The door closed. Sam had the feeling they were all exhaling at once, tensions fading. Scheff sat with his eyes closed.
“You realize, of course,” Haas said angrily, “that no part of that is in any sense admissible.”
Lobwohl stared at him. “You are going to go through all your motions, Palmer, and we are going to go through all ours, and if there is any sense and justice in the world we are all going to find some nice quick legal way of avoiding courtroom circuses, and we are going to put that sick dirty animal away with a load of consecutive sentences that will still have a long time to run when they box her and take her out the back gate. And we all live with it in our own way.”
Haas slowly wiped his face from forehead to chin with his open hand. He gave John Lobwohl a weak smile. “Right now I think that my colleague here from Texas and I are going to go quietly off someplace and get plastered. Maybe Boylston and I are the only ones who really know the names and numbers of all the players.”
After five rings Lydia Jean said, “Hello? Who is it?” She sounded blurred by sleep, slightly querulous.
“This is a drunken husband,” he said carefully. “Sodden, disreputable.”
“Sam! Are you really drunk?”
“I have discussed it carefully with a dear friend. After conducting certain tests, we have adjudged each other drunk. Yes.”
“You certainly are very stately about it.”
“It is a solemn occasion, dear wife. There is the matter of a certain paradox which needs exploring. I tried to explain it to my good friend, Mr. Palmer Christopher Haas, member of the Florida bar, and he suggested I should explore it with you.”
“Explore, sir.”
“I telephoned you when I learned that it was really Leila, not some girl they thought was Leila. I was sober. I cannot remember what I said. I am drunk at the moment, but I feel I will be able to recall this conversation perfectly. All I remember of the other one is a desire to tell you good news, and to tell you I love you. Did I relay that message adequately?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“I wish to say it again while drunk.”
“Please do.”
“I love you, Lydia Jean.”
“That was very nice dear. Thank you. I love you too.”
“I have been learning mysterious things about mysterious people. A certain dusky nurse named Theyma Chappie had messages for me. A certain Raoul Kelly pointed out a vague trail through the underbrush. My drinking companion, Mr. Haas, who is now asleep within range of my vision, has decoded some invisible writing.”
“About what?”
“It is supposed to be about me. And thus, indirectly, about you. But it disappears, like — like a dab of cotton candy on the tongue of a summertime child.”
“That’s a very lovely turn of phrase, Sam dear.”
“They seem to come imbedded in the liquor somehow. At any rate, what I am is me. I want to be looser.”
“You sound looser.”
“What I promised, you take care of things for Raoul and ’Cisca and you would have fair warning to zip back to Corpus. But I am going to be me, and you are going to be you, Am I right?”
“I... suppose.”
“The only change, if there is any change at all, dear wife, is that now I know it is not so great to be stuck in the world as a Sam Boylston. It is not so easy for either of us to live with it.”
“The wedding is Monday, dear. High noon. She is a darling. And he is a very wise good dear dumpy little man, and we are frantically laundering her English.”
“You aren’t answering my question, Miss Lydia Jean.”
“Jonathan is flying back tomorrow with Leila. They phoned me just at dinnertime. I asked if you were coming along. They said they didn’t have any idea.”
“Let’s get back to the promise I made you about...”
“You could, of course, stay solemnly drunk over there amid those flesh pots, Sammy, or you could get on the dime and come home with the kids and lend a hand around here, like being a best man and mixing punch.”
“But I want to know what you are going to...”
“How can you know if I don’t know?”
“Excuse me. T’was brillig and those slithey toves were all over the dang place.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The gospel according to Palmer Christopher Haas. He says logic is man’s most destructive illusion. All thinking is done with the glands, and the logic part gets stuck on afterward to neaten things up. So — when I couldn’t follow what you were saying, any answer is okay.”
“Darling?”
“Yep.”
“Catch that plane. Get some sleep now, and catch that plane.”
On Sunday the twelfth day of June, Howard Prowt, humming happily to himself, read the water over the Bimini bar with the skill acquired in these weeks of cruising the islands, and when the hue of the morning water deepened to a dark rich shade, he put the HoJun on automatic pilot on the course which, allowing for wind, the flow of the Gulf Stream and compass deviation, should bring them in sight of the sea buoy off Fort Lauderdale in four plus hours.
He clambered spryly down to the cockpit deck. The girls, June and Selma, were cooking bacon in the galley below, and chattering back and forth. Howard peered over the transom to check on his water circulation through the engines. Kip came back from the bow along the side deck, carrying the made-up bow lines. As he stowed the lines he said, “All clear forward, Skipper.”
“Good deal. Hatch too?”
“Dogged down tight.”
“We’ll take some water forward when we get into the Stream.”
Kip lit a cigarette and said, “Damn, I hate to have this thing ending. I was saying to Selma in the night, we’ve never had a better time.”
“Glad you people could make it.”
“Howard, I swear to God you’ve taken off two inches around the middle, and you’ve got a tan there, man, that won’t quit.”
“The thing about cruising, the boat is moving all the time and you’re balancing yourself against it and so all day long you’re getting exercise without hardly knowing it.”
June called them to breakfast. Howard perched where he could watch the open sea ahead. Getting to be so many pleasure boats with automatic pilot there was no guarantee anybody would get out of your way. Kip got the eight o’clock news on the transistor, a Miami station.
They had all been following the Staniker case, theorizing about it. The announcer said that an informed source had said that it now appeared, based on new evidence, that the Harkinson woman was going to be indicted for the murders of Staniker and the Akard boy.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun!” Kip said. “That old gal must be a real pistol.”
“A face that sunk one ship anyway,” Selma said tartly. “Some part of her at least,” Kip said. “Here we go again, kids,” June said.
“Honestly though,” Selma said, “it was really like a miracle the Boylston girl lived through such a terrible ordeal.”
As he put his plate aside and picked up his coffee cup, Howard saw his wife look obliquely at him and look away. And he knew only he was sick of that particular expression.
He cleared his throat and said, “Are we all friends?”
“What have I done now?” Selma said.
Without looking toward June, Howard said, “I should have told you kids this sooner, I guess. Confession is good for the soul or something. When June and I brought this bucket across the Gulf Stream alone, I wasn’t scared. I was plain terrified. I didn’t know there was so much water. I was green, and I didn’t know what the boat could take and I didn’t know how to handle it in seas like that.”