The Deep Blue Good-Bye Part 12

"Oh, she's twenty now." She hesitated. She was obligated to end our little chat with a stylized flourish. The way it's done in serial television. So she wet her little bunny mouth, sleepied her eyes, widened her nostrils, patted her hair, arched her back, stood canted and hip-shot, huskied her voice and said, "See you aroun', huh?"

"Sure, Marianne. Sure."

Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is compet.i.tion for bag-boy jobs in the supermarkets.

They yearn for security, but all they can have is what they make for themselves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the unemployment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sa.s.sy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electrified house where everybody brushes after every meal.

But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance-with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue.

So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician's world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies.

These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can't have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.

I went north of the mainland route, past an endless wink and sputter of neon, through the perpetual leaf-fall and forest floor of asphalt, cellophane, candy wrappers, Kleenex, filter tips, ticket halves, Pliofilm and latex. One of Junior Allen's women lay wounded and the other lay drunk, and I was looking for a third.

The Citrus Inn was an old place, a three-story cube of cracked and patched Moorish masonry, vintage 1925, with three entrances, three sets of staircases, three stacks of small apartments. It was on a short, dead-end street in a commercial area. It was across the street from a large truck depot, and bracketed on one side by a shoestring marina and on the other by a BEER-BAIT-BOATS operation which had a tavern specializing in fried fish sandwiches. There was a narrow ca.n.a.l behind the three structures, sea-walled, stagnant.

The Citrus Inn had its own eroding dock, parallel to the sea wall. I had parked in front. I walked around the unlighted side of the Citrus Inn. I stopped abruptly and moved off into deeper shadows. There were two darkened old hulks tied up to the Citrus Inn dock. The third craft was lighted inside, and a weak dock light shone against the starboard side of it and into the c.o.c.kpit. It shone on the life ring. The Play Pen.

There were several of them in the c.o.c.kpit. I couldn't see them distinctly. They had music going, the hesitating rhythms of Bossa Nova. A girl moved to it. Another girl laughed in a slurred sour way. A man said, in a penetrating voice, "Dads, we are just about now out of beer and that is a h.e.l.l of a note, Dads. Somebody has got to trek way the h.e.l.l to Barney's. You going to do us like this in the islands, Dads? You going to let us run out of the necessities of life once we get over there?"

Another man rumbled some kind of an answer, and a girl said something which the music obscured. In a few moments two of them came by me, heading for the tavern. I saw them distinctly when they clambered up onto the dock, a husky, sideburned boy with a dull fleshy face, and a leggy awkward girl in gla.s.ses.

As they pa.s.sed me the girl said, "Shouldn't you buy it one time anyway, Pete?"

"Shut up, Patty. It makes Dads happy to spring for it. Why spoil his fun?"

I had my first look at Junior Allen. It wasn't much of a look. He was a shadowy bulk in the c.o.c.kpit of the boat, a disembodied rumble of a voice. A single bark of laughter.

When I got back to the Busted Flush, Lois was still out. I sat her up. She whined at me, her head heavy, her eyes closed. I got her up and took her over to the beach and walked her until she had no breath for complaining. She trudged along, dutiful as a naughty child. I walked her without mercy, back and forth, until her head was clear, and then we sat on a public bench to give her time to catch her breath.

"I've got a ghastly headache," she said in a humble voice.

"You earned it."

"I'm sorry, Trav. Really. Seeing him scared me so."

"Or gave you an excuse?"

"Don't be hateful."

"I just don't like to see you spoil what you're trying to do."

"It won't happen again."

"Do you mean that?"

"I don't know. I don't want it to happen again. But I keep thinking... he could come walking along this beach right now."

"Not tonight. He's busy."

"What!"

I told her how and where I had found him. With a sideburned boy named Pete, and three girls named Deeleen, Patty and Corry.

"From the little I heard, he's taking all of them or some of them on a cruise to the Bahamas. They think they're working him. They think they've found a very soft touch. They call him Dads."

"Can't those poor kids see what he is?"

"Cathy didn't. You didn't."

"What are you going to do?"

"Go see if I can make a date tomorrow afternoon."

"They might be gone."

"I think he'll wait until he gets the new generator installed."

"But what if he leaves with them in the morning?"

"If that seems too dreadful to you, Lois, you can always get drunk."

"You don't have to be so cruel."

"You disappointed me."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"How's your head now?"

"A little better, I think. Trav?"

"Yes, honey."

"Trav, I'm so hungry I could eat this bench."

When I took a look at the outdoors Sunday morning I knew they weren't going anywhere. It was a sparkling day. The wind had swung around and it was coming out of the northeast, hard and steady. A wind like that builds too much of a chop out in the Stream for anything the size of Junior Allen's cruiser. It would be running seven or eight feet out there, and very dirty.

I waited until noon and then drove up to the Citrus Inn. Apartment 2A was in the center section on the second floor, I wore a courting costume, summer version. T shirt, khaki slacks, baseball cap, straw shoes, an eager smile, and a bottle of good bourbon in a brown paper bag. I rapped on the scarred and ornate old wooden door, and rapped again, and a girl-voice yelled in an exasperated tone, "Just a minute!"

The Inch rattled. The door opened an inch and a half, and I saw a tousle of dark hair and a segment of tan face and a cold green unfriendly eye. "Whaddya want?"

"I'm looking for Deeleen."

"She's not here."

"Are you Corry?"

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"A friend of a friend."

"Like who?"

"Marianne, works at Charlie Char-Broil."

"That silty b.i.t.c.h hasn't got any friends." Had I done any pleading or begging, she would have slammed the door. So I stood easy, mildly smiling. It's a relaxed area. There is a code for all the transients. if you are presentable, unhurried, vaguely indifferent, it is a challenge. I was having better luck with this than I expected, up to this point. I wanted it to continue. If you push against hostility and suspicion, you merely increase it. In a few moments I saw a little less animosity "What's with this Marianne and you looking for Deeleen? I don't get it."

"I don't want to confuse you, Corry."

"There's some facts of life I should know?"

"I used to see Deeleen around there and never got to know her, and then she left and I was wondering about her, if she'd left town, and I asked around and Marianne said maybe she was still here. So this was an empty day, and I had this jug, so I thought I would come see. But if she's as friendly as you are, I guess it wasn't much of an idea."

She examined me for at least twenty silent seconds. "Stick around a minute," she said, and closed the door. It was ten minutes before she came out. She had stiffened her dark hair somehow until it looked like a j.a.panese wig. She wore a swim suit and an open cabana coat. The swim suit was a black and white sheath, the black faded and the white slightly grubby. Though flawed by a bulldog jaw and a little too much meat across the hips, she was reasonably presentable. She closed the door and smiled up at me and said, "You're practically a giant, huh? You got a name?"

"Trav."

"There's a kid in the apartment sleeping it off. She was whoopsing half the night from beer. Come on, I'll show you something."

I followed her down the short corridor to a back window overlooking the dock. A girl in a very brief bikini lay on a pad on the cabin roof of the Play Pen. I looked down at her over Corry's shoulder.

She looked up at me quizzically. "I don't blame you at all to come looking, she's built so cute, huh?"

"Tasty."

"But if she's absolutely the only idea you came up here with, honey, you can save your self the trouble. She's all set up with the guy owns the boat."

"It's a lot of boat. Whose is it?"

"An old guy named Allen. We call him Dads. We're going to go far and wide on that boat, man. We're going to the Bahamas on that boat. Would you believe it, he says it's hard to find people to go cruising with you? Isn't that a crazy problem. But the way things are, honey, she won't play. It could screw up the boat ride." She turned toward me from the window with just the slightest hint of the stylized posture of the model, the small mechanics of display, seeking approval. "So?"

She had invited inspection and I gave it, then said, "You have to know when to change your ideas. You have to stay loose."

"The thing is," she said, "I wouldn't want you should have any terrible disappointment. I mean on account of Dee."

This was the small smoky game of appraisal and acceptance, offer and counter-offer. She had narrowed it down to that one response necessary to her esteem. So I responded as she wished. "If that was you down there in the sun, Corry, and Dee up here with me, then I could feel disappointed."

She smirked and beamed and preened, then linked my arm and took me down onto the dock. "Hey!" she said. Deeleen sat up, owlish in huge black gla.s.ses. "Where is everybody?" Corry asked as I helped her aboard.

"Dads took off someplace in Pete's car. Pete went down to see Mitch about if he's got the motor back on the little boat yet. Patty okay?"

"She's still sacked out up there."

Deeleen got up and came clambering slowly and cautiously down into the c.o.c.kpit. At a thirty-foot distance she was a very attractive, ripe-bodied young girl. At close range the coa.r.s.eness, and the sleaziness of the materials used in construction were all too evident. Her tanned hide had a coa.r.s.e and grainy look. Her crinkle of putty-colored hair looked lifeless as a Dynel wig. The strictures of the bottom half of the bikini cut into the belly-softness of too many beers and shakes, hamburger rolls and french fries. The meat of her thighs had a sedentary looseness. Her throat and her ankles and the underside of her wrists were faintly shadowed with grime. There was a coppery stubble in her armpits, and a bristle of unshaven hair on her legs, cracked red enamel on her toenails. The breast band of the bikini was just enough askew to reveal a brown newmoon segment of the nipple of her right breast.

"Deeleen, I want you should meet Trav," Corry said.

"Hi," Deeleen said, looking me over. She had a broad mouth and a pink stain of lipstick on one front tooth. She was obviously awaiting further identification.

"That Marianne works at the Char-Broil, she told him one time we were out this way, and he came around. I was telling him about going on the cruise with Dads." It was very casual, but totally explicit. He came looking for you, but I told him the score and he settled for me.

Deeleen gave a little shrug of acceptance and slumped into a canvas chair, spraddled and hot. There was a little roll of fat around her waist. She hitched the bikini top up. High against the meat of the insides of her thighs a fringe of pubic hair escaped the scanty fabric which encased the plump and obvious pudendum. A few years ago she would have been breathtakingly ripe, and even now, in night light, with drinks and laughter, there would be all the illusions of freshness and youth and desirability.

But in this cruelty of sunlight, in this, her twentieth year, she was a record of everything she had let them do to her. Too many trips to too many storerooms had worn the bloom away. The freshness had been romped out in sweat and excess. The body reflects the casual abrasions of the spirit, so that now she could slump in her meaty indifference, as immunized to tenderness as a wh.o.r.e at a clinic.

"What's with squirrel-face Marianne?" she asked indifferently.

"Nothing new."

Corry shed her cabana coat, put canvas cushions on the wide transom and stretched out. They had stopped surveying me. I had pa.s.sed inspection.

"Even with that wind it's almost too G.o.dd.a.m.n hot," Corry said. "Anybody figured out what we're going to do?"

"I'll wait'n see what Dads wants."

Corry turned more toward Dee, closing me out of the conversation. "Was it the way you figured?" she asked.

Dee gave a flat, mirthless laugh. "Only more so."

"Anybody want a drink?"

They both stared at me as though startled to find I was still there.

"Sure," Deeleen said. "What is it?"

"Bourbon."

"Okay." Corry said.

"But he locked it when he took off," Dee said. "You can't get down where the ice and gla.s.ses and stuff is. Corry, you want to bring stuff down from upstairs?"

"It's after one," Corry said. "He can get some stuff from Barney, can't he?"

"Ask to buy some of the big paper cups," Dee, told me. "And get a six-pack of c.o.ke, huh?"

Barney's service was slow, and he overcharged me for the cups, c.o.ke and ice. By the time I returned to the Play Pen, the girls had shuffled me and dealt me. Corry informed me of their approval and of the choice that had been made. She did it by rubbing the back of my neck while I fixed her drink.

We moved back under the overhang, out of the direct weight of the sun. With the breeze, it was comfortable. As they began to get a little high, they included me more naturally in their conversation. We talked about the cruise. Pete arrived. He had a dead handshake, like a canvas glove full of hot sand. Corry gave him a key to 2A and he went up to see how Patty was. There was discussion about whether she would go on the cruise. She would have to lie to her folks.

Suddenly Junior Allen swung aboard, leaped, landed lightly. He was immaculate in white sport shirt, white slacks, pale blue yachting cap. I guessed he was nearing forty. I had not been prepared for him to look so powerful and so fit. He was broad, with shoulders so packed and corded with muscle they gave him a slightly simian posture, the impression enhanced by the extra-long weight and heft of brown tattooed arms, and the short legs, slightly bowed. He had a brown, seamed, knotty face, broad, smiling broadly, the smile squinching the small blue eyes. It was a friendly grin. It was a likable grin. it did not change in any way as he looked at me.

"h.e.l.lo, kids," he said. His voice was a bra.s.sy rumble. He rumpled Dee 's lifeless hair with a big brown paw. "Who we got aboard, little sweetheart?"

She was transformed. She was elfin, lisping, adoring; his ripe, dumpy little child. "This is Trav, darling. He's with Corry. Trav, this is Dads Allen. He's the one owns this boat. Hasn't it got a cute name?"

"It's a very cute name," I said.