“Get away from me,” he said.
“Richard…”
“Get away from me.”
“Richard, I didn’t want to go back.”
“Get away.”
“All right,” she said quietly. She turned and started away.
“There she goes,” he called after her. “Don’t touch her, she’s in mourning.” His anger rose in him. “Hey, come back, I’ve got an idea. We’ll have a lynching. We’ll string the kid up to the diving board and hang Bieberman from a beach umbrella.”
She was moving from him quickly, back to the hotel. He got up and ran after her. He put out his hand to stop her but she eluded him and he saw himself stumble forward, his empty hand reaching toward her. He recovered his balance and walked along a little behind her, talking to her. He felt like a peddler haggling, but he couldn’t help himself. “The drowning loused things up, didn’t it? It killed a stranger, but nobody around here knows from strangers.” She broke into a run. From the way she ran he could tell she was crying. He ran after her, hearing her sobbing. “Let’s blame someone. The lifeguard. Bieberman. Me. You want to know what to blame? Blame cramps and lousy Australian crawl.” As he approached the hotel Preminger halted. Norma walked into the hotel and Preminger slumped on the steps. He clapped his palms together nervously in raged applause. That kid, that lousy kid, he thought. He thought of his tantrum as of a disease which recurs despite its cure.
When the world had quieted again he knew that he was not alone. He realized that he had been aware of someone on the porch when he turned from Norma and let her go inside. He looked around and saw in the shadows about twenty feet away the silhouette of a man propped against the side of the porch. In the dark he could not make out his face.
“Bieberman?”
The man came toward him from the dark recesses of the porch. He walked slowly, perhaps uncertainly, and when he passed in front of the hotel entrance he was caught in the light slanting down from the interior like a gangplank secured to the building.
“Ah, Preminger.” The voice was deep and mocking.
“Mr. Bieberman,” he said softly.
The man stayed within the light. Preminger rose and joined him there nervously. “It’s about time for bed,” he said. “I was just going up.”
“Sure,” Bieberman said. “So this will be your last night with us, hah, Preminger?”
Preminger looked at him, feeling himself, as they stood together within the close quarters of the light, somehow under attack. “I hadn’t planned for it to be.”
“Planned?” The old man laughed. “The girl will be going in the morning. What will there be to keep you? The food?” He laughed again. “You’ll leave tomorrow. But I thank you for staying the extra day. It will make me a rich man, and I can go myself to a hotel.” He noticed the bottle in Bieberman’s hand. The old man followed his glance and looked up, smiling broadly. “Schnapps,” he said, holding up the bottle. “A little schnapps. I’ve been sitting here on my porch and I’m on a deck chair on the Queen Mary, which in honor of my first voyage over is keeping a kosher kitchen. The only thing wrong is that once in a while someone falls overboard and it upsets me. If we weren’t three days out, I would call my wife she should swim up from the city and we would go back.’
Preminger smiled and Bieberman offered him the bottle. He took it and, unconsciously wiping off the neck, began to drink.
“I guess I will be going,” he said.
“I guess you will.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” Preminger said. “It was supposed to be a lark. I didn’t come slumming, don’t think that. But it didn’t work out. I guess I just wanted to fool around.”
“Yeah,” Bieberman said. “I know you guys. You’ve got a suitcase filled with contraceptives. Fooey.”
“I just wanted to fool around,” Preminger repeated.
“Nobody fools. Never,” Bieberman said.
“You said it,” Preminger said.
Bieberman went back into the dark wing of the porch. Preminger followed him. “I don’t want you to think I’m leaving for the same reason as the others. I don’t blame you.” The old man didn’t answer. “I really don’t,” he said.
Preminger almost lost him in the shadows. “A boy who likes to fool around doesn’t blame me,” the old man said.
Preminger paused. “Well,” he said lamely, “good night.” He went toward the door.
“Preminger, tell me, you’re an educated person,” Bieberman said suddenly. “Do you really think they could sue me?”
He turned back to Bieberman. “I don’t see how,” he said.
“But the lifeguard — the boy. If I knew he was a boy? If I knew he was sixteen? If they could prove that, couldn’t they sue?”
“How could they find that out?” Preminger said uncomfortably.
“Well, I wouldn’t tell them. I wouldn’t run an ad in the Times, but if they knew it, could they sue me?”
“I suppose they could try, I don’t know. I’m no lawyer. I don’t see how they could find you responsible.”
“My guests did.”
“They’ll forget.”
“Ah,” the old man said.
“Next year your place will be full again.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said sadly.
“Wait a minute, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It made them sick,” Bieberman said so softly Preminger thought he was talking to himself. “All they could do was get away. Some of the women couldn’t even look at me. Sure, that’s why the Catskills and Miami Beach and Las Vegas and all those places are so important. That’s why a man named Bieberman can have his name written across a hotel, and on towels.” Preminger couldn’t follow him. “I mean, what the hell,” he said, suddenly talking to Preminger again. “Does Spinoza get his name written on towels?”
“Why don’t you come inside?” Preminger said, offering him his arm.
“When a little girl drowns in such a place where nobody must drown, where you pay good money just to keep everybody on top of the water, it’s a terrible thing. I understand that. You’re not safe anywhere,” Bieberman said. “Not anywhere. You go to a football game and all of a sudden the man on the loudspeaker calls for a doctor it’s an emergency. Not during a holiday, you think. You think so? You think not during a holiday? You think so? In a forest even, by yourself, one day you notice how the deer are diseased or how the rivers are dried up — something.”
“Come on inside, Mr. Bieberman,” he said.
“Preminger, listen to me. Do me a favor, yeah? Tomorrow when you get back to the city, maybe you could call up those people and tell them what the lifeguard told you. You’re the only one who knew about it.”
The old man lighted a cigarette. He could see the glowing tip pulsating softly as Bieberman spoke. He tried to see his face but it was too dark.
“You’re crazy,” Preminger said finally.
“I’m responsible,” he said sadly. “I just don’t have the nerve.”
“Well, I’m not responsible,” Preminger said.
“You are, Preminger.”
Preminger got up quickly. He walked across the darkened wing of the porch and came abruptly into the slanting yellow light. Bieberman called him and he turned around. “Preminger,” he said. “I mean it, tell them you heard me brag once how I saved a couple hundred bucks.” Preminger shook his head and started carefully down the steps, afraid he would stumble in the dark. “Preminger, I mean it,” Bieberman called.