A quick burst of rain and wind slapped hard against the side of the station wagon. The wagon swayed and he brought it back into the lane. Palm tops, dimmed by the rain curtain, swayed in the wind.
“It’s getting a lot windier,” Jean said, and he detected the slight tremor in her voice.
“Is it a real hurricane?” Stevie asked. He had a small and grimly logical mind. He wanted no substitutes.
Chapter 2
Bunny Hollis awoke before nine in a motel on Route 19 and lay there listening to the hard roar of the rain that seemed to be increasing in force from minute to minute. He wondered what morning it was. He counted back and decided that it had to be Wednesday, October seventh. He stretched until his shoulders creaked, knuckled his eyes and sat up. There was a faint pulse of liquor behind his eyes, a sleazy taste in his mouth. He sat naked on the edge of the bed and took his pulse. Seventy-six. And no suggestion of a premature beat. Lately when he smoked too much and drank too much the premature beat would start. He had been told by a very good man that it was nothing to worry about. Just ease off when it started.
He turned and looked at his bride in the other bed. She lay sprawled as if dropped from a height, a sheaf of brown hair across her eyes. She had kicked off the single sheet in her sleep. The narrow band of white across her buttocks was ludicrous against the dark tan of her.
Betty did look better with a tan, he decided. And he had chided her into losing ten pounds. But neither tan nor weight loss was going to do very much for pale eyes that were set a little too close together, for teeth too prominent or a chin too indistinct. She was young though, and she could be amusing... and at twenty-one she was worth close to three million dollars.
He went quietly into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. He examined his face in the mirror with great care, as he did every morning. He thought the face looked about twenty-six, nine years younger than its actual age. And, as always, he wondered if he was kidding himself. It was a face in the almost traditional mold of the American athlete. Brown and blunt, with broad brow, square jaw, nose slightly flat at the bridge, gray wide-set eyes with weather wrinkles at the corner. A very short brush cut helped mask the encroaching baldness. It was a face made for grinning, for victory, for locker-room gags, for Olympic posters.
He cupped cold water in his hands and drenched his face and rubbed it vigorously, massaging it with strong lingers, paying special attention to the area under the eyes, at the corner of the mouth and under the chin. He massaged his scalp and dried his face and head and then turned and studied his body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. Athlete body to match the face. Waist still reasonably lean, though not what it once had been. Deep chest and slanting shoulders. Brown body with the crisp body hair on the legs and arms burned white by the sun. Long slim legs with the slant of power. Muscle knots in the shoulders, square strong wrists.
At least the product she was getting was adequate, he thought. Cared for. Somewhat used, but not enough to show. Years of wear left in it; enough, at least, for him to be able to fake adequately the various intensities of a honeymoon.
Three zero zero zero zero zero zero.
And heah, ladies and gentlemen, we have a little girl who represents thu-ree million dollars. Who will be the lucky man?
Bunny Hollis, of course.
Bunny, who always ran out of luck every time but the last time. Like the good old Limeys. Never win a battle and never lose a war.
A long long way from the skinny, sullen kid out in southern California who practically lived at the public courts. The skinny kid had owned a second-hand racket and an amazingly powerful forehand stroke for a twelve-year-old.
Cutler, one of the great coaches, had spotted the skinny kid, made him work at the game, made him learn the fundamentals. Cutler had talked to his family about Bunny’s future in tennis. The family hadn’t cared much one way or the other. There were six other kids. They were glad to have somebody take the responsibility for Bunny. When he was fifteen, Cutler got him a job and moved him into a room at his own club, the Carranak Club. And Bunny started to win tournaments. He learned how to hide the sullenness behind a quick, artificial smile. He was skinny and brown, tough and tireless as leather. He knocked the other kids off, and the scrapbook grew. It was a good feeling, to be treated as though you were important. Those were the best years. Fifteen, sixteen and seventeen. That was when the will to win had not been weakened — when it was stronger than the will to live.
He learned how- to handle himself off the court. And he grew bigger and the smile grew more natural and the sun-bleacheu crew cut was pale against his tan skin. He went to the big tournaments and he began to climb higher in the national ratings. Cutler went along. Then Cutler was ill with that heart business and couldn’t go along. And something happened to the will to win. It became diluted. It was diluted by too many parties and too many young girls. And by the older women and their presents of bill clips and cameras, sports jackets and theatre tickets and plane rides. And once, just once, a convertible. A yellow one.
Some of the other boys kept the will to win. And kept climbing. And somewhere along the line the papers stopped talking about Bunny Hollis as “promising.” They called him an erratic contender, with flashes of brilliance. Cutler died and there was no one to chew him out any more. On his best days he could take some of the top ones. But long sets were poison. Liquor had undermined the tireless stamina.
During the war, he was in Special Services. He gave tennis instruction to field-grade officers in a big camp in the southwest. But there was the incident involving the wife of a full colonel, and then he was sent to Assam, in north India. There he went back into serious training at a small planters’ club. He took the All-India tournament and was sent on an exhibition tour, and then it all started all over again and the regained edge was lost.
During the next two years after the war, his twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh years, his game sagged badly, his charm wore thin, and tournament invitations became more rare. He hunted around for the right slot and found it, through a friend of a female friend, and by handling himself properly during interviews, he became a pro, the tennis professional at the Oswando Club in Westchester. There were six fine indoor courts, so that it was a year-round job. He found that he liked working with kids.
His personal problems were solved when Betty Oldbern came to him to be “brushed up” on her tennis. She was nineteen and he was then thirty-three. She was heavy, shy and unattractive. She knew how to play tennis because she had been given lessons ever since she was very small. Lessons in tennis, swimming, golf, riding, dancing, fencing, conversational French, painting, sculpture, creative writing. She was the product of private schools in France and Switzerland, and Philadelphia. There had been many tutors. She did nearly everything competently, yet did nothing with either grace or style, nor pleasure. She had few friends and a great many relatives, most of them elderly. And the name was Oldbern, as in Oldbern Shipping Lines and Oldbern Chemicals and Oldbern Natural Gas.
She came to him shyly at nineteen for lessons. She was living on a generous allowance, and in two more years she would be twenty-one and on that birthday she would receive something like three millions. She had had the most sophisticated education available, yet she was almost entirely naive. She still wore her baby fat and blushed like a sunset. Within a month she was deeply and helplessly in love with him. It had not been hard to manage.
Four days after her twenty-first birthday, after two years of her devotion, Bunny made an appointment with Harrison Oldbern. Betty’s father. He did not state his business. Harrison Oldbern was on the Board of Governors of the Oswando Club — a thin, alert, tanned man — sportsman, deep water sailor, shrewd businessman.