“Naturally.”
“Next came the Reverend Coombs. He too had been slandered. And then he proceeded to slander all the Save Our Bayers. Slur, sneer, smear innuendo. Gist of message as follows: The soft weak do-gooders, the so-called liberals are gutting the strength of this great capitalistic God-fearing nation, and it doesn’t take any secret organization to put them down, because the common man, in his wisdom, will rise up as a multitude and smite them down. There is no place in our grrreat community for irresponsible, pleasure-seeking, Godless parasites and so on. Poor Tom got his turn next. Believe me, not one single word was audible. Same with a scared professorial type from Washington, from some national conservation group. Then Kat Hubble went up onto the stage and faced the animals. Couldn’t hear a word of that, either. My God, she is a lady. She is brave and true. That decency was like a banner in the sunlight. Then came the perfect timing. Burt Lesser scolded them for being so rude. He made his pitch. Then the golden voice of the Chamber of Commerce made a financial pitch that had them all breathing heavy. That was all. The commissioners called a short recess to determine if they would vote on it at once. They so determined. They voted yes. Gus Makelder gave a little sermon on the need for harmony, forget old differences, hand in hand into the golden future and so on and so forth. Not a peep out of the Costex people. The proponents had the sense to trim the presentation way down. With the S.O.B.’s whipped before they ever got started, there wasn’t any need for the customary parade of talent. It was hot in that auditorium, Jimmy. Hot, sweaty, noisy and a little bit dangerous. They went swarming out with some steam left to release. When the hot dry winds blow, the natives get restless anyway. So we’ve had a little flurry of alarums and arrests tonight. Fistfights, car thefts, rapes and other little evidences of high spirits.”
Mitchie handed Jimmy his drink. He said, “How are things at the zoo?”
“Your desk is empty. I’ve got your stuff in a carton in my car, and your check in my wallet. I’ll stop by your place tomorrow before I go in, okay?”
“Fine, Bri. Thanks. How does that retraction read?”
“It makes you look like a thug, a liar and a person of unsound mind. Other than that, you’ll love it. Borklund keeps staring at me the way the house cat watches the parakeet. He hates the news end. It complicates the money machine. I think he’s wondering how he can cover the local scene without using human beings. You want to stop by and use our crying towels? You sound down.”
“Thanks, no. And thanks for the report.”
Jimmy hung up and turned the phone light out. The fresh drink was tall and strong. Mitchie had reversed the stack of records. She sat at one end of the couch, wedged some of the cushions behind her, and had Jimmy stretch out. He made small changes in his position until the nape of his neck was perfectly fitted to a curve of her bare strong thigh. Her fingers were gentle, smoothing his eyebrows, stroking his hair.
“How did Brian get that terrible scar? In a war?” she asked.
“In a saloon in Kansas, from a broken bottle. No fracas. He fell on it.”
“Are they happy?”
“Huh? Nan and Bri? I guess so. Sure.”
“Jimmy?”
“I’m right here.”
“You know what the worst thing of all is? Really the worst thing of all? It’s when you do some idiot damn thing, drunk or not, and later there’s nobody you can go to and say you’re sorry. It’s when you can’t disappoint anybody. Oh, the hell with having somebody to please. The worst is having nobody to be cross with you because you let them down. If they didn’t have anything else, they’d have that.”
“I guess so.”
“Jaimie, it’s like that old problem of the tree falling in the middle of the forest. If nobody heard it, did it make any noise? If you do a wicked, evil thing, is it really wicked and evil if nobody gives a damn? Or does it just happen in a vacuum?”
“Mitch, honey, I’m not exactly up to philosophical speculation.”
“But this is heading someplace.”
“Is it?”
“It might get roundabout, but if you don’t fall asleep, you might find out how it comes out. My little girl was ten years old a week ago Tuesday.”
“Uh... Carol?”
“Thank you for remembering her name.” She leaned down and kissed him, then leaned back again. “When you’re emotionally upset, you can do yourself a hell of a bad turn, you know? I really think my lawyer was playing footsie with his lawyer. I got careless, you know. When the dust blew away, there I was with my clothes and my car, a sixteen-thousand-dollar settlement, and two hundred a month until the moment I remarry. But he had complete custody of the kid. I told myself I didn’t give a damn. He has the kid, and I am costing him less than seven dollars a day. For God’s sake, our phone bill used to run more than that! But because I got careless — because I’d stopped giving a damn — they had me in a bind, and it was sort of take the offer, or nothing. I took it and came home. I can’t see her, but they let me write to her. I write to her care of a lawyer. I guess they get together and fumigate the letter. Once a month is often enough, they’ve told me. I get formal, dutiful, polite little letters back from her. She sounds like a bright kid. When she gets to be eighteen, I guess she can decide whether to meet me face-to-face.”
“That’s a sad sort of...”
“Hold the sympathy, Jaimie,” she said, touching his lips. “I’m making no appeal on that basis. I’m just buzzed enough to be terribly stark about all this. I make an appeal on a different basis. It goes like this. I’m not happy. I accept that. I don’t expect to be. But I’m not having much fun.”
“I thought you were.”
“Now let’s get to the stark part, and take the cold appraising look at Mitchie McClure. First for the deficits. I’m a party broad, Jaimie. I’m not on call, but I’m in scads of little black books. Buster, old buddy, if you get to Palm City on this trip, I want you to look up a pal of mine named Mitchie McClure. Here’s her address. Tell her you’re my friend. She’s a lot of laughs and she’ll show you the town, and whether or not she puts out depends on you, old buddy. She’s no bum. Got the picture? Right. So there are the drinks and the dinners and the little gifties that piece out the budget. Sometimes a gift of money, tucked in a shoe or a drawer or a purse. The first few times that happened, it made me feel crawly. But we’re talking deficits, aren’t we? Okay. The girl is in the semipro league, and she drinks much too much, and she’s letting herself get too heavy.
“Now for the assets, and leave us not indulge in any vulgar puns. She is selective, which I suppose is the dreary excuse and justification of all the semipros. She is reasonably pretty, and she is getting very bored with drinking these days, and even more bored with being horizontal, resort-type recreation for good old Buster and Charlie and Jack. She’s clean, and reasonably intelligent, and she could hoe fifteen pounds of meat off those hips in a month or so, if she had reason to give a damn. And I think she has a capacity for loyalty which has never had a proper workout.”
“Where are you heading with this?”
“Shut up. Jaimie, tell me true, does it mean anything to you that you were my first and I was your first? Can you feel any... tenderness toward those two love-dazed clumsy kids, the you and me of a long long time ago, full of dreams?”
“You know it means something.”
“You know, I’m this here woman, this party broad, and I’m also the fifteen-year-old girl you used to take up into the storeroom over Getland’s boathouse, both of us breathing so hard we sounded like marathon runners. We told each other it wasn’t wrong, because we were going to spend our whole lives together.”