While he slept I dug into the more remote lockers in the bow section until I found the small ragged suitcase I remembered. Girl-bought clothes for a version of McGee of long ago, when I hid out and they hunted me, and I was afraid the stink of my rotting leg would clue them in. Killed the two of them while in delirium. No
20 John D. MacDonald memory of how she got me to the hospital, HeaW later 1101V she managed to keep them hmm taking the leg off. Now there is that crooked pale arroyo, long down the right thigh, deep into muscle tissue. Function unimpaired. But a chancy time, deep there in fevers, seeing the pearly gleam of the gates, talking to the dead brother, sometimes looking up out of a well at the prokssional faces bending over the bed.
17hese were thEe clothes she brought me, the clothes in which I was wheeled out into the vivid unreal world, clothes in which I first tottered about, ten feet tall and two inches wide, certain that if I fell off the crutches I would break like a glass stoW TWO, would fit Arthur nicely in his dwindled condition and were only slightly musty from long staragn. In a housewifely inood, I hung them out to air, dunking of the money the dead ones had stolen, quite legally, from the dead brother and how, quite illegafly, the girl and I had stolen it back, cut it down the middle.
While Arthur slept, I wondered how the hell to get rid of him. 17hat was the event of my Christian chariqi I could accept being an aid station but not a convalescent clinic. I went over the composition of the group as Arthur had known it, looking for a substitute pigeon. I had my slob summer all planned. Immediately after the dry rot surgery and a few other maintenance matters, I wanted to take the Busted Flush down to Dinner Key, get her hauled and get the bottom scraped and painted, and then chug at my stately 6+ knots-with a six-hundred mile range on the
RIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD 21
two 58 hp Hercules Diesels-over to the Bahamas on a dead calm day. The 52-foot barge-type houseboat can take pretty rough weather if Orced to, but she rolls so badly she tends to bust up the little servomechanisms aboard which make life lush. I had been mentally composing a guest list, limited to those random salty souls who can get amm, hold their liquor; endure sunshine, make good talk, swim the reefs, navigate, handle the lines, slay food fish and appreciate the therapeutic value of silence. It is the McGee version of being a loner-merely having some people about to whom you don’t have to constantly react. Arthur did not fit that specification closely enough.
When darkness came, I took the aired clothes below and put them on a chair in the guest stateroom. He was snoring in a muted way. I closed his door, fixed myself a Plymouth gin on the rocks, closed the lounge curtains, looked up Chookie McCall’s number. No answer. I hadn’t seen her or heard anything about her in two months.
I tried Hal the bartender at the Mile O’Beach who keeps good track of our gypsy contingent of entertainers. Hal said she’d been working at Bernie’s East up to May first when they closed the Brimstone Room, and as far as he know all she was doing “as a Saturday morning one-hour show of dance instruction on KLAKAY But he had it on good authority she was all set to regroup her six pack and open back at the Mile O’Beach in the Bahama Room come November 15th.
“Hal, is Frank Durkin back yet?”
“Back yet! Don’t sit on your hands until he gets back. Dint you hear what they got him on?”
“Only that he took a fall.”
“It was assault with intent to kill, or felonious assault or whatever the hell they call it. Three to five up in Haiford, and you can bet Frankie will get smartass with those screws up there and they will keep him for the five. Chook goes up to see him once a month. She’ll be making a lot of trips. All that woman could find something better, McGee, and you know it. She don’t get any younger.”
“Younger? Hell, she’s only twenty-five at the most.”
“Ten years in the entertainment business, and thirty when they turn Frankie Durkin loose. It adds up, Trav. If I was trying to locate her tonight. I think maybe Muriel Hess would be a good bet. She’s in the book. They’ve been working together on material for when she starts up here in the fall.”
I thanked him and tried the number. Chook was there. “What’s on your mind, stranger?”
“Buying a steak for the dancing girl.”
“Plural?”
“Not if you can help it.”
There was a long palm-over-the-mouthpiece silence, and then she said, “What kind of a place, Trav?”
“The Open Range?”
“Yum! I’ll have to go back to my place and change. How about coming over for a drink? Forty minutes?”
I shaved and changed, and left a note for Arthur in case he woke up. Because of all the boat errands, I had Miss Agnes parked nearby, my electric blue Rolls pickup truck, an amateur conversion accomplished by some desperate idiot during her checkered past. She is not yet old enough to vote. But almost. She started with a touch, and I went along the beach to where Miss McCall lives in the back end of a motel so elderly it has long since been converted from transient to permanent residence. She’s in what used to be two units. Wrapped in a robe, smelling of steam and soap, she gave me a sisterly kiss, told me to fix her a bourbon and water. I handed it in to her.
In a reasonably short time she came out in high heels and a pale green-gray dress. “McGee, I think I say yes because how many guys I go out with can I wear heels with?” She inspected me. “You’re too heavy.”
“Thanks. I feel too heavy.”
“Are you going to do anything about it?”
“I’ve started.”
“With booze in your hand?”
“I’m starting a little slow, but I’m one of those who lose it with exercise. Not enough lately. But a lot more coming up. Chook, you are not too heavy.”
“Because I work at it all the time.”
She was indeed something, All that woman, as Hal had said. Five ten, maybe 136 pounds, maybe 39-25-39, and every inch glossy, firm, pneumatic-intensely alive, perfectly conditioned as are only the dedicated professional dancers, circus flyers, tumblers, and combat rangers. Close up you can hear their motors humming. Heart beat in repose is in the fifties. Lung capacity extraordinary. Whites of the eyes a blue-white.
Not a pretty woman. Features too vital and heavy. Brows heavy. Hair harsh and black and glossy, like a racing mare. Indian-black eyes, bold nose, big broad mouth. A handsome, striking human being. When she was five years old they had started her on ballet. When she was twelve she had grown too big to be accepted in any company. When she was fifteen, claiming nineteen, she was in the chorus of a Broadway musical.
While I freshened the drinks she told me what she was working out with Muriel, a New Nations theme, researching the music and rhythms. She said it would give them some exotic stuff and some darling costumes and some sexy choreography. We sat to finish the drink. She said Wassener, the new manager, was considering a no-bra policy for the little troupe next season, and was sounding out the authorities to see how bad a beef he might get. She said she hoped it wouldn’t work out, as it would mean either canceling out two good girls she already had lined up, or talking them into wax jobs. “Posing and blackouts and that stuff,” she said, “it’s a different thing. You just keep your chin up and you arch your back a little and tighten your shoulders back, but I’ve been trying to tell Mr. Wassener dancing is something else. MiGod, a time step in fast tempo, and all of a sudden it could look like a comedy routine, you know what I mean. If he thinks it’ll draw, what he should get is a couple of big dumb ponies and just let them stand upstage on pedestals maybe, in baby spots and turn slow.”
After I agreed, there was a last inch of the drink silence, and I knew I had to say something about Frank Durkin. Like being forced to discuss ointment with somebody with an incurable skin rash.