“I’ve never thought about it.”
“It is, I assure you. Take Dan Grimes, for instance. You wouldn’t think a man so big and strong and important as Dan would have practically no capacity at all for alcohol, but it’s true. That’s why he never drinks except when he’s with friends where it won’t make any difference. He always gets drunk almost immediately, and the next thing you know he’s getting sick and passing out. What I mean is, he’s susceptible. Are you susceptible, Mr. Laird?”
“I don’t drink much.”
“How unfortunate. It might make you more entertaining if you did. Are you susceptible to anything else in particular?”
She was standing very close to me, and I could smell the astringent sweetness of her perfume, and feel on my face as she talked the moist warmth of her breath. All at once she put an arm around my neck and put her lips on mine, kissing me slowly. There was a suggestion of a taunt in the way she took her time. I stood quietly with the glass in my right hand, the left hand empty behind her back and carefully not touching her, and after awhile she stepped back past the empty hand and leaned against the cabinet and began to laugh softly as if she were genuinely amused.
“You are also a very poor kisser, Mr. Laird,” she said. “You make a poor drink, and you kiss a poor kiss.”
“I guess I just have no talent,” I said.
“It’s possible. On the other hand, it’s possible that you’re merely undeveloped. You might improve with experience.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
From the lake came the strong, sweet sound of a motor-boat moving pretty fast. The sound moved from the main channel past the point and into the arm.
“It’s Ira and Dan,” Rita Boniface said.
“Sounds like it,” I said.
I finished my drink and set the glass on the table. Turning toward the door, I saw clearly in the light of the lamp something I had not seen before. It was a shoulder harness, complete with .38 automatic, and it was lying in a casual way across the foot of the bed like nothing more than a discarded shirt. I stopped and stared at it, feeling a cold and heavy congealing of the uneasiness that had been gathering inside me ever since the arrival of these odd people that I did not understand and did not like. I wished that they had not come, or that they would, having come, go away again at once.
“What a pretty toy,” I said.
“The gun? It’s Ira’s.”
“Is it part of his ordinary equipment?”
“It is when he goes anywhere with Dan Grimes, and he’s going somewhere with Dan practically all the time.”
“You mean he’s Grimes’s bodyguard?”
“That’s one of the things he is. Ira’s a number of things that might surprise you. He’s a capable guy.”
“I got that impression.”
“He’s a very capable guy, and he’s mine. Don’t be fooled because I try to entertain myself when I’m bored. Ira’s number one.”
“With you and Grimes both?”
“That’s right. With me and Dan and others too. As I said, where Dan goes, Ira usually goes.” She paused, and I could hear her breathing, the sound of it suddenly slow and deep and measured in the room. “Maybe soon,” she said softly, as if I were no longer there and she were speaking only to herself, “Dan will go somewhere without Ira, and there will only be Ira left.”
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking.”
The boat had pulled up to the dock, and I went outside and walked a few steps down the slope and waited. Dan Grimes and Ira Boniface came up the slope toward me. Grimes was walking a little in advance, and he was carrying a metal stringer with half a dozen bass hanging from it. He held the string up for me to see, and it was plain that he was feeling exhilarated by his luck.
“What do you think of these?” he said.
“They’re beauties,” I said.
They looked as if they’d weigh about three to five pounds each. There were two white bass and four black bass.
“You knew what you were talking about, all right,” he said. “The second cast I made, I got a good strike.”
“Did they give you a good fight?”
“Yes,” he said, “they fought hard.”
Rita Boniface had come after me out of the cottage. She lit a cigarette and stood looking at the bass without enthusiasm.
“I’m getting hungry,” she said.
“We’ll go get something to eat,” Grimes said. He turned back to me. “Where’s a good place to go, Laird? From now on, I’m taking your advice on everything.”
“There’s a place just where you turned off the highway onto the lake road,” I said. “They have good Kansas City steaks. Charcoal broiled.”
“Fine,” Grimes said. “How’s a KC charcoal broiled steak sound, Rita?”
“It sounds good,” Rita said. “Let’s go get it.”
She turned and started up the slope to the cottage, and Ira Boniface went after her.
“I’ll clean your bass and put them in the freezer,” I said.
“Will you do that?” Grimes handed me the string. “I’d appreciate it.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Part of the service.”
“Next time anyone wants to know a good place to fish, I’ll know where to tell him.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” I said.
He went up the slope at an angle to his own cottage. There was a big stump of an oak on the slope between the cottage he was in and the one occupied by the Quintins. I used the stump for cleaning fish for guests, and now I got a knife and a scaler and cleaned the bass on the stump. I had just finished with the last bass when Grimes and the others came out of the cottages and drove away in the Chrysler wagon. It was almost as dark then as it would get, and there was a bright moon rising out of the lake.
They came back about ten and went into Grimes’s cottage. A little later I went down the slope to the dock and sat on the bench in the moonlight. It was a wonderfully clear, cool night, the air filled with scents and stirring with small sounds, and I sat there for a long time on the bench, but I was unable to feel any of the good things a man should feel on that kind of night.
Someone in the cottage turned on a portable radio and tuned in a d. j. program. The music was very bad and very loud, and the talk and laughter became louder in competition with the bad music. They were having quite a party up there. I was glad the fourth cottage was unoccupied, because otherwise I might have had a complaint about the noise, which would have created a problem.
I kept sitting on the bench on the dock until it got to be midnight, and then I got up and walked along the edge of the lake to the point. I stood on the point for quite a long time. I could hear now and then, out in the water, the splash of a leaping fish, and in the trees across the arm along a ridge, a loon and an owl. After awhile I turned and started up the slope at an angle toward the cottages. In the middle cottage the party was still going on, but the laughter and talk had become sporadic and not so loud as before, and it was apparent that things were coming slowly to an end. Among the trees on the slope, it was very dark. In the Quintins’ cottage, the first I reached, I could hear faintly a harsh, aspirate sound of deep breathing. I was not more than two feet from the porch, and I stopped and looked inside, but it was too dark to see anything, and I stood there for a minute listening to the breathing, which was suddenly quieter and hardly audible. I took a step backward to turn and leave, and my foot came down on a dead branch. The branch cracked sharply, and someone spoke instantly beyond the dark doorway. It was the voice of Laura Quintin.
“Who’s there?” she said.
“It’s John Laird,” I said.
“Oh. I’m glad you’ve come along, Mr. Laird. I could use some help.” Her voice sounded tired and curiously flat.