’s not on it. Everyone’s been through customs already, she’s not on the plane.”

“Well, what... what?”

“Jamie, she’s not on the fucking plane!”

“Where is she then?” he asked idiotically.

“What?” Connie said. “What do you mean, where?”

“Jesus,” he said. “Are you sure you...?”

“I’m trying to get a manifest now. But, Jamie, they’ve all come through customs already, I’m sure she...”

“Jesus,” he said again. “All right, look, I... let me call Andrews Travel. Where are you, give me the number there, I’ll get right back to—”

“What’s the good of calling Andrews? If she’s not on the plane...”

“Well, maybe there was some mixup. Give me the number there, will you?”

“No, let me call you back. I’ve got Alitalia checking, they may...”