Go to the Widow-Maker (73 page)

“Oh, Lucky, come on,” he said desperately.

“And you had the temerity, the
gall
to accuse me about my old boyfriend from three years ago, who wasn’t even a love affair!” she said. “And so all our love affair, everything that happened to us in New York, was all a lie,” she said. That was when she turned to him and Grant saw he had totally miscalculated. Her eyes were two bright, bright buttons, glinty, impossibly concentrated to two tiny points like some addict’s. They did not at all match the horribly wide, stiff smile of her mouth below them. Grant suddenly remembered that time in Kingston when she had slapped him across the face with her purse, and how he had promised himself to try to analyze her unexpected reaction, and hadn’t. “I
was
a whore. I really
was
a hooker, a New York lay, a two-week party-girl whore. And you were the businessman from out of town in for a fling who wanted to get his ashes hauled. Only it all turned out different, and I married you. Only because you just didn’t happen to be married. Only you didn’t even have guts enough to tell me—”

“Lucky! Don’t say that! You know that isn’t true!” Grant said.

“Only you didn’t even have guts enough to tell me how much you loved the little wife. Back home. You didn’t even have that much courage.”

“Lucky, please.”

Unaware of what she was doing, still with those bright bright, stary, almost pointed eyes and the horrible smile below them, she put her right hand under her left breast and hefted it, hoisted it, as if weighing something. “Men. Goddamned miserable asshole-licking men. Self-pitying sons of bitches. Ass-lickers. I might have known. I
should
have known. Nobody’s ever
really
free, without some kind of a Stud or a free lay around somewhere. But I’m just stupid. Some stupid whore. So! Another Buddy Landsbaum I get.”

Grant felt something click in him and the strange calmness he had felt in the shower stall swept over him even stronger. After all, what could happen? They could shoot each other, at the very worst. Otherwise she could divorce him and take half his loot in alimony, if she wanted. Fine. Good. What the fuck did it matter. “Well, what do you want to do?” he said.

Lucky Grant didn’t answer that and went on absently hoisting her left breast, and her face became normal. “It’s not such a bad deal at that, I suppose,” she said. “All I have to do is fuck you every now and then, whenever you want to get laid, and maybe blow you once in a while. And I’ll have my charge at Saks and my charge at Bonwit’s. I love Mancini shoes. They’re hard to find in New York, did you know that? There’re only two places that I know of. I guess it’s not such a bad deal really. I’ll be just like everybody else. Did you really say that?” she asked. “What she said you said about me?”

“Lucky!” Grant said, stung. Then he pulled himself back down. “Of course not. You’re not.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m fair. But you couldn’t really call me the best cocksucker in New York. That was what surprised me.”

Grant wanted to scream at her from pain. Instead he pulled himself back down, and made himself listen for that click into the calmness that didn’t care. “Well, let’s stop, hunh? It’s the second act curtain. What do you want to do?”

“I certainly don’t want to stay around here any longer,” Lucky said. “That’s for sure.” She seemed as far away from him as he felt from her. It was horrible. But he didn’t care, did he?

“We’ll leave for New York as soon as I can get tickets.”

She turned to look at him then, her eyes wide and hardly seeing but not that horrible brilliance anymore, and took her hand away from her breast. “New York? New York? I don’t want to go back to New York. Not now. All my friends would know right away. All they’d have to do would be to look at us. I’m proud.”

An ironical defense seemed the only thing left to avoid this kind of pain, he thought. “Okay. Well, where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I have to think. This is all a bit of a shock, you know. I have to think. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t want to stay here, I know that.” She gave him a glacial smile that was light-years away. “It’s really not such a bad deal at that, you know. It’s just that it’s not a love affair. But businesswise it’s okay.” The horribly glacial smile disappeared. “But how could you have brought me
here
? Really! How could you have?”

“It was easy,” Grant said. “You think it over and you let me know where you want to go, will you? We’ll go there.”

“Are you going to take me back to your ‘house’ in Indianapolis?” Lucky said.

“No,” Grant said. “I guess that’s out.”

“Yes, I think that ought to be out,” Lucky said. “I want to go back to Kingston,” she said. “That’s where I want to go. I want to go back to René and Lisa. For a while anyway, at least.”

“Okay. I’ll go to town and get the plane tickets. But I would like to suggest,” he added, leaning heavy on the irony, “that Lisa of all people is about the worst choice you can pick at the present moment. She hates men about as much as you do at this moment. She can’t be very good for you right now.”

“Yes,” Lucky said and gave him that light-years smile again, a smile totally different in kind from that first horrible one. “Yes, she hates men. All
but
René. You really are a cheap gutless nogood prick, you know that? How
could
you have brought me here back to
her
? That horrible old bag. How
could
you have been her
lover
?”

“I’ll go and get the tickets,” Grant said in a stony voice. “For as soon as we can get out.”

She didn’t answer. He went and dressed. He was exhausted, he discovered, when he got out of the house, the Cottage. When he put his hands and feet on the steering wheel and pedals of one of Evelyn’s cars they were all four shaking. No hour and a half of bottom-time with a crowbar had ever exhausted him half as much. He forced the car to move anyway, by sheer force of willpower. It had happened. His estrangement with Lucky over Carol had happened. And it had happened just exactly like he had dreamed it so many times in his horrible wide-awake daytime daydream nightmares. Just exactly.

In town, after seeing to the plane tickets (they would be flying out once again on the midnight flight), he went to the Ganado Beach Hotel and called René in Kingston. The Ganado Beach had a dim quiet bar with fishnets on the ceiling and those green glass balls for floats. It was soothing, and he needed soothing. He ordered a double martini. When things are so bad that nothing else bad can happen to you, it’s sometimes almost pleasant, almost peaceful. The end of the line. But of course he’d find room for them René had said.— “You want ze same suite? We ’ave now ze John Gieigud suite, ze Sharlie Addams suite, and now we ’ave ze Ron Grant Honeymoon Suite. I move somebody. Wa ze matter, my Ronnie? Eez somesing bad happen you?”—“No, nothing’s happened,” Grant said, “why?”— “You soun’ fonny,” René said—“No. I’ve caught a small cold is all,” Grant said. —“I ’ave everysing ready for you. I meet you at ze airport. Kees ze Lucky pour me.”— “Sure,” Grant said. Ha ha. Hansel and Gretel and the Babes in the Woods. After he finished his drink he went around to Bonham’s.

The big diver was sitting in his swivel chair with his feet up on his desk, and Orloffski was loafing lazily in a chair on the other side of it. “There’s nothing like some weather to give a guy a rest,” Bonham grinned, and took his feet down.

There semed to be no way to tell him except just come out with it. “We’re leaving, Al. Lucky and me. We’re going back to Kingston for a few days.”

“Kingston’s got the same weather,” Bonham said. “You won’t be able to dive there either.”

“I know. But that’s not why we’re going. Lucky wants to see René and Lisa again before we head out for New York. So it looks like the salvage operation’s over for me.”

“There’s still five cannon to get out,” Bonham said. “We ought to be able to dive in five six days.”

“Not me. I got to be getting back to New York. See about my new play. Starting rehearsals.” It was strange when you felt like this how hard it was just to talk. It was all dull, nothing mattered.

“What’s the matter with you, pal? You look like you lost your best friend,” Orloffski said bluffly.

“I don’t have any best friends,” Grant said, making it crisp. “I thought you knew that.” He was back to not liking Orloffski again, now that the first flush of the Pole’s successful voyage had worn off. He was still convinced Orloffski had stolen his Exacta camera. “You can help Al finish the salvage job,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Are you kiddin?” Orloffski bellowed. “Multiple dives at 120 feet with 47 minutes decompression time? I aint about to. I aint no chance-taker. And I aint no workin diver. I’m a simple spearfisherman.”

Grant looked at him with amusement “Was it all that dangerous, Orloffski?”

“You knew how dangerous it was,” Bonham put in quickly from behind the desk. “It’s all right. I’ll do it myself. It’ll take longer that’s all. Or maybe you and me’ll do it when you come back down for the
Naiad’s
first trip. But what about your share of the seven that we’ve got?”

“I don’t care,” Grant said. “Put it in on the schooner. Send me a statement, but put the money all on the schooner.” He got up. He found he was having trouble sitting still, now. “But there was something else I—” he mumbled, embarrassed. He discovered he hadn’t known what he had meant to say. Or cared. He thought a moment. “Oh, yeah. What about—What about the possibility of silver and gold; you know, other stuff, artifacts, that might have been on that ship?”

“No chance,” Bonham said. He shrugged. “It would take equipment like Ed Link had on the
Sea Diver
to find anything under that sand. Now that it’s located somebody like Ed Link might do it someday, but we couldn’t. Anyway it might even be too deep for Link.” He got up from behind the desk and followed Grant outside. “Listen, I just got word that the
Naiad
may be finished soon. In a couple of weeks maybe. That means that once I get hold of Sam Finer we may be pullin out on our cruise in less than a month. If that’s true, it would be silly for you to go back to America and then come right back. Why don’t you just stay? You could just about live on the extra plane fares.”

“I can’t,” Grant said. “I’ve got to be getting back to New York for my play. And Lucky wants to go back to Kingston before we leave. Anyway, you’ve got my New York address. Send me a wire. Anyway uh Lucky might not be going with us on the cruise.”

“Is something the matter?” Bonham said.

“No. Why?”

“You seem so strange,” Bonham said. “I thought maybe something bad might have happened up at the villa.”

“No,” Grant said. “Nothing.” He found he could hardly think, actually, and he wanted to get done and be gone. “Look, send me that wire. I figure we’ll stay in Kingston a week or so. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bonham said. They shook hands, rather sadly, Grant thought. But then he found he couldn’t really think about much of anything. He couldn’t think consecutively. His mind just jumped around. All he seemed really able to think about was just that Lucky was mad at him, more than mad at him— totally and glacially separated from him. Light-years. Wherever he turned he came up against that like against that same brick wall. On the other side of which was all the sunshine. And there was nothing to do.

Back at the villa he went to see Evelyn. “Lucky and I are leaving.”

“I rather thought you might be.” Evelyn came out onto the veranda with him.

“I wanted to tell you myself. And thank you for everything you’ve done for us. We’re taking the midnight plane to Kingston.”

“Carol is shut up in her room,” Evelyn said. “She would like to know if there’s anything she can do to rectify what she’s done. And she asked me to help any way I can.”

“There’s nothing to be done. We couldn’t possibly stay here now. I wouldn’t want Lucky to. And she certainly doesn’t want to.”

“I suppose not,” Evelyn said. “Carol said some pretty insulting things.”

“Insulting! Did you hear it?”

“How could I help it?” Evelyn smiled. “Still . . .”

Grant looked at her, their hostess, this tall statuesque woman with her cynical face, whom he had known off and on for years now. Just two nights ago, when he had walked out into the grounds well after midnight, he had seen her and the girl Les Wright sitting side by side with their heads together on a set of old stone steps that led nowhere on the hillside. As he watched Les Wright had begun to comb Evelyn’s long gray hair on her thrownback head in the moonlight. He had tiptoed away so they didn’t see him.

“Your screendoor is all busted up down there,” he said.

“That’s of little importance,” Evelyn de Blystein said. “It’s been awf’ly hard on Carol having you here with your new bride.”

“It was her idea,” Grant said. “It wasn’t me who asked for it”

“It’s pretty easy to see that she’s madly in love with you,” Evelyn said.

Grant did not know how much to say, how far to go. “She told you that!”

“No, but . . .”

“I don’t think she’s capable of loving anybody. Or any thing. Except maybe herself, a little bit.”

“She thinks she loves you,” Evelyn said.

“Foster-mothers often fall in love with their sons,” Grant said. “Especially if they haven’t had any children of their own.”

“Yes,” Evelyn said. “Have you seen Hunt?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Don’t you think you ought to say goodbye to him?”

“I suppose so,” Grant said. “Where is he?”

“Paul and he went down to the gardener’s greenhouse to look at some new plants. They’re both trying to pretend nothing has happened, the asses.”

“They would be,” Grant said. “Well, thanks. I’ll go down and see him.”

Hunt Abernathy saw him coming from inside as he approached the greenhouse, and came out to meet him rather than let him come in. Quietly he took Grant by the arm and led him away, off across the lawn. His gray eyes were anxious, enhancing the deep crowsfeet wrinkles around them. “What are you going to do?”

“Go back to Kingston, Hunt. We leave on the midnight plane.”

“Oh, maybe it won’t be necessary to do anything as drastic as that,” Hunt said. “Perhaps if—”