The Beach Girls (16 page)

“Wonderful,” Helen said.

“And,” Orbie continued, “I got those eight Bitty-Beddy
girls on the eleven o’clock plane and that’s more wonderful. Yelping like hound dogs, they were, about missing the party. But, by God, can you figure how it would be, me running around trying to keep ’em out of trouble in a party like this one is going to be? Man! It half sickens me to think on it. And that’s the last damn batch this year. I’m howling tonight.”

“The main thing is, have we got enough beer and food?” Amy said. They stared at each other, wearing slight frowns.

“Not enough,” Gus said gloomily.

They had discussed it many times, and had finally ended up ordering twenty-five per cent more of everything than on the previous year.

“That isn’t the main thing at all,” Helen said in her most crisp executive manner. “The main thing is to keep it from getting too rough. Are you all set on that, Lew?”

A big white grin showed in the middle of his corsair beard. “I’m staying close to sober, cutie, and so are five buddies.”

“How close?”

“Not so close we won’t have no fun at all, but not so far we won’t be able to put the lid on fast if we have to. We’re going to keep circulating every minute.”

She studied him for a moment and then nodded. “There’s not much else we can do. They should be arriving with the stuff pretty soon. The tent is ready. I’ll be taking money and using the stamp. All we can do is hope it’s a nice party. Amy, how about the talent show?”

“We decided eight o’clock, Helen. A friend of Sid’s is going to be the M.C. Sid says he’s worked in big places. He says he’s real funny. Eight o’clock should be about right. He’ll have a sort of a program I made out.”

“Is Christy going to sing?”

Orbie answered, “We had a terrible time talking her into it. Told her how well it went over last year and all, and how much Alice liked it. She just didn’t want to, but finally she said okay. She and me though, only rehearsed one time. I never seen a girl change so much so fast, I swear.”

“Love,” Amy explained with a sigh.

“She wants to sing straight,” Orbie said worriedly. “A
couple ballads. I don’t know how it’ll go over, I honest to God don’t. I guess Leo is all right, but …”

“Well, I guess we’re all set,” Helen said. “You’ve been a very good committee.”

There was almost a concerted sigh. Soon it would be out of their hands. It was as if they had drilled holes in a rocky cliff, planted the charges and lit the fuse. Now all they could do would be watch it go off.

“Anybody think of any special problems?” Helen asked, standing up.

“Moonbeam could get to be one,” Lew said. “If Captain Jimmy should figure on passing out too early. I mean if she sets up in business too obvious, it might not go so good with the womenfolk.”

“You see if you can keep Captain Jimmy slowed down some,” Orbie said.

“Sure thing.”

“Lew,” Helen said, “you remember to have one of your boys take a look once in a while to make sure they’re staying off the boats in storage.”

“Sure thing.”

The committee meeting broke up. They filed off Gus’s boat, looking more worried than festive. Orbie motioned to Lew, and Lew followed him out to the
Mine
and went aboard with him into the neat, gleaming, air-conditioned orderliness of the main cabin of the houseboat.

“Sit down,” Orbie said. “We could get us a small start with one beer.”

“Couldn’t hurt a thing. Don’t mind if I do.”

Orbie opened the beers. They took deep swallows.

“Got a minute?” Orbie asked.

“All you need.”

“I didn’t want to bring this up in front of the others. Fact is, I’m going back on my word even telling you. But I figure it’s another place where there could be trouble and you ought to know about it so you can keep an eye on it.”

“What’s this all about?”

“I’ve known Christy a long time, almost as long as Sim and Marty’s known her. She’s all gal.”

“I go along with that. Couple of times I made a pass at her, damn if she didn’t get me laughing so hard I forgot
what I was after.”

“Same here, Lew. What do you think about her and this Leo Rice?”

Burgoyne pursed his lips and knuckled his beard. “Well, all of a sudden they’re in love so hard it gives me the itch to see them together. It sure was fast and complete. You asking me if it’s a good thing? Hell, I don’t know. I’ve got so I like him pretty good. I wisht he wouldn’t talk so careful. But you take the way I worked him and the way he kept getting up so Dink could knock him down, he’s got a good gravel bottom. He don’t scare, and he learns quick. Hell, Orbie, why shouldn’t he learn quick? You know he’s a big shot businessman. Plenty of money. He don’t look the kind to go knocking a woman around. Christy must be thirty.

“I guess what I think about her and Leo—I guess I think it’s a good thing for her. I mean I never heard of her messing around any, and I guess it’s just as unnatural for a gal as it is for a man to go too many years without any sack time at all.

“Now don’t you get that scowly look, Orbie. I’m not badmouthing Christy and you know it. I don’t want to have to go round and round with you and get all wore out for the party. I’m thinking the whole thing out as I go along. Anybody can see, from the way they just look at each other, they can’t hardly wait to get alone again. And, by God, it makes me feel sorta lonesome, as if I’m missing out by nobody looking at me like that. Yes, I guess it’s a good thing, all the way around.”

“So what if he hurts her by just taking off?”

“I don’t think he’s the kind of a guy who’d …” Lew stopped abruptly and clenched a big brown scarred fist. “Say, you don’t mean that son of a bitch was lying about his wife being dead, do you? If he’s pulled that, I’m going to take him by the—”

“Slow down, for God’s sake. Nothing like that. Christy come to me for advice. Or maybe just to talk it out. It helps you with your own thinking if you talk things out. His wife is dead. She kilt herself last year. Rice isn’t his name. She didn’t tell me his real name. He came here on purpose, to get a good close look at Rigsby. She took a vacation in Nassau and got messed up with Rigsby and
he raised such pure hell with her before he kicked her off the ketch, she kilt herself.”

Lew stared at him, wide-eyed. “God damn!”

“Now this is secret and private, Lew. I shouldn’t be telling you. Christy has been trying to talk Leo out of doing anything stupid. She told me she’s been telling him that now they found each other, it makes everything different. But it doesn’t make it different enough, I guess. He’s enough man so that even if he has got a new woman, that doesn’t cancel out why he come here.”

“To kill him?”

“Maybe. She doesn’t know and I don’t know, and I don’t think Leo is too clear about it in his mind. But he just can’t go away with Christy and spend the rest of his life thinking about what he maybe should have done.”

“I’ve sure wondered why he was giving Rigsby the time of day.”

“She told me he got Rigsby to talk about the woman that kilt herself. She said it was a pretty spooky type thing.”

“Hell, yes.”

“I can remember just about exactly how Christy put it to me. She said she was scared. She said she’s found her guy, but now she’s afraid she might all of a sudden lose him because there’s one part of him she can’t reach. That’s the part about Rigsby. She says he’s getting more tensed up all the time. She’s afraid if he gets a little tight at the party, something is going to blow. And he don’t stand a chance in hell of beating Rigsby up. Hell, that time you and Rigsby met up nose to nose, it took you damn near an hour to lick him, and after you did, he wasn’t as chopped up as you were.”

“I don’t know. I was just fun-fighting. It’s different when a man has a reason big as the one Leo has. My, I’d like to watch that fight.”

“If we could be sure that’s all it would be, okay. Leo would get it out of his system, providing he didn’t get clobbered too fast. But maybe he’ll get a club or a gun and kill him like you kill a snake. And ruin everything for him and Christy. She shouldn’t be hurt bad again. You know that.”

“I know that. Yes.”

“Rigsby’s leaving day after tomorrow, and Leo knows
that too. That’s why she figures he might make his move tonight. And she doesn’t know what it will be. She can’t get him to talk about it or promise he won’t do anything. You and me, boy, we better stay close as we can in case it looks like a good idea to bust something up.”

“We can take turns, like.”

“All right. But don’t you let on to Christy I told you all this, or we will have to go round and round.”

Lew grinned and closed his right hand effortlessly, crushing the empty beer can. “Let’s do that anyway, again some time. Been over a year. Just a little fun-fighting, Orbie. Stand-up, stuff, with no stomping and no gouging.”

“Next week, maybe, if I feel real good.”

Lew started out. He turned back and said, “You hear about Rigsby snufflin’ around Judy Engly?”

“Everybody knows that but Jack.”

“He make out yet?”

Orbie shrugged. “I’d say maybe no. Alice chewed her last week for having anything to do with him. She went all sulky and told Alice she wasn’t doing anything wrong, and what business was it of hers?”

“Now Jack could lick him for sure.”

“For surely sure.”

Lew left the houseboat, slowly and thoughtfully.

By two o’clock, an hour before post time, the party began to stir. It made its first evidence on the moored cruisers. Stan and Beezie Hooper, with several house guests, came down to the marina and started a small social gathering aboard the
Fleetermouse
, airing it out, opening the ports, setting out the chairs and rubber mattresses, setting up a self-service bar, and getting Billy Looby to bring out a supply of ice. Billy, as on previous years, had stocked a monster supply of ice in blocks and cubes—and raised the price.

This year he had improved the range of his service by laying in two cases of cheap bourbon and two cases of cheap gin. With each ice delivery to a boat he would wink and say, “Iffen you folks should run out of drinkin’ liquor …”

The breeze died. The high white sun leaned its tropic weight on the gaudy vacation strip of Florida’s East
Coast, so that it lay sunstruck, lazy and humid and garish, like a long brown sweaty woman stretched out in sequins and costume jewelry. The sun baked the sand too hot for tourist feet. Slow swells clumped onto the listless Atlantic beach. The sun turned road tar to goo, overheated the filtered water in the big swimming pools of the rich and the algaed pools of the do-it-yourself clan, blazed on white roofs, strained air conditioners, turned parked cars into tin ovens, and blistered the unwary. A million empty roadside beer cans twinkled in the bright glare. The burning heat dropped a predictable number of people onto stone sidewalks, of which a predictable number died, drove the unstable further into the jungly wastes of their madness, exposed the pink tongues of all the dogs in the area, redoubled the insect songs in every vacant lot, set the weather-bureau boys to checking the statistics of past performance, and sent a billion billion salty trickles to flowing on sin-darkened skins.

At the Stebbins’ Marina, all exposed metal was too hot to touch. No one stayed below, except on the air-conditioned boats. The small boat traffic, back and forth from the basin entrance to A Dock, had a sleepy, buzzing sound about it, deadened by the hot mugginess of the air. Only the brownest and toughest ones stretched themselves out to endure the predictable agony of the sun. There was a dazed jumble of music, much of it Cuban, from boat radios and record players. Tall tinkling drinks turned tepid the moment the last sliver of ice disappeared.

At three-thirty, half an hour after the bar in the tent opened, Helen Hass made her first deposit in the office safe. She had toured the whole basin with her rubber stamp, ink pad, small counting machine and dark-eyed diligence. Each time she stamped a hand, she clicked the counter.

She pushed dark hair back off her damp forehead with the back of her hand, sat at the desk and counted the first batch. She had also caught some of the early arrivals who had come by car. Soon the lot would be full. A little over seven hundred dollars. It checked out. She put it in the safe and spun the dial.

Alice came heavily down the stairs. “Hi, Helen. That darn little window conditioner up there is making it hotter, seems like.”

“It’s terrible!”

“Getting any customers?”

“Not too many yet. They’re in the shade, drinking beer.”

“Don’t you work too hard, honey, in this heat. Suppose some do sneak in and don’t pay, does it matter much?”

“It does to me!”

“All right, all right. Guess I’ll go out and circulate a little. How do I look?”

“Wonderful!” Helen said. It would have been more accurate to say Alice Stebbins looked different. Her standard costume was blue jeans, a pair of raggedy sneakers, a man’s white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled high on her brown muscular arms. In the cold months she added a bulky maroon cardigan. In honor of the day she now wore a sheer white feminine blouse, a yellow skirt and high heels. Somehow it made her look older, heavier, rather drab and dull and ordinary.

“Is anything wrong?” Helen asked.

“Why do you ask, honey?”

“I thought you seem sort of … listless.”

“Just the heat.” They stepped out together into the yellow furnace. Three men were heading from the lot toward the docks. Helen darted out and stamped them and got their money.

At about quarter to four Leo Rice, in seersucker robe, carrying his toilet kit, started toward shore. Joe Rykler, lounging alone in the shade of the cockpit of the
Ampersand
said, “Whoa, friend.”

“For what?”

“A little stimulator. Does wonders for the endurance. Only takes a moment.”

Leo waited. It did not take long. Joe handed him up a small fat pewter mug, misted on the outside. “Thanks, but what is it?”

“A poor thing, but mine own. It’s a Marterror. That’s what you get when you start to make a Martini and make it too big.”

Leo looked at the mug dubiously. “Little early to blast off, isn’t it?”