Part 8 (1/2)
”Do you want me to go and pick up that package from Mr. Rucker?”
”Oh, no, thanks. I already talked to Betty about it, and she's coming with me now and we'll go over there before two o'clock. It's perfectly all right, really. But thank you.”
A st.u.r.dy girl in a yellow dress came hurrying to the car, saying, ”Sorry, Sue. I got to talking to somebody.”
”Betty, this is Travis McGee. Betty Joller.”
She had one of those plump pretty faces which go with wooden shoes and beer festivals. Her eyes were Dutch blue, and her smile was totally friendly and not the least bit provocative. ”When I saw you standing with Meyer, I figured it had to be you,” she said. ”Carrie told me once that the only really happy time she could remember was when you loaned her and Ben your houseboat for their honeymoon. We're all going to miss her so much around here.”
They got in, and Susan hitched her white dress up above her knees and then backed smartly around and they left. At my elbow Joanna said, ”Now that Susan is some kind of great package.”
”And Jason has his eyes on it.”
”I noticed that. She's too young for you, chief.”
”So are you.”
She laughed so hard it bent her over. The laugh was silver bright under the shade trees, unfitting for the occasion. ”Me? Me?” she gasped. ”I'm the oldest person around anywhere.” She wore little salmon shorts and a soft gray top. She had wound her ginger hair into a pile atop her head and pinned it in place casually. Ends were escaping. It made her throat look very slender and vulnerable.
She looked around. ”Where did you leave your wheels?”
”We walked over from the marina.”
”So I'll walk back with you, okay?”
”Okay Joanna.”
”We haven't made our deal yet.”
”Deal?”
She carried a small white canvas beach bag. She twirled it by its draw cord. ”Keep playing dumb and I'll brain you, honey.”
So we went out to the sidewalk and walked through sun and shade, past little frame houses and new little stores, to the marina. Jason was back at work. He was in his khaki shorts standing on the bow deck of a big Chriss, hosing it down, was.h.i.+ng off the salt, and the new arrivals, a pair of small round white-haired people in bright boat clothes, stood sourly watching his every move. ”Get that cleat too,” the man yelled. ”The cleat!”
”Yessir,” said Jason the musician. ”Yessir, sir.” Joanna was loudly enthusiastic about the below-decks s.p.a.ces of the Busted Flush. While she was. trotting around, oh-ing and ah-ing, Meyer told me he had some errands. I gave him the car keys. I did not know if he had errands or a sudden attack of discretion.
I caught up with her in the head, standing in front of the big mirror, touching her hair, turning and looking back at herself over her shoulder. She saw me in the mirror and said, ”This is really some kind of floating playpen. It's funny. I keep feeling left out. I keep thinking that it isn't right that all this has been going on without me. After all, I'm the best in the world. You didn't know?”
”You hadn't mentioned it before.”
”Don't tell me you designed all this?”
”No. It was as is when I won this barge in a poker game.”
”Ah. Hence the name:”
”There was a Brazilian lady that went with it, but I wouldn't let him bet her.”
”Are Brazilians so great?”
”I wouldn't know. Anyway I kept the decor.”
She was smiling. Then suddenly she slumped her shoulders, shook her head, her face somber. ”It's so great to kid around, isn't it? I guess the real reason I'm quitting the job is because it wouldn't be the same there without Carrie. Can I have a beer?”
”Of course.”
We sat in the galley booth, facing each other across the Formica top. She was pensive, silent, unreadable.
Finally she said, ”So it isn't any game. So I don't want in, thanks just the same. Sorry I bothered you.”
So I told her the truth about my relations.h.i.+p to Carrie. And why I was here with Meyer. She turned beet red and had to get up and pace around to control her restless embarra.s.sment. It took me about five minutes to get the record straight. I left out the part about the money.
”You must have thought I'd lost my mind!”
”I decided you weren't too tightly wrapped, kid.”
”You encouraged me, d.a.m.n you!”
Finally she calmed down and sat down, sipped her beer, and said, ”Okay, I can see why you think she was killed. The purse and the gas and so on. But why? She wasn't into anything that rough. Everybody and his brother is hustling gra.s.s into Florida. There's absolute tons of it coming in all the time. It's about as risky as running a stop sign.”
”Did she tell you how it worked?”
”Not in so many words. It was no secret they used Jack's cruiser. There is no way this coast can be policed. Too many small boats and little airplanes and all.”
”Didn't anybody at the cottage ask Carrie where she got it?”
”Betty always did, and Carrie would say something different every time. Like she'd say they had a special on it at Quik-Chek. It was top quality, cured right. Jason says it's the best he's ever run into. It was fun, the four of us, Betty and me, Carrie and Floss. Betty got a little machine and made cigarettes. And we had the cookbook, too, and made those hash puppies. Like on an evening, there'd be eight or ten of us sitting around, and maybe Jason making music, and we'd get onto a real nice level. And there'd be good relaxed talk that made sense, not like when everybody is drinking and people get ugly or silly. They say now it can mess up having babies, and it can lower your resistance to colds and flu and infection and so on. So? Automobiles can kill you, and people don't stop driving.”
”The imperatives aren't the same.”
”The what aren't what?”
”Excuse me. Let's not get into a hard sell.”
”Are you opposed?”
”Joanna, I don't know. A fellow who was pretty handy with a boat once said that anything you feel good after is moral. But that implies that the deed is unchanging and the doer is unchanging. What you feel good after one time, you feel rotten after the next. And it is difficult to know in advance. And morality shouldn't be experimental, I don't think. I find that the world is full of things which are unavoidable and which cloud my mind. When my mind is clouded, I am experiencing less. I may think it is more, if the mind is warped, but it is less, really. The mind looks inward, not outward. So I just... try to make sure there's always somebody in the control room, somebody standing watch.”
”Somehow it sounds dull.”
”It isn't.”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist. ”Okay, smart-a.s.s. Do you think you'd feel good after me?”
”If the reasons are right, sure.”