Case of Lucy Bending (42 page)

"Hello?" A frail voice. So like her. Tentative and hopeful.

"Hi," he said throatily. "It's me."

"Oh daddy!" she said, laughing happily. "I was just thinking of you and hoping you'd call. I willed it. I concentrated: 'Make daddy call, make daddy call.' And here you are!"

"Yeah," he said, thinking what a whacko she was. "Listen, I can take a few hours off. I got to get back here later this afternoon. For an important call. But I got a few hours. How's about I pick up a pizza and a cold pack and come over for lunch? Okay?"

"Oh yes! Yes, yes, yes!"

"All right. Be there in half an hour or so. Maybe a little longer. What kind of pizza you like?"

"Whatever you say."

It was almost an hour before he got to May's apartment. It was stifling. She had no air conditioner ("The plants wouldn't like it," she explained), but he had bought her an enormous electric fan, and that helped a little. But still he took off jacket, tie, and shirt.

He sat in the worn armchair, eating pizza from the big box on the floor. She sat alongside, rising occasionally to fetch him a cold beer. He didn't like the idea of her, with that gimpy leg, getting up and then sitting again on the floor, obviously with difficulty. But she insisted on doing it, so he let her.

While they wolfed the pizza and swilled the beer, she chattered about what she had been doing since he saw her last. He let her run, smiling and nodding, and gradually the knot of unease loosened; once again he felt comfortable and at home.

"I've got to show you a new bikini I bought," she said breathlessly. "I'll model it for you. I went all over to find something I liked and that fit just so. You've
got
to like it, daddy. It's very hard, you know, to get a good fit. I've been going to the beach in the morning for a few hours. Don't you think I'm tan? Well, not tan exactly, but I do have color now, don't I? How long can you stay, daddy?"

"A few hours. Two."

"Well, then, you'll see. And I take a thermos of iced tea with me, and maybe some seedless grapes, and in the morning the public beach isn't crowded at all. And yesterday morning, when I was out there, just sunning and swimming, do you know what I thought, daddy?"

He was slopping a wedge of pepperoni pizza, gulping a beer. It took him a moment to ask, "What? What were you thinking, May?"

"I was thinking that the only reason I could live like that and be so happy was because of my daddy. My own sweet daddy. Because he's so good to me."

He smiled at her fondly, reflecting that she might have faults, but ingratitude wasn't one of them. And following hard on the heels of that judgment came the thought that hers was whore's talk. But he put that nastiness from his mind.

"Another slice, daddy?" she asked.

"Oh God, no," he said. "I've had it. Put the rest in the refrigerator. Maybe you'll want to heat it up later."

"Will you be able to come over tonight?"

"No."

"All right,'' she said equably. "Then maybe I'll just freeze what's left and have it for lunch someday."

"Good idea," he said heavily. "Lemme have another beer."

She popped another beer. She brought it to him. She wiped his lips with a paper napkin. She stroked lightly, lovingly over his stiff, brushy hair. She touched his cheek. She let her palm fall onto his naked shoulders.

She played with the hair on his chest. She pinched gently at the rolls of fat about his waist. She smoothed the heavy muscles of his neck, his back.

And all the time she stared into his eyes with a look that was soft, tender, giving. He didn't know; he just didn't know.

"And now," she said formally, "I would like to model my new bikini for you. I hope you'll like it."

"I'll like it," he assured her.

She limped into the bathroom, closed the door. He sat lump-ishly in front of the electric fan, working on his third beer. Slowly he cooled and dried. The morning's fears and frustrations faded. He felt sparky again and could look around at that jungly apartment with a smile.

She came out of the bathroom, giggling nervously. The new bikini was a little white thing, straps and patches. Hardly more than a G-string and two quarter-moons cupping her small breasts.

She would never be a creamer, no way, and the slivers of cloth made her body seem even younger, more fragile. A delicate plant. A new stem. She turned to show him, the sleek hair swinging across her ribbed, sun-flushed back.

"Baby, it's beautiful," he said.

"Really? Do you
really
think so?"

"I really do. It's lovely."

"Look," she said, reached behind her, unhooked the bra, swung it away. She came close to him, standing between his spread knees. "See? Here above my titties. See the line? I'm getting a burn. It's just pink now, but I'll be all tan pretty soon."

"Sure you will," he said. "Just take it easy. Don't try to do it all at once."

He put his beer aside. He put his hands on her hips, where bones lifted the skin. She pressed to him. He stared at those feathery white breasts. Pink eyes. She felt so frail that he thought if he clenched his big hands, he might crumple her.

He leaned forward to lay his cheek onto her cool softness. He felt her stroking his hair. She was murmuring something, but he couldn't hear. She moved away. She took his hand, pulled him. He rose clumsily, followed her to the sofa.

She climbed up, bent onto knees and forearms. Her head was down between her flat palms. He stared at that thin, suppliant back. He reached to comb the glossy hair so it ran like black water along the channel of her spine.

"Please, daddy," she said in a dozy voice, "be nice to me.

She knelt before him, bowed, presenting her buttocks thrust high. But still it was obeisance. Abject surrender. An offering. He pulled the bottom of her bikini away, worked it off her legs, knees, feet, then tossed it aside. He reached beneath her, felt her.

"Thank you," she breathed. "Oh, thank you."

He played with her slowly, not listening to her baby talk. His satisfaction was so intense he could not comprehend it.

He had a sturdy, practical business mind. He could work a sweet deal or rig a contract. But his brain was not a subtle one; it could not encompass the interchangeability of master and slave.

He only knew that he was experiencing a fervid happiness and, because he was not a creative man, could not bear the ambiguity of his role. So he had to assert what he believed to be his "real" character.

But when he unbuckled his belt, unzipped, let trousers and undershorts fall to his ankles, he found to his chagrin that his member was as flaccid as uncooked dough. He stared at it with mortification and fear.

May must have sensed his hesitation, for she lifted her head, looked at him over her shoulder. Then she pushed herself up, turned, sat on the edge of the sofa, facing him.

"Let me do it, daddy," she said gently.

He let her do it. He watched her clever fingers at work, and then her bobbing head. Manhood returned, and with it came a surge of love and gratefulness toward this girl-woman-whore who was making him whole.

When he could no longer endure, he pulled away and spent on her breasts, insensate, following instinct, want, need that he had never felt before and could not understand.

He collapsed alongside her on the couch. When he kissed her, lips glued, he began to sense the depth of his commitment to this maimed child who looked at him with trusting eyes and called him "Daddy."

William Holloway called his revolver Eric, for reasons he could not determine since, to the best of his memory, he had never known anyone in his life named Eric. But it made it easier when talking to his gun, or talking to himself about his gun.

He recognized well the dangers of a man who drank as much as he did fooling around with a loaded weapon. So he exercised extreme caution whpn handling the gun, planning his moves carefully in advance and warning himself . . .

"Now you are going to take Eric slowly from the holster."

"Hold Eric by the grip, keeping your finger out of the trigger guard."

"Point the muzzle away from you and swing the cylinder out."

"Unload Eric completely and do not begin cleaning until you are perfectly certain he is clear."

Then he could begin his weekly chore of dusting, wiping, oiling and, finally, reloading the revolver. It was a job he anticipated, enjoyed, and performed with the same sweet comfort that, as a boy, he had brought to his piano lessons.

He was aware that Jane knew he owned a handgun, and kept it holstered in the drawer of the bedside table. Maria, the Cuban maid, had probably seen it there. Holloway didn't think his daughter, Gloria, knew of it, and he hoped to hell his son didn't.

Friday night dinner was a hurried affair. The children ate and scattered to their friends on the beach. Jane went into the study to sit at the leather-topped desk, inspect a sample carton for the video cassette of
Teenage Honeypots,
and make notes for improvements.

Maria cleaned up, started the dishwasher, and went to her room where she would listen to a Spanish-language radio station and make innumerable phone calls. William Holloway went upstairs to clean Eric, oil it, polish it lovingly, and return it to its soft leather nest.

Then he changed to Bermuda shorts (no undershorts), loafers (no socks), and a bright red Izod shirt (no undershirt). He went slowly downstairs, humming a theme from
The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Jane was on the phone to Luther Empt, telling him what was wrong with the cassette carton. Holloway reflected that his wife never conversed; she told.

He mixed himself a tall beaker of vodka and water with a squeezed lime wedge. He sampled it and added more vodka. Then he wandered onto the terrace, dimly illumined by the muted lamplight coming through the picture window. He stood at the railing, looked up at the night.

It was a jigsaw: black sky and nacreous clouds. Everything was jagged, but everything fitted. Holloway thought his own life was something like that: ridiculously disparate elements that all came together and added up to . . . what?

His entire life had been a series of incongruous incidents and events, over most of which he had no control. He had been pushed and pulled, hauled and shoved. And here he was in south Florida, wearing silly clothes, with a family he didn't know and really, he admitted, didn't want to.

"What a waste!"

"Yes, a waste," he replied. "Because you know, in your heart of hearts, that you started out with a great capacity."

"For what?"

"Love, for starters."

"Oh-ho! A few weeks ago, drinking in this same spot, you declared you had a great capacity for virtue. Now it's love."

"Are the two so different?"

"Wise-ass!"

Thankfully, he was not speaking aloud to himself when Jane came out onto the terrace and told him she was taking the cassette carton back to Luther Empt and would be gone for a while. He nodded and let her go. Idiocy was engulfing him.

He drank awhile, dreamed awhile, went back inside to mix himself a fresh drink. He kissed the bottle of vodka. "God bless you," he said.

The sky seemed lighter when he came back out. The air was warmer, more caressing. It stroked, that air; it whispered. He kicked off his loafers and straggled down to the beach, carrying his slopping beaker. He sat down in the sand, about twenty feet from the surf.

He saw a meandering figure, a boy zigzagging along the strand, kicking at shells, coral rocks, seaweed.

"Wayne?" Holloway called. "Wayne Bending? Over here."

Wayne stopped, peered. Then he came slowly. He sat down on the sand alongside.

"Hi, Mr. Holloway," he said in a grumpy voice.

"Hi," Holloway said. "Nice night."

"Yeah, it's okay."

Holloway looked closer at the lad. "What happened to your face? A black eye?"

"Nah. Just a bruise. I fell. At school. It's better now."

"Uh-huh. How you doing, Wayne?"

"At school? Okay."

"No, I meant what you told me about. You know—this guy and his friend. When I drove you home in the rain ..."

"Oh," the youth said. "That. Well, that's all over, all finished."

"Sorry to hear it."

They sat in silence then, Holloway drinking slowly, the lad picking up fists of sand and letting the grains dribble through his fingers.

"Mr. Holloway, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Can you lend me some money? Not a lot. Just some. I'll pay you back, really I will."

"Money for what, Wayne?"

"I want to go away. I want to get out of here."

Holloway drew a deep breath. The kid was an open heart, doomed to feel. The kid was him, William Jasper Holloway. When he was Wayne's age, he had the same furies and restraints, the same pains and longings.

"You're putting me on the spot," he told the boy. "I give you the money and you run away. Maybe the police find you, bring you back, and it comes out that I gave you the money to go. I like your parents; they're my friends. They find out I gave you the money to take off, and that's the end of that friendship."