A Flash of Green (51 page)

He sat up and drank and settled back again. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Christ, it isn’t exactly what you’d call the chance of a lifetime. You know, though, you wouldn’t have to work for a while. You could get yourself sorted out.”

“I have to do something.”

“Yes, indeed you do. I’m neat. I make a lot of my clothes. I cook pretty well.”

“But terrible coffee.”

“I know. I know. So make your own.”

He sat up. “It isn’t every day I get propositioned.”

“It isn’t?
I
do. Oh, I’m sorry, hon. That’s the kind of joke I won’t make any more.”

“Mitch, I want to think about it.”

“I didn’t expect you to tear home and start packing.”

“But I do think I’ll go on home.”

“You could stay here. Please stay here, Jaimie.”

“I have to go. I couldn’t even tell you exactly why. Don’t be sore.”

“I’m not sore. It’s perfectly all right. Really. Just drive with care. I can’t afford to lose you too many times, my Jaimie.”

He stood just inside her doorway and kissed her. Barefoot, she seemed small. She tiptoed up snugly against him, her arm around his neck. Her solid weight moved him back against an angle of the wall by the door. His right hand, under her fleecy coat, traced the soft and heated planes of her back, down to the padded ledge of hip. At the end of the kiss he held her there, her lips at the base of his throat, her forehead pressing round and hard against his jaw. He looked beyond her and saw the palm fronds and the fat leaves of dwarf banana swaying violently in the inaudible wind.

“Goodnight,” she whispered and turned away from him. He let himself out. He had to cross the pool area to get to his car. He looked toward her big window from the far side of the pool, looked into the dark room. She was standing at the window. Only the pale short coat and the lesser pallor of her hair were visible.

Twenty-four

THROUGHOUT THE NEXT WEEK
Jimmy Wing spent more time at his cottage than ever before. Mitchie stopped to see him a few times. At first she was confident and enthusiastic, but she became uncertain the more she became aware of his lethargy.

“So it was a dumb idea,” she said at last. “So it was a dream, Jaimie.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to say it, dear. Your enthusiasm speaks for itself.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t thought it out.”

She stood up and went to the door. He followed her more slowly. She turned, with a sad, wise smile. “It’s one way to give me the message.”

“It isn’t like that, Mitch.”

“Isn’t it? Anyway, I’m off your back. You know where I am. Give me a ring sometime.”

“Sure,” he said too heartily. “I’ll do that.”

When the rackety sound of her little car was gone he searched himself for some feeling of relief, but, as during all the recent days, he felt nothing. He knew that it was implausible, and perhaps even dangerous, to have so little discernible reaction, but he could not summon up any sense of alarm.

The days were strange. Loella, the motel maid, had ceased coming over to clean the cottage, and it seemed too much effort to find out what had happened. The cottage grew increasingly cluttered. He had no routines, ate when he was hungry, slept often and heavily, sweating profusely in his sleep, dreaming of beasts and fleeing. He wondered how much money he had left in his account, but did not want to make the effort of reconciling his checkbook. He guessed it was about four hundred dollars.

He wrote to friends in far places, asking about the chance of a job. Usually the letters were too long, and he did not mail them. He tried to make a beginning on a half dozen ideas for magazine articles, but the prose seemed flat and artificial and he quickly lost interest.

The phone rang quite often that first week. He seldom answered it. Once, when he answered, a man offered him a free trip to Cape Coral and a free airplane ride over the new development, where hundreds of fine building lots were available, adjacent to the best fishing grounds on the west coast of Florida.

Another time a woman with a high, mad, whining voice chanted obscenities at him, terming him a Commie dupe.

He could not determine which of those two calls seemed more unreal.

He saved personal letters, unopened. One afternoon he decided to read them and looked all over the cottage for them and could not find them, and had to assume he had thrown them out accidentally.

He glanced at each day’s newspaper. The things he had always
covered had been divided up among several people. When they weren’t by-lined, he could almost tell by the style who had written them. The paper constantly, stentoriously hailed the new era of prosperity which would enhance the area, courtesy of Palmland Development.

On his table was the carton Brian had dropped off, containing the junk from his desk drawers at the paper, a long accumulation. He did not open it.

Once, when he answered the phone, it was his sister Laura.

“I’ve been trying and trying to get you, Jimmy. I thought maybe you’d come here. I thought, being in so much trouble, you might come here.”

“I was going to. I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“I wrote you a note for you to phone me. Didn’t you get it?”

“I’ll stop by and see you pretty soon, Sis.”

She lowered her voice. “Sid has been worse this week and I don’t feel right leaving him here alone, but I was going to come out there. I’ve been worried about you, Jimmy.”

“Everything is okay.”

“You lost your job, and nine out of every ten people in the county think you ought to be ridden out of here on a rail, so things must be real good for you. Real real good. What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Are you looking for a job?”

“I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

“Jimmy, you sound so kind of blah. Are you facing up to things? You’re the kind who always needs a push. You’ve got a wonderful education. You should get away from here. You know that, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“I don’t want to sound cruel, but there’s one thing I won’t have
you doing. I won’t have you coming here and moving in on us, not unless you can pay your way. If you could, it would be a help, but I don’t see how you’re going to find any kind of a job around here. Jimmy, you come on into town and talk to me tonight.”

“I’ll be around to see you pretty soon.”

“We have to talk.”

“Sure, Sis. We’ll talk it all out.”

On Thursday, the third day of August, Brian and Nan came to the cottage at sunset. They had to sprint to the door through a hard rain that began to come down just as they had parked.

“You given up answering the phone?” Brian asked.

“Too many weird calls,” Jimmy explained.

“They should be dying out by now,” Brian said. “After all, they won.”

“
Look
at this place!” Nan said, staring around. “If I can borrow a shovel and a wheelbarrow, Jimmy …”

“Don’t bother with it,” he said.

She gave him a questioning look. “I
am
going to bother with it. In fact, dear, it almost pleases me. You’ve always been such a Mister Neat, it made me insecure when you visited our cruddy little nest. I’m glad to see there’s a little slob in you. You guys go sit on the porch and watch the rain while I housewife this shambles.”

Brian and Jimmy sat on the rear porch. Brian said that at last he felt Borklund had stopped suspecting him of any complicity in what had now become famed as Wing’s Forthright Editorial Policy. Brian began telling him of the changes on the paper, the new assignments, the foul-ups on the things Jimmy had always covered. He stopped abruptly and said, “I get the strange idea you’re not tracking.”

“Go ahead. It’s very interesting.”

“Sure. Sure. What are your plans?”

“I’m sort of formulating them, Bri.”

“Nothing definite?”

“Not quite yet.”

“Then I’ve got something for you. A coincidence. I tried to check it out with you but I couldn’t get hold of you this morning, and I couldn’t get away to track you down.” He handed Jimmy a business card. “Scott is an old friend. And Jacksonville isn’t too bad of a place to live. He’s looking for a guy like you, Jimmy. It’s a newsletter thing.
The Southeast Investor
. He’ll pay a hundred plus expenses at first and work your tail off. He’s got so many other things going for him, if he can find somebody who’ll work out, he wants to give them the whole load, on a percentage of the net basis. It’s a leg-work problem, plus good clear prose, with a captive analyst to give it the financial slant. It’s made for you, boy.”

“Interesting,” Jimmy said.

“He flew back this afternoon. He’ll be expecting you to be in touch.”

“He just happened to drop in?”

“Just like that,” Brian said with a wide, innocent stare.

“You’re a good man, Haas.”

“You’ll go ahead with it?”

“It’s something to think about.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“These things die down,” Jimmy said.

Haas looked at him in astonishment. “Lots of things do. Everything does, in one sense or another. But be a little realistic, for God’s sake. You put a big crimp in Elmo’s plans. He’ll never be anything more than small time, but he’ll always be as big as you can get in this county.”

“I made him a noble speech. At the moment I almost believed
it. He acted kind of sad and martyred, as if a pet hound had bit him.”

“You bitched Elmo and you betrayed the business community and spat in the face of progress, and I don’t think you could get a job washing cars in Palm County. Maybe you could get it, but I doubt you could keep it.”

“I might be able to think of something.”

“Why should you be anxious to stay here, anyhow? What is there here for you? Who is there?”

Jimmy smiled. “There could have been somebody, but I messed that up pretty good too.”

“She asked me about you. She phoned you. She thought you’d left. She was surprised you’re still around. A lot of people are.”

“She still at the bank?”

“They moved her back out to the front desk, even. Sometimes I can’t figure this damn town. She got up on her hind legs and talked to an unfriendly mob. She didn’t let the situation rattle her. Same as Tom. So they’re a couple of folk heroes. All of a sudden nobody is very mad any more. The heat is the common enemy. The purge of the degenerates has ended. But nobody is making room for you, boy. Don’t count on that much amnesty.”

The rain had stopped. Nan came out onto the porch. Soon it was time for them to leave. Brian had to go back to the newsroom. Jimmy thanked Nan for the cleaning job, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. Brian said they’d have to play some chess soon. Nan started to go out to the car with Brian, then sent him on ahead.

“You’ve done some taking care, Jimmy,” she said. “You’ve done it when I was desperate.”

“I was glad to.”

She studied him. “Our turn now, Jim.”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you? I’ve been watching you. It reminds me of me, a long time ago. After I got out of the hospital. The body was mending fine.”

“I tell you I’m all right.”

“I kept telling people that too. But I didn’t want to even wash myself or brush my hair. You sleep a lot, don’t you?”

“I’m between jobs. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

“You can’t read because you can’t keep your mind on it. You stare at television, but the minute it’s over you can’t remember what it was about.”

“Can anyone?”

“Don’t make defensive jokes, Jimmy, please. You’ve had a serious shock, or a series of them. You’re disturbed. I know the symptoms. I know them so well. You should see somebody, you know. Somebody who can help you.”

“I don’t know what makes you think I need any help.”

“Sooner or later you’re going to realize you do, and the sooner you realize it, the easier it will be to get over it. If you won’t go see anyone, at least force yourself to … to stir around a little. Your world is getting smaller and narrower every day. You’re putting up more walls every day. Try to break that pattern, Jim, please. For me. As a favor to me … and Bri. You’re our friend. You know that. We love you. Try to do what we want you to do—for us if you can’t do it for yourself.”

“I keep telling you, I’m …”

“Please, Jimmy.”

He shrugged, forced a smile. “Okay. I’ll stir around, even if it does spoil my vacation.”

On the following day it seemed much easier to stay at the cottage. He took a rusted spinning reel apart, cleaned it, oiled it, reassembled it, then felt so exhausted he took a long nap. After the
nap he wrote a long letter of inquiry to Brian’s friend in Jacksonville, telling himself there was no point in phoning or seeing the man before he knew what the working arrangement would be. In the late afternoon, with a sense of accomplishment, he took a huge bundle of laundry to the commercial end of the key and left it off. He drove over into the city intending to stop and see his sister, and then suddenly found himself slowing down for the turn into his own driveway. He went to bed early and slept late.

On Saturday afternoon he forced himself to drive to Kat Hubble’s house. It took an alarming effort of will. His mind kept presenting a hundred plausible alternatives. He was able to make the final three hundred yards only by telling himself that she would not be home. But her car was there. He stopped in her driveway. As he hesitated, deciding to back out again, she came around the corner of the house, a garden trowel in her hand, a look of question on her face. She halted abruptly when she recognized him. He willed her to turn on her heel and go back out of sight. She flushed, then came slowly toward him, unsmiling, the flush fading to pallor.

He got out of the car. “Hello, Jimmy?” The greeting was a question.

“I’ve got no business coming here. Brian said you asked about me.”

“I wondered about you. I phoned you. I guess I wanted to tell you … we appreciated what you tried to do, even if it didn’t work.”

“Regards from the committee.”

“Not exactly.”

She turned and moved into leafy shade. He followed her. Spots of sunlight made quick patterns on her hair.