Paperman said, "Well, let's take it that I'm some kind of world-beating fool, and let it go at that, Iris."
"No, let's not." Iris put her drink on a side table, folded her arms, and looked at him intently. "Norman, now listen. Everybody on this island, everybody without exception I think right down to your Virgil the boatman, knows about me. Why, I came here with Alton. I used to stay nights in Government House. He was going to marry me, or he said he was, he still says so in fact, and I didn't give a damn what anybody thought. I never have. Now how in God's name, Norman, has it happened that nobody told you? Didn't Tilson? Didn't Collins? Didn't Lorna, for Christ's sake, the fresh little tart?"
"Nobody ever did, Iris. Maybe like you they assumed I knew it. Or-I don't know. Nobody ever told me."
He was thinking how unbelievably dense he had been. Everything was falling into place; her odd conduct on the first night when Reena Sanders had beckoned to him; her bristling hostility to Sanders in Pitt Bay, her demonstrative affection to himself under the governor's eyes, and the dog's friendliness with Sanders; a glimpse now and then of Iris with Sanders, her decidedly strange way of talking about this Negro, and about all Negroes. There are none so blind, he thought, as those who will not see. Iris Tramm had been for him the embodiment of the magic of Kinja, the glimmering blonde at the core of the island dream, and he had not wanted to see that she was the Negro governor's mistress, and he hadn't seen it.
Iris's searching eyes on his face made him uneasy. "Are you sure it doesn't make a difference to you? Be honest now. It must be a sort of shattering idea, Norman, if it's actually news."
"Why? I like Iris Tramm, the woman I know. Your love life is your own."
"But I love a Negro, dear. Let's get that very straight. I've been in love with him for two years, and it's been beautiful. For a while it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. Nevertheless, a Negro he is."
"I know he is, and it doesn't make the slightest difference, I swear that to you."
Iris heaved a sigh, never taking her eyes off him. "Doesn't it, though? Honestly, now, Norman-all the Broadway and all the Marxism never got three inches below your skin, did it? You're a nice middle-class New York Jewish liberal, and you're shocked to the core. Obviously you are. I just hope you're not disgusted, too. Because really that's how things are.
Paperman, thoroughly demoralized, said the first thing that came into his head. "Look, Iris, I've slept with a colored girl."
Her face stiffened into a smile, and she said in a hard bright tone, "Have you? Tell me about it. Was it fun? Is it true what they say about them?"
"All I mean is, to me they're just people-"
Iris got off the divan, and stood looking down at him. "Poor Norm. You're floundering, and you're reading your lines very badly. I didn't mean to stagger you like this, baby, God knows. Nevertheless this makes our score for the day perfect, doesn't it? We're over the cliff, after all."
He stood, and tried to put his arm around her. She deflected it with no ill-humor, went to the kitchenette, and took a bottle from a cabinet
"How about dragging your bruised and broken body up to the main house?" she said. "You're having important company in the morning."
"You're building this all up, Iris. I don't want our evening to end."
"I believe you sweetheart, but how do we get the car back up the cliff?"
"What are you making there?"
"Bourbon and tap water. That's what one drinks when one drinks. No fussing with limes and ice cubes and such."
He took the full glass from her and poured the brown contents in the sink.
"Why, thank you," she said. "With that simple gesture, you've saved me from my worst enemy."
"Iris, listen-"
"Norman, go away."
The pulse of sudden power in her voice stopped his protests.
He managed to kiss her once. She did not object. She stood straight and endured the kiss. Then Norman left the cottage named Surrender.
Chapter Thirteen
Return of Atlas
1
The corrugated iron shutters were still down over the wide entrance arches of the terminal when Norman drove up at eleven. He wanted to catch the manager of the air-cargo office early. Peculiar customs regulations existed for fresh foodstuffs arriving by air, and he had a sheaf of official papers with him. But there was nothing to do but wait. No live thing stirred outside the airport except a stray donkey trailing a broken rope across the entrance walk in the beating sun, and browsing on a border of red lilies.
Bob Cohn came driving up in a small gray navy truck a few minutes later. Cohn had unofficially volunteered the truck, with his commanding officer's unofficial permission, to transport Norman's two hundred chateaubriand steaks to the Georgetown freezer. Norman had asked this favor, and Cohn had cheerfully arranged it. The fact that Hazel was coming on the same plane as the steaks had gone unmentioned.
"Hi," Cohn said, squatting beside Norman, who was sitting on the hot tarry-smelling driveway, in the shade of the Rover. The frogman's leg muscles stood out stringily under the red-brown skin. "I told you eleven was too early."
Norman looked at him for a moment and then said baldly, "So, Iris Tramm is Governor Sanders' mistress."
Cohn's eyes widened, and his smile faded away. "What? What makes you say that?"
"She told me."
"She told you?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Last night."
"I see. Were you surprised?"
"I was stupefied. And that got her angry."
A little lizard stood on the roadway staring at them, pulsing out its throat in a grotesque red loop. Cohn caught it with a rake of a hand. "What else did she tell you?"
"Not much. She sort of threw me out."
Cohn opened his palm on the ground, and the lizard leaped free and ran. He grinned at Paperman, his teeth white and regular in his hawkish sunburned face. Cohn wore a T-shirt, very brief khaki shorts, and heavy dusty shoes with white socks. "She got that angry, eh? She got angry at me, too, when I once said I didn't think you knew."
"The way I had it figured, you were probably the lucky man," Paperman said.
Cohn laughed out loud. "I'm the guy Iris tells her troubles to. Back in October the governor asked my CO. to check her out in an aqualung, because she was wild to try it. I drew the assignment and so we got friendly. The lung gave her claustrophobia, and she made only two dives. She's a good swimmer, though, and a game woman."
"You never even made a pass at her? She's smart, and she's very pretty."
Cohn shrugged. "Iris has always treated me like an eighteen-year-old, Norm. -Well? Did you mind?"
"Mind what?"
"Finding that out," Cohn said, looking him in the eye, and Paperman felt that the frogman understood what had happened the night before, in all its main points.
He hesitated, then spoke stoutly for the record. "Not in the least. But she didn't believe me."
Cohn nodded slowly, and thought for a few moments, head down, juggling pebbles in one hand; and then began to talk about Sanders. He was a California Republican, a minor professional politician whose chief asset-so Cohn said-was that he was a Negro. Aside from that, Alton Sanders was a typical career bureaucrat, perhaps brighter than most, hard-working, knowledgeable, alert, and bound to end as a congressman, or an undersecretary in the Cabinet, unless he made a bad mistake; such as, for instance, marrying a white woman who was a former film star notorious for drunken collapses, and an ex-communist to the bargain. Iris's real problem wasn't loving a Negro, Cohn said, it was the more common one of loving a married man, who wouldn't break up his marriage and career for an unsuitable woman he'd fallen in love with.
"You came along about the time she was facing up to that," Cohn said. "Reena was down here, you remember. For a showdown, supposedly, but nothing was happening. When you came into the bar that night for the first time, with all your jokes and Broadway talk, you were a lifesaver. I'd never seen Iris spark the way she did to you. I thought she was working up to try to drown herself, and maybe she was, but you diverted her. She's been worrying over you and your hotel ever since. Iris likes you."
Paperman said, not too steadily, "I liked her. I mean, I still do."
Cohn nodded. "This needed no force reconnaissance to find out. But Norman, why were you so shocked? If you stopped to think about it, what could a smart, beautiful woman like her be doing all alone on a West Indian island? It could only be that her life was such a lousy mess, she'd be strictly nobody to get involved with."
The entrance shutters began to rattle and screech upward. Paperman said as he stood, "You're wise beyond your years."
He had forgotten how small and slight Henny was. She was the first white person out of the plane, after several natives descended the little ladder. She eagerly waved at him, with the smile that he loved, and came toward the gate in a fast walk just short of a scamper. She wore a small beige hat, a tailored black suit, she carried a fur on her arm, and she proclaimed New York as a tiger proclaims jungle. Atlas emerged from the plane right behind her, in a blue brass-buttoned jacket and white flannel pants, hoarsely bawling over his shoulder. He carried a small canvas bag with a bottle sticking out. So much Paperman saw, and here was Henny, running the last few steps and embracing him, with the desperate hug of a lost child that has been found. The smell of her perfume was as welcome and as novel as her kiss.
"My God, you look marvelous," she said.
"Where's Hazel?"
"Oh, still pulling herself together. She's been doing a heavy make-up job for the last half-hour on that bumpy rattletrap. Hi there, Bob! Jesus, the men look good down here. What a ride! Murder! We've been dodging through thunderstorms. It's so clear here!"
"HEY, NORM! HAVE THEY GOT A BAR YET IN THIS SHITTY AIRPORT?" roared Atlas, halfway to the gate. "I'm shaking like a leaf. I need a drink!" He grasped Norman's hand in a damp huge paw. Atlas was pale, and unshaven, and the dark bags under his red eyes were appalling, but otherwise he was the same, complete to the bourbon reek.
"Welcome back, Lester. I'm sorry there's no bar. We'll rush you back to the Reef and you can tank up."
"Doesn't the son of a bitch look healthy and happy?" Atlas said to Henny. Even when he wasn't shouting, he had the voice projection of a hog-caller, and after his first remark, everybody in the airport was staring at him. "Look at that relaxed face. Why, he's dropped ten years. This can only come from laying all the women who register at the Gull Reef Club. It tones up the system."
"Oh, shut up, Lester," said Henny.
"Why? Listen, if Norman's giving that extra service it ought to be advertised. I might pitch in to help him handle the Christmas rush. HAW HAW HAW!"
"What the devil, where's Hazel?" Paperman said. "They're starting to unload the luggage."
A motor-driven wagon was beside the plane, and men in overalls were slinging suitcases and parcels out of a hole in the plane's side. Cohn said, as two frosty oblong paperboard boxes were handed out smoking, "There comes your meat, Norm."
"What meat?" Henny said.
"And there's Hazel," said Cohn. "We're all set."
The girl stood on the top step, one white-gloved hand resting in the doorway, posing for invisible news photographers. Her light clinging pink silk suit displayed a voluptuous figure; she wore no hat, her dark hair fell to her shoulders in an old-fashioned charming way, and at this distance she looked fresh and dewy as a primrose. With a queenly little wave that might have been for Norman, for Cohn, or for everybody in the airport, she came down the stairs, and behind her the Sending emerged from the doorway, carrying Hazel's fur-collared coat, and her hatbox, and her make-up bag, and a typewriter, and a tennis racket, and his own coat, and two cameras.
Hazel gave her father a brief hug and an offhand kiss, looking over his shoulder at Bob Cohn with immense startled eyes. "My goodness! It's you!"
"Sure."
"What on earth are you doing here? Why aren't you off somewhere a couple of hundred feet underwater, strangling an octopus?"
"The navy's discharged me for arteriosclerosis, Hazel."
"Oh yes, no doubt."
The Sending came to the gate, panting, perspiring, and tourist-white. "Hazel, I looked under every seat," he said. "That eyebrow pencil is gone."
"Oh, well, I'll buy another one. You remember Bob Cohn."
Klug looked Cohn up and down and said, "Oh, yes. The frogman. Are you meeting somebody?"
Atlas was herding together the six passengers who were guests of the Club. "Here's our gang, Norm! They had first preference on my booze while it lasted, by God. Gull Reef hospitality this time began right in San Juan, didn't it, folks?"
