Authors: John D. MacDonald
“So preach me a sermon.”
“If—we made a phone call, maybe they could get there in time.”
“In time for what? He’s
gone
, baby. Long gone. I saw a girl once with a hemorrhage they couldn’t stop. One of those big rosy Irish types. She got knocked up and a girlfriend tried to do the job with a piece of tubing and a piece of wire. She dwindled way down, all gray and shrunk up, and she looked fifty years old when she died.”
“You’re different,” Oliver said wonderingly. “You’re not the same at all.”
She looked ahead through the mist, slowing for the last turn. “I’m Crissy,” she said. “Your dear Crissy. Look what your dear Crissy did, all for the sake of love. I’m the same. The world is the same world. You make it or you don’t make it, honey. Nobody picks you up and brushes you off and gives you another run at it. You do what you have to do before somebody does it to
you
.”
“But it wasn’t like I thought,” he said.
“When it’s for real, it never is, Olly.”
She saw the obscure shell road and made her turn. It was a mile and a half south of the turnoff to her house. She drove slowly until the headlights shone on the palm bole she’d had Oliver place across the road when they had driven out, hoping it would discourage any lovers or fishermen who sometimes used this road to drive down to the shoreline.
He got out and lifted the end of the log and walked it out of the way and got back into the car.
“Remember what comes next?” she asked.
“I sail you back and leave you off at your place and bring the boat
back here and drive home. Tomorrow I hitch a ride over and walk in and sail the boat up to Dinner Key.”
She put the car in gear and drove ahead slowly. “And if they question you, you don’t know anything about anything.”
“Oh God, Crissy! I—I can’t even stop thinking of how—heavy he was.…”
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “Believe me, darling, you won’t worry about it at all. Everything will come up roses.”
As she neared the end of the road she looked to see if the headlights picked up any gleam of metal from parked cars, but the area was empty. They had found the place while sailing. She slowed and parked near the foundations where an old frame house had burned down years ago. She parked on a slight down slope. Headlights shone on his sailboat tied to the small remaining section of an old rotten dock. She turned the lights off and got out. The wind from the west was still blowing gently, moving the mist that was coming off the water.
They went down to the sailboat. She said. “Oh, here’s the car keys. Wouldn’t that be great, to go off with them.”
He put them in his pocket. He leaned and put the case aboard. He said, “I—I’m sorry I couldn’t do …”
“It’s over, dear. It’s done. That’s all that matters. Darling, before we run the sail up, would you look at the main sheet there near the transom on the port. There seems to be a turn of the jib sheet around it and it could get jammed in that roller thing. The flashlight is in that little …”
“I know.” He stepped aboard. She followed him. He got the flashlight and knelt, peering at the lines.
“It looks all right to——”
At that instant she stabbed the muzzle of the single-shot 22 rifle into the socket of his right ear, pulling the trigger as she did so. It
made a quick, hard snapping sound. He dropped and the light went out and he began a savage thrashing down there in the bottom of the boat. She backed quickly and sat on the dock planks and pulled her feet out of the way. Elbows and knees and heavy bones thudded against the bottom of the sailboat. He made the effortful grunts of combat. The boat rocked, swaying the tall naked mast back and forth. There was a quivering drumming sound of unseen arm or leg against some solid part of the boat, a muscular tremor faster than she would have believed possible. Then there was silence. The small rocking stopped, the mast motionless. The breeze from the west held the hull a few inches away from the dock, affixed by bow and stern lines. She slid aboard cautiously. He was face down, head toward the stern. She wrapped his right hand around the action of the rifle, pressing the fingers against the metal. She wrapped his left hand around the middle of the barrel, thumb toward the butt. Then she placed the weapon down, butt toward the stern, close beside him, pushed his thumb through the trigger guard, pressed it against the trigger.
She took the little packet of scratch paper out of the hip pocket of her slacks. It was slightly damp. The last draft of the note. Floor plan of number ten. She worked his wallet out of his hip pocket, put the packet in with the few dollar bills he had, and replaced the wallet. She became aware of acrid odors of urine and excrement. She freed the bow line first, as Oliver had taught her to do under such circumstances of wind and mooring. As the bow swung slowly out, she ran the mainsail up and belayed the halyard around the cleat in the way Oliver had taught her. She freed the stern line. The boom swung to starboard, and she let off on the main sheet, and, other hand on the tiller, her feet braced near his back, she sat and sailed northward up the shoreline, staying well enough out for the mist to hide her from anyone on the shore, yet not so far out she would fail to see the corona of the outside floods she had left on against the
mist. She came upon that haloed light sooner than she had expected. The only sound was a gurgle of water around the transom and rudder, a faint rattle of halyards against the stick.
She went by the lights and, staying well out, brought it around, close hauling it, pointing it close to the wind, peering into the mist, rehearsing the things which had to be done quickly. When the dock appeared she found she was too far out. When she turned toward it, she turned right into the eye of the breeze. The sail flapped. She thought, with a touch of panic, she would not have the momentum to reach it. She scrabbled, caught the boat hook, leaned and caught the edge of a dock piling. As she pulled the stern in, the breeze caught the close-hauled mainsail, heeling the boat and almost breaking her hold. But then she was able to grasp a dock line in her right hand. She put the case up on the dock. She found the loop and slipped it over the tiller. She let out on the main sheet until the boom was angled far enough out to port. She wedged the sheet into the safety cleat, stood quickly and scrambled onto the dock, banging her knee painfully against the edge of it. She rolled and looked out and saw the Skatter moving out into the mist. The rattle and gurgle died. The mainsail was a tall blur and then it was gone. It would go aground, she was certain, on the western shoreline of Eliott Key.
She snatched the case up and moved swiftly, limping slightly, into the shadows of the shrubbery near the foot of the stone stairway. She waited and listened and watched, and then moved quickly from deep shadow to deep shadow, moving behind the flood lighting. Dressed in the dark clothes, she walked quickly along the terrace to the sliding doors to her bedroom. She had left the draperies a foot apart. She looked into her bedroom. It gave her a strange feeling to see, in the glow of the night light, the woman shape under the light blanket, blonde hair snuggled into the whiteness of the pillow. She put the case down, lifted the corner of the mat outside her door, took the thin spatula, slid it through the crack and lifted the catch
free. She put the kitchen implement in the waistband of her slacks, rolled the door open, picked up the case and edged through, into the bedroom coolness, into the place of all her scents and lotions and fabrics. She yanked the draperies shut, reached through and locked the sliding doors again. Took three slow steps and fell to her knees, and then rolled slowly onto her side. She pulled her knees high, tucked her head down, held her clenched fists between her breasts. After each long slow exhalation she felt a clenching and tremoring of her belly muscles, somewhat like the residual quiverings after orgasm. She felt the texture of the rug against her cheek and temple. She smelled her own sourness, a sharp pungency of nervous sweat.
At last she got up very slowly. It took a great effort. She took care of the case first, rinsing the glasses again, drying them on one of her soft towels before putting them back into the rack on the bar. She rinsed the Thermos. One sliver of ice was left. She reached in through the wide mouth and dried the inside carefully and put it back in the compartment under the bar. She replaced the bourbon bottle and soda bottle and bottle opener in their customary places. She put the overnight case in the luggage locker in her dressing room.
After her long, hot shower, and after she had toweled her hair to dryness, used her array of sprays, astringents, lotions which were so ordinary and comforting a part of her bedtime routine, she put on a short nightgown and turned her bed down. She took the pillow she had used for the torso, the rolled bath towels she had used for the legs, the wig and wad of toweling she had used for the head, and put everything away carefully. She had had to go out onto the terrace a half dozen times and come back in and pat and plump and adjust until the shapes of round hip, dip of waist, shoulder, sprawl of legs had looked real to her. She rolled up the damp soiled clothing she had worn. She spread the slacks on the floor, put the shirt, bra, pants, socks and boat shoes on them, and rolled it all into a tight, stubby
cylinder and tied it with twine, then remembered the kerchief and got it and stuffed it into one end of the cylinder. They were all old, all ready for discard. She put the bundle in the back of her closet and washed her hands.
She unlocked the inner door, drifted silently through the dark house and put the spatula back into the kitchen drawer and went back to her bedroom, leaving the inner door unlocked. The intercom master was fastened to the wall just inside the door to the dressing room. She depressed the button under the designation Apt, pressed the speak bar and said in a drowsy voice, “Francisca? Francisca?”
She released the bar and waited, and just as she was about to try again, the girl said, “Yes? Yes? Yes?”
Crissy frowned. There was no teaching her not to put her mouth so close to it and speak so loudly.
“Sorry to wake you up, dear. What time is it, anyway?”
“From—uh twelve in the night is maybe ten minutes later.”
“Is that all? I had to get up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I took a hot shower and that didn’t help a bit. If I take another one of those pills, I’ll feel terrible tomorrow. Would it be too much trouble to bring me some hot cocoa, and maybe some crackers?”
“Oh, no! No troubling!”
“Just put a robe on, dear.”
“Soon, soon,” the girl said in her high, happy voice.
Crissy opened the draperies to the same gap as before, opened the inner door a few inches, turned off all but the night light and the bedside lamp, then rolled and turned and tossed until the bed lost its too-fresh look.
Francisca knocked and came in with the cocoa and crackers on a small lacquered tray. She wore a quilted robe in a lurid shade of bright lime yellow. Crissy hitched herself up, put another pillow behind her back and reached for the tray.
“Thank you, dear. This is pretty silly.”
“No is,” Francisca said firmly.
“Did he come by and collect his sailboat? I tried to see but it’s too misty to see the boat basin.”
“Is gone.”
“Did he give you any trouble?”
“Oh, no! Never see him.”
“You don’t have to wait for the tray, dear. Go on back to bed. I think this will do the trick.” She put her fist in front of a wide yawn. The girl said goodnight and went out and closed the door quietly.
Just as she was lifting the cup to take the last few sips, Crissy began a violent and uncontrollable trembling. Cocoa spilled on the front of her nightgown and on the top sheet. She put the tray aside quickly, and when it kept on and on, she went across to the bar and poured a half tumbler of dark rum. She had to hold it in both hands. Her teeth chattered against the thick rim. Once it was down she was almost certain she would lose it. But then her stomach accepted it. She turned off the light and curled up in her bed in the same position as when she had lain on the floor.
The trembling stopped like something slowly running down. While she was thinking about getting up and taking a pill, she fell off the edge into sleep.
AS DUSK BECAME NIGHT
, Mrs. Mooney had begun to fight a familiar battle with her conscience and with her desire.
After she had fed the three old dogs, she turned the lights out in the house. She plodded from room to room, muttering to herself. From time to time she would climb the stairs and go into her bedroom and stand at the window overlooking the row of rental cottages and see through the leaves those fragments of yellowish glow from a light in Number 10, a light in that Mr. Stanley’s bedroom shining through the pale worn shade.
The logic of it was beyond question. With such dense shrubbery, the cottages had a lot of privacy. And on a night so hot, there could be but one reason for pulling the shades down.
She had fought it and won the other night. But tonight it was stronger. Like a terrible gnawing. It was so unfair that it should keep going on and on into these years when she thought it would be over, when she would have rest and peace.
She roamed the dark house, muttering her complaints, and explaining how terrible a thing it was, telling it all to Mr. Mooney, years in his grave now, reminding him that it had begun way back even when he was still alive, and how he had caught her at it once and given her the beating she deserved, told her they could send her off to jail, told her she was an evil woman, and even after she had promised she would never do it again, he had been nasty-polite to her for weeks.
She turned the television set on and sat to watch it, then found herself roaming back and forth across the living room in the pallid flickering light of the horses running, the men shooting and shouting.
The next time she went upstairs she avoided looking out the window and instead went to her big desk in the corner and turned on the desk light and opened the big scrapbook atop the litter of old invoices and receipts.