At the beginning of June, Frederic Quinn was released from the high-priced detention facility Sophrosune School, and before being transported to the high-priced detention facility Camp Sierra Williwaw, he had a whole month of freedom. He intended to make the most of it.
He collected a dozen starfish from the wharf pilings and put them in the ovens at the club to dry out. The ensuing stench permeated the ballroom, drifted through the corridors into the cabanas, hung over the pool and terrace. The entire staff was pressed into service to track down the source, but no one thought of opening the ovens until it was time to start cooking for the Saturday night banquet.
Mr. Henderson immediately blamed Frederic, who had made the common criminal mistake of hanging around to see how things turned out.
“By God, this time you’ve gone too far, you bastard.”
“I didn’t do it, I didn’t, I didn’t!”
He swore his innocence on the small Bible which he carried around in his pocket for this very purpose. It was one of the more useful things he had learned at Sophrosune School.
Some of his exploits were more or less in the interests of science. He jumped off the thirty-three-foot diving platform holding a beach umbrella to see if it could be used as a parachute. It couldn’t. After that, the cast on his left wrist curtailed his activities to a certain extent but he was still able to let the air out of Mr. Henderson’s tires and to put red dye into the Jacuzzi when little Miss Reach was dozing. She woke up, assumed she was bleeding and began to scream to the full capacity of her ninety-year-old lungs. When a stem to stern, inch by inch examination by a number of bystanders proved that she wasn’t bleeding, she was rather disappointed. Her whole life had been passing before her eyes and she was just coming to an interesting part.
That same week Charity Nelson reached retirement age. She didn’t tell her boss, Smedler, or anyone else at the office, since she had no intention of retiring. Instead she celebrated by herself with two bottles of Cold Duck. Halfway through the second bottle she became quite sentimental and decided to phone her first husband, who lived somewhere in New Jersey. By the time she’d tracked him down to Hackensack and learned his phone number she couldn’t remember why she was calling him.
“Hello, George. How are you?”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning, that’s how I am.”
“Your clock must be wrong. Mine says twelve.”
“Who is this?”
“Oh, George, how could you forget our anniversary?”
“I’m not having an anniversary. You sound stinko.”
“George, I am stinko.”
“Who the hell is this, anyway?”
“This is me,” Charity said. “Me.”
She hung up. Men were beasts.
In mid-June, Grady Keaton returned to work at the Penguin Club. The girls brought the news home as their contribution to the dinner entertainment that night, but the Admiral was dining out and Iris was confined to her room, so they had only Miranda to contribute it to.
“That lifeguard is back again,” Cordelia said. “The one who locked Frederic Quinn in the first aid room. Remember, Miranda?”
“No.” Miranda raised an empty fork to her mouth, chewed air, swallowed. “No.”
“You were there.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do,” Juliet said. “All hell broke loose. And afterwards Frederic threw up all over your dress and everybody could see what he’d been eating, ugh.”
“This isn’t a very appetizing subject for the dinner table, Juliet.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“Or me,” Cordelia agreed. “I don’t see why it’s all right to talk about food while you’re eating it but not when you throw it up.”
“Stop it, girls, this very minute... Now let’s start over on a more civilized level. Tell me what you did today that was interesting.”
“We already told you about seeing the lifeguard who’s back working at the club. We forget his name.”
“Grady,” Miranda said. “I think that was his name — Grady.”
She went down to the club the next afternoon while the girls were at a movie. She stood outside looking in at the pool through the glass door. Grady was leaning against the steel frame of the lifeguard tower, his arms crossed on his chest, an orange-colored visor shading his face. He seemed smaller than she remembered, as though someone had located a vital plug and let some of the air out of him. He had shaved off his mustache — some girl probably asked him to or asked him not to. She wondered how many girls there’d been in the eight months and three days since Pasoloma.
She wanted to leave, to go back to the Admiral’s house and hide in her room, but she couldn’t force her limbs to move. She stood there for such a long time that one of the porters came out of the club and asked her if she needed help. He was a young Mexican who spoke the Spanglish of the barrio.
She said, “No, I’m fine. I was just about to leave.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Thank you. Muchas gracias.”
“Por nada.”
He reminded her of the boy in the dining room of the clinic, Pedro. Grady had promised him a ride in the Porsche, but Grady wasn’t very successful at keeping promises. The instant they rolled off his tongue they rolled out of his head and heart. I never said anything about marriage or commitment or forever... Jeez, I’m not a forever-type guy, Miranda.
Poor Grady, he didn’t recognize what was good for him, he would have to be forced into doing the right thing.
As soon as she returned home she called Ellen. She used the kitchen phone because it was the only one in the house not connected to any of the others and nobody could listen in.
Ellen answered. “Penguin Club.”
“Ellen?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Grady is back?”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”
“I’m taking it very well, thank you. How long has he been here?”
“A week.”
“A whole week and you never said a word to me.”
“I intended to, but—”
“Are you trying to keep us apart?”
“You are apart, Miranda. You’ve been apart for a long time.”
“No,” Miranda said. “Not for a minute. Perhaps Grady doesn’t realize it yet, but I do. He came back here to see me.”
“He needed a job and Mr. Henderson agreed to rehire him.”
“That’s simply a cover-up.”
“Miranda, please—”
“Oh, I won’t rush him. I’ll give him a little time to adjust and then I’ll arrange a meeting. I’ve saved enough money to buy a whole new outfit. Grady likes soft silky things.”
“Stop it, Miranda. He hasn’t even asked after you.”
“Of course not. He’s too subtle for that. He wouldn’t ask you anyway. It’s been obvious from the beginning that you’ve had a hopeless crush on him.”
“You just won’t listen to reason, will you?”
“Not yours,” Miranda said. “You’re not my friend anymore.”
To celebrate the July Fourth holiday Mr. Henderson planned a special event for the club. It was his most inspired idea since the Easter Egos costume ball where everybody came dressed as the person they would most like to be resurrected as. (Toward the end of the evening two of the resurrectees, Héloïse and Abelard, staged a knockdown drag-out fight. This didn’t spoil the party, since it was generally viewed as part of the entertainment, especially the choking scene. A number of volunteers gave Héloïse artificial respiration, but she survived anyway and a good time was had by nearly all.)