It was a beautiful night. The hotels seemed capable of storing energy, and now mysteriously reflected their whiteness. He drove a new convertible, the top down, like a well-paid private detective in movies, and as he drove, privileged at red lights which he stopped for or ignored according to some delicate discretionary sense of his own, he had a notion of coast, a feel of margin. Behind him lay the long drought of his inland life, his singleness (here raised to bachelordom; there were many bachelors in this place) and apprenticeship, which of late he had begun to grudge, resentful of it as of a detour. He played the radio low as he drove slowly along the attenuated strip of twenty- and twenty-five-story hotels like eccentric figures in geometry with their ramps looping like doorman’s braid and their cantilevered balconies that shoved out from the shoulders of the buildings like the epaulets of drum majors — and the buildings themselves, amok parabolas of frosting or the ribbed pockets of gadgets for slicing hard-boiled eggs. Sandcastles! And beyond the great wall of hotels that traced the soft veer of the strand, the sea itself, the fishy Atlantic, a new element. It was this — all that water — that now joined the air, fire and clay of his life, and seemed to make it whole. Here he lived, here, behind the deep water, exactly at sea level, where his voice with nothing to stop it might climb miles, a straight, clear trajectory of sound, spraying old Heaviside’s umbrella of ionosphere, deep as stars, sharp as night. He loved his luck, but it made him nervous. It might turn out to be merely temporary, like a spell of good weather. (Was that why he loved Florida, because the weather was more constant here and he took it as a sign of other, deeper constants?)
He drove up the ramp outside the main entrance to the Deauville and turned his car over to Geraldine, Nick the night man’s girl friend.
“How are you, Geraldine?”
“Not so hotsy, not so totsy. Wisht I was back in ’bama on the farm. Nick and me tuned in the show tonight on a Lincoln Continental while we necked. Turned on the air conditioning and it give me the swollen glands.”
He went inside and picked up his key from the night manager.
“Hi Dick.”
“’Lo Rick.”
“Seen Nick?”
“Nick’s chick.”
“That hick?”
“She’s sick.”
He wasn’t sleepy and went past his suite to Carol’s room, a few doors down. Carol was one of the entertainers in the lounge.
He rapped their signal. “Carol?”
“What is it? Who’s there?”
“Dick, honey. I’m a little nudgy tonight. Okay if I come in for a few minutes and talk?”
He heard someone ask who the hell was out there at this time of night. “Dick, I can’t,” Carol said from behind the door. “Not tonight.”
She must have let one of the guests pick her up, something that happened only when she was very blue. She was married, but her husband had abandoned her and her two children. Now the kids lived with her folks in Michigan; he guessed she missed them pretty bad. Sometimes she used his shoulder to cry on, though he would have preferred her to call up and tell him about it on the air.
“See you tomorrow, Carol,” he said. He leaned closer to the door. “You didn’t remember our signal,” he whispered.
There was soft music playing behind the door of Sheila’s room. Sheila was the dance instructor at the hotel, but occasionally she picked up extra money by dealing for the house in private games around Miami. He rapped their signal and when Sheila opened the door he saw that she was still in her Gwen Verdonish skin-tight clothes — musical-comedy red bell-bottoms that went up and around her body like a scuba diver’s rubber suit. She probably had a dozen such outfits. Something about her wiry, dancer’s body struck him as vicious, but he liked her very much.
He asked if he could come in. “My God,” she said, “you too? Everyone’s making a play for the help tonight. I saw Carol bring a tourist up earlier, and what’s-his-name, the swim pro, Finder, has some minky old bag from Cleveland with him. I guess that other one, Mrs. Loew, must have checked out today.”
“Finder’s keepers.”
“Finder’s keepers. Ha ha. These corridors are snug with sin, I do declare. Must be the moon. Whassamatter, Dicky?”
“I want to learn Rhumba.”
“You’re too old to learn Rhumba. Whassamatter, Dicky? Got the heebie jeebies?”
He loved show folk. They were just as worldly and understanding in person as on stage.
“Not the heebie jeebies, no. Say,” he said, “I have an idea. Why don’t we make love?”
“Well, come on in,” she said. “I do declare.”
He sat down on the side of her bed.
“You never tried to put the make on me,” she said. “What’s up?”
“To find out if you will is why. To see if you’re as worldly and understanding as you are on stage.”
“Whassamatter, Dicky?”
“Yes or no.”
“Well, yes then. Heck, yes.”
Taking her hand, he brought her down beside him on the bed and gave her a kiss. Then he tried to undress her, but he had trouble with her skin-tight clothes.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing? Hey! What are you doing?”
“I think I tore it. Send me the bill.”
“It’s a costume, dummy. It doesn’t work like regular clothes. The bell bottoms go up over my head. You take it off like a sweater. Don’t you know anything about dancing girls?”
She took the bottoms of the strange pants and rolled them up her long legs as if pulling on stockings, maneuvering her body intricately as they rose astonishingly above her hips where they unsnapped at the crotch like a baby’s pajamas. She was naked underneath. Dick gasped and gazed in wonder. “Send me the bill. I want to pay it.”
They made love and smoked. Dick offered her a light from his matchbook, but was disappointed to see that she had plenty of Deauville matchbooks of her own. Then they drank Sheila’s scotch, which he stirred with the cavalier-topped swizzle stick. The FM played “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago and Dick saw through a chink in the drapes that there was a full moon. Naked, he got out of bed and opened the curtains. Sliding back the glass doors, he stepped out on the balcony. Below him the illuminated swimming pool glowed like an enormous turquoise; beyond it the narrow, perfect lawn of beach meshed with the dark Atlantic, the uneven, concentric tops of the waves seen from above like the curved rows of an amphitheater.
He sat in a wrought iron and rubber chaise longue and crossed his arms on his chest. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that Sheila was watching him from the bed. “Come on out,” he said. “This is swell.”
“Do you know what your ass looks like pressing through those rubber straps? Like a zebra’s.”
“Come on out,” he said. “The sun will be coming up in a little bit. It’s going to be terrific.”
Reluctantly she got up and put on a dressing gown. She brought Dick’s underwear out and sat in a chaise next to his. “Here,” she said, “put this on.”
“Why? I’m comfortable.”
“How old are you, Dicky?”
“Pushing fifty. Why?”
“You’re not in the first bloom of youth is all.”
“Oh. Aesthetic reasons. Okay.” He took the underwear and pulled it on. “Is my body really that bad?”
“Pushing fifty’s pushing fifty. But actually, if you want to know, you surprised me tonight.”