He went in and sat at the bar, under the festooning of nets and glass floats. There was a noisy party of four in a corner, and one couple dancing, tight-wrapped and slowly, to the muted juke. There was a half drink and a woman’s purse on the bar three stools away. Bernie, the fat bartender, was checking the bar tabs against the register.
He came over and said, “Long time, Jim. You off it?”
“Not so anybody could notice. Beam on the rocks, Bernie. Uh... make it a double. Slow for a Saturday.”
“We did our share, earlier on. We made new friends. We carried out a few.” He put the drink in front of Jimmy.
“Move over here cozy,” a familiar girl-voice commanded. He turned and saw that the half-drink and purse belonged to Mitchie McClure. He grinned and moved to the stool beside her.
“How’s the ink-stained wretching business?” she said. “Tuck the paper to bed, full of scoops and excitements?”
Her voice had the drawling quality which drinking always caused with her. She had a ripely sturdy body, a bland pretty childish face, so unmarked, so much in contrast with the knowing eyes, the sardonic voice, that it had a masklike quality. They had known each other for many years. Her hair was bleached almost white, paler than he had ever seen it, and piled in a contrived tousling which curved to frame her face and curled down almost to her eyebrows in a silky fringe.
“The hair is really something, girl.”
“This week’s hair. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is shaving it off. Every time I get it done I feel like a new woman for twenty minutes.”
“You alone? On a Saturday night?”
“Shocking, isn’t it? There are clowns you can take and clowns you cannot take. I reserve the right to choose, Jaimie. I didn’t send this one on his way early enough. I should know by now. Stick with a friend of a friend. It’s when you get to a friend of a friend of a friend the system collapses. Look up good old Mitchie if you ever get down that way. God, what a boor! I’ll tell you something, Jaimie. It makes a girl treasure her stinking little inadequate alimony, because maybe without it, life would turn into a wilderness of boors. Ha! Adrift in a sea of dullards. I’m a lucky girl. Right, Bernie?”
“Right, doll.”
“One for the road, Bernie. And hit my friend again.”
“Not right off like that,” Jimmy said. “We go to the matches.”
“That’s my game. You can’t win.”
He tore matches out of the ashtray book. She went first, calling two. Their clenched fists were side by side. They glowered at each other. He had one match in his fist. “One,” he said, displaying it. She opened an empty hand. “Horse on me,” she said. “Your call.”
He decided to use bad strategy. He used all three matches, and called four. She waited a long time, guessed three, opened her hand and showed one.
“You lucked out,” she said indignantly. “Your lucky day, eh?”
“Sure. I’m up to here in luck, Mitchie.”
She tilted her head and looked at him more closely. “I’ve seen you looking better, Mr. Wing. Much better. On the other hand, everybody used to look a lot better, every one of us. Right, Bernie?”
“Right, doll.”
“I took canoeing and boating at Sweet Briar,” she said. “It readied me for the world. Heavy weather. We run before the wind, Jaimie. No sea anchors.”
The noisy foursome had paid and left. Bernie went and unplugged the juke. The dancing couple left.
“You have the look of a man trying to close the joint, Bernie.”
“Right, doll.”
They paid, said goodnight and went out. Bernie went to the door and they heard the click of the latch behind them. The spray of sea oats in yellow neon went off. A car whined by. The Gulf mumbled against the dark beach.
They stood between his station wagon and her ancient Minx.
“Old Saturday night,” she said. “Sunday morning.”
“One of each every week.”
“You are down, aren’t you, dear?” She moved closer to him, put her hands on his waist and looked up at him. “Got all dressed up and ended up with no place to go. We could share a little gesture of friendship. I’m not being brazen. Just cozy. And it wouldn’t matter a hell of a lot either way.”
He kissed the bridge of her nose and said, “Follow me,” and got into his car. Her lights followed him up the Key and down his long driveway. She saved out some breakfast eggs and scrambled the rest. They talked aimlessly for a little while and went to bed. Just before they went to sleep, she rubbed the coal of her cigarette out in the bedside ashtray, settled back down against him and said, “Who is she, Jaimie?”
“Who is who?”
“Don’t give me that. I told you my long sad story of unrequited love a long time ago, with tears and everything. Remember? Who is she?”
“She’s somebody who isn’t going to work out.”
“On account of Gloria?”
“On account of a lot of things, Mitchie.”
“She married?”
“You talk too much, honey.”
She changed position, put her arm across him, nestled more closely and sighed. “I know. Anyhow, I feel more even with you. People like us, Jaimie, we have two things we can go with. One thing, you can wake up in the morning and know you’re alive. That’s something, I guess. The other is this. Having somebody close to hold onto sometimes.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“But neither is really so much, is it, when you think about it?”
“Go to sleep, Mitchie.”
Toward dawn a great raw clangor of thunder awakened him. He heard the lisping roar of heavy rain moving toward the cottage, moving across water and tropic growth. He was trying to pull himself far enough awake to go see to the windows when he heard them being closed. He thought Gloria was closing them, and then he remembered Mitchie. The heaviest rain came. As it began to die away after ten minutes he heard a small thin whining sound. He was on the edge of sleep. He wondered if some animal was under the house. He tried to fall back into sleep and could not. Finally he sat up. The world was a drab dark gray. The rain was almost gone. Both the bedroom and the kitchen opened out onto the small screened porch on the back of the cottage. The door was open. He could barely see the pale figure of Mitchie standing out there on the porch by the screen, naked, making that stifled whimpering sound. He lay back. In a little while the sound ended. The rain was gone. He heard the sound of her bare feet on the wooden floor, heard the rattle of a towel rack in the bathroom. Soon the bed moved as she eased back into it. He rolled toward her, pretending to embrace her in sleep. Her skin was cool, freshened by the rain which had blown against her. He mumbled and held her and kissed her eye and tasted salt with the tip of his tongue. While they made love he wondered exactly what had been in her mind as she had stood out in the rain, crying. Perhaps she thought of nothing but her own tears.
She woke him at eleven. She had gone back to her place to change, and she had picked up some fresh orange juice on the way back. When he finished his shower, the eggs, toast and bacon were ready. He was glad she had awakened him, but he wished she had done it by phone. He did not relish having her around, not in the morning. She came cheery and too bawdy and too much at home. She came down too heavily on her heels when she walked. Her hips looked heavier than he had realized they were as she stood at the stove in her chocolate-colored shorts and her yellow blouse. And she made weak coffee. She could not possibly be the same person who had wept in the dawn rain.
She sat across from him with her coffee and said, “Cheer up, pal. I’m not here for keeps.”
“It’s nice to have you here.”