Chris (4 page)

Whatever this game Dizz was playing, Chris did not like it. Chris did not mind a good fight with everything out in the open. But when a woman started being wily, a person might as well beat an honorable retreat from the battlefield.

Dizz had never done anything like this before. She was usually bluntly honest. Hurt like hell, sometimes. But at least you knew what was happening. You could only guess this way.

Chris didn't like any of the answers she came up with.

The phone startled her out of her bitter reverie. She leaned over to the end table and grabbed the receiver.

"Hello," she said.

"Miss Hamilton?" asked a voice she knew from somewhere.

"Yes."

"Chris, darling, this is Carol. I thought maybe you'd like to come help me with some sea shells over lunch."

Chris paused a long minute. She knew perfectly well she was too old to play at getting even. And she knew she had no business getting involved with this girl.

"Yes," she said. "I'd like that. Very much, in fact."

"Good," Carol said. "Can you be here in an hour?"

"Honey," Chris said, "I can make it in half the time, if you're free."

"Come ahead. I’ll see you then."

Chris hung up the phone and hurried to put on a skirt. She knew it was all wrong. She belonged to Dizz and she always would. She could not decently let anyone else get interested.

Carol was a good kid. She deserved somebody who could love her, who would settle down with her.

Chris had all the arguments against it down pat. But she felt a niggle of excitement at the thought of being with Carol, of caressing-her and loving her.

And when she closed the door behind her, she walked briskly to the corner to hail a cab, filled with a kind of elation she had not felt in years.

The meter made a dollar's worth of clicks before the cab left the crosstown traffic and turned north on Fifth Avenue. A dozen blocks later it pulled up in front of a four-story stone building that looked no different from the others lining the block.

A small metal placard on the great black door said MARINE MUSEUM.

"This the place?" asked the driver, turning to peer at Chris through smudgy thick lenses.

"Yes, this is it," she answered, leaning across to open the door.

"Don't look much like a museum," he commented sourly.

"It's private," Chris whispered confidentially and turned on a mysterious smile.

"Oh," the driver said. The awe in his voice made Chris at least an ambassador from lower Mongolia.

Chris grinned and handed him two singles. She stepped out of the cab and slammed the door without looking back.

She felt the driver watching her till she had climbed the wide concrete steps, opened the heavy black door and passed inside.

It was always an experience to enter this place. Something like being suddenly at the bottom of a tropic sea. The walls were tapestried in warm blues and greens with an occasional splash of scarlet and of gold. The floor was covered with a thick sand-colored carpet that caught and held every trace of noise. The great entry hall rose four stories high and from the skylights above long fingers of sunlight reached down, only occasionally finding bottom and resting there.

Beyond the hall and on the floors above was housed one of the finest collections of marine lore in the world. With almost limitless funds and a practical approach to spending them, Jonathan Brandt had put old Hobbes' will and his mansion to splendid use. In his employ divers had combed every sea, searching out lost cities, fabulous treasures and sea creatures of every variety. Thousands of books, maps, diaries and secret documents had found their way into his eager hands.

And the whole had been arranged in a fairy-tale fashion that never ceased to delight Chris and others who, for a rather sizeable fee, had the standing of lifetime members. It was like a casual visit to Neptune's private palace and being allowed to wander at will through his gardens and libraries. No showcases, no locked cabinets. The glories of the sea were all set within easy reach to be examined and admired.

Chris herself had been responsible for many fine contributions, mostly rare shells and a few oddities like the collection of treasure maps she had routed out in odd corners of the world. As she crossed the hall toward the office at the back, Chris was remembering proudly how she'd done that lying bastard Blackfield out of an authentic pirate's map. He'd tried to chisel her out of a small fortune. But he had a weakness for rum and poker. So...

"Chris!'' A high-pitched squeal called to her. "Chris, dahling!" Jonathan Brandt had appeared, apparently from nowhere. He looked like a chubby cherub, all five-five of him round and pink and snub-nosed and somehow angelic. Little wisps of faded blonde hair poked out at the edges of his bald pate and his clear blue eyes would never get as old as the rest of him.

He bustled noiselessly across the carpet toward Chris, stretched forward on his toes and puckered his lips.

Chris bent to receive the greeting. She was fond of Jonathan, in a peculiar way. He was charming and pleasant and did his work expertly. But she wouldn't trust him out of her sight.

"Chris, it's been an age. You look marvelous, just too too marvelous," he said breathlessly. He always sounded breathless. "And how's Sheila?"

Chris felt a pang of dismay. Jonathan had known Dizz for years, had even fancied himself in love with her once. He'd been one of the people who'd introduced them. She didn't like to think what might happen if he knew why she was at the museum.

"Sheila's fine," she said. "As always."

"Good, good," he said. "And what can we do for you this lovely afternoon? If anything." He stood with his hands together as if in prayer. He moved up on his toes, back on his heels. He was never still.

"Well," she paused imperceptibly, then took the plunge. "I got a call from your new assistant, Miss Martin. She's cataloging that last batch I brought in, I gather, and wants some information."

Dr. Brandt pursed his lips and clucked. "Very thorough, Miss Martin, very thorough. I've been most pleased with her work." He peered up at Chris. "Beautiful girl, beautiful. Have you met her yet?" he asked.

"No, I haven't," Chris lied. She prayed in her heart that Carol would play it smoothly when the time came for introductions.

"Come along, then. She's in the office in back." Jonathan turned toward the rear of the building.

Chris followed him the length of three immense rooms and through an archway into what had once been the solarium. There was not a sound to betray their passage.

When they entered the room, Carol was sitting on a high stool at a semi-circular counter that ran the length of the glass wall. Spread out before her on sheets of off-white paper were thousands of colorful pea-sized shells. She held one of these tiny shells between two fingers and was studying it intently.

Dr. Brandt coughed politely in order not to startle the girl.

Carol put the shell carefully on the paper and turned to face them. She looked up at Chris and began a smile that could easily turn out to be too friendly.

Chris sent her a warning with her eyes over Dr. Brandt's pink dome. Carol caught it. The smile eased to one of polite greeting.

"Miss Martin," Dr. Brandt said, then turned to Chris with a flourish of his hand, "this is Christopher Hamilton." The tone in which he said it implied that anybody but a fool would grasp the full significance of the moment.

Carol slid off the stool and came toward Chris as though she were about to curtsey to the Queen. "How do you do, Miss Hamilton," she said. Chris could see the laughter bubbling in her eyes.

Chris extended her hand. "Miss Martin," she said.

Solemnly they shook hands.

"Well, ladies," Dr. Brandt said, "I'll leave you to your work." He turned to go.

"Jonathan," Chris called after him, "one second. After I astound and bore this young lady to death with all the pertinent facts, have I your permission to buy her a drink?" She grinned at him. "I like to be on the good side of your assistants. I give them enough dirty work to do."

"Of course, Chris," he answered. Chris made a habit of Christmas gifts and the like, he knew. He turned importantly to Carol. "As soon as you've finished here, call it a day," he said expansively.

Chris watched him trot out through the archway and toward his own office off the foyer.

She turned to Carol. "Thank you," she said. "That fat little gentleman has all the instincts of a peeping Tom. And I can't see any good reason for keeping him posted on my personal life."

"Sure. Any time," Carol said. She walked back to the counter. "Does he know Dizz?" she asked, carefully keeping her eyes focused on the shells.

For a long minute Chris did not answer. She looked intently at the back of Carol's head, trying to calculate what was happening inside it "Yes, he does," she said. "Why?"

"Just curious," Carol answered.

Chris came and stood beside Carol at the counter. She gripped the edge with both hands and pressed till the knuckles went white.

"Look," Chris said softly, "I came here because I wanted to see you. I like you," she said. "A lot. Do I have to give you the history of my life? Or will you take it for what it's worth?"

Carol tilted her head and smiled into Chris's eyes. "No, darling," she said. "I don't need any explanations. I just don't want you to get in trouble with your girl." She grinned impishly. "I know how unreasonable women can be."

Chris laughed and hastily planted a kiss on Carol's forehead.

"Now, big shot, we've got work to do." Carol turned to a rack of rolled maps, selected one and lifted it off.

"Sit down over there at the desk and well get at it."

Chris reached out and easily lifted the cumbersome map from Carol's hands. She carried it to the desk and unrolled it on the broad top. Carol brought over a couple of conch shells to anchor the bottom corners.

"Now, I could use some tracing paper and a sharp pencil," Chris said. She stood looking down at the map, tracing with a forefinger the area to be lifted.

Carol came up behind her and laid a two-foot square of tracing paper over the map. Then she reached in front of Chris and pulled open the middle drawer. 'Take your pick," she said.

Chris selected a blue drawing pencil and felt the lead with her finger. Then she took a contraption with a razor blade from the drawer, flicked lightly at the lead and tested it again.

"Okay," she said. "An ashtray and we're all set." For two hours Chris bent studiously over the map, tracing carefully every minute particular of the Keys, shading here and there, labelling each area she had explored and listing meticulously which shells came from which spot. Occasionally she paused to take a drag on a cigarette or to sharpen the pencil.

Carol, she knew, was somewhere behind her, silently going about her business, not humming or running a sweeper or something, as Dizz would be doing.

Finally Chris straightened up and put the pencil down on the desk. "How's that?" she said.

Carol was all of a sudden at her elbow, studying the tracing. "Perfect, darling," she said. "You just saved me a week's work." She picked up the paper and carried it to the counter. She checked a couple of items against the key, shifted one to another sheet. Chris rolled up the map, crossed with it to the rack and set it in place. She returned to the desk, moved the conchs back on a shelf, then sat down in the swivel chair.

Carol came and perched on the desk beside her. "It's a pleasure to watch you work, Chris," she said. "You're so thorough. And you know what you're doing."

“I should," Chris answered. "I've been doing it for twenty years."

"My God, I was just out of diapers then," Carol laughed. "What got you started?"

Chris shifted in the chair. "Well," she said, "a land of childhood compassion, I guess. I was brought up around the Indian River Inlet, you know. Plenty of ocean and beach and dunes. I remember when I was just a little kid, going with my family to Long Neck to dig clams. Not in the mud on shore, but wading up to your neck in the water with a tub tied to you and floating behind. You dig down in the mud with the clam rake and when you're a kid it's fun to see if you can dig faster than the clams and catch 'em before they get away."

She paused to put out a cigarette. "Then one night I had a peculiar dream," she went on. "A big clam was standing in the water with a people rake and I was trying to dig my way down into the mud. And just when I thought I was safe, he grabbed me with the rake and pulled me out of the water and threw me in the tub." She laughed. "I never went clamming after that."

Carol slid off the desk and stood up. "But you started collecting clam shells?" she said.

"Hmm. And other kinds. And making maps. I used to walk along the shore, listening to the ocean. I'd hear voices, you know, telling me about far away ports and all kinds of mysteries at the bottom of the sea." She sighed wistfully. “I even wrote poetry in the wet sand at one point."

Carol was silent, letting Chris enjoy her reverie.

"So," Chris said in a moment. "And now I'm hungry. How about you?"

Carol crossed to a small lavatory at one end of the office. “I’ll be with you in two seconds," she said. And in two seconds she returned. She had put on a soft rose wool coat that set off her dark hair dramatically.

Chris lifted an eyebrow in approval. She was vaguely aware of a warmth of feeling toward this girl that she usually associated only with Dizz. It wasn't something that she could define. But it had something to do with wanting to protect her, to be strong yet infinitely tender.

Dizz had taught Chris to hide this feeling, to put it away or be laughed at. Yet Chris knew instinctively that Carol would not laugh.

"Chris, tell me something," Carol said as "she came toward her. "And I'm not being catty."

"Okay," Chris said. "Ask away. I don't have to answer, after all."

"Does Dizz go with you on these trips? I mean, is she interested in your work?" Carol asked.

"Dizz?" Chris laughed deep in her throat. "Dizz doesn't know a conch from a cochina. And the only oyster she's ever seen was on a plate in front of her. I thought she was a comrade when I met her, but I found out later she'd read up for the occasion." She said it affectionately, without malice. "But how come we're back to Dizz?"