Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

“I should have given it to you a long time ago. But I guess I wanted your good opinion. I wanted you to think of me as the fearless journalist, fighting for truth and beauty.”

“I’ll retain that delusion anyhow, Jimmy, because... well, I know you would if you could.”

After Wing had finished talking with Kat, he had a cautious euphoria which he could not identify. He knew he should dress quickly and take his copy into town, but he did not want to disturb this feeling of well-being until he could be certain what caused it. He stretched out on his bed, naked, resting the icy ring of the beer can against his belly. At first he thought it was due entirely to Kat and to his awareness of her. She had said she was stretched out across her bed. He had visualized her in a manner he knew was inaccurate. He had made it night at her house, and put a weak lamp beyond her, and dressed her in a diaphanous hip-length nightgown, ribboned at her throat, her hair ruffled, her face softened by desire as she spoke to him...

Like in high school, he thought irritably. Sex visions. All the hot swarming preludes to masturbation. You’re supposed to be grown up, lover boy. You are supposed to have arrived at that male adult condition which has learned that strangers are never very good in bed together, and that the similarities shared by all women are of more moment than the differences between them.

No, it was not the familiar compulsion which had given him these moments of something which felt like a cousin to happiness. He felt as if he had been released, freed of some weight which had been pressing against him. He began to wonder, with increasing conviction, if it was merely the result of having expressed his own attitude toward his work. He realized he had never talked in precisely that way to anyone, about what he felt and believed. He had tried to tell Gloria, but she had thought, each time, he was just in a bad mood and needed cheering up. He had argued it with Brian Haas, but Brian’s disenchantment was so much more thorough than his own that he generally found himself defending a position he could not believe.

In stating his position to Katherine Hubble, he had felt as though he were striking a pose with her, presenting a faulty image of himself, but the pretense had been the reality he had been suppressing. And he had experienced the familiar phenomenon of self-illumination which comes through turning thoughts into words.

But as he tried to find the reasons for his sense of well-being, it had faded to where it was too faint to identify. His head was propped up on two pillows. He looked down along his body, still lean, but softened by the sedentary years, looked at the ruff of tan-blond hair on his chest, the slight bulge of pallid belly with the dimpled umbilical knot, at the nested peduncular sex, at the slight sheen of perspiration on the long flaccid legs. My unloved engine, he thought, idling along, working its gas-bag lungs, clenching its heart in resting rhythm, burning what it wants and making rubbish of the rest — while way up here, behind the wet lenses to see with, behind the fleshy bulge of the air intake, and behind that dual-purpose orifice which can make howling and grunting sounds and also grind matter small enough to go down the pipes, the gray jelly makes its pictures, its plans, its excuses and confusions, arrogantly ignoring its dependence on the engine which carries it about, ignoring all the dutiful, clever combustions and hydraulics, the thermostats and maintenance and repair procedures, the churning and pulsating and secreting which never stop until it all stops. Perhaps then, as the last bright picture fades, the final emotion sustained by the bone-cased jelly is indignation that the faithless engine has quit. Perhaps its last word is WAIT!

The phone rang. It was Harmon at the paper saying, “Borklund says to say he’s wondering about the Palmland stuff.”

“I’m just now tying it to the pigeon.”

“Huh?”

“Tell J.J. it’s Pulitzer material.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve done it as a long dialogue between an empty bay and a sexy bulldozer.”

“Chrissake, Wing, what he wants to know is when are you bringing it in here?”

“Tell him to look up. I’m probably standing in front of him right now.”

“Huh?”

Wing hung up, dressed quickly and headed for the mainland.

When Jimmy Wing parked in the field beside Elmo’s Lemon Ridge home a little before eleven there were at least forty cars in the area. As he walked through the gate he could hear music that was almost drowned by the interwoven, incomprehensible texture of loud conversations, whoops, laughter. When he could see the pool area from the path, he saw that it was packed with people, most of them standing, most of them in large conversational groups. All the landscape, pool and apron lights were on. There were more people in the workshop, where the bar was set up. There was no uniformity of dress. A half dozen people were swimming. As he walked slowly down toward the screen doors, he saw women in shorts and halters talking to women in strapless cocktail dresses.

He stopped in the shadows to look at the composition of the group. He picked out the Palmland Development people, and many of the younger faces in the Palm County Democratic Party. He saw some of the wheels of the Palm County Chamber of Commerce, and a mixed bag of businessmen, those who might be the ones to benefit most quickly from a project to build eight hundred upper-income homes. One couple was leaving. The woman looked wan, tottering and drunk, and the man looked both concerned and angry. It was evident the party had been in process for a long time, and was showing exceptional vitality.

He looked for Elmo and did not see him. He saw Dellie Bliss on the far side of the pool. As he worked his way slowly through the throng, nodding to friends, acknowledging greetings, he saw Dellie leave the people she had been talking to. He hurried and caught up with her.

“Well, hi, Jimmy!” she said.

“Hello, Dellie. Pretty festive around here?”

“Isn’t it a mess? It sort of just grew. That’s the kind of parties you find around this house. I was just going to check and see if I ought to have more food brought down from the house, but I can tell you there isn’t much left up there. If you’re looking for Elmo, you come with me. I think he’s in by the bar.”

Inside the workshop the music was louder than the voices. Inside a circle of spectators, Buck Flake was proving he could lie down on the floor and get up again without spilling any of the full drink balanced on his forehead.

Elmo saw Wing and left the circle and came over to him. They moved out of the doorway to talk. “How much is the paper doing?”

“Headline and half of page one, half of page two, one whole page of pictures and about eight little specials scattered around.”

“Fine! It’s been big on the radio all day too.”

“What’s the party? Premature celebration?”

“Keep the voice way down, Jimmy boy. Way down. Get a drink. You’re way behind. This’ll start to thin out some. You circulate and listen to the happy folk. We’ll talk a little later on.”

Jimmy carried a stiff drink out toward the pool. He admired a tanned and lovely back and, as the woman turned, he realized it was Eloise Cable, in a deceptively simple sun-back dress. She was standing with Leroy Shannard, Martin Cable and young Connie Merry, the wife of the county attorney. Jimmy joined the small group. They all greeted him.

Martin said, “Tell me, Jimmy. You were there. Did I give the impression the bank was already behind this Palmland project?”

“That’s not the way I reported it. There were a lot of ifs and whereases. Anyhow, Borklund got a copy of your statement and it’s running on page three, I think, word for word.”