To his right, David Preston could see the residential area, sprawling for some distance around the peninsula, its homes covert and blended with the firs and pines and redwoods, showing logical and ecological building rather than the flattened bareness of tract developments. While the fishing harbor was at the bottom of the town and increasingly more at the cannery, the bay was dotted with piers and boathouses of the shore-owners; Reedsport was the perfect mix of pleasure and business.
Directly ahead of him was the back yard of the sporting goods store. It also had a pier, a wooden finger of planks sticking out in the water; a klinker-built Thompson fourteen footer with some sort of outboard attached bobbing in the salty swell, covered with a green tarp: and high wood fences on both sides running from the building out into the water.
"Excellent," he said. "I really do want to stay here, Mrs. Franklin. Or… may I call you Marleen?"
His smile was so winning, his charm so overpowering, that again Marleen felt the heat of redness stain her cheeks. "I… I suppose so."
"In that case, call me Dave."
"We haven't decided the details yet, Mr. Pre – Dave," Marleen said, feeling almost schoolgirlish at her silly way of responding toward this man. What was wrong with her? She was around men all day, running the shop the way she did… She cleared her throat, getting a grip on herself. "The rent is seventy-five dollars a month, including utilities, first and last months payable before occupancy. And there's a deposit of fifty dollars which I'll refund when you move out."
"Deal," Preston said emphatically. "That is, if…"
"Yes?"
"Well, one of the reasons I like your place is that it's fenced in back…"
"Naturally," Marleen broke in hastily. "I don't want burglars to break in the back or children to wander through and possibly hurt themselves." She realized that she was all but babbling, over-eager as if she wanted this strange man to move in, to be pleased and without any problems. What was the matter with her?
"Well, you see, I own a dog." He looked at her, trying to see her reaction. Dogs and little children screwed up more situations, including the renting of apartments. "He's a friendly cuss, loves people…"
"We'd have to see him first of course, but personally I like dogs. I mean, if they're real dogs, and not those little dust-mops that run around biting ankles and yapping all the time."
Preston laughed warmly, and Marleen found herself joining in. "No, Marleen, this isn't a dust-mop. King is a German Shepherd, only he's not quite pure-bred. His mother was, but the kennel she was at didn't watch her well enough one season, and she mated with an Alaskan Husky. King was the result – almost all Shepherd, only a little shorter and thicker, and much more even tempered – and I got him for nothing. But he'll be a good watch-dog around here, especially if I can build him a kennel out there, maybe by the rear door there. He won't be any trouble, I promise."
"I'm sure he won't, David."
Preston opened his wallet, a battered and dog-eared brown leather with frosted-plastic picture windows and bits of paper stuck haphazardly to its pockets. He gave Mrs. Franklin two hundred dollars in twenties. "I'll move in this afternoon, if you don't mind. I don't have much stuff. It's all at the Buckingham Hotel, on…"
"I know the place," Marleen said, wrinkling her nose in disdain. God forgive the fancy name, it was over a garage, entered by a flight of stairs narrow and dark, open to the street. No door, no entry way, the place from the outside had the sleaziest look imaginable. Window shades were dirty and cracked and crooked, and the curtains, where they existed at all, were limp, bedraggled, and filthy. It was a fierce looking place, and Marleen had never been prompted to set foot in the place. But it was about the only reasonably priced place for transients in Reedsport, which didn't cater to "outsiders" much – beyond the expensive and garish motels along the strip.
She took the money offered. "I'll write up a receipt later," she told him. "Your mail can be addressed to the store, and will be in with mine. I'll sort it." She handed Preston the key with which she'd opened the apartment door, telling him she'd air it out if he liked, and that there was a side entrance separate from the store at the foot of the stairs, connecting with an alley-way and gate leading to the sidewalk. "The key works the gate, too. You're free to come and go as you wish; I'm not a nosy woman."
"Good," he grinned, and she thought she caught a glimmer of risqueness in his eyes. "I was afraid that you'd mind if I had, ah… visitors now and then."
Visitors… Polite euphemism for girls in his room. Mrs. Franklin found her throat suddenly constricting and a weird, loud pounding of breath in her chest. Girls, to make love with… Her head whirled, but not with shock. That was the galling part – she was a good woman in her own mind, a respectable grass-roots widow with a child to raise, who had successfully placed sex in the back of her mind since her husband's death, and she should be shocked. But she wasn't. Stoically she had spent six years with only the memories of Howie's wonderful love-making and his delightful ways of causing her utmost joy, and though she'd been on dates now and then, there'd never been a man among the fishermen and other acquaintances she and her late Howie had known that had attracted her. Even then it wouldn't have meant sexual contact, for she would save herself for marriage, as she had the first time.
But as she looked up at the frank, open expression on David Preston's face, she felt no bitter and righteous indignation. She felt something in its place – what? It was a shock, then, a heart-quickening, blood-pulsing shock to realize then what was causing the turmoil in her mind. She was saddened! She was standing there, having met a man for less than fifteen minutes, and she was dismayed to learn that he knew other women, that he was interested in making love to them instead of… instead of her!
Mrs. Marleen Franklin, a woman who had always prided herself in being honest with herself above all, of accepting her frailties but determined to overcome them and be a strong and resourceful person, of taking on life's responsibilities and working without rancor for a better day, a happier life, felt her body quiver inside, though its fleshy shell of skin remained motionless, if slightly blushing. She was actually jealous of the other women in her new boarder, David Preston's, life, and that was a bruise to her disciplined morality.
No, she couldn't turn him out, not for being a man. And what a man he was, she had to admit, a secret tingling of excitement spreading through her loins. He stood in a lord-like, animalistic splendor, not arrogance or cruel maliciousness – only with the innate healthiness of an earthy, hedonistically-oriented male. He took his women, a modern-day Ghengis-Khan or Viking; from his flaxen, wavy hair down to his strong, muscular legs, he was the conqueror. No, she couldn't turn him out or deny him his physical pleasure any more than the maidens of Rome could do anything but melt to the ravishments of the Visgoth barbarians. She couldn't, because the pure and basic magnetism between a man – a true man – and a healthy woman wouldn't allow it. She felt this without knowing it, without admitting it.
Her mind, a product of puritanical society, was no match for her body, the evolution of hundreds of thousands of years of instinct. Adam and Eve didn't worry about proprieties, only about the heat and needs of one another, and their mingling seeds had been refined and sophisticated, but were still the foundation for both Marleen and David.