“Sam, I was being naughty. That is all. To give you — what is it? — needles. I did not mean to hurt. To hell with the roundness of the world, Texas Sam.”
“Okay.”
She studied him. “You know what I think about you? You are a very severe man. Very strong, very rigid, very honest in your own fashion. Too much is happening for you now. The loneliness of no wife and boy. The pain of the sister. Hatred for that Captain. Be careful, Mister Sam. A man can break, and he can do mad things and spoil everything forever.”
The directness of her sympathy made his eyes begin to smart again, and in a clumsy and unexpected way of hiding his face from her, he took her into his arms. She stood rigidly, but without protest, and he had the feeling she had stopped breathing. Then her arms slipped around him. She inhaled tremulously, pressed the warm wiry slender strength of her body against his, her fingers prodding into the muscles of his back, rolling and twisting her hips against him, nipples suddenly hard as little pebbles against his chest, through fabric. As he felt the planes of her slender back, the small ripeness of her hips, he inhaled in her crisp hair and soft throat an incongruous scent from childhood, suddenly recognizing it as the smell of vanilla Necco wafers. As he searched for her mouth, she suddenly gasped, thrust at him, wrenched herself away, ran to the couch and sat on the very edge of it, head bowed, back deeply curved, fists on her tawny knees, breathing audibly.
He went to her, touched her shoulder. She reached up and put her hand over his. “Sorry,” she breathed. “Sorry.”
“My fault.”
She stood up, gave him a wan smile and went off to her bathroom. It was a full five minutes before she came back, in full possession of herself.
“Sam, there are too many ways a thing can go wrong, I think.”
“How do you mean?”
“You must know how naughty I really was. You were very attractive to me. The look of you and how you move, and the color of your eyes. I thought it would be a very pleasant matter, you know? This pretty shift, and nice drinks, and then I would challenge you in some small ways so you would notice me as I am, and then we would take the challenges to bed and turn them into good sport. See? I have no shame. To arrange a thing so coldly, I can do it only if the attraction is strong and if — it can be — unimportant. So we spoiled it.”
“Did we?”
“Of course! I have concern for you, Sam. Too, too quickly we have some meaning for each other. The chance to be casual is gone. I cannot risk anything that would be more than that. Or would you.” She grinned. “In your marvelous language, who needs it? Now please put a new tape in your little machine and go away, my dear Sam, before we become damn fools and forget how round the world is.”
Chapter Thirteen
On Tuesday afternoon Staniker was awakened from his nap by the muted clacking of the slats of the blinds as his day nurse opened them. Just outside the window was a vivid bough of bougainvillaea, the sun lighting the petals from behind, turning them to hot flame.
He lay with lids half closed, idly watching her do other small housekeeping chores around the room. With a remoteness and objectivity alien to him he noted that she moved well, with a hightailed, saucy, frisky, promising look. It was a flavor he had always appreciated in a young woman, and over the years he had come to learn that more often than not, it indicated a considerable amount of sexual energy.
Nurse Chappie stopped and made a frowning inventory of the room, to see, apparently, if anything had been overlooked, and as she did so, she fingered her slender, tea-tan throat...
Throat! He closed his eyes. He had a new image of what the inside of his head was like. It was a smaller place than ever before. It had dwindled because he had been forced to erect a square framework inside it from which he suspended a heavy fabric hanging from ceiling to floor on all four sides. He had dragged all harmless things into the lighted area, that cube wherein he sat. But things stirred in the darkness beyond the fabric. They could be summoned by a certain kind of thought, and then the shape of them would begin to bulge inward against the fabric, and you knew that if it kept up, they would come crawling under the fabric from out of the unspeakable blackness. So you gave your thoughts a quick twist and aimed them in a safe direction, and the things would quiet down and the fabric would once again hang quite motionless. When danger was over you could take deep breaths, unclench your belly muscles, and let your eyes open.
He had escaped them this time by aiming his thoughts at the motor sailer he was going to buy. It would be like the one he had seen last year in Miami, up for sale because the owner was ill. Teak and mahogany hull built in Hong Kong, and then glassed and finished and rigged in Sweden. The diesels and electronics and navigation aids had been mounted aboard in Germany. A blue water sailer, with power winches, enormous fuel and water tanks, big generators, freezers, air conditioning.
He walked her decks and, young again, he stood at the wheel balanced against the easy movement of her, outward bound from Wellington to the Loyalty Islands, and sprawled atop the trunk cabin, bikinied and sun-drowsy, but smiling at him with a happy and grateful warmth, was one of those superb and vital New Zealand girls, a truly great one, greater than the very best of all the ones he could remember. A great vessel and a great grinding girl, and all the money packed into the barrel safe so carefully hidden down below it was no worry at all to him.
When Mary Jane got a look at that money, she’d...
It took a violent twist to turn swiftly enough into a new direction because that had made a great stir behind the fabric.
“You slept well, Captain?” the nurse said, not knowing how helpful it was to have her speak at that moment.
“All I seem to do is sleep,” he said.
“Ah, you speak much better now,” she said, leaning to slip the thermometer under his swollen tongue. She laid the pads of her fingers against his big wrist, and, frowning, watched the sweep second hand of the gold watch pinned to her white nylon bodice as she counted.
After she had put the thermometer back in alcohol and was marking his chart he said, “I’m expected to live?”
Her smile was quick and bright. “You are not actually in a dying condition, mon. Now you must have water again.”
“How many gallons will that make?”
“Dr. McGregory says we can stop keeping track of the fluid balance now. He’s satisfied there’s no kidney damage. Here. Drink this now, and then you may go on a journey. With some help. All the way to the water closet.”
When he was seated on the edge of the bed, in the short gown, she worked his left arm into the sleeve of the robe, then hung it lightly over the shoulder on the burned side. She helped him up with a considerable wiry strength, and, from his left side, her right arm around his waist, his left arm heavy across her narrow shoulders, she walked him in small steps to the private bathroom about eight feet from the bed. She left the door ajar, saying, “If there is any faintness or dizziness, Captain, call out. And do not forget the specimen. The bottle is there on the shelf over the lavatory.”
He was again astonished at how weak and how frail he felt. Better than yesterday, at least. So better than this tomorrow. When he came out, she helped him to the armchair and, after she had finished making his bed up, helped him into bed and took away his robe and hung it in the shallow closet. She went off with the sample to deliver it to the lab, and when she returned, young Dr. Angus McGregory was with her. He was sunburned and portly, with a ginger-gold moustache of RAF impressiveness.
He nodded at Staniker, studied the chart, jotted some new instructions on it. “Confirms what Nurse Chappie here tells me. Grotesquely healthy, Captain. An affront to my profession. So let’s have a look at the arm first. Nurse?”