Part 13 (1/2)
As I turned her around she said, ”He used to worry so much about the money we owe on the marina. He used to fret and fume. Hey! What are we doing now?”
”It's siesta time. This is called getting you ready for your three o'clock nap.”
”Don't you think you better move back onto your houseboat?”
”Right now?”
”Well... not exactly right now, okay?”
By Sunday afternoon the air conditioning was making good headway against the dampness aboard the Flush. A milky light and blurred outlines of nearby boats shone through the Pliofilm. The carpeting had been jettisoned, and Meyer had samples to study, before rendering advice.
The ninth day of June. I hadn't adjusted to the five-day gap in my memory. I was being hustled along too fast into the time stream. Ears ringing. A sweet and greedy lady to be with.
”Make some sense of things,” I asked Meyer. He stopped playing solitaire with his carpet samples. ”I cannot come up with an overview,” he said. ”I can sense no paradigm that later events will prove out. I can construct no model from what we have.”
”Thanks.”
”Believe me, it's nothing.”
”I know. I know.”
”How about this blue? Indoor-outdoor. Won't fade.”
”It's truly lovely, Meyer.”
”Come on. Don't you care how it's going to look?”
”Intensely.”
”All things considered, you should be jollier, Travis.”
”Than whom?”
”Than whom has not such a handsome lady tending his convalescence.”
”I feel disoriented. I have a dull ache in the back of my head, and I live in a motel.”
Further discussion of my melancholy was terminated by the arrival of Jason-Jesus with Susan Dobrovsky. She looked sallow and subdued, with smudges under her eyes and a listless manner. Jason was being very firm and forthright. The protector. No social strokes. No discussion of the weather. He planted his feet and got right into it. ”Susan and I have been developing a useful dialogue about her situation here. We've decided that it is more important for her to get away, to get back to Nutley, than it is to hang around while Van Harn takes care of the last little legal details regarding Carrie's death.”
She sat on the edge of the yellow couch which was going to have to be recovered. ”I want to leave,” she said, in a very small voice. ”Everything here has been so rotten.”
”Mr. McGee, Susan told me that you told her that you owed Carrie some money. You paid off the funeral home in cash. Is there more money Susan should have?”
”Yes.”
”How much?”
”What's your special interest in this, Jason?”
”Somebody has to care about situations like this. People have to take care of people.”
”Granted. Let me talk to Susan alone. Meyer, why don't you go topside with Jason?”
When they had left and the Pliofilm curtain had fallen back into place, I went over and sat beside her on the couch. She became very still, quite rigid. It seemed a curious reaction. I touched her arm and she made a huge flinching motion, ending up two feet farther away from me.
”Hey” I said. ”Whoa. Settle down.”
”I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just that I'm not reacting to things... normally. To being touched by anybody. I can't help it.”
”What happened to you?”
She gave me a wide, bright terrible smile. ”Happened? Oh, I was a guest at the V-H Ranch yesterday and the day before. That's all. Mr. Van Harn raises Black Angus and breeds horses. He has twelve hundred acres out there, and the old Carpenter ranch house was built out of hard pine in nineteen twenty-one and it's still as solid as a rock. I... nothing... can't...”
She bent abruptly forward, face in her hands, hands resting on her knees. I reached to touch her and pulled my hand back in time.
”Were you forced?”
Her voice was m.u.f.fled. ”Yes. No. I don't know. I don't know what to say. He kept after me and after me and after me. It went on and on. I got so tired. So I thought... I don't know what I thought. Just that if I let him that would be the end of it.”
”Susan, I have to know something. Did he ask you anything about Carrie?”
”There wasn't much talking.”
”Did he ask you anything at all about Carrie?”
”Well, he wanted to know the last time I'd talked to her, and so I told him about the long phone call, the one I told you about too. He made me remember everything she said. One part that I told him was about you. You know. Carrie said to me that if a person named Travis McGee got in touch with me I was to trust him all the way.”
”Did he seem interested in that?”
”Not any more than in any of the rest of it. He just kept me going over it and over it until he saw there wasn't any part of it I hadn't told him. That was the only talking there was, mostly.”
”When did this conversation take place?”
”Yesterday, I think. Yes, yesterday. Early in the morning, I think. I remember the sounds the birds were making. Early sounds.”
”How did you get back?”
”He drove me in and let me off at the Inn. He had a meeting. Maybe it was three o'clock yester day afternoon. Jason came over this morning. I... told him about it. I wanted to tell somebody about how d.a.m.ned dumb I was.”
”How did Jason react?”
”He wants to go kill him. What good would that do anybody? I shouldn't have gone out there with him. Joanna told me enough about him so I should have been careful, more careful. Mr. McGee, is there any more money? And you still have Carrie's rings. I remember Mr. Rucker giving them to you. He tried to give them to me and I couldn't take them then. I can now. Is there any money?”
”A lot of money.”
”A lot?”