Part 1 (1/2)

The Long Lavender Look.

John D. MacDonald.

When I play with my cat, who knows but that she regards me more as a plaything than I do her?

-MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE.

One.

LATE April... Ten o'clock at night. Hustling south on Florida 112 through the eastern section of Cypress County, about twenty miles from the intersection of 112 and the Tamiami Trail.

So maybe I was pus.h.i.+ng old Miss Agnes along a little too fast. Narrow macadam. Stars above, and some wisps of ground mist below. But not much of it, and not often.

The big tires of the old blue Rolls pickup rumbled along the roughened surface. Big black drainage ca.n.a.l paralleling the road on the left side. Now and then an old wooden bridge arching across the ca.n.a.l to serve one of the shacky little frame houses tucked back in the swamp and skeeter country. No traffic. And it had been a long long day, and I was anxious to get back to Lauderdale, to Bahia Mar, to the Busted Flush, to a long hot shower and a long cold drink and a long deep sleep.

I had the special one-mile spots turned on. They are bracketed low on the ma.s.sive front b.u.mper. Essential for fast running through the balmy Florida nights on the straight narrow back roads, because her own headlights are feeble and set too high.

Meyer, beside me, was in a semidoze. We'd been to the wedding of the daughter of an old friend, at the fish camp he owns on Lake Pa.s.skokee. It is a very seldom thing to be able to drink champagne, catch a nine-pound ba.s.s, and kiss a bride all within the same hour. Meyer had been giving me one of his lectures on the marital condition.

So I was whipping along, but alert for the wildlife. I hate to kill a racc.o.o.n. Urban Florida is using the rabies myth to justify wiping them out, with guns, traps, and poison. The average racc.o.o.n is more affable, intelligent, and tidy than the average meathead who wants them eliminated, and is usually a lot better looking.

It is both sad and ironic that the areas where the racc.o.o.n are obliterated are soon overrun with snakes.

I was alert for any reflection of my headlights in animal eyes in the darkness of the shoulders of the road, for any dark shape moving out into the long reach of the beams.

But I wasn't prepared for the creature of the night that suddenly appeared out of the blackness, heading from left to right, at a headlong run. At eighty, you are covering about a hundred and twenty feet per second. She was perhaps sixty feet in front of the car when I first saw her. So half of one second later, when I last saw her, she was maybe ten inches from the flare of my front right fender, and that ten inches was the product of the first effect of my reaction time. Ten inches of living s.p.a.ce instead of that bone-crunching, flesh-smas.h.i.+ng thud which, once heard, lingers forever in the part of the mind where echoes live.

And I became very busy with Miss Agnes. She put her back end onto the left shoulder, and then onto the right shoulder. The swinging headlights showed me the road once in a while. I could not risk touching the brake. This was the desperate game of steering with the skid each time, and feeding her a morsel of gas for traction whenever she was coming back into alignment with the highway. I knew I had it whipped, and knew that each swing was less extreme.

Then a rear tire went and I lost her for good. The back end came around and there was a shriek of rubber, cras.h.i.+ng of brush, a bright cracking explosion inside my skull, and I was vaguely aware of being underwater, disoriented, tangled in strange objects, and aware of the fact that it was not a very good place to be. I did not feel any alarm. Just a mild distaste, an irritation with my situation.

Something started grabbing at me and I tried to make it let go. Then I was up in the world of air again, and being dragged up a slope; coughing and gagging, thinking that it was a lot more comfortable back under the water.

”You all right, Trav? Are you all right?”

I couldn't answer until I could stop retching and coughing. ”I don't know yet.”

Meyer helped me up. I stood, sopping wet, on the gravelly shoulder and flexed all the more useful parts and muscles. There was a strange glow in the black water. I realized Miss Agnes's lights were still on, and she had to be ten feet under. The light went off abruptly as the water shorted her out.

I found a couple of tender places where I had hit the wheel and the door, and a throbbing lump on my head, dead center, just above the hairline.

”And how are you?” I asked Meyer.

”I'm susceptible to infections of the upper respiratory tract, and I'd like to lose some weight. Otherwise, pretty good.”

”In a little while I think I'm going to start being glad you came along for the ride.”

”Maybe you'd have gotten out by yourself.”

”I don't think so.”

”I'd rather think so. Excuse me. Otherwise I have to share the responsibility for all your future acts.”

”Do I ever do anything you wouldn't do, Meyer?”

”I could make a list?”

That was when the reaction hit. A nice little case of the yips and shudders. And a pair of macaroni knees. I sat down gently on the shoulder of the road, wrapped my arms around my legs, and rested my forehead on my wet knees.

”Are you all right, Trav?”

”You keep asking me that. I think I will be very fine and very dandy. Maybe five or ten minutes from now.”

It seemed very very quiet. The bugs were beginning to find us. A night bird yawped way back in the marshland. Vision had adjusted to the very pale wash of starlight on the road and on the black gla.s.s surface of the drainage ca.n.a.l.

Miss Agnes was down there, resting on her side, facing in the direction from which we had come, driver's side down. Sorry, old lady. We gave it a good try, and d.a.m.ned near made it. Except for the tire going, you did your usual best. Staunch, solid, and, in a very dignified way, obedient. Even in extremis, you managed to keep from killing me.

I got up and gagged and tossed up half a cup of swamp water. Before he could ask me again, I told Meyer I felt much improved. But irritable.

”What I would dearly like to do,” I said, ”is go back and find that moronic female, raise some angry welts on her rear end, and try to teach her to breathe under water.”

”Female?”

”You didn't see her?” I asked him.

”I was dreaming that I, personally Meyer, had solved the gold drain dilemma, and I was addressing all the gnomes of Zurich. Then I woke up and we were going sideways. I found the sensation unpleasant.”

”She ran across in front of us. Very close. If I hadn't had time to begin to react, I'd have boosted her with the right front fender, and she would be a piece of dead meat in a treetop back there on the right side of the road.”

”Please don't tell me something.”

”Don't tell you what?”

”Tell me she was a shrunken old crone. Or tell me she looked exactly like Arnold Palmer. Or even tell me you didn't get a good look at her. Please?”

I closed my eyes and reran the episode on my little home screen inside my head. Replay is always pretty good. It has to be. Lead the kind of life where things happen very quickly and very unexpectedly, and sometimes lethally, and you learn to keep the input wide open. It improves the odds.

”I'd peg her at early to middle twenties. Black or dark brown hair, that would maybe have been shoulder length if she wasn't running like h.e.l.l. She had some kind of ribbon or one of those plastic bands on her hair. Not chunky, but solid. Impression of good health. Not very tall. Hmm. Barefoot? I don't really know. Maybe not, unless she's got feet like rhino hide. Wearing a short thing, patterned. Flower pattern? Some kind of pattern. Lightweight material. Maybe one of those mini-nightgowns. Open down the front and at the throat, so that it was streaming out behind her, like her dark hair. Naked, I think. Maybe a pair of sheer little briefs, but it could have been just white hide in contrast to the suntanned rest of her. Caught a glint of something on one wrist. Bracelet or watch strap. She was running well, running hard, getting her knees up, getting a good swing of her arms into it. A flavor of being scared, but not in panic. And not winded. Mouth closed. I think she had her jaw clamped. Determination. She was running like h.e.l.l, but away from something, not after it. If she started a tenth of a second earlier, we'd be rolling east on the Trail by now. A tenth of a second later, and she'd be one dead young lady, and I could have racked Miss Agnes up a little more solidly, and maybe you or I or both of us would be historical figures. Sorry, Meyer. Young and interestingly put together, and perhaps even pretty.”

He sighed. ”McGee, have you ever wondered if you don't emit some sort of subliminal aroma, a veritable dog whistle among scents? I have read about the role that some scent we cannot even detect plays in the reproductive cycle of the moth. The scientists spread some of it on a tree limb miles from nowhere, and within the hour there were hundreds upon hundreds of...”

He stopped as we both saw the faraway, oncoming lights. It seemed a long time before they were close enough for us to hear the drone of the engine. We stepped into the roadway and began waving our arms. The sedan faltered, and then the driver floored it and it slammed on by, accelerating. Ohio license. We did not look like people anybody would want to pick up on a dark night on a very lonely road.