Go to the Widow-Maker (105 page)

“It doesn’t sound kooky at all to me,” Lucky said softly, in that same very low voice. “I think you’re a fine man. And I always have. Except maybe for a little while there, when I was mad at you,” she added, lowly.

“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right. I
should
have told you.”

“Would you like to make love to me?” Lucky asked in a low, almost apologetic voice.

“I sure as hell would,” he said in his foghorn-barred voice. “But I couldn’t do it your way. I couldn’t go down on you. Not with this sticking out of my face. But if it’s fucking you want, I’ll sure as hell give it a hell of a try.”

“Fucking’s fine,” Lucky said.

It was just then that the quiet knock came, on the closed door; and then the door, which Grant had deliberately, not tried to lock, in order to make less noise, swung open. Bonham stood in it, filling it really, and he looked like a zombie. His eyes had the deep dark totally empty look of a zombie, largely because he was so drunk.

“May I come in a minute?” he asked politely.

“Sure, Al?” Grant said quickly, before Lucky could say anything. “What’s up?”

It didn’t take very long. Bonham explained, in a voice which sounded just about as zombie-ish as his face (and body) looked, about the whiskey. It had not been returned. But it was well hidden. So instead of leaving out early tomorrow they were going to wait for the Commissioner to come and inspect them, which he absolutely for sure would. Then they would get under way, back to GaBay. So they didn’t have to worry about getting up early. They could sleep late. Here Lucky laughed suddenly, a bitter laugh. Bonham turned his zombie eyes to look at her slowly, then just as slowly he turned them back to Grant. “How’s your nose?”

“Not so bad. I’ve got the bleeding stopped. In a minute or two I’m going to try to shape it up a little bit, if we’ve got any adhesive tape around. If not, I’ll sleep in the chair.”

Without speaking, Bonham in his slow zombie manner reached into his hip pocket and came out with, and handed over, a one-inch roll of adhesive tape complete in its plastic clip-ring holder. Grant took it, and nodded. “Thanks.”

“See you in the morning.” Bonham turned to go out of the door. Then he turned back. He stared at the two of them zombie-like for several moments. “You’ve got yourself one hell of a man there, Mrs Grant,” he said in his zombie voice. “And you should appreciate him. But I know you do.”

“Thank you,” Lucky said politely, and Grant was vastly relieved. He did not really care what Bonham thought anymore, about anything, though—in a childish way—he supposed he
was
pleased by what the big man had just said. It was a considerable compliment. But mainly, he was worried about Lucky, that with what Bonham had just said—which was so utterly ridiculous, from her viewpoint—she might blow up, and begin to screech and holler like some angry fishwife. But she hadn’t. She had said exactly the right thing to say, and he was immensely relieved.

“And though I know you don’t like me much,” Bonham went on, speaking to her, “I want you to know I admire you and I think you’re some hell of a woman—hell of a
lady
,” he corrected quickly. He turned away again. Then he turned back once more.

“I’m sorry about what’s happened. I know it’s dumb to say that. I guess it’s all of it been pretty much my fault.” Then in his zombie-ish way he was turned and gone before either of them could dispute, or agree with, this opinion.

Grant took the roll of adhesive tape (they had not had any themselves, he discovered) into the bathroom and worked on his nose before the mirror. That had been really thoughtful of Bonham, he thought, to bring tape. “I’d rather you didn’t watch this,” he said, “but you can if you want to.”— “I want to,” Lucky said. “I’ve never seen anybody make a nose out of a blob before.” He glanced at her quickly. She had said it bitterly, but she wasn’t
being
bitter. She was really interested. —“Okay. Come on,” he said.

It took him about fifteen minutes. The pinching and squeezing, one forefinger pushing from each side. Then the tape, the first strip, up at the top of the bridge and the resqueezing with the thumb and forefinger of one hand on the outside of the tape. Then the same thing lower down, the same process, always moving lower down, until there were four overlapping strips of the tape, spreading out across and over his cheekbones under his eyes. Thank God neither cheekbone or sinus had been busted. He had to stop several times because of the tears the pain of it brought into his eyes so he couldn’t see, and also in order to relax his tensed-up diaphragm with a bit of the deep breathing that now came so naturally to him, as an experienced diver. Both nasal passages were all closed up naturally, with the coagulation, mucus, what-the-fuck-ever, and he had to breathe through his mouth.

“That’s the best I can do,” he said finally. “It’ll be all right for tonight And I’ll have the Surgeon take a look at it tomorrow.”

“I think it’s a pretty good job,” Lucky said quite coolly. “It even almost looks like a nose again.”

“Wait’ll you see Orloffski tomorrow,” Grant promised.

“To hell with Orloffski,” Lucky said.

Then they went to bed together and made love in that skin-touching, electrical-skin-contact way they had once had, but had not now had together for quite a very long time.

The inspection went off quite well, perfectly, the next day, as Bonham had predicted. The Administrator, in his white suit and white topee that was almost a uniform, and his one Green constable in his blue uniform with its red trouser stripes and red cap band, came aboard after requesting formal permission from the Master of the Vessel. The Administrator was precise, pleasant proper, and very polite. So was Constable Green, since he had been personally trained by the Administrator, or perhaps by his predecessor. The Constable (while the Administrator stood by) looked everywhere—including in the bilge under the sole, the lazarette, everywhere.

“You understand of course that it was quite necessary,” the Administrator said, shaking hands with the Master of the Vessel. “I’m quite sorry to have had to have done it. You understand? Quite.”

“But of course, sir,” Bonham said. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’d hate to have my vessel put to sea under any kind of a cloud. I’ll want to return to the Nelsons, probably quite often, in the future.”

“We will always look forward to seeing you here,” the Administrator said, and smiled, “and your clients,” he added, nodding pleasantly to the others. “We flatter ourselves that we have one of the future’s better spots in the Caribbean. Especially for cruises such as yours.” If he noticed the swollen taped-up nose of Grant or the cut swollen face of Orloffski, he gave no indication of it.

Once they were under way and out at sea, the Surgeon looked at Grant’s nose.— “Not a bad job,” he said and with the grudging admiration of a professional, “not a bad job at all.” In spite of that, he got out his little medical kit (he always carried it, he said, would feel naked without it, and especially on cruises) and redid the job, pulling off the tape, remolding a little, and putting on his own new tape while Grant hissed and teared with the pain. Then he carefully swabbed the swollen nasal passages. “Of course, it all should be done again in a few days, as soon as that swelling goes down.” Badly hungover, shaky, worn out with rutting; he still had good hands, great hands; and when he had finished it was clearly a better job than Grant had done, or could have done.

In the case of Orloffski he found he had to take four stitches in the cut on the Pole’s left cheek under the eye. He had all the gear and did it swiftly, sanitarily, and efficiently. For the smaller cuts above Orloffski’s two eyes which were not so bad and didn’t really need stitching, Grant took him aside and showed him how to make the boxer’s and boxer’s trainer’s ‘adhesive bridges’, something the Surgeon had for some reason never heard about, and again received his rather grudging admiration. The Surgeon then made these and applied them to both cuts over Orloffski’s eyes, but at no time did Grant or Orloffski speak to, or even come near, each other.

That was the kind of sail it was. Because of the Administrator’s inspection, they did not get under way until pretty late, just about ten o’clock, so they did not sight Negril Point until around nine the next morning. Most of this time they were beating to windward into the trades, tacking often, so Orloffski stayed up forward to handle the jib and staysail while Bonham from the cockpit handled the main and fore sails. For this reason Grant chose to stay back near the cockpit. The land breeze at night did not help them much this time; for some reason it had shifted and came to them off Jamaica only a little more easterly than the northeast daytime trades. Grant and Lucky, who were together just about every minute now that they could be, tried to sleep a while below during the night but finally gave it up and came back up on deck, and Ben and Irm came up with them, where the sea and the sky of stars and the breeze were all so beautiful. Bonham remained at the wheel. Cathie Finer dozed in a corner of the cockpit. There was very little talk, now. At around ten in the morning when they rounded Negril Point they were two-thirds of the way home. Just about everybody was glad. Not too terribly long after, three or four hours, they passed Montego Bay. By six in the evening they were pulling into GaBay harbor and hauling down sail.

Ben and Irma of course had never been to GaBay, except once for a day in a rented car, but Grant and Lucky knew it well. The first thing Grant did was to telephone the West Moon Over from the Yacht Club for reservations, for that night, which they got quite easily when Grant used his name. All any of them could think about right now was getting away from these people, all of them, and—perhaps—resting up a little, resting up from their ‘vacation cruise’.

But if there had been little talk during the long voyage back, there was talk now when Bonham presented his charges to Ben and Irma for the trip. He asked them forty dollars a day per person. That made seven days, or so Bonham figured —although they had finished the cruise at six
P.M.
and would not be on board that night The total came to just five hundred and sixty dollars.

“Well, Jesus!” Ben said in a pained but embarrassed voice. “You never did quote me charges, but I figured maybe twenty to twenty-five bucks a day. Per person, of course. I must say it seems kind of high to me.”

“But don’t forget I reminded you all all them dockage charges,” Bonham said calmly and evenly.

“But we only actually docked—I mean, docked where you had to pay—two nights!” Ben protested, with embarrassment.

“Also,” Grant put in, who was embarrassed also now, “remember that Ben and Irm are pretty good friends of
mine.”

Bonham’s face remained totally inscrutable. “Them’s my charges,” he said, “and I think they’re fair. More than fair.” He had obviously fixed up his charges with the Surgeon and his girl before the voyage, and was sticking to them, but of course the others could not know what this arrangement was. And Bonham, in money matters, in
anything
having to do with money, remained always as inscrutable and as unreadable as a sphinx.

In the end Ben paid him, rather than suffer the embarrassment of argument, writing out a check right there on the Yacht Club bar—just as Bonham (or so Grant suspected) had figured ahead of time that he would. On the way to the hotel in the taxi, Grant apologized for it. Ben only shrugged.

They made quite a sight at the West Moon Over Hotel, Grant with his swollen taped-up nose, all of them sunburnt almost black with their salt-saturated hair askew and sticking out all over, and looking very ‘salty’ indeed. But of course Grant was known there, by the manager as well as by just about everybody else, so there was no problem—especially when they learned they had just returned from a cruise to the Nelson islands with Big Al Bonham in his new schooner, which of course everyone had heard all about. They bathed and cleaned up, swam and floated a while in the fresh-water pool, all of them glad to be away from salt water and the sea for a while. Then they dressed for dinner, had some drinks in the bar, ate an excellent dinner which included no seafood at all, and went happily to bed, the two pairs of them.

It was at one-thirty in the morning when Bonham called Grant, waking him out of a sound sleep, making him get up to walk across the room to answer the phone.

It was about the worst thing in his life that could happen to him at the moment, he thought. For one insane, nightmarish, dreamlike, sleep-drenched moment he thought Bonham was calling him to tell him about his wife and Jim Grointon, that he had seen them, had caught them, together. Vigorously, he rubbed one hand harshly back and forth across the back of his neck, and then slapped himself there several times. He had made that decision. It hadn’t happened. It hadn’t happened. He had analyzed and judged all the evidence, and he knew it hadn’t happened. “What?” he kept saying into the phone, “what? I don’t understand. I don’t understand. What?”

“I’m in trouble,” Bonham’s drink-thick voice said again. “I’m in real trouble. I need your help. Can you come? I’m at the Moonrise Motel. Can you come?”

“Okay, okay, I’ll come,” Grant said rubbing his neck some more. “I’ll come.”

“Are you sure you’re awake?” Bonham said.

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m not,” Grant said. “Now tell me again.”

“The Moonrise Motel,” Bonham said thickly. “It’s about ten miles in toward town from where you are at the West Moon Over. Have you got a car?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we rented a You-Drive here,” Grant said. I can be there in twenty minutes or so.”

“Please come,” Bonham said thickly. It was the first time Grant had ever heard him use that word ever. “Please.”

“All right. I’ll be there,” Grant said, almost hating himself for saying it. “Twenty minutes. But what’s the trouble.”

“If you can’t figure it out by the time you get here, you’re not as smart as I think you are,” Bonham said. “How many kinds of trouble are there if the weather’s good?”

Grant was suddenly full awake. Cathie Finer! It had to be something to do with that. But
what
? “All right. I’ll be there,” he said and hung up.