“Oh God, God!” she whispered. “He can’t do it. He tried and tried and tried. I helped and helped and helped. Then he was no damn good at all, and he started crying, and I had to get out of there. Oh God, Trav, my nerves are shot, shot, shot.”
“Steady, girl.”
“That damn bitch might just as well have cut them off,” she said, and sobbed again, and got the hiccups. She hicked and gasped and ground her face into my throat, held me in an iron grip, and, with each hick, gave me a little thud with those powerful hips. I was not unresponsive. Hell, a bronze statue three thousand years old would have made its reaction as evident to her as I did.
“God, darling-hic-be a dear-hic-and take me off hic-the hook.”
“And you know it wouldn’t stop there, and wouldn’t that do Arthur a lot of good, though? Wouldn’t that brighten his hours, improve his morale?”
“But you-hic-want me, darling. Please-hic-”
“Okay Chook.”
“Bless you!” she said. “I love you so. Hic.”
“I’ll help you out,” I said. I bent to get one arm behind her knees. She went loose, thinking, perhaps, I was going to tote her topsides to the sun pads on the upper deck. I swung her up and out and over the rail and let go.
Shriek. Ka-swash. Then some coughing, and then some strident and bitter abuse from the dark water. I strolled back to the boarding ladder, bent and gave her a hand, hauled her up onto the after deck and told her to stay right there. I brought her a towel and a terry robe.
“After all!” she said in a cold and level voice. “Really!”
“Your language is improving.”
As she belted the robe, she said, “You’re all bastard, aren’t you?”
“Listen. Did it or did it not cure the hiccups?”
Suddenly we were laughing, and in laughing we were friends again, and went topsides to the big padded bench at the topside controls. I went and checked the anchor line, came back with cigarettes for her, a pipe for me. The running light dimmed the stars, but not entirely.
“You were absolutely right, of course,” she said. “And let me believe, damn it, that it cost you something too.”
“More than I care to think about.”
“So maybe failure finished him off. We don’t know that. But I damn well do know that I would have moved into your bed for the duration of the voyage, captain, and that certainly would finish him.”
“Like that little knife they use when the matador hasn’t been able to kill with the sword. Some stocky little guy, like a butcher, moves in and gives it to old bull right behind the ears. And he goes down as if he’d been dropped off a roof.”
“Then those damned mules pull him all the way around the ring instead of right on off stage. Why do they have to do that?”
“A tribute, maybe.”
“Trav, how in the world am I going to act toward Arthur tomorrow? He felt so… wretched about everything.”
“Open and obvious affection, Chook. All the little pats and smiles and kisses. Little hugs. Just as if it had worked.”
“But why in the world should… Oh, I think I get it. No penalty for failure. Encouragement to try again. No social disgrace. But if it ends up the same way I don’t think I can endure it. Oh hell, I suppose I can always run out and jump overboard, screaming.”
“And hiccuping.”
“Honestly, and you have to believe me, I never got in such a state before in my life. It’s something about a boat, I guess. And the phase of the moon. And Frankie gone for years. And feeling… so damned sorry for Arthur. And, of course, being so bloody awful healthy. Poor lamb. He was so apologetic and crushed. Well, thanks for practically nothing, McGee. Night.”
I made the pipe last. I sat up there, bare feet braced on the wheel spokes, and wondered why Chook should bring out the martyr in me. Twice now, with her, I had gone so noble it semi- sickened me. And such a glorious package. But was she? Maybe she was a little too much. She created a certain awe in the standard issue male. I had noted that fewer passes were made at her than she had a right to expect. All that robust, glowing, powerful vitality might actually have given me a subconscious block, a hidden suspicion that I might, in the long run, be unable to cope-an alarming prospect for male vanity, of which I was certain I had my share. When these dreary suspicions threatened to spoil a pretty night, I went forward, back down through the hatch and into my spartan bed.
Too restless to go to sleep quickly, I found another reason, perhaps just as ego-damaging, why I could resist intimate involvement with Chook. Except for her inexplicable bondage to Frank Durlcin, she was uncommonly staunch and stable. Though shrewd, diligent and perceptive, she did not have any of those inner contradictions, complexities and vulnerabilities that are born of self-doubt.
She was all of a piece, confident of her total survival, and-in that sense-utterly wholesome. Maybe I could be stirred only by the wounded ducklings. Maybe I could respond best to the cripples I cut out of the flock, the ones who, by contrast, could give me a sense of inner strength and unity. And a whole woman might, conversely, serve to give me a less fictional image of the inner McGee, showing the fracture lines and the clumsy ways I had pasted myself back together, and too many tricks with mirrors.
When you have learned control over your own dear little neuroses, you can have empathy with the ones who are shaking themselves apart, and get your jollies out of teaching them how to dampen the vibrations. But a sound and solid one can only make you aware of how frequently precarious your acquired controls can become. It could be that this wariness of the sound ones and the true ones was one of the hidden reasons why I had to be a roamer, a salvage expert, a gregarious loner, a seeker of a thousand tarnished grails, finding too many excuses for all the dragons along the way.
This kind of emotional introspection, this self fondling, is strange medicine. A little bit, now and again, can acrete a small quotient of wisdom. But, like nitroglycerin for the weakened heart, too much of it at one time can blow your head off.
Maybe it was all a lot simpler than that. Physical attraction was strong, but without emotional attraction. Once begun, we would go the long route, and at the end of it there would be absolutely nothing, very probably not even the friendship. And that was good enough to warrant a knowing abstention.
Tuesday Chook seemed to be overdoing the whole routine. The response was perhaps as noticeable as she would have gotten from petting a dead dog. Pats and squeezes, kind words and quick kisses, and special little treats from the galley. Arthur seemed too deep in humble apathy to notice or care. But from time to time I saw him stare toward her with a mildly baffled expression. She laid it on so thick, I felt more comfortable at long range. I gave myself the most rigorous day yet. There is one which can match anything they thought up during the Inquisition.
Sit. Hook feet under something solid. Lace fingers behind neck. Lean slowly back until shoulders are approximately ten to twelve inches off the deck. Stop right there. And stay there until the sweat bursts and every muscle is jumping, and then stay there a little while longer, then come slowly, slowly back up to the sitting position. Another: One-legged deep knee bends, taking about two seconds to go down and two seconds to come back up. Continue until body weight seems to approximate seventeen tons.
Alternate ten minute rest periods with fifty minute workouts all day long, then soak in a tub so hot you have to get into it by inches, then eat twenty ounces of rare beef, a peck of salad, stretch out topsides and look at the stars, and blunder off to bed.