of those sandwich boards. The sign says Sex. Now, I don't figure
that's so bad. A lot of women wear it. And plenty of us aren't after
anything particular except some fun, some pleasure, a little
give-and-take. I figure that all things being equal, we're just about
the best kind of woman there is. A whole lot better than some dried-up
and sad-assed type like Steve's sister. Because we can switch it over
to love at the drop of a hat.
"But sometimes I think that Casey uses it, you know? Like it's some
kind of dynamite she has so she can blow loose whatever she wants out
of life. And I think that's not so good. Dangerous, even. I know
that Steve's wanted her since they were kids, even though he wants me
too. But I think I'm good for him, basically. And she isn't.
"Maybe she's good for you I don't know about that. But not Steve. Not
ever. Though every now and then, he keeps trying.
"And I can't help but thinking that it's not good for her, either, to
be that way. What's it for, anyway? Pleasure. Pleasure and
affection. But for Casey I think it's something else, something it
shouldn't be. Like conquest.
"Or hunger."
EMT
"What do you want, Case?"
We were lying in bed at my apartment.
"What's worth having?"
Her face was only inches from mine. Her eyes let me down into the
depths of her. I slid there gratefully.
"Pleasure.
"Knowledge. Security. I want to own good things, I guess. Success,
eventually. And something astonishing, something that surprises me. Or
me, surprising myself."
I didn't question her. I just watched her eyes narrow. She sat up
suddenly, catlike, in the moonlight.
"Will is worth having. Power."
^Ah
"How goes it among the rich, stud?"
Rafferty was in his usual corner place at the bar, near the wall with
the old crooked print by Frederic Remington overhead. You could see
everybody enter and leave from there and you had a clear view all the
way back to the jukebox. The clock on the wall said five-fifteen.
"Air's a little thin at the moment."
I told him about Steven and Casey pushing him. He shook his head and
grinned at me.
"Line from some Warren Dates movie. I always remembered it. "If they
didn't have cunts, there'd be a bounty on 'em.""
"Pretty deep, I guess."
"Too bad you can't just switch tracks. That little blond looks sweet
and easy."
"I think she probably is."
"But no banana, huh?"
"Nope."
I ordered as hot of scotch with a beer back from Hank McCarty, the
bartender, and he brought it over. My hands were still dusted with a
fine brown powder from the saw at the yard. It turned a muddy mahogany
when I picked up the frosted glass.
"You got to think about what you're doing, here, Danny boy. What the
fuck are you doing? You gonna up and marry the girl? Maybe chase her
back to Boston or wherever that school of hers is come September? Work
a lathe while she picks up her degree? What are you getting all
worried about? Screw her, have fun with her and let it ride."
"Sure."
"I mean it."
"Look, George. I haven't gotten it all mapped out. Things just
happen. You know that."
He looked annoyed. "Yeah, well they can just un happen too."
I didn't want to argue. Besides, he was probably right. In a lot of
ways I was walking around with blinders on when it came to Casey no
past, no future and a very narrow focus on the present. About the
length of one summer. That was okay so long as I knew it was a
temporary thing by nature, so long as I was prepared to lose it and
then go on.
I wasn't. There was a basic mistake operating and I knew it. I was
already half-committed to the girl and I didn't know a thing about her
except physical things and what you could deduce in the space of a
couple weeks, some of which wasn't very good. So what was I getting
involved in? She was rich, for god's sake. I was her summer playmate.
It wouldn't be hard to get pretty annoyed with me myself.
It seemed like a good time to tie one on. I ordered another round for
us.
"That's right, get a little sloppy. You'll feel better."
"Do me a favor, George."
"Sure."
"If she ever pushes me off a cliff somewhere, kick the shit out of
her?"
"Be glad to."
We drank our beers and watched the Caribou fill up steadily with the
after-work crowd. I was always interested to see the mix. Jeans,
dirty T-shirts, overalls, business suits from Sears. We got salesmen,
fishermen, laborers. A smattering of women. All kinds of people.
Bars up here don't cater to a single type of crowd the way they do in
the cities. There's not enough clientele for that. Bar life is about
as democratic as we get.
"Jim Palmer was in yesterday. We were talking about you."
"Me? I hardly know the guy."
"Well, not about you exactly. I mentioned that your friend had seen
lights over at the Crouch place. Jimmie did all the contracting on the
place, remember? Anyhow, he says there's nobody there now. So it must
have been kids."
"I guess."
"Found out a few things, though."
"Like what?"
He settled back in the high-back chair and sipped the head off a
fresh-poured beer.
"Well, for one thing, that doctor left scared."
"Scared?"
"According to Palmer. Says he was up there maybe a month before the
old guy left the place, because there was some patch-up that needed
doing on the front porch, but the doc wouldn't let him bother with it.
Had to go down into the basement instead to seal up a hole in the wall.
Big hole. Said it looked as though somebody'd been whacking away at it
with a sledgehammer. He couldn't figure it. Said the doc was a pretty
weird guy. But he could understand him wanting it patched up again.
The draft was fierce."
"In the basement?"
"Sure. Palmer says that in a couple of places the foundation's sitting
right beside some open spaces in the seawall. Tunnels. Erosion or
whatever. Said that whole stretch of coast is honeycombed with 'em. So
you open up one of those spaces and the wind runs right in from the
sea. Anyway, he closed it up. I told him about our little excursion
out that way when we were kids."
"I still don't get it. The draft was what scared him? What was he,
afraid of summer colds?"
"Jimmie says he doesn't really know what it was. Maybe he was afraid
the whole house was going to slide down into those tunnels someday. You
know, the way they go out in California. But that cellar is sunk in
solid rock. He had no problem there. No, hecouldn'tfigure what it
was."
"Ben and Mary's ghosts."
"Could be."
"You sound like you've got more."
"I do. Did you know they were imbeciles?"
"You mean crazy?"
"No. Imbeciles. It's a pretty ugly story, actually. It seems that
when the bank called in that mortgage money they had a town meeting