“There’s something missing in this whole picture.”
She said, too loudly. “Get that out of your head! I’m not what you thought I was. I pretended, but it didn’t work. That’s all.”
He got up quickly and took her shoulders and wrenched her toward the door so that the daylight struck her face. She turned her head away, and he put his knuckles against the side of her chin and turned her back. “It’s an act,” he said in a low voice. “Give me the right reason.”
Her eyes held an emptiness. There were new lines bitten deep around her mouth. He smelled her juniper breath. She said, “No act, Paul. Anybody you marry is supposed to be Joan of Arc. Is that it? I got sick of it and sold it. And what difference would that have made if you weren’t coming back?”
He released her. “That was the pitch. I wasn’t supposed to come back.”
“At this point it doesn’t make any difference, does it?” She turned back into the dimness of the room. “I didn’t sell the house to Winkler. I could have.”
“I’m supposed to tell you you’re a good girl.”
He looked through the screen when he heard firm steps on the shell path. A very large, very young man took the two weathered steps in one stride. He had a look of richness and importance. He pulled the screen open, then started a bit. “Vally? Oh, there you are.” He stepped around Paul with a slightly quizzical look, put an arm around Valerie, patted the back of the yellow skirt cheerfully, and said. “Little late. Sorry, pal. Who’s your friend?”
“My ex. Paul Rayder. Paul, this is Harry. I told you about him, Harry.”
“Oh, sure. How was it, soldier?”
Paul stared at him, stared at the bland, smiling face. He turned and pulled the door open and went down the steps and down the shell path. He heard the deep sound of Harry’s voice, heard them both laugh. There was a shrillness in Valerie’s laugh. A bright-red MG was parked at the curb. Paul walked slowly down the street. When he was close to the corner, he heard the gutty roar of the motor. Harry took the corner onto Collins hard and fast. Paul glanced at the car. Valerie’s dark hair was wind-whipped. She looked back at him, and it was more the face he remembered. It seemed, almost, to have something soft, lost, and wanting in it. He wondered if she knew Harry’s last name.
When Paul went into the lobby of the hotel at six. Jerry Dobson bounded up out of a chair and came over, hand outstretched.
“In spite of the fact you look like death warmed over. I’m glad to see you.”
“What I’ve lost, you’ve gained. Fat, sleek, and prosperous.” They went into the cocktail lounge, took a corner table.
They ordered, and Paul said, “You were right. A drink is indicated.”
“You caught her, then. I know what you mean.”
The drinks came. Paul turned his glass slowly on the tabletop. “It’s funny. Fun-town is always loaded with them. Funny to see your wife right in the routine. Find out anything when you traced her?”
“A little. Not much. After the decree, she stayed in the Virgin Islands, got in with a pretty fast crowd, and blew a good piece of the settlement. Came back here and took a beach apartment. Started unloading more at the tables over the county line while the season was on. Moved to a smaller place. Like she was trying to get rid of every dime as fast as she could, I guess. She’s on the town right now, as I can see you guessed. She’ll make out through this season all right, probably. It will be May or June before she gets picked up for soliciting on the street.”
“That bad? You’re kidding. Jerry.”
“That’s the trouble. I’m not. They’ve got an eye on her. They know she’s in business. It’s a hell of a thing, but you better know the worst. Forget her, Paul. Plenty of other guys have married no-good women.”
“I had the funny feeling she was holding out on me.”
“About what? She’s a type. Life has got to be a party, with paper hats.”
“Who did she sell to?”
“A guy named Winkler. For cash.”
“Know anything about him?”
“He’s been around the Keys most of his life. Heard a rumor he used to run Chinese in, but no proving that.”
“Funny it should be a local.”
Jerry said thoughtfully, “I know what you mean. You usually get that kind of a price when you unload a setup like you built down there to a nice trusting old couple from Michigan. He wanted it, though. And it is a nice hunk of land. What do you want to do about the house? I can rent it again for the season. Tragic thing, that couple that had it last year.”
“What was that, anyway? Your letter didn’t tell me much. You’re a specialist on short letters.”
“It was a young couple. Morrisey. They built a little restaurant about two hundred yards down the pike from your place. The house was handy, so they rented it until they could build one of their own on land near the restaurant. He went swimming early one morning, and she got worried and went out and couldn’t find him. The tide brought him in. He was a strong swimmer, but he hit his head somehow. On that reef offshore, they think. The girl is game. Her mother came down. They’re running the restaurant together. The Sand-Dollar Inn. Pretty decent food. You want to rent the house this season?”
“I don’t know what I want to do. All I could think of, all the way back, was talking to Valerie. So I’ve talked to her, and I feel like it was a swing and a miss. I think maybe I’ll go down there and stay in the house for a while. Get some sun and some fishing and maybe some thinking done. What am I worth? About forty thousand plus the house? I’ve got to get into something, I guess. But not yet. Not until I find some reasons, I guess. And if I don’t find any, I won’t do anything. I could get a shack and fish and make it all last as long as I will.”
“You? I know you better than that, Paul. You’d go nuts.”
“Not the way I feel now.”
“It isn’t the same kind of war I was in, is it?”
“No. I haven’t figured it out yet. That other war, Jerry, being in it, it took you finally down into a sort of emotional valley. It flattened you. This one, you come part way up some kind of a hill on the other side. Because you stop paying any kind of attention to any issues, or moralities. All you have left is competence. So you get competent. It’s a cold-eyed war, this one. You kill them deader in this one, because you kill them in a workmanlike way.”
Jerry signaled for a refill. They sat and talked. Jerry wanted him to come home with him for dinner. Catherine would want to see him. Paul said not yet. Not this quick. Jerry had to leave. Paul sat alone and drank and thought of the girl he had married and the stranger he had seen today.
When he walked out into the gray seaside dusk, he was unsteady on his feet, and his mouth felt numb. There were too many bright faces around him. Too much laughter. He ate and went back to the hotel and went to bed, and heard it start to rain heavily as he went to sleep.
In the morning, he test-drove a used convertible, inspected it carefully, paid for it by check, then waited around for the details of plates, license, check clearance. At noon he ate at the hotel, checked out, put the top down on the car, and drove down through South Miami and Homestead and Key Largo, down the Overseas Highway, on the long bridges. Traffic was light. The sun was a hot weight on his shoulders.
At last he was near his place. He went through the small Key village of Cove’s End, hot and dusty with a memory of a long summer, and noticed, just beyond the town, a neat, new-looking cinderblock restaurant called the Sand-Dollar Inn. Some new roadside courts had been built beyond the town. He saw his sign ahead: PLAYA DE MAÑANA. THE BEACH OF TOMORROW. HOUSEKEEPING CABAÑAS ON THE ATLANTIC. As he slowed to make the left turn across traffic, down the abrupt slant of the sand road, he took a second look at the sign and frowned. The big post had tilted a little and had not been straightened. The neon looked broken. A breeze swung the end of the broken wire that had lighted the sign. Summer sun had cracked and faded the paint. A new sign, crudely lettered on raw wood, was nailed to the post, closed, no trespassing. The genera] flavor was that of abandonment.