John D MacDonald Travis McGee 13 A Tan and Sandy Silence

Archiwum

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frowning down at her knuckles. "It's rather difficult for one to imagine being
quite ready for it. I mean if one has taken a bucket of scraps aft after
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cleaning fish, it is so abrupt to be suddenly tweaked, then taken by the hand,
and led below." She roused herself and looked slightly startled. She had been
voicing her internal monologue. "I go on, no?" She forced a wan smile. "At any
rate, once the ten days are ended, I shall either go back to the boutique to
stay or go back to quit my job and pack. I shall fret about it later, not now.
Valerie told me that it would be good for you to get as much sleep as you can
now. Can you sleep, dear?"
I could. I slept and slept and slept. The dull ache in hands and feet and head
did not inhibit it. In too many of the sleep periods Lisa was way down below
the velvet black, waiting for me on the bright beach, the severed head propped
on the delicate bones of the jaw, smiling at me.
It was another morning, and Mickey Laneer brought me a stone mug of coffee,
nudged me awake, and put the coffee in my hand after I had hitched up,
knuckled grainy eyes.
"You are some kind of a sleeper," she said.
"A long swim with your hands and feet tied will do it every time. We moved
again, didn't we? Where are we, and what day is it?"
"Anchored in the lee of Frigate Island at eight o'clock on the morning of
Thursday, April twenty-ninth."
"Thursday! But couldn't you get in touch with-"
"He'll be off to the west of here about opposite us at fourteen hundred. We'll
make a radio check on him an hour beforehand. No sweat. We'll run out and
intercept and put you aboard Dulcinea."
"I've been a lot of trouble to you and your crew, Mick."
Her smile was sour. "Better this kind than the kind you were going to lay on
me if I ran you back in.
"Hard feelings, captain?"
She grinned, punched me on the side of the thigh. "My four passengers haven't
made any complaints. Maybe because I run the only game in town. The gals have
loved playing nurse. By doing it your way-with you having the grace not to die
on me-I've kept my friendship with Rupe. And I put a high value on it. No,
McGee. Except for having to give up my own cabin, no hard feelings. How do you
feel anyway? Strong?"
I checked and tested. "Better than I should."
"You look good. If you feel strong enough, I can send you down a little sample
of our recreation program here aboard the Hell's Belle. Courtesy of the
management. Name your favorite nurse, man."
"Joyce?"
The taut smile was gone. "Now you really are a smartass, you know that? I know
damned well you know that girl's arrangement aboard, because she told me about
talking to you."
"I thought maybe she'd made her decision."
"And you were curious? I wouldn't want you aboard long. You'd make too much
mischief. Nobody puts any kind of pressure on that kid. She works it out for
herself. She makes her own decisions."
"What will she decide?"
Mickey Laneer stood up, looking weary and cynical. "She'll decide that every
other choice she has is worse. I'll send your breakfast."
Teddie brought my breakfast. She was the big, creamy, Minnesota Swede who had
learned her sailing on Lake Superior. She was the one who giggled. Her hair
was sea-weathered to a harsh spill of pure white hemp. From the bulge of bland
forehead down to the clench of prehensile toes, she was tanned to the shade of
macaroons. She giggled as she presented the tray with the menu she had
devised. Two giant rum sours. A stack of toast. A platter of flying fish,
perfectly sauteed and browned, crisp and sweet. A big enameled coffee pot and
two of the stone mugs. She latched the door, giggling, and we had breakfast.
She took the tray over to the table and came back, giggling. In the moist
hollow of her throat, from earlobe to collarbone and across the socket in
front, around to the other earlobe, she smelled exactly like fresh cinnamon
and Pears' Soap.
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The rendezvous was made about fifteen minutes past two, an estimated seven
miles due west of Frigate Island. I convinced Mickey that there was no need to
use the tender to transfer me. It was a freshening breeze, the sea running
sparkling high. I said that though I didn't want to test my skull by diving, I
could certainly swim a little. Rupe put the Dulcinea dead in the water,
rocking in the trough, and hung the boarding ladder over. Mickey at the helm
took the Belle across the Dulcinea's stern, laying her over so that as I sat
on the lee rail and swung my legs around to the outboard side, my feet were
but inches from the water.
I dropped and swam the fifty or sixty feet to the Dulcinea, bringing from the
Belle no more than I had brought aboard-the swim trunks, leaving behind
somewhere in the sea the scraps of nylon cord they had cut out of my flesh.
There was no hand extended to help me when I clambered aboard the Duicinea.
Rupe and Artie stood staring at the Belle, jaws slack, leathery paws dangling.
Mickey saw no need to change the uniform regulations for an old friend like
Rupe. Mickey showed off by taking the Belle fifty yards past us, coming about
smartly, working hell out of her girls, and then coming back aslant, waving as
she angled across our bows on a northeast course not over forty feet away. The
girls shouted, grinned, laughed, and waved.
"Fool woman," Rupe said. "All sailor, that fool woman. Artie. Artie? ARTIE!"
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