Enchanted Isle (7 page)

“Does what look like you need my money?”

“This coat, what do you think?”

“Well, it’s a very nice coat.”

“I asked if it looks like I need your money?”

“Mandy, it doesn’t look like anything, until I know how you got it. How did you get it, then?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“It is if I’m to answer your question. Was it given you? And if so, by whom? Or did you steal it? Or did you get it the way your mother got hers? If she has one.”

“What do you mean, the way she got hers?”

“You know what I mean—in bed.”

“How’d you like to go to hell?”

“Was there something else?”

I
MUST HAVE GOT
back in the cab and ridden down to the hotel, but the next thing I really remember is bursting into the room, after opening the door with my key, and coming apart all over, right in front of Rick. He was in bed in pajamas, a highball tray beside him, reading the paper, the same one I had read, that he’d had sent up with the Scotch and seltzer and ice. And I no sooner was there that I started to whoop, weeping and wailing and bawling, so I couldn’t make myself stop. And then in the middle of it I saw tears on the coat and whipped it off so it wouldn’t get smeared up and threw it on the other bed. Then I went on with the show. He lay there staring at me, then got up to stare at the coat, then walked to the chair in his bare feet to sit and listen at me. Then after a long time he asked, “OK, what have you done? Are they on your tail or what? And where did this coat come from?” It was some time before I could speak, but then I said, “I haven’t done anything! It’s that Vernick, the things that he said! The lying things, the rotten things, to me, out there at his house!” So then I started to talk as control came at last, while he sat there, listening to what I said.

It went on quite a while. Because I no sooner started on Vernick than I’d have to backtrack to the store to explain about the coat. And I’d no sooner get started on that than I’d have to backtrack to lunch and what I’d seen in the paper. And then, all of a sudden, I started crying again—for no reason at all, but I did. So at last he started to talk. He said, “That’s nice, I’ll say it is. Here we were inching ahead—bought ourselves bags, checked the big one to leave it, then found ourselves a pad so we could lay up and think. Then we really got a break. Mandy, did you read
all
the stuff in the paper? How that girl idemnified me? As Vito Rossi, one of the bandit mob? We didn’t know it, but this was the worst bunch of thugs on earth, the Caskets, and Rossi, he was one of them. And the girl, the one that forked over the money, when shown a picture of him, a mug shot by the police, said, ‘Yes, that’s the one, he held the basket.’ We were all in the clear, playing in wonderful luck, and then what do you do? Go and buy this coat, paying with twenty-dollar bills that had to be hot. The store still has them and is going to report them, sure as God made little apples, to the police, who of course report to the papers. And as though that wasn’t enough, you parade the damned coat for Vernick, and when he sees the papers, that’s it!...Christ, we had it made! It was all ours. We were in the clear. And now what? If the eight ball was there before, God knows what the number is now!” And he fell on his knees in front of the chair, burying his face in the seat.

“You don’t have to cry about it.”

“How stupid can you get?”

“At lease I did something! I didn’t just lie there, drinking booze and feeling sorry for myself!”

He got back into bed again and lay there a long time. Then, moaning, he kept saying over and over, “Mandy, how could you? How could you?”

“...OK then, I did wrong.”

“Here we were sitting pretty, and...”

“I did what I had to do! It was why I got in it at all! To get this mink coat and shake it in his face, that horrible Ed Vernick! I told you, didn’t I? I told you, I told those bandits!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!”

He got back into bed, then lay there a while, pressing his hands to his head and squirming under the covers. Then at last he sat up and commenced hollering again. “I have to find out! If that goddam store called the cops! I have to find out and I can’t—I can’t go out to call; I don’t have any pants! I sent them out, sent them out with the coat to be pressed, to be dry-cleaned and pressed, and here I am caught with no clothes till that valet brings them back
. And I got to find out!”

“You mean you’re going to ask them, ‘Did you call the cops?’ Oh, boy! Talk about me being dumb!”

“No, I know what I’m going to ask, but...”

“Well, can’t you call from here?”

“And have these girls listen in?”

“Rick, get with it, for God’s sake. Wake up where you are! You could be president of the United States and these girls would not listen in! They’re too busy! This place is too big! It’s...”

“OK, OK.”

He grabbed the coat, which was still on the other bed, turned the pocket down to look at the label, and when he had the name of the store found the number in the book. He gave it in, and when the store came on he said, “Fur coat department, please...Fur coats? Did a girl come in today to buy a mink coat off you? Young girl around sixteen, paying with twenty-dollar bills?...Oh, she did! Well, I’m her husband, and I just called to say I’m bringing that coat back! She had no business buying a mink coat at all! That money was given to us, to both of us when we got married, for sheets and blankets and carpets and chairs, to help furnish our home!...What did you say?” Then he held on for some time and listened while some woman talked at the other end. Then, in kind of a different tone, he said, “Then, you won’t take it back? OK, it’s what I wanted to know.” He hung up, fell back on the bed, and gasped, “Thank God, thank God, thank God!”

“Yeah? For what?”

“They haven’t called the cops—I could tell from how she talked, that woman who came on the line. She said money was money, and it wasn’t up to them to ask any questions about it. She said the girl did mention her wedding present, but if that much cash was unusual, there was nothing about it that the store had to question at all or pass judgment on. And merchandise on sale is not subject to return. And, she gave me no lead at all to find out who I was or bait me into the store. All she gave me was the brush. So...”

“Seems that God didn’t make little apples—just big ones, maybe.”

“Now there’s a thought. There’s a thought and a half.”

He squirmed in the bed some more, then burst out, “I’ve got to find out about Vernick! Whether he called the cops, or what! I’ve got to check on him!”

So he looked in the book again and gave the number in that I knew so well. Then: “Mr. Vernick, you don’t know me, but I’m calling about a girl who was out to your house today, or so I understand...” Then a voice cut him off and there came a click. He hung up and said, “Thank God, thank God once more, thank the all-merciful God. He didn’t call any cops either. If he had, he’d have tried to find out who I was, where I was calling from, and where Mandy Vernick was. He didn’t—just said, ‘I’ve nothing to say about her. Goodbye!’”

“So you got all worked up over nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Mandy.”

“And we are sitting pretty, aren’t we?”

“If
we are.”

“Well? Are we or aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know! Mandy, I’m shot.”

“...You mean...
you got hit?
”

“I mean I’m jittered. Bad.”

“Oh! You scared me there for a minute.”

At last I calmed down, then took off my clothes and went marching around naked. Then I put my pajamas on and got in the other bed. Sitting pretty or not, I felt like holy hell and wanted arms around me. I own up he didn’t turn me on, at lease not much, but any port in a storm, and I’d been through one. I was hoping he’d come to me, and if it meant that other, then, OK, I’d even have stood for that. But nothing happened. I didn’t know why, especially after that pass that he’d made the night before, talking about my legs and then making a pest of himself to get me in bed with him. He just lay there, now and then sipping his drink. He wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t taking too much, but he seemed to need it, the way he was acting. He said he’d ordered it up from room service, along with the afternoon paper, and signed for it, tipping the boy out of the money I’d given him while we were buying our things at the plaza. He had put the tray on the luggage rack, the sawhorse thing with tapes, and offered me a drink, but I told him I didn’t like it. So it went on for some little time, him sipping and thinking and me sighing and hoping, and then all of a sudden I knew why he was not coming over, not slipping into my bed when he must have known I’d say yes. It was because he was scared, or “shot” as he called it—not on account of me, of that, or of anything in particular, but of everything, especially the cops. And I thought about last night, the way I’d thought about it, on account of being mad. And I realized if a girl gets mad enough, she won’t, and if a guy gets scared enough, he can’t.

After a long time, he said, “Mandy, I’ve been thinking about it, ’specially about him, this guy today, Vernick. I mean he could be right. Maybe he’s not your father.”

“He has to be! He and mother were married!”

“That don’t prove anything.”

“Well, why wouldn’t he be?”

“He told you. He knows stuff, of course, that he didn’t mention to you, but on top of that your looks told him, so he said. You don’t look like his kith or kin.”

“What’s kith?”

“I don’t rightly know. Friends, maybe.”

“His friends could be my father? Was that it?”

“Mandy, I don’t know what it was.”

“Well, what was he getting at?”

“That some other guy is your father.”

“Oh! That’s all!”

“Mandy, it could be true. And it would help, I would think, if you got with it now, ’stead of cussing him out about it.”

“You mean if I believed it?”

“Well? I believe it.”

“...You believe it? Why?”

“The stuff you told me, Mandy, about yourself, about your mother, about him, and about Steve, this guy who beat you up who seemed to know more, to know a whole lot more, than he was telling you.”

“And it’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“At lease you’d quit plaguing yourself about him.”

“But then I wouldn’t know! Who my father is!”

“I was coming to that.”

For the third time I’d been hit in the stomach and started to cry again. When I could talk I said, “Here it’s all I’ve thought about, this last year and a half, my father, my real, sure-enough father, how I would go to him, how he’d ask me in real nice, how he’d take me in his arms, and how we’d be happy. And now look how it’s turned out!” I told him then, for the first time, about the desert island and how I’d dreamed about it, that my father and I would swim there after our plane was forced down, and we’d stay there and live, eating clams and drinking coconut milk. I said, “Maybe we never would, maybe it was just silly, but I would imagine that we were there and laugh to myself about it, thinking how we would live there.” He listened and didn’t make any cracks, just let me talk along. Then he got out of bed and sat on the floor beside me, there between the beds, in front of the liquor tray, so his face was close to mine. Then he took my hand and kissed it. Then he said, “Mandy, why can’t
I
be your father?”

“...You! You be my father, Rick?”

“Yeah, starting right now.”

“You’re not much more than a boy.”

“I’m that much more than a boy that I can eat clams with you and drink coconut milk on that island we’re going to have.”

“You mean you’re not laughing at it?”

“I mean we’re going to have one!”

“...When? And
where?
”

“In Florida!
Now!
Now we know where we’re going! Mandy, they have them down there! Cays, they call them—big ones, little ones, whatever size you want, some with palm trees on them, some with nothing but grass, but all of them with clams! We’ll buy ourself one! We got money, haven’t we?”

“Oh, Rick, you make me so happy!”

Because I knew, of course, that this was his way of doing, to kind of make it look different, his not coming in with me, as, of course, if he was my father he couldn’t come to my bed, and it would be for that reason, not on account that he couldn’t, that he didn’t. So OK, I wasn’t kidded. At the same time it was just what I wanted if he and I were to go on. I mean that other was not what I really wanted, though I would have stood for it regardless to get what he was giving me now, kisses and pats and love. So now I had what I really did want, without having to do that other. So it helped, in the most wonderful way. I said, “Rick, I think that’s the nicest thing that’s been said to me, that ever was said to me, in my whole life until now.”

“Then OK. Now, little daughter, sleep.”

“You make me want to cry. But happy.”

He held me close in his arms, and next thing I knew it was dark. I whispered, “Rick, are you there?”

“Yes, Mandy. You’ve been asleep.”

“I’m sorry. I’m kind of tired, I guess.”

I looked then, and when I saw he was in his bed asked, “Did you sleep at all, Rick?”

“I guess so, little bit... much as I could, worried as I am. I can’t help how I feel. Tomorrow, if we get out of town, if nobody stops us, I mean, if we get started for Florida, I imagine I’ll feel different. Then it’ll be the worry was just for nothing.”

“I’m sorry I caused it, Rick.”

“Listen, what’s done is done, and when no harm is done, don’t beat yourself over the head. That’s how I look at it, Mandy.”

“What time is it?”

“Well, you got the watch on. Look.”

“It’s five of ten.”

“You hungry?”

“Rick, I hadn’t thought. Yeah, little bit.”

“I’ll order something sent up. How you do, you call room service. They’ll get you a paper too—I think I’ll have one sent up. The five-thirty if they still have one. It’ll tell more than the one I have here, the same one you read, I guess.”

“Have two sent up, one for me.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“The identical same I had in the coffee shop—tongue sandwich, buttermilk, and apple pie a la mode. It was all wonderful, and the pie was out of this world.”