“God, I don’t ever want to see them again. Darling, they say that little Bogen is way way off. If he’d tried to fire his rusty little gun, it would have blown his hand off. They are going to put him away.”
“So now your life is all neatened up, Miss Dean. And you’ll get to marry your dear friend. Congratulations. Is that my money you keep hanging onto?”
She handed me the envelope. I fumbled it open, and saw that it was light, and found that it counted up to ten thousand. It wouldn’t count one inch past that. Before I could get the first word out, she was hanging onto me, laughing and teasing, saying, “Now darling, do be realistic, after all! I gave you all that nice travel money, and sent you off with quite a handsome and exciting gal, and you had some exciting and delicious adventures, all on the house. I’m really not made of money, darling. Taxes are fantastic. Really, when you think of it, I think you are doing terribly well out of this, and some of my advisors would think I was out of my head to give you all this.”
As she was talking she got the money out of my hand and slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, and was going quite directly and efficiently to work on me, with the quickness of a lot of little kissings, and an arching and presentation of all the celebrity curves and fragrances, a lot of cleverness of little hands, and a convincing steaminess of breath and growing excitement, worming her way astride my lap.
This was the artist at work, at the work she knew best, operating from a life-long knowledge of the male animal, and quite convinced, apparently, that a good quick solid bang would send the man away too happy to care about being shorted, too dazed to object. Already she was beginning to work her way out of those soft knit pants and simultaneously beginning the little pressures which were supposed to topple me over onto my back on the big couch under a picture of the lady herself.
I got my good left arm in between us and my palm flat against her wishbone, then abruptly straightened my arm, sending her catapulting back, scrambling, slipping on the smooth hard terrazzo, sitting hard on a white furry rug and riding it back like a sled to end up under another picture so soulful the artist had indicated a halo effect.
She bounded up, hair masking one eye, yanking the knit pants up over the white behind. “What the hell!” she squalled. “Jesus Christ, McGee, you could have bust my tail bone!”
I was standing up, fixing my sling, starting toward the door.
“It’s okay, Lee baby,” I said. “I’ll take the short count. You don’t have to try to sweeten it. It wouldn’t mean one damn thing to you, and it would mean just a little less than that to me.”
I left amid a shrieking of ten-letter words, and I was hastened on my way by a hail of elephants. She had a collection. She threw fast, but not well.
I crunched down the finest grade of brown gravel, past sprinkler water pattering on fat green leaves. The Korean let me out. I could feel the meager money-weight in my jacket pocket. I stopped and took my arm out of the sling and stuffed the sling in a pocket. The arm did not feel good swinging, so I tucked a thumb in my belt.
I walked and thought of what a weird way to lose a good woman. I saw old men carefully driving lookalike cars with names like Fury and Tempest and Dart. Through a fence I saw a quintet of little girls dashing in and out of the silvery spray of a sprinkler, shrilling. A dog smiled at me.
What a ridiculous way to lose a woman. They do not like pedestrians in that neighborhood. Polite cops stopped, asked polite questions, and politely drove me to the nearest taxi stand. I got into the cab and the only place to go was my hotel room, and I didn’t want to go there, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
When we stopped for a light I saw a magic store, and I asked the driver if he thought they might sell love potions in there. He said that if I was looking for action, just say the word.
I went back to the hotel, and seventy minutes later I was on the Miami jet.
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Travis McGee #4 The Quick Red FoxJohn D. MacDonaldTHE QUICK RED FOX