“Five-five.”
“You look much taller than that!”
“It’s because I’m a wraith. A hundred and five pounds. I’ll even tell you the forlorn dimensions. Reading from the top they’re thirty-one, nineteen, thirty-one. Symmetrical, no?”
“Not exactly. Thirty-one, thirty-one, thirty-one would be truly symmetrical. Putting that crazy nineteen in the middle is what saves it. Anyhow, Jan has a hell of a good figure, said he with husbandly pride. She’s generally a placid gal, which works out fine because I’m inclined to blow up. Lately she hasn’t been so placid. That’s because I’ve had to leave her alone too much, and she has the idea I could get out of all this traveling. I could, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be the smart thing to do. You didn’t ask for my problems. You asked about Jan. She is my nifty girl.”
“It makes me feel like an urchin outside a candy store.”
“You never feel sorry for yourself. Remember?”
“Any time I start to, all I have to do is remember the delights of my marriage. And suddenly you’d be surprised at how contented I get.”
“You should try again.”
“Uh uh! I rode my little barrel over the falls, thank you. I survived, but not by much of a margin. Floyd, dear man, thank you for the drink and the talk. You can plant me in a cab, please. Tomorrow I’ll be the earnest quester, and nail you down about what you really think about conventions.”
Halfway through the lower lobby she stopped suddenly and turned, smiling, and said, “If you have time, and if it’s possible to get anywhere near the ocean, ten minutes of sea breeze would blow the cigar smell out of this mop.”
“I have time and there’s an ocean around here somewhere. I swear I’ve seen one.”
They walked across the pool area and found an outside stairway that led up to the low flat roof of the furthest rank of cabanas. With most of the hotel lights behind them, they could see the phosphorescence in the waves. They stood side by side, looking over a low wall.
“One day,” she said, “it ought to reach up with one hell of a big wave and yank all this gunky luxury right back out and drown it.”
“Nature girl?”
“By instinct, but not habit.” Suddenly she took her shoes off, put them on the wide railing and stood close to him, smiling up at him. “See? Five five. Not even that, actually. I lie a little. Five four and a little over a half inch.”
“And you actually weigh seventy-two pounds, and the measurements are really nineteen, nineteen, nineteen.”
“The hell you say, Hubbard.” She came up on tip-toe, put her arms around his neck and sagged her weight on him. “A hunnert ’n five pounds of dreary broad.”
She kissed him lightly, mockingly, and suddenly he was kissing her with a strength and fury he could not have anticipated. She fitted her slimness to him, strained to him, left her mouth soft for the breaking. The kiss ended and he was holding her close, whispering, “Cory, Cory, Cory, Cory.” Her hands moved on his face and his throat, and she covered all the parts of his face she could reach with a hundred light quick kisses, making an audible, murmurous sound of contentment as she did so, until her mouth came back onto his, into a little more violence than before.
“You’re not running,” she muttered. “You’re not running like a rabbit.”
“Cory, Cory. God, you feel so sweet and good.”
She thrust him away, snatched up her bag and shoes. “I better do the running, my darling. Right now it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense.”
She fled more quickly than he would have guessed possible. He called to her, but she did not stop or answer. By the time he reached the bottom of the steps she was more than halfway across the pool area, moving fleetly through a confusion of colored spotlights and floodlights, between the tropical plantings, angling toward the flank of the tall pale hotel.
He slowed his pace and sat on a chaise near the pool and smoked a cigarette. He wiped her lipstick from his mouth. He looked at the sky, and went on up to his room.
He was wearily and dutifully brushing his teeth when the room phone rang. He hurried to the phone, half expecting long distance, half expecting some kind of family disaster.
“Floyd?” she said in a small wary voice.
“In that good school, were you by any chance on the track team?” He stretched out on the bed.
“Tennis, swimming, field hockey. No track team. I just got home. Just this minute.”
“Did you ever get to put your shoes on?”
“Darling, I know you’re keeping it all very light and gay so that this won’t be an awkward sort of conversation, and I do treasure you for it. But I feel wretched, and I want you to please let me go on feeling wretched. And guilty.”
“Why be guilty?”
“Because it was all so damn contrived, dear. When we started out, I didn’t want to be put in a cab all of a sudden. I wanted to be kissed, and I meant to be kissed, and, damn it, I lied and fiddled around until I made sure that I did get kissed. You were like they say, a helpless pawn.”
“We pawns make out pretty good.”
“Floyd?”
“Yes?”
“It turned out to be more of a much than I’d planned on.”
“I know.”
“My mouth is bruised, and I keep getting these stupid trembling feelings like waves, and they go from my scalp right down to my toes and back up again.”
“Best of luck.”
“Tell me I did right to run.”
“You did exactly right, Cory honey.”
“And we have to leave it right there, don’t we?”
“At the moment that seems like a cheerless prospect.”
“Oh, I know. I know. But this hit a little too hard to... seem safe.”
“Yes indeed.”
“Somebody has to do the running.”
“And you did it. You’re a good sensible girl.”
“Yes, damn me. Floyd?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I messed myself up. I don’t want to mess you up too.”
“Could you?”
“Help me, darn it! Tell me to stay the hell away from you.”
“Sure. Stay away from me.”
“Do you think it’s going to be easy?”
“Certainly not. Now do me the same favor.”
“Okay. Floyd, stay away from me.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
“Did anything ever happen to anybody so sudden?”
“They say it does sometimes.”
“Never to me.”
“Or to me, before.”
“Floyd, darling, we’re just going to have to be terribly rational about it. Avoiding each other is just going to be tantalizing. The best thing we can possibly do is get together tomorrow, by the cruel light of day and talk it to death. What do you think?”
“Talking should do it. I’m still a coward.”
“What were you doing when the phone rang?”
“Well, I didn’t catch this girl’s name, it all happened so suddenly, and it looks now as if she’s given up and gone to sleep, but...”
“Floyd!”
“Actually, I was burnishing my fangs and thinking of you.”
“What were you thinking about me?”
“Actually, I was trying to decide what to think about you. I was trying to establish an attitude, I guess. But I was, and still am, a little too dazed to make very much headway with it. You see, Cory, this doesn’t happen to Floyd Hubbard. It’s out of character. One of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen just doesn’t fall into his arms. So Hubbard isn’t ready. Right now he feels like a gay blade. Inside he’s doing some swashing and a little buckling. He’s got an imaginary waxed mustache. Hell, honey, he’s flattered all to pieces, and half convinced they drugged you in that bar, and pretty certain that by tomorrow you’ll laugh yourself sick.”