Condominium (51 page)

“With my help?”

“If you’re willing, when the time comes.”

“I think I might be.”

“Thanks.”

“But don’t count on much, Billy. I don’t think there’s any way in the world you can sidestep all hell, if a new channel cuts through where Harrison says it will. No way.”

“If I’d only had more guts …”

“Exactly what I keep saying to myself. Every day.”

“You? What are you afraid of?”

“Look at your own laundry list. It’s the same as mine. See you around. I’m fearless, all right. I did a story on the condominium dwellers’ revolt at Golden Sands and the resident creep killed it. I did one on Harrison’s report yesterday. Same fate. Now I’m going back and write one about how difficult it might be to get off the key in a hurricane if you wait too long, and they will probably kill that one too. Bad for the condo trade. Don’t make people edgy. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t irritate the advertisers. Don’t criticize the sheriff. Instead, go write a fearless feature on the new plantings being put in by the downtown merchants.”

Cole Kimber sat on the near corner of Loretta Rosen’s desk in her small office in the rear of her small building. He wore a white straw ranch hat, a thin gray shirt of Western cut with pearl snaps, custom slacks, custom boots. He smiled down at her. “Tell you again, pretty lady. I got rid of every son-of-a-bitching thing I had left. Sent all my old customers a letter they should get in touch with A to Z Construction and Maintenance, anything they want done. Took a loss on a termination agreement with Letra, on account of their accounts were frozen there at Athens Bank and Trust. Emptied out the apartment, even. Sold stuff, gave it away. Pretty lady, my ex-employees are on the unemployment insurance, and I gave them a nice bonus to tuck away, every one. Went out to Roger Gandey’s place and made him a cash offer on that custom motor home he took out to California and back last year. It’s in first-class shape. Generator, air conditioning, electric galley, rugs this thick. Runs smooth as a new Greyhound bus.”

“Are you trying to sell me a bus ride, for God’s sake?”

“You closed on selling this real estate office yet?”

“Tomorrow, the sixteenth. Noon. They take over then. I hope your advice was good, Cole.”

“It was perfect. If you made a cash deal.”

“I made a cash deal. I discounted a little to make it cash. Certified check for the balance.”

“You’re something, Loretta.”

“Cole, the answer is no!”

“We’d just drift on down around the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, and get the tourist cards and papers for Mexico there. No big hurry. Take all the time we want. Get all the way down to Guatemala, spend some time, then come back up to Yucatán and pick up the ferry service to bring the motor home on back to Miami. Make it last a year and then come on back here and see how things are going for everybody. To tell the plain truth, I got a little too close to Marty Liss and Lew and Benjie and Jus Denniver and those boys, and I think it would be a nice year for traveling.”

“Good-bye. Have a nice trip.”

“You remember why I used to have to take you way out in the wide bay or the Gulf somewhere in the old cruiser? Or why I had to take you way off into the piney woods to that hunting shack?”

“Shut up, Cole!”

“On account of when I’d get you going good, you were by God the noisiest piece of ass south of Atlanta.”

“God
damn
you!”

“Now here you are messing around with that kid lawyer, that pretty boy, that Gregory McKay. Little young for you, ain’t he?”

“You are a bastard.”

“Does he ever get you going to where you howl like a hound in the moonlight? Lord God, I’ve tried quite a few since you busted
us up so you could go back to making money and keeping your mind on it, and they came on very stale ladies.”

“Cole, Cole, Cole.”

“I could make sure I always park the motor home way off in the boonies somewhere so you won’t scare all the Mexicans, honey.
Look
at you, by God. You’re getting all pointy just at the thought of it.”

“Go
away
, Cole.”

“And another thing. How many apartments did
you
sell in those four buildings? If they fall down, like the man says, those people are going to come right to this office with fire in their eye, and those new owners are going to send them right to you. But it could be hard to find you, the places I want us to go.”

“You are a persistent man.”

“You’re old enough to know exactly what you want, and I know just how to give you what you want, and you’ve held onto your build better than any woman your age I ever saw anywhere. You shouldn’t be messing around with some kid lawyer. You are forty-six damn years old, pretty lady, and I am forty-eight, and right now we are both free as birds and we can leave Saturday or Sunday, whichever you say. And here is a pretty I got for you, to give you when you decided to say yes, but here, take it anyway.”

She opened the box and gasped at the lovely ring. It was an oval cabochon of opal, big enough to reach almost from knuckle to knuckle, a milky white with a shifting glimmering fire of orange, red, green, blue, aqua. “You idiot,” she said in a low voice. She exhaled. “Sunday.”

“Hah?”

“Sunday. I can’t leave until Sunday sometime. I have to store my stuff. I have to pack. I have to put the house up for lease.”

He stared at her. “I never thought you’d say yes.”

“You didn’t give that impression. You acted certain.”

“Well, hell. Turn that kid back to his old lady, and we’ll have us a vacation you wouldn’t believe.”

The photograph taken at six o’clock located Ella at approximately 17 degrees north, 75 degrees west. That placed the center a hundred miles southeast of Morant Point, the easternmost tip of Jamaica, and about two hundred and fifty miles due south of Guantanamo. In the photograph the great spirals of rain cloud curved in toward the tiny visible eye. They were counting the dead in Santo Domingo, and estimating the dead in Port-au-Prince. It was raining very heavily and steadily in Havana, and heavily but intermittently in the Keys. The flow of data into the National Hurricane Center was very heavy. From the pilot program of the Integrated Global Ocean Stations System, supervised jointly by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the World Meteorological Organization, oceanographic data was being transmitted through the World Weather Watch along with the usual atmospheric observations. Prediction of probable direction was becoming ever more critical as Ella neared major land masses. Wind currents in the upper atmosphere and the hemispheric patterns of highs and lows indicated that Ella would probably turn northward in the next forty-eight hours. If it was an angled turn, the hurricane could carry on up into the pocket of the Gulf of Mexico. If it waited long before turning it could be in large measure subdued by the hills and jungles of Yucatán. Were it to turn sharply and abruptly, it would smash across Cuba into the lower Keys. As with a person walking down a long hallway lined with doors, each stride reduced the number of choices remaining.

A HEAVY RAIN FELL
across the lower half of the Florida peninsula during the dawn hours on Friday, August sixteenth. Sarasota, Venice, Athens, Boca Grande, Fort Myers and Naples all received about two inches, and almost three inches fell at Key West, Matecumbe and Islamorada. Havana reported seven inches in the previous twenty-four hours, with winds gusting to seventy.

A bright blue bolt of lightning and instantaneous slam of thunder snatched Francie Liss up out of another of those dreams about Troy Mallory. In the dream he had been giving her another tennis lesson, but the court was soft and yielding, as if they were playing on a gigantic mattress. She kept falling, and when she fell she would lose the racket, and while she looked for it, Troy would yell angrily at her. When she found the racket and did hit the ball, she could not make it go fast. It seemed to float over the net toward him, and she wondered why he was not wearing anything at all as he played. As she looked down at herself, the lightning and thunder woke her.

In a few moments the torrential rain began again and she relaxed, having heard and believed that the lightning travels in front of the rain and there is no danger once the downpour begins.

She got out of bed and in her short nightgown she padded over to the sliding doors onto the terrace that overlooked the bay, looking west toward Fiddler Key. She held the Mexican draperies aside and looked out at the silvery bounce of rain from the terrace stones and felt such a great surge of romantic love for Troy Mallory that she felt unable to take a deep enough breath. Yesterday afternoon had been the very best yet. It just seemed to get more and more fantastic for them every time they met. And everything had become so dear to her. That narrow little alley and the big old banyan tree, and the walk through the overgrown little back yard to the funny cottage, where he would be waiting to open the door and take her in his arms, all of it had become magical. He was so tender and so strong, and he had such a wonderful crinkly smile. He was a perfect age for a man, twenty-four, and by wonderful coincidence just one day older than she.

She went back to her queen-size bed, separated from Marty’s identical bed by the shared night table with its controls for the sliding doors, the draperies, the electric blankets, the rheostat for the lights, the dials for the sound system, the thermostat control for room temperature.

Francie lay on her back with her hands up under her nightgown, fingers laced across her flat stomach, thinking about Troy and listening to Marty make that goddam popping sound with his lips every time he exhaled. If he wasn’t snoring, he was making that incredible popping noise. Really a creepy little person to be married to. So hairy. Troy wasn’t hairy all over like that. And where he did have hair it wasn’t all that black curly hair with white hairs in it. Troy was so damn beautiful in every way, in every part of him,
perfect. She thought that after four years married to Marty, it was as if she had earned the right to Troy. Why not? She was getting older and older, every day. Marty would make a person old before their time. Lately he was worse than ever. Mean and nasty. Business problems of some kind. Worried about money. What would he do if she ran away with Troy Mallory? What would the people at the club say? What would her goddam mother say? Poor Troy. Doesn’t have a dime. Was seeded way up there before his knee went out on him. Now he can’t cover enough court to play the big money game. Look at that snitty little girl over there on the East Coast. Thousands and thousands. It isn’t fair. And Marty making me sign that agreement before we got married. Jesus, that was dumb of me. Troy is so sweet. Could I live the way I’d have to live? Waitress or something? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I could, because this is true love, and it means for better and for worse and so on. Richer or poorer. Sickness and in health. My God, Troy is certainly healthy.

She got up and went over and put the heel of her hand against Marty’s shoulder and gave him a hard push.

“Whassawarra!” he said.

“You’re doing that popping thing!”

“Poppythin?”

“Stop popping your mouth!”

“Time sit?”

“Twenny past six.”

“Jesus, Francie! Go to sleep!”

“I
want
to go to sleep. You are popping your mouth and I can’t!”

“Gess room,” he muttered and rolled over. In thirty seconds he was popping again.

She grabbed up her pillow and her light cotton blanket and left, banging the door. She went down the hall to the bigger guest room and lay atop the spread, cocooned in the yellow blanket.

“Troy,” she said aloud in a sweet little voice. “Troy, darling, I love you so. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Maybe he is awake, listening to the rain pour down and remembering how much fun we had yesterday afternoon, and maybe he is saying he loves me too.

Lee Messenger had awakened with a white crackling hissing pain at six on Friday morning, a pain that devoured all will and resistance, and he had awakened her at once to give him a shot. He fell into the Demerol sleep and was summoned out of it by the same merciless force a little after ten o’clock.

When it increased beyond his capacity to endure it, he yelled and hurt his throat, and then said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I just … can’t …”

She gave him the second shot, and when he was finally at rest she phoned the doctor. She said, “I really haven’t seen my husband like this before. It’s like a new dimension. It’s frightening.”

“Well … normally I would say let’s wait a bit and see. But I’ve heard that Ella is turning north and we might have confusions going on here that would make it difficult to get him off the island and into the hospital later if I decided that’s where he should be.”

“We’ll want that suite arrangement, one of those suites, at Physicians and Surgeons Hospital that I looked at before, if one is available. Otherwise, two private adjoining rooms, Dr. Wadkin.”

“I’ll arrange an ambulance, and by the time you arrive with him, they’ll know where to put you, Mrs. Messenger.”

She checked the sleeping old man, then phoned down to the office and said that an ambulance was coming to take Mr. Messenger to the hospital. She packed a bag for him, tears blurring her
eyes as she wondered if he would wear these clothes and come home in them. She packed her own bag, then took the emergency money from the wall safe Lee had arranged to have installed before they had moved in.

She wrote a note to Mrs. Schmidt, who was due to arrive at eleven, telling her to go ahead and do the cleaning, but there would be no one at the apartment to cook lunch or dinner for.

As she waited for the ambulance, she remembered that Sam Harrison had said he would stop by in the afternoon. She phoned his room at the Islander and he answered immediately.

“Sam? Barbara. Lee is pretty bad this morning, and with the storm coming, Dr. Wadkin thinks he might be safer and more comfortable in the hospital, so we’re going over there as soon as the ambulance gets here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What can I do?”