He gave me a strange look. “So do I.”
“You’ll make it, Taggart.”
“We’ll have you to dinner every once in a while.”
“I’ll use your guest towels.”
“We’ll feed the kids first.”
So I left him there and went on back to the boat, depressed in a vague way. The plumbing facilities aboard the Busted Flush are extraordinary. I heard that the Palm Beach type who originally built her obeyed every whim of his Brazilian mistress. The water tanks are huge. You could almost set up a bridge game in the shower stall. One could plausibly bathe a sizeable horse in the stainless steel tub. Every possible area of the walls of the bath is mirrored.
When I had saved myself from extinction in that marathon poker game by making a four heart flush stand up, the houseboat chap showed an expensive tendency to see every hand I had from then on. After I had all his ready cash and his houseboat, as his friends gently and firmly led him away from the game, he was trying forlornly to swing a loan on the Brazilian. With cash and houseboat gone, it would seem that his title to that particular asset was clouded.
I could guess that she had been a very clean girl. Other than that, she was either a very large girl or a very gregarious one.
I thundered hot water into the big tub, setting up McGee’s Handy Home Treatment for Melancholy. A deep hot bath, and a strong cold drink, and a book on the tub rack. Who needs the Megrims? Surely not McGee, not that big brown loose-jointed, wirehaired beach rambler, that lazy fish-catching, girlwatching, grey-eyed iconoclastic hustler. Stay happy, McGee, while you use up the stockpiled cash. Borrow a Junior from Meyer for the sake of coziness. Or get dressed and go over to the next dock, over to the big Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party and join the festive pack. Do anything, but stop remembering the way Sam Taggart looks with all the wandering burned out of him. Stop remembering the sly shy way Nicki would walk toward you, across a room. Stop remembering the way Lois died. Get in there and have fun, fella. While there’s fun to have. While there’s some left. Before they deal you out.
Four
THE INSISTENT bong of the bell awakened me. I stared at the clock dial. Quarter after midnight. I hadn’t gone out at all. I had read my book, gotten slightly tight, broiled myself a small steak, and baked myself a large potato, watched the late news and weather and gone to bed.
I put a robe on and went out through the lounge and put the afterdeck lights on. I looked out and saw Nora Gardino rehooking my gangplank chain. She came aboard and swept by me and into the lounge and turned on me, one fist on her hip, her eyes narrow. “Where is he?”
I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “For God’s sake!”
“You know Beanie, over at the Mart.”
“Yes, I know Beanie.”
“She called me, over an hour ago. Maybe an hour and a half. She said she saw Sam about eight o’clock over at the Howard Johnson’s. She was sure it was him.”
“Can I fix you a drink, Nora?”
“Don’t change the subject. Where is he? You said he wouldn’t get here until tomorrow.”
“So I lied.”
“Why? Why?”
“Settle down, honey. He had a little matter to take care of first.”
“I called you and called you, and then I decided you’d turned the phone off again, so I came on over. I want to see him, Travis.”
“He wants to see you. Tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “No. Now. Where is he?” She stood there staring at me, tapping her foot. She wore flannel slacks, a yellow turtleneck sweater, a pale leather hip-length coat over the sweater, swinging open. She looked fervently, hotly, indignantly alive.
“Let him set it up his own way, Nora.”
“I am not going to wait through this night, believe me. It’s ridiculous. The time to have it out is right now. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Travis!”
I yawned again. “Okay, okay, honey. Let me get dressed. I’ll take you there.”
“Just tell me where.”
I was tempted, but then I thought that Sam Taggart would be sore as hell if I let her go to that fusty little cabin without warning, bust in on him in the midst of that kind of squalor without warning. The best way I could retrieve it would be to have her wait out in the car and go get him and warn him and send him on out to her. As a matter of fact, as a penalty against myself, or a gesture of friendship, I could turn over the Busted Flush for the reunion, and stay in his little Mount Vernon.
I dressed quickly, woke myself up by honking into double handfuls of cold water, locked up, went out with her and woke up Miss Agnes. Nora sat very perky and alert beside me.
“What was it he had to take care of?”
“I’ll let him tell you that.”
“When did he arrive?”
“This afternoon, late.”
“How does he look?”
“Fine. Just fine. He’s in great shape.”
I drove over to Route 1 and turned left. She was as rigid as a toy with the spring wound too tightly. When I glanced at her, she gave me a big nervous white-toothed grin in the reflection of the passing street lights. The gas station was dark. I parked on the asphalt beside the pumps and got out.
“In one of those crummy little cabins?”
“He isn’t broke.”
“I don’t care if he’s broke. I’ll come with you.”
“Nora, damn it, you stay right here. I’ll send him out. Okay?”
“All right, Trav,” she said meekly.
I walked around to the back. Cupid McGee. His car was beside his cabin. There was a pickup truck parked beside the end cabin on the left. The others looked empty. I rapped on his door. Night traffic growled by on Route 1.
“Sam?” I called. I rapped again. “Hey Sam!”
I tried the latch. The door swung open. I smelled musty linoleum, ancient plumbing. And a sharp metallic smell, like freshly sheared copper. I fumbled my hand along the inside wall beside the door.
The switch turned an unshaded light on. The light bulb lay against the floor, on the maple base of a table lamp, the shade a few feet away. The eye records. The eye takes vivid, unforgettable pictures. Sam Taggart was on his side, eyes half open in the grey-bronze of the emptied face, one chopped hand outflung, all of him shrunken and dwindled by the bulk loss of the lake of blood in which he lay. A flap of his face lay open, exposing pink teeth, and I thought, idiotically, the missing teeth are on the other side.
They’re sending a guy to close the account.
I heard the brisk steps approaching across cinders, and it took me too long to realize who was coming. “Sam?” she called in a voice like springtime. “Darling?”
I turned too late and tried to stop her. My arms were wooden, and she tore loose and took a step in and stared at what they’d left her of him. There are bodies you can run to. But not one like that. She made a strange little wheezing sound. She could have stood there forever. Lot’s wife.
I had enough sense to find the switch and drop him into a merciful blackness. I took her and turned her slowly and brought her out. She was like a board.
In the darkness, with faint lights of traffic touching her face, she said in a perfectly conversational tone, “Oh, no. I can’t permit that. I can’t stand that. He was coming back to me. I can’t have anything like that. I can’t endure that. There’s only so much, you know. They can’t ask more than that, can they?”
And suddenly she began to hurl herself about, random thrusts and flappings like a person in vast convulsions. Maybe she was trying to tear herself free of her soul. She made a tiny continuous whining sound, and she was astonishingly strong. I wrested her toward brighter light and her eyes were mad, and there was blood in the corner of her mouth. She clawed at me. I caught her by the nape of the neck, got my thumb under the angle of her jaw, pressed hard against the carotid artery. She made a few aimless struggling motions and then sagged. I caught her around the waist and walked her to the car, holding most of her weight. I bundled her in on the driver’s side, got in and shoved her over, and drove out of there.