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He continued to go out with them in the boat whenever Bonham took Grant out, which was almost every day, after he got back, snorkling along over them when they were on deeper dives, freediving down to them sometimes when they were on the shallow reef. He got so that finally—on the shallow reef—he could freedive twenty, even twenty-five or thirty feet down to the corals. He was therefore able to freedive to the cave entrance and peer in, but of course there was nothing to see until you swam far enough in to turn the corner, another twenty or twenty-five feet, and this he could not do. He tried the lung a couple of more times in a pool, but always with the same result, and Bonham advised him not to try it in the sea. He was very frustrated, especially whenever Bonham and Grant went back into the big cave, which they did from time to time.

Grant was fascinated by the cave, but it was more than that. Bonham, since getting back, had suddenly acquired quite a few new clients in the hotels from the big influx of tourists because of The Season, and the cave was one of his chef-?oeuvres. He took all of his neophytes there, as soon as he was sure they could handle the dive, and Grant and Doug usually went with him—paying much less for the trips when there were other clients, fortunately. Bonham’s policy was always to help his more permanent clients financially when he could.

They had taken to hanging around with Bonham a great deal more since his return, Grant because he wanted desperately to stay away from Carol Abernathy as much as possible. But Doug Ismaileh had taken a great shine to the big diver with his, to them, marvelous accomplishments—as Grant had known he would. Bonham had a favorite bar in town called The Neptune, where he had once introduced Grant to the two Jamaican girls, and where he hung out with his local pals when he wasn’t out diving or giving lessons. Naturally, this place had no social connection at all with the de Blysteins and their highclass social friends, and Grant and Doug spent a great deal of time there with Bonham, drinking. Also they met his wife and he invited them to his home.

Bonham’s home, which he had bought and like almost everybody in this age of credit and time payments apparently was having difficulty paying off, was a little clapboard house with two small bedrooms, kitchen, livingroom and bath, set in a tiny yard on one of the side streets in the middle of the town. It was a somewhat impoverished-looking place, not at all like the houses most white people lived in in Ganado Bay but more like the home of a colored bank clerk or assistant store manager, but Bonham’s wife Letta had done a lot with the inside, and Bonham had built himself an American brick barbecue outside in the little yard. When he had returned from Grand Bank, the Finers and the Orloffskis had flown back with him and William, the Finers immediately catching the jet to New York, and now—as they found out when he invited them up the evening of the first day he was back—the Orloffskis, Mo and Wanda Lou, were staying with him.

His wife Letta was a small, superbly built, quiet-spoken, medium-dark Jamaican girl, who looked as much schoolteacher as she in fact was, and who apparently took a rather dim view of the Orloffskis in her house although she entertained them nicely. Not that the Orloffskis needed entertaining. They had already moved in and taken over, and appeared to be more the hosts than the guests. But, as Bonham told Grant, it wouldn’t be for long. The plans, as he told them both—or rather Grant, since Doug knew nothing about Bonham’s setup except what little Grant had told him—were that Sam Finer after a few day’s business in New York would be flying back out to Minnesota, where he would forward the money immediately. Then Bonham and Orloffski would go down to Kingston to look the schooner over once more (Orloffski had never seen it), buy it, and arrange to have it hauled. Orloffski would then fly to Jersey and bring the cutter down the inland waterway to Florida and sail it to GaBay. Meantime, the Orloffskis were house—or apartment—hunting. When they found a place Wanda Lou would move in there and Bonham and Letta would help her out and look after her. He told them all this as, with loving sausage fingers, he prepared his barbecue in the yard for steaks in the late evening light.

The steaks were excellent. So was the booze, though they all drank more of it than was probably good for them. Grant noticed that Letta was not above drinking a fair amount herself, which surprised him, even though it was apparently never enough to make her really drunk. William and his wife and four kids had come over too, so that with the Bonhams’ maid washing glasses and dishes there seemed to be almost more people ramming around the little house and yard than it could handle or contain.

And after that the two of them took dinner with the Bonham menage every night, and were little seen at the villa. The second night they ate at Bonham’s again with the mob—because even with the absence of William and family, who did not appear again, the six of them in that tiny house (especially with the two huge and hollering figures of Bonham and Orloffski) made it seem like a mob. The third night Letta was not with them and they ate at The Neptune, Grant and Doug picking up the tab. It turned out Letta worked as a hostess in an Italian restaurant five nights a week (excepting Mondays and Tuesdays, when the place closed for its ‘weekend’) to augment their meager income. It was run by an Italian (aided by his Jamaican wife) who had been maître d’ at one of the big hotels, and Grant had eaten there with Evelyn and the Abernathys, but he did not remember Letta. The fourth night they again ate at Bonham’s, again without Letta, when Bonham made them marvelous barbecued ribs. Every night everyone drank far more than was good for them, but it seemed to be the norm around Bonham—and Orloffski—and around Grant and Doug, for that matter.

It was surprising that Carol Abernathy (on behalf of Evelyn) left them alone that long without complaining. But the days were running down, and time was running out. On the morning of the fifth day after Bonham’s return, Carol Abernathy caught the both of them at breakfast coffee (they weren’t eating because they meant to dive that morning) and divulged her plan for the saving of Grant by Doug Ismaileh.

She started off by employing her role as den mother of the biggest cub scout pack in the county.

“You two guys have been pretty scarce around here the past few days.” She had come down to the terrace where they were in her pajamas and robe. It was not quite nine o’clock in the morning. “Here Evelyn’s got two of America’s biggest and handsomest playwrights staying in her place as houseguests and she can’t even utilize them. When are you going to stay home an evening?”

Grant decided he would not answer that, and let Doug do it. Doug said, “Tonight, I guess. We been seein a lot of this guy Bonham.”

“So I understand from Evelyn,” Carol said, “who got it from her maid, who got it from the jungle telegraph.” Having Doug around as a sort of third-party observer seemed to have straightened her out quite a bit, as though having an audience kept her remembering the right role. There had been no more crazy scenes like the knife-wielding episode in Grand Bank. “Also, you both look like you’ve been drinking a lot more than you should or is good for you.” She peered at Grant keenly. Grant filmed his eyes over for her.

“That’s usually the case, aint it?” Doug grinned. “Especially when we get together.”

“Anyway,” Carol Abernathy said, and smiled, “this is what I wanted to talk to you about: It turns out Doug has got relatives in Montego Bay, did you know that?” she asked Grant “And he wants to visit them while he’s down here.”

Grant deliberately did not answer her. He had known, everybody had known, for at least four years, that Doug had Greek-Armenian relatives who ran a restaurant and small hotel in Montego Bay. They had come down there from Florida and opened it up immediately after the war. Doug was forever talking about them, and meant to do a play about them.

“So,” Carol went on cheerfully, “I thought it might be a good idea if the two of you went over there for a week or so. It’ll save ‘trouble’ here at Evelyn’s. And you can pick up some cunts and have yourselves a
good
bender. It might serve to take Ron’s mind off all his little New York pussycats.”

“It’s okay with me,” Doug said and looked at Grant.

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Grant said with a chilled voice. “I’m ready to go right now, today. The sooner the better.” He got up.

“Then maybe you’ll feel more like yourself,” Carol smiled at him. “You might even feel like getting down to work again.”

This had been one of her techniques of ‘personality control’ for years: the instillation of guilt about not working, not ‘creating’: more, the idea that none of ‘her boys’ had strength of character enough to get their work, their writing done, without her around to crack the whip over them. Grant did not intend to let her get by with that this time.

“I doubt that,” he said coldly. “I haven’t done as much of this skindiving yet as I want to.” He looked over at Doug. “I was thinkin I might take along an aqualung from Bonham, and do a little diving over there.”

“Good idea,” Doug said.

“It’s only seventy-five miles,” Carol said. “You can do it in an afternoon.”

“I’d rather go right now,” Grant said. “This morning.” And with that he put his napkin on the table and went to his room to pack a bag. As he climbed the big staircase he could hear Carol and Doug still talking, swiftly, then Doug followed him.

They rented a car in town. While Doug was doing that, Grant picked up a set of tanks and a regulator from Bonham’s shop. “It’s okay. I’ll put it all on the tab,” Bonham grinned. “There’s a guy over there named Wilson who’s got a compressor and can refill ’em for you if you need it.” An hour and a half after Grant had deposited his napkin on the table they were on their way out of town along the north coast road.

T
HE MOMENT HE WOKE
in the hotel bed, with a terrible hangover, he knew he was going to call her and reached out blindly for the phone even before he opened his eyes or took his face out of the pillow. The phone in his hand, he opened his eyes and stared at the untouched, unperfumed, unlipsticked pillow beside his own. He had had it all up to here. It was what, now? three weeks! And he had had a bellyful of everything, of just about everything.

In one way he felt it was a weakness. To call her. He had wanted to do this diving thing all on his own, alone, and concentrate wholly on that. But he was too weak to do even that. Couldn’t even be without a broad for three weeks or a month without sinking into a suicidal depression. But he didn’t give a damn. He placed the call (there would be a delay of thirty to forty-five mintues the oversweet voice said) and rolled over on his back staring at the ceiling and contemplating his weaknesses.

The false and professionally happy voice of the operator, demanded of her by her company’s personnel training course, made him as lonely and nauseated him almost as much as the catalog of his weaknesses. He ought to be used to them. He was not. He ran once more fruitlessly over all his problems: Carol Abernathy and responsibility: when did it stop; that goddamned white elephant of a house in Indianapolis that he no longer wanted and that was costing him a fortune; his financial problems (it was embarrassing to have made as much money as he had and not have one nickel invested; and he was already worried about Bonham’s forthcoming bill); his other, essentially a drinking, problem with Doug Ismaileh (and other artists of that particularly drinking type).

How to get out of Indiana? How to get money so he could afford to live somewhere else? How to get out of skindiving, now he had gotten into it? How to get
into
Lucky?
That
weakness? Well, he wasn’t going to marry her. He’d take her to Kingston, for a while, and see what happened. How to get rid of Doug, whom he liked and didn’t want to hurt—at least at certain times? Right now Doug was firmly and unequivocally shacked up with a gorgeous model in the next bedroom across the connecting bath, in which the rush of water had wakened him three times during the night—or rather, the morning—as she came in to douche. Grant looked at the snowy rounded untouched pillow beside him and longed for Lucky. He must really be in love. He had had his choice of three of them!

He had talked to Doug about Carol Abernathy on the drive over. Grant had never been to Montego Bay. Doug knew MoBay but had never been to Ganado Bay, and so neither knew the road. Grant had driven. And probably because of that, almost certainly because of that—because he was driving— he suddenly found himself talking and talking and talking about Carol Abernathy, about art and life, about his past, about Lucky. As can so often happen, he became hypnotized with the car and the road, the movement of the land backward, the movement of the windshield forward, and talked and talked.

The ride itself was beautiful. Almost all the way the road ran alongside the sea, glinting and sparkling cleanly in the bright tropic sunshine. Almost everywhere inland thick fields of green cane slanted slowly to the forested, jungled mountains sometimes several miles away, sometimes only a few hundred yards from the road. Only the village and towns were ugly. Dusty, jerrybuilt and dilapidated except for one or two rich planters’ townhouses with their gardens walled in so you couldn’t see them, they appeared at regular intervals like misshapen pearls knotted into a string. Peeling ad signs and busted neon tubing along the main streets. Like the beat-up cars nobody knew how to drive or take care of. Parts of a blunted salient of the civilization the tourist vacationers came here to flee but which itself must inevitably come too, brought by them or those who catered to them. All the tourist hotels along the sea were beautiful, they noted, and modern, and there were many of them. Between Ocho Rios and St. Ann’s Bay they stopped at the Roaring River Falls for a beer at the falling-down garbagy beercan-strewn concession in the chill fern-laced clearing beside the giant’s rock staircase over which the water never ceased its noisy pouring, and ate sandwiches Evelyn had insisted on packing for them because the concession was notoriously foul and germy. Then Runaway Bay, Discovery Bay, Rio Bueno, Falmouth. Over all always there was a smell of an unusually pungent woodsmoke, the fuel the black peasants used for everything, from cooking to heating wash water.