"He wasn't nearly as much of a jerk as most people thought."
"Sure he dumped his wife but how could that possibly help her have a stroke?"
The captain said, "I don't suppose he did much worse to that little handicapped boy who wet his pants than slap him a time or two." He pawed at a chin in need of a shave. "Was he really that much of a jerk?"
"You're asking the wrong guy."
"Why?"
"Because he was unpleasant to me. He let it be known that he considered me a very weak guest panelist and he treated me accordingly. Plus he made jokes about my height."
"Oh, yes. They call you 'Yosemite Sam.' I think my wife told me that."
"I love that name."
"Are you serious?"
"What do you think?"
They walked on a bit. The night was beautiful, the ocean endless, the thrum of powerful engines reassuring evidence of man's illusory dominance over the ocean.
"You don't think she did it, do you?"
"No," Tobin said. "And based on how everybody reacted tonight-Sure he was a wife-beating, child-molesting, embezzling sonofabitch but deep down all he needed was old-fashioned love-I'd say there are at least several other equally good suspects."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that if we look beneath the surface, we'll probably find all sorts of reasons he was killed-by one of them."
Captain Hackett sighed. "It just wouldn't make sense that she didn't kill him."
"Of course it would. She'd be the perfect setup."
They reached Tobin's cabin. "They really didn't seem to be very moved by his death, did they?"
Tobin smiled. "I remember back in 1953, when I was very young. I was over at a friend's house watching TV-they were the only people on the block with a set-and news came that Stalin had died. They interrupted 'Mr. Peepers.' I've never forgotten it. Everybody was euphoric because Stalin had died. It seemed as if everything in the world was going to be all right." He nodded back toward the lounge. "I kind of had that same sense tonight, didn't you?"
"Nothing you could prove," the captain said.
Tobin said, "Not yet, anyway.”
10
In the dream he sat in a vast dark movie theater and on the screen was Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dana Wynter, whom he still thought the most beautiful actress of her time, was just about to fall asleep and in so doing become one of the pod people and he was in seventh grade again and watching the movie in the State Theater and held spellbound not only by the beautiful noir writing and directing but mostly there was just Dana Wynter, the luxuriant elegance of that face, the silken dark hair and silken dark gaze, domestic and exotic in equal parts-and now, as always in the dream, he cried out for her to not close her eyes, not to become one of the pod people, cried out to no avail…
Knocking woke him.
Disoriented, he had to put his circumstances together one word at a time. Ship. Cabin. Sleep. Dream. Knock. Door.
"Huh?" he said, peering through the safety chain.
She wore her white terry-cloth robe again. Her hair looked a bit mussed. Her wonderful mouth looked forlorn.
"They gave me a new cabin," she said. Moonglow made a nimbus of her blond hair. "Yes."
"But I couldn't sleep."
"Ah."
"I tried."
"Umm."
"But I couldn't."
"Uh."
"You're not awake, are you?"
"Mhrmw."
"What?"
He shrugged.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He shrugged again.
"I shouldn't have bothered you. I'm just lonely and afraid. Not even telling Aberdeen everything helped. Well, not 'telling her.' Writing her, actually. I mean, I put everything down. Everything he said to me-you know about that really annoying guy-and everything I said to him. I had quite a bit of champagne and even told him about that United pilot and what we did in the bathroom that time. And then how he was stabbed and all and…"
By now he was sufficiently awake that he could say, "Do you want to come in?"
"Do you ever sleep with women?"
"As often as I can."
"I'm serious, Mr. Tobin."
"Please don't call me Mr." He wondered if his dreaded sleep-breath (which the army could use as the ultimate weapon) was wafting in her direction. "It makes me feel even older than I am."
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right."
"But do you?"
"Sleep with women?"
"Yes."
"As in sharing a bed with rather than making love?"
"Yes, on occasion when I've been heartbroken or especially lonely, women have been nice enough to do that for me, and on occasion I've been nice enough to do that for women in similar circumstances."
"I need to be held."
"All right."
"Very tightly."
"All right."
"I need to be a little girl again."
"All right."
"But I really don't want to be touched. Not sexually."
"All right."
"Really?"
"Really."
"It's a lot to ask."
He leaned over and kissed her, nuclear breath or not, on the forehead. Chastely. The way he did his daughter when she was but a year and sleeping with her fuzzy pink bear.
Her body was more wondrously curved than he'd even imagined and at first there in the dark, her lying against him, the water and the moonlight inviting immemorial urges, it had been difficult indeed but then she'd begun to cry, so softly he'd been moved far more than he would have thought possible, and then he had a frank and a sharp discussion with his penis about decorum and appropriateness and giving-Cindy-my-word, and finally then, next to her sweet scent and sweeter warmth, he fell asleep.
11
Tobin had once read a rather long and surprisingly fascinating book on medieval theater and how, when the theater wagons pulled into the small towns surrounding London or Rome or Prague, the townspeople would come forth with gifts of flowers and food.
What audiences these days had to offer was not much different, really. But their gifts were the special attention they lavished on people who were essentially nobodies, has-been's or would-be's (Tobin always put himself in the latter category), and instead of flowers their mouths bloomed with laughter over the trite jokes of mid-level celebrity. Game show or melodrama, they searched for some respite from the grind of work or dull relationships or any number of fears.
And that was why there were so many of them this morning, the ocean sky cloudless blue, the ocean calm and unending green, on the brilliant white deck, where the episodes of "Celebrity Circle" were taped.
Jere Farris, the producer, tense under the best conditions, looked even tenser and more exhausted this morning as he tore himself this way and tore himself that way to address all sorts of problems-from lighting to sound checks to makeup to cue cards to the routine the warm-up comedian was going to use.
Tobin was in his seat behind the big horseshoe-shaped panel. He had a nameplate in front of him, a guide for all the millions of folks at home who might not have a clue as to who he was. He wore a Hawaiian shirt-even though they weren't anywhere near Hawaii. As Farris said, "It's tropical, that's all that matters to Mr. and Mrs. Midwest, it's tropical."
Everybody on the panel wore Hawaiian shirts and leis, and had gigantic fruit drinks in front of them, and redwood-sized plastic palm trees behind them so that the picture that went home was of this fantastic floating paradise, complete with insert shots of truly incredible babes lolling about the swimming pool and snapshotlike inserts of the various celebrities doing "tropical" stuff: Tobin playing deck tennis, looking short next to the gorgeous Susan Richards; macho ex-TV cop Kevin Anderson pumping iron as two women with a lot of suntan goop on, so they'd look darker, standing to his right supposedly playing the ukuleles they hugged to their great bikinied bosoms; and Cassie McDowell leading a group of "young-at-heart older citizens" in a chorus of "God Bless America."