“She owns the whole ball game now.”
“But doesn’t she give you money?”
“She tries hard.”
“Doesn’t it come from some kind of rotten source, like drugs?”
“Probably. Indirectly.”
“Am I boring you?”
I turned and grinned at her. “Not most of the time.”
“It’s just that I want you to be-”
“Respectable?”
“That’s not the right word: It’s not as stuffy a word as that.”
“Independent?”
“Closer.”
“‘That is something I have always been, Annie, and always will be. I steer through a pretty crowded track, and once in a while I brush up against a Preach, who wants to tame me by breaking my elbows, or a Dirty Bob, who wants to punish me by killing my friends. Okay I have a lot of moves. Earnest apology. Happy sapistry. A good straight left hand when needed. They nearly had me quelled, kid. That was before all this with Esterland.”
“Will you tell me all about it sometime?”
“Probably. They had the lid almost hammered down on me. But I couldn’t take a life that flat. You know. Things have to move. Like I lied to you about not being able to run away from the storm. We probably could have. But this is a better way.”
“I know we could have. I checked the charts.”
“I have a lot of trouble with bright women.”
“You couldn’t stand any other kind.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “After the storm, are we going to hurry back to Lauderdale?”
“If you can call anything this crock can do hurrying.”
“I think about Meyer.”
“So do I. Look, he has to be alone for a time. Maybe it is long enough by now. I hope so. He failed his image of himself because I think he fashioned that image a little too closely to his image of me. I am more of a physical person than Meyer. He has too much imagination. That’s what helps people break themselves. He didn’t expect it. He’s been in tighter spots. This time he saw something in the crazed, dying, evil eyes of that man. He saw his death there, and it sucked the heart right out of him. And he’s ashamed, though he shouldn’t be.”
“Have you told him he shouldn’t be?”
“Of course. I told him it can happen to anyone at any time, and I tried to tell him it had happened to me too. It almost did, once. But not quite. And I couldn’t lie well enough to convince him.”
“What will happen?”
“He’ll want to get into something rough. He’ll look for a chance to try to recover his self-respect. And it might be a very close play indeed to try to keep him from getting himself killed. He seeks that absolution, the end of shame. And that is a primitive reaction. Whatever it is, I am going to have to help hunt for the situation, and I am going to have to see that he gets away with whatever foolish move he makes.
“Then he’ll be okay again?”
“Practically. Not quite. Because he knows it can happen.”
A breeze came skitting into the bayou, silvering the black water. She lifted her face to it. “Hey! Feel that!” It faded away, and a mosquito sang into my ear. “Will we get a lot of wind?”
“Maybe.”
“Will it turn into a constant shrieking like they say?”
“Maybe. But it is a roaring kind of shriek. Deeper than plain old shrieking.”
“Could we maybe, while it’s roaring or whatever, make love?”
“I will certainly see if I can arrange it, Annie. I will put some thought to it. I really will.
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Table of Contents
Travis McGee #19 Free Fall in CrimsonJohn D. MacDonaldEpilogue