“Mary, I don’t need to know all—”
“It’s so different out here,” she went on, blandly, merely interested in her own story. “People wear so little, and they just let you see everything that’s happening to them. And this man’s suit was that very thin kind of shiny material — you know the kind I mean?”
“Yes, Mary, I—”
“I could see everything she told me, calm eyes round and innocent. “And it was a very thick one, too. But not too long, which was lucky, or it would have poked right out the top of the suit.”
“Mary, look, you—”
“And then he came over to ask me what time it was. I was sitting on the beach towel, you know, and he stood right next to me, and there it was, practically in my face. I could see the vein. And he said, ‘Do you have the time?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t have my watch with me,’ and then he smiled and sort of gyrated, like this.” And she did a slow round movement with her hips. She’s in very good physical condition, Mary, the muscles rippling beneath the flesh as she did a deliberate illustrative bump and grind.
“Mary,” I said firmly, “if you wouldn’t look back at these people, they—”
“They’ll just come over,” she said. “It’s because I’m alone. This man, I just told him, ‘I’m going for a swim now,’ and I did.”
“So am I,” I said, and went away and leaped directly into the water, which steamed around me.
That wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot. Almost every day, Mary has another rutting male to tell me about. There was the time she was body-surfing and a man nearby, also body-surfing, kept managing to bump into her in the water, once getting his hand inside her bra. And the man who tried to adjust her bicycle seat while she was seated on the bicycle. And the man with the banana, who—
Well. The point is, for my own peace of mind I’ve been avoiding Mary as much as possible while Ginger’s away in town, this being the week Ginger has to commute. (Mary won’t tell these stories in front of Ginger, of course.) But today was a special case if there ever was one, and so, regardless of what pornography awaited me below, I went downstairs after my Vickie conversation, and into the kitchen, where Mary was boiling water for iced tea. I took a glass down from the shelf, put ice cubes in it from the freezer, then filled it about halfway with vodka. I had opened the refrigerator door and was reaching for the orange juice when Mary said, “Tom? Is something wrong?”
“You remember Vickie Douglas,” I said, pouring orange juice.
“Your editor, yes.”
“She’s pregnant,” I said, putting the orange juice away.
“Tom!” She stared at me.
“Not by me,” I said in irritation, and knocked back half my drink. Then another ramification of the situation came to me — the realization that that irregular madwoman was capable of getting herself knocked up at her age despite all the aids and counsel of modern-day science, and if she hadn’t been preggers already when we’d met I could have been the father — and I knocked back the drink’s other half.
“Tom, it’s ten-thirty in the morning,” Mary said.
“You gonna tell me the sports next?”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s the problem?”
“Vickie is taking a year’s leave of absence. She is no longer my editor. The Christmas Book is an orphan.”
“Well, that happened before,” she pointed out, “when Jack Rosenfarb left. You were worried then, and it worked out all right with Vickie.”
“That was a special case,” I muttered. I was building a second drink. It would simply not be possible for me to climb into bed with Hambleton Cudlipp the Third. Nor could I see myself running this whole routine again if they gave me another Vickie Douglas, of whom there is a rich supply in New York publishing. “I’m doomed,” I said.
The whistling teakettle whistled. Mary made tea while I made a screwdriver and took it out to the back deck. Standing in the sunshine, I surveyed the blackness of life. Mary came out and touched my arm and said, “It’ll be all right, Tom.”
“It will not. We are precisely at the point where Craig can drop the ball.” I nodded at the little guesthouse. “Hows the accommodation?”
“Fine,” she said. “Hot in the daytime, but I’m never in there in the daytime. Tom, don’t brood.”
“The definition of insanity,” I said, “is ‘an inappropriate reaction to stimuli.’ Given the stimuli I’ve just been hit with, if I didn’t brood I’d be crazy.” I swigged screwdriver.
Mary took the glass out of my hand and put it on the table. “Don’t hurt yourself, Tom,” she said. “It isn’t your fault.”
“I know that.”
“So don’t make it worse. You’ll give yourself a headache and a hangover and an upset stomach, you’ll ruin the entire day—”
“The entire day is ruined.”
She came over and put her arms around me and drew my head down into the crook of her shoulder and throat. Patting the back of my head, holding my torso with her other arm, she murmured, “It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.”
Mary is several inches shorter than me, so it was a somewhat awkward posture I was in, knees bent slightly, head folded down like a hanging victim, and yet a sudden wave of comfort and warmth flowed over me as I stood there, much stronger and sweeter than anything the vodka could have done. Mary was in her bikini and my hands felt the warmth of her back. In my nose was a faint aroma, a sweet duskiness, that reminded me of times long long ago.
When a couple live together for years, they lose the knowledge of one another’s scent. But Mary and I had been apart now for seventeen months, and had become strangers again. Her fragrance was both new and old — and so was the feel of her body against me — and very disturbing.
She stopped patting my head, but continued to hold me, and arched her back so she could look up at my face. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll survive,” I said, and kissed her.
Very warm. The old-and-new again. Known but exotic. Complex. Memory and desire and regret and distant warning bells.
She released me, stepped back, smiled. If she had smiled in some sort of triumph or conquest I would have hated her, but there was nothing in the smile but care and concern. “Sit down,” she said, “I’ll make coffee.”
I sat under the beach umbrella, looking out at the sunlight. My thoughts were confused, but calmer. The problems of The Christmas Book seemed very far away; important, but not urgent.
I did not go to bed with Mary, nor did she seem to assume I might. If there had been any hint of it from her, would I have followed through? I have no idea.
The coffee helped, and further calm conversation with Mary helped, but I still got my headache. Now I shall go fling myself into the ocean.
Sunday, July 17th
Mary left this afternoon.
Several times in the last two weeks I thought the situation might explode, but it never quite did happen. Ginger once or twice wanted an explosion, and I could see it, and I guess Mary could see it, too, because she very gently and quietly disappeared from view. I made the mistake once of pointing this out to Ginger: “You keep saying Mary’s devious,” I said, “but if she was devious wouldn’t she let you pick a fight with her?”