Part 12 (1/2)
”Oh, she's twenty now.” She hesitated. She was obligated to end our little chat with a stylized flourish. The way it's done in serial television. So she wet her little bunny mouth, sleepied her eyes, widened her nostrils, patted her hair, arched her back, stood canted and hip-shot, huskied her voice and said, ”See you aroun', huh?”
”Sure, Marianne. Sure.”
Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is compet.i.tion for bag-boy jobs in the supermarkets.
They yearn for security, but all they can have is what they make for themselves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the unemployment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sa.s.sy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electrified house where everybody brushes after every meal.
But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance-with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue.
So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician's world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies.
These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can't have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.
I went north of the mainland route, past an endless wink and sputter of neon, through the perpetual leaf-fall and forest floor of asphalt, cellophane, candy wrappers, Kleenex, filter tips, ticket halves, Pliofilm and latex. One of Junior Allen's women lay wounded and the other lay drunk, and I was looking for a third.
The Citrus Inn was an old place, a three-story cube of cracked and patched Moorish masonry, vintage 1925, with three entrances, three sets of staircases, three stacks of small apartments. It was on a short, dead-end street in a commercial area. It was across the street from a large truck depot, and bracketed on one side by a shoestring marina and on the other by a BEER-BAIT-BOATS operation which had a tavern specializing in fried fish sandwiches. There was a narrow ca.n.a.l behind the three structures, sea-walled, stagnant.
The Citrus Inn had its own eroding dock, parallel to the sea wall. I had parked in front. I walked around the unlighted side of the Citrus Inn. I stopped abruptly and moved off into deeper shadows. There were two darkened old hulks tied up to the Citrus Inn dock. The third craft was lighted inside, and a weak dock light shone against the starboard side of it and into the c.o.c.kpit. It shone on the life ring. The Play Pen.
There were several of them in the c.o.c.kpit. I couldn't see them distinctly. They had music going, the hesitating rhythms of Bossa Nova. A girl moved to it. Another girl laughed in a slurred sour way. A man said, in a penetrating voice, ”Dads, we are just about now out of beer and that is a h.e.l.l of a note, Dads. Somebody has got to trek way the h.e.l.l to Barney's. You going to do us like this in the islands, Dads? You going to let us run out of the necessities of life once we get over there?”
Another man rumbled some kind of an answer, and a girl said something which the music obscured. In a few moments two of them came by me, heading for the tavern. I saw them distinctly when they clambered up onto the dock, a husky, sideburned boy with a dull fleshy face, and a leggy awkward girl in gla.s.ses.
As they pa.s.sed me the girl said, ”Shouldn't you buy it one time anyway, Pete?”
”Shut up, Patty. It makes Dads happy to spring for it. Why spoil his fun?”
I had my first look at Junior Allen. It wasn't much of a look. He was a shadowy bulk in the c.o.c.kpit of the boat, a disembodied rumble of a voice. A single bark of laughter.
When I got back to the Busted Flush, Lois was still out. I sat her up. She whined at me, her head heavy, her eyes closed. I got her up and took her over to the beach and walked her until she had no breath for complaining. She trudged along, dutiful as a naughty child. I walked her without mercy, back and forth, until her head was clear, and then we sat on a public bench to give her time to catch her breath.
”I've got a ghastly headache,” she said in a humble voice.
”You earned it.”
”I'm sorry, Trav. Really. Seeing him scared me so.”
”Or gave you an excuse?”
”Don't be hateful.”
”I just don't like to see you spoil what you're trying to do.”
”It won't happen again.”
”Do you mean that?”
”I don't know. I don't want it to happen again. But I keep thinking... he could come walking along this beach right now.”
”Not tonight. He's busy.”
”What!”
I told her how and where I had found him. With a sideburned boy named Pete, and three girls named Deeleen, Patty and Corry.
”From the little I heard, he's taking all of them or some of them on a cruise to the Bahamas. They think they're working him. They think they've found a very soft touch. They call him Dads.”
”Can't those poor kids see what he is?”
”Cathy didn't. You didn't.”
”What are you going to do?”
”Go see if I can make a date tomorrow afternoon.”
”They might be gone.”
”I think he'll wait until he gets the new generator installed.”
”But what if he leaves with them in the morning?”
”If that seems too dreadful to you, Lois, you can always get drunk.”
”You don't have to be so cruel.”
”You disappointed me.”
”I know. I'm sorry.”
”How's your head now?”
”A little better, I think. Trav?”
”Yes, honey.”
”Trav, I'm so hungry I could eat this bench.”
When I took a look at the outdoors Sunday morning I knew they weren't going anywhere. It was a sparkling day. The wind had swung around and it was coming out of the northeast, hard and steady. A wind like that builds too much of a chop out in the Stream for anything the size of Junior Allen's cruiser. It would be running seven or eight feet out there, and very dirty.
I waited until noon and then drove up to the Citrus Inn. Apartment 2A was in the center section on the second floor, I wore a courting costume, summer version. T s.h.i.+rt, khaki slacks, baseball cap, straw shoes, an eager smile, and a bottle of good bourbon in a brown paper bag. I rapped on the scarred and ornate old wooden door, and rapped again, and a girl-voice yelled in an exasperated tone, ”Just a minute!”
The Inch rattled. The door opened an inch and a half, and I saw a tousle of dark hair and a segment of tan face and a cold green unfriendly eye. ”Whaddya want?”
”I'm looking for Deeleen.”
”She's not here.”
”Are you Corry?”
”Who the h.e.l.l are you?”