Part 4 (2/2)
”You have a car?”
”In a manner of speaking. After you left yesterday I was wondering what you think of all this.”
”I thought I made that clear.”
”I mean what do you think of it as a woman.”
”Is that pertinent?”
”Perhaps. It might help me in talking to the Abbott girl.”
She thought for a moment. It was a long strong face, flat planes in the cheeks, very dark and vivid and lovely eyes, a prominent and forceful nose, broad firm mouth.
”I would say this, I guess. Lee isn't a suggestible child, you know. She's had four marriages. And other relations.h.i.+ps, some of them not particularly wholesome. But she's always been pretty cautious. She is very frankly and happily promiscuous, but the situation in those pictures I would say is not her natural style.
”She was lulled into it somehow, and d.a.m.ned uncomfortable about it later on, and still is. I wouldn't know how those other females reacted to it. But I don't think it is accurate to think of Lee as just another woman getting involved in something messy.”
”What do you mean?”
”She is a property, Trav. She has few personal rights and privileges. She's just worth too much money to too many people. They can't afford a blemish on her. I've gotten used to thinking that way about her. So when I look at those pictures, I see them in terms of risk. Like watching a clown juggle priceless gla.s.sware. Those men were aware of it, of course. The unattainable G.o.ddess suddenly right there within reach, tired and drunk and sweaty and willing. They talk, you know. It spreads like ripples. It has had a lot of time. Little hints and rumors are coming back home to roost. She's scared of that, too. She'll be all right until one picture doesn't pay off. Then there could be some reluctance. Why take a chance?”
”How will this picture do, this Winds of Chance?”
”Very well, I think. It's the kind of part she always does well. Coffee?”
”Thanks.”
After she poured it she hesitated by the table, empty pot in hand. ”You didn't say anything about how you'd like me to dress, Trav. I thought... I imagine women have stayed here with you. I'd be less conspicuous if I... stayed with resort clothes.”
”You do fine. Use your own judgment.”
Five.
ON THE way down to Bastion Key Dana was delighted with my stately and ancient pickup truck. It is painted a hideous electric blue and called Miss Agnes by all who know her. It is one of the largest of the old Rolls breed, and some owner of long ago, perhaps after bas.h.i.+ng her up, did a backyard job of converting her into a pickup truck. She is high and solid. It takes a long time to move her up through the gears, but when you have a chance to get her up to eighty, she will settle into it all day long in a rus.h.i.+ng ghastly silence. She eats gas, but holds a little over forty gallons at a time.
I liked Dana's delight. It reminded me of the way she reacted to Skeeter's mouse. I knew I had to watch it, or I would be trapped into the hopeless project of trying to find ways to delight her, to bring out that little spark so deeply buried.
At Bastion Key you turn right off the highway beyond the town and follow a sh.e.l.l road out to a little short causeway that leads over to Hope Island. It is not a luxurious retreat. Stan Burley is the Schweitzer of the gin bottle. The buildings are surplus barracks he barged in long ago. He and all of his small staff are reformed drunks. If he has room, he takes you, at whatever you can afford to pay. He has some theories. They work for him. If you took a seven-foot chimp and shaved every hair off and painted him pink, you'd have a recognizable version of Stan Burley. His graduates who stay dry send contributions regularly.
Before I could turn the motor off, Burley was striding toward us from his little screened office. It was warm and bright, eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning. The Florida bays were blue.
”Ho, McGee,” he said, hand outstretched toward me, looking with a keen expectation at Dana, doubtless thinking her a new guest.
I introduced them and said quickly, ”We've come down to talk to one of your people, Stan. If possible. Nancy Abbott.”
The welcoming light went out of his face. He gnawed his lip. ”Miss Holtzer, you go wait in my office a minute, and Jenny will give you a nice gla.s.s of iced tea.” She nodded and walked away. Burley led me over to a wooden bench in the shade.
”What's it about, Trav?”
”She was involved in something a year and a half ago. I want to ask her some questions about it. Is she all right?”
He shrugged. ”She's dry, if that means very much. Has been since October. I shouldn't tell you a d.a.m.ned thing about that one. But you worked so hard with me that time with Marianne. G.o.d help us, we fought hard, but we lost that one, boy. I'll have to tell you, it's on my conscience having her here, this Nancy. It isn't the place for her, but no place is, not any more. Did her father send you?”
”No.”
”A retired policewoman delivered the child here in October. Sick drunk and down to ninety pounds. The D.T.'s and the spasms. Pitiful. I got a thousand then, and I get a thousand a month from a San Francis...o...b..nk. I write the bank a condition report once a month. After we began to bring her out of it, she puzzled me. I had a doctor friend look her over. Drunk is only part of it. But the thousand a month takes care of a lot of other ones. I'm an evil old man, Trav.”
”What's wrong with her?”
”Physically she's as healthy as an ox. She's only twenty-four. She had nine years of drinking, the last five of them heavy, not long enough to damage her. Mentally, you name it, she's got it.”
”She's mad?”
”Boy, she isn't sane. What they did, they got too eager with her long ago. Some people who thought shock treatments were the answer to all. A cure for anxiety and depressive symptoms. As far as I can figure, she had over twenty complete series. That and the alcoholic spasms, there's degenerative damage. She doesn't track too well. She can't handle abstract concepts. She's trapped in a manicdepressive cycle. You hit her at her best. She's on her way up now, but not up too high yet. This is her happy time. She could manage in public pretty well if too much wasn't demanded of her. Pretty soon she'll get real wild. Violence, compulsive nymphomania, such a craving for drink she'd kill to get it. Then I put her under restraint. Then she falls all the way down to the bottom. She won't speak for days. Then she starts to slowly build again.”
”How is her memory?”
”Sometimes good and sometimes gone.”
I looked at that tired simian face and remembered the way he had talked of Marianne. Of love and destruction.
”What did it to her, Stan?”
”Her? The father did it. The adored, talented, mighty father. It was an ugly marriage. The poor child was too much like her mother, so the father couldn't help despising her. He rejected her. So because she couldn't understand why-just like Marianne-she grew up with a conviction of her own worthlessness. Ah, that's where the compulsions start, McGee. A person can not endure inexplicable worthlessness. So they establish the pattern of proving themselves worthless. For this child it was s.e.x and drink. The guilts made her emotionally unstable. She was after destruction. The shock treatments and the spasms have done the job for her. She's a destroyed personality. Where can she go? Nothing much can be done for her now. Here is as good as anywhere. Sometimes she is very sweet.”
”I don't want to upset her.”
”What do you want to ask her?”
”If she can remember some names. If she can remember some pictures being taken.”
”Pictures?”
I opened the envelope, sorted out two of them and handed them to him. His face puckered with concern and sorrow. ”The poor kid. See what she's saying, in effect? Love me, love me. Rejection by the father, rejection by the young husband, a butchered abortion, a year in an inst.i.tution when she was seventeen, for hit and run.”
”What would showing her these do?”
”Trav, nothing can do her much good or much harm.”
”Will she talk to me?”
”In this part of the cycle she's very outgoing. She might get agitated. It might strike her as funny. I don't know. It might accelerate this phase of the cycle. I can't see as that would do any harm.”
”Should you be there?”
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