Go to the Widow-Maker (28 page)

Bonham took a moment to decide. He hadn’t been too upset by her so obvious dislike of him today on the plane, but it certainly hadn’t made things any pleasanter. “Okay.”

“I expect you’ve been wondering why I acted so strangely to you today on the plane,” she said as they came out into the trellised walkway. It was almost dark now. Soon the manager and one houseboy would be starting up the big outdoor gasoline-driven auxiliary generator in order to carry all the extra room, hall and outdoor walkway lights. It would continue to chug noticeably amongst the insect noises all through the rest of the night until the last one went to bed, when the watchman would turn it off till the next night.

“Well, no. Not so much,” Bonham said. “It seemed sort of strange and sudden after the fun we’d all been having at the Yacht Club, though.”

She nodded, a fast, primly eager nod. “I had a very special reason.” She did not continue and waited, but Bonham would not respond.

“You see,” she went on finally with a sly look, leaning toward him, “I have reason to think that Ron might be thinking about wanting to put some money into this schooner deal of yours.”

“You know about that?”

“Oh, everybody knows about that.”

“I don’t think they do,” Bonham said bluntly.

“Well, then, maybe Ron has told me. Does that matter?”

Bonham shook his head.

“Well, in any case, I think it would be a very good thing for Ron if he did do this. He could put up five thousand, even ten thousand dollars if he really wanted to, you know. And I think it would be good for him.”

“Then why—” Bonham began.

“Because that’s just the way he is,” Carol Abernathy said, obscurely. She went on. “He does just the opposite every time of what I want him to do. Therefore, my plan in being unkind and rude to you was all done in order to push him the other way. If Ron thinks I like you and would like to see him put money into your boat—”

Bonham’s nerves jangled at the way she called the big schooner a ‘boat’.

“—then he would automatically refuse to do it. On the other hand, if he thought I was dead set against you and your project, he would be much more inclined to want to do it with you.

“Now; don’t you think that was wise of me?”

“I guess so,” Bonham said. “But, tell me, why do you feel you want Ron to go into this thing with me? After all, you hardly know me.”

“For his health,” Carol Abernathy said. “For his health, and for his mental health. He works very hard at his plays, you know. It’s a very nervous-making, very wear-and-tearing kind of work. Because of that he needs all the pure relaxation he can get. I think your boat, and diving with you like that every so often, say three or four times a year, would be the best thing in the world for him!”

They had reached the door to the big diningroom-bar, and the voices of the others came out faintly to them through the screens where they stood among the mosquitoes. Suddenly the big generator began to chug and all the extra lights, all those not in the main building, went on all over.

“So if I pretend to be your ‘enemy’ now and again, every now and then, you’ll understand what my purpose is, won’t you?” Carol Abernathy said primly. “And you’ll know that I’m really on your side, and trying to help you with your deal.”

“I’ll think about it,” Bonham said, somehow perplexed. “You want me to go ahead and try to sell him on it?”

“Of course I do! Didn’t I just tell you! And now I’m going in and have a cocktail with that nice sweet Cathie.” Bonham watched her walk away from him with that hunchbacked, very selfsatisfied walk she sometimes got. Then he turned on his heel and went back to do his interrupted washing up. Grant was asleep on one of the beds as he came in, with only a towel thrown across his crotch and under it what was very obviously an enormous hard-on. Grinning, Bonham did his washing up before he waked him for dinner. When he touched the playwright gently on-the shoulder, Grant sat up like a flash, grabbed at the towel on his crotch and blushed. Bonham only laughed, roaring. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody! Come on and get dressed and let’s go eat.”

“W
HERE IS EVERYBODY?”
Grant said as he came back out of the bathroom. He had grabbed up his shorts and slacks and taken them in there with him and put them on in the bathroom.

“They’re all over at the bar. I been workin on that damned camera with William and came back to wash up.” Then Bonham grinned. “Did you have a good pee?”

Grant looked embarrassed, and Bonham roared again. Grant reached for his shirt. “I guess I better hurry up.”

“It aint nothin to be ashamed of,” Bonham said, and a sudden fleeting dark look which Grant did not understand crossed his face.

“Has Ca—Has Mrs. Abernathy gone over yet?”

“Yeah. She’s already there. She seems to have taken quite a shine to Cathie Finer.”

Grant put on his shirt and a pair of rope-soled espadrilles. “I noticed that. Well, maybe it’ll be good for her. Come on, let’s go.”

They walked down the hall as far as the door outside in a sort of cautious silence. “What’s the matter with her?” Bonham said finally. “Is she some kind of nuts or something?”

“Well,” Grant said, “no. I mean, not the kind of nuts you’d have to lock up or anything. Or dangerous. She’s highly neurotic though, I think.”

“Where I come from somebody would up and knock her on her ass,” Bonham said unequivocally.

“It might do her some good. Then again, it might not do her any good at all. At least with Cathie Finer here she’ll have somebody to talk to. Wanda Lou’s not much of a talker.”

“The hell she’s not!” Bonham said.

“I mean, she talks. But she doesn’t say much of anything.”

“That’s fer damn sure,” Bonham growled.

“You seem to be having your troubles with her husband, too,” Grant said with a slight smile.

Bonham’s face looked suddenly weary, stoically weary. “Well, he’s got that cutter of his which we could sure use. And when he sells the building where he had his sports shop up in Jersey, he’ll have some money to put in. I just hope we can get old Sam to go for the schooner deal. I think we can get her for seven or eight thousand. But she’ll need a good bit of yard work.”

“What does he say about it?” Grant said casually.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. We’re going to talk to him tonight.”

“But he knows about it?”

“Yeah, he knows about it. You wouldn’t like to put some money in it yourself, would you?” Bonham asked, rather heavily Grant thought.

They had been walking along the walkway, an uncovered one now, between the widely spaced lights and between them you could see the star-studded sky, each star gleaming like a lightbulb in the clear, absolutely cloudless tropic canopy. Mosquitoes didn’t much bother Grant, and he had been enjoying it, the air smelling of sea, the insect noises in the slight breeze, the faint chugging of the electric generator off somewhere. Now he was suddenly startled, shocked even. He had been expecting this question to come, sometime, but now that it had he was still startled.

“Who, me? No, no; no, no. I haven’t got that kind of money. Shit, I wish I had.”

“As a part owner, you’d get all your diving cruises and trips free. Say three or four a year. Ten days. Or two weeks. We could cruise up here, cruise to Tortuga in Haiti, cruise to the Caymans, cruise to Cozumel and Yucatan even. Be a lot of fun. Lot of diving.”

“I don’t have that kind of money,” Grant said quickly. “It sounds great, but I don’t have that kind of money at all.”

“Wouldn’t have to put in as much as Finer. Say three thousand. Even two thousand. For starters. Well, think about it. We’ll talk about it later.”

They had reached the screendoor to the main building’s porch. Far inside, in the dim bar with its lights gleaming on local pine paneling, they could see the others, and a faint murmur of talk and laughter and glasses clinking came out to them. It sounded good, happy, as if they two were about to enter a group of people with no problems who had nothing to do but enjoy themselves and life. Bonham must have been trapped by the same illusion. He stopped with his big hand on the door handle and took a very deep breath, which he then let out in a long slow sigh. It seemed to take a full minute for him to complete his exhale. “Meantime,” he said, his eyes taking on a really fierce, ferocious look, “I’m gonna
eat!
And
drink!”
He went in.

Grant followed. It was maybe another full hour before they sat down to dinner, and during that time they all except for Carol Abernathy put away an enormous amount of booze. The manager was entertaining, since it was the first night, and the drinks were all on the house. He was a heavy-drinking, half-English, half-white-Jamaican man with a penchant for telling very good, mildly dirty stories which no one had ever heard before, in a very King’s English voice. He had known Bonham, Grointon and Raoul the pilot for years, and had built his hotel here all by himself and was in fact more than half owner of it. He liked to talk about diving and listen to diving stories but had never done any of it and did not, he said, ever intend to. Sam Finer on the other hand could not talk about anything else except diving, and his overwhelming passion for it earned him a good deal of razzing from the others. His admiration and hero-worship for Bonham was even greater than Grant’s.

The drinks flowed freely, since the black barman had received instructions from the manager to keep all glasses filled, and when they went to dinner finally they were all except for Carol Abernathy more than a little pissed—as the British manager liked to say. “I’m pissed!” he said. The dinner was free too, anyway, since it was composed solely of seafood which they had caught themselves, and the manager as host was serving a very good white wine, a Muscadet which he imported himself via Nassau from Europe for his guests, and which, being served freely also, did not allow the ingestion of food to sober anybody up. By the time dinner was over they were all except for Carol Abernathy even more pissed than before it started. “More pissed!” the manager hollered. Finer and Orloffski had taken several big crawfish, or langouste as they were getting to be called more and more, which was served first in a Bahamian recipe with a very hot sauce. After that there were high-piled platters of batter-fried fish—grouper, snapper, hogfish, rockfish—enough to feed a small army. Finer and ‘Mo’ Orloffski, as he liked to hear himself called, had taken it all that morning.

Grointon and Raoul the pilot had made a point of coming into the bar much later, only a few minutes before dinner was served, and would have sat at a table by themselves had not the manager and Bonham invited them to join the larger group.

Grant, who had already been drunk once today, as had Bonham, did not know just when Carol Abernathy went to bed. All he knew was that suddenly he looked up and found she had gone; as had Orloffski and his loudmouth girlfriend, not intending to waste any more goddam valuable sacktime, as Orloffski so handsomely put it; he could imagine their stablelike sex life. Grointon and Raoul were just in the process of leaving, Bonham and Sam Finer were down at the far end of the room talking business in low voices, and he himself was sitting over coffee with Cathie Finer who was a little drunk too and the manager, who was very drunk. The manager was just on the point of excusing himself sleepily to go to bed, which he did, and then cautiously got up and stiff and erect as the Guards Officer he said he once was, marched carefully from the room. Grant and Cathie were left alone.

“Thanks for this afternoon,” she said in a quiet voice with a small smile.

“Are you kidding?” Grant asked. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Not if I could possibly help it.”

“I know that. But when they told us you were coming, and I knew you didn’t know I was here, I was afraid when you saw me that you might say something or let something out, just out of surprise.”

Grant shook his head with stubborn drunken bonhommie. “Bonham told me that Finer had recently married a good-looking New York model. But of course I didn’t connect it with you, or think I might have known you. It’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, it’s funny. Meeting down here like this.

“I like your husband,” he added gallantly, although the truth was he didn’t know Sam Finer well enough yet to like him or not.

Cathie Finer looked straight at him soberly for a moment before she answered. “He’s a nice man, Sam. And he’s worth a
lot
of money. He’s kind of crude maybe, by uh by New York standards; but underneath that he’s a very nice man. And he needs me,” she added simply.

“Well good for you,” Grant said. For no reason he could feel a kind of twisting gripe inside himself. He had never really known her, just that one long weekend together. He had never tried to explore her. Of course, she had probably changed some too in the past two years.

“God only knows why he needs me,” Cathie Finer said. “But he says he does. And after thirty-two, modeling gets to be slimmer and slimmer. And slimmer. Unless you’re a Dorian Leigh or somebody and can open up your own business.” She smiled. “He doesn’t step out on me, and I don’t step out on him. See, Sam’s a very jealous man. Anyway I wanted to thank you.”

“Hell.” Grant flushed. “Forget it.”

“And I also wanted to talk to you about your uh foster-mother there,” Cathie Finer said, her voice getting a little straighter.

“Yeah?” Grant said. “What about?”

“Well, first place, she’s not really your foster-mother, is she?” Cathie Finer said quietly. “She’s your mistress, isn’t she?”

Only a few people had ever asked him that question point-blank. Lucky had been one. He had always denied it. “She was,” he said, not really knowing why he was admitting it now.

“I like her,” Cathie Finer said. “She’s got a lot of marvelous qualities in her. She’s a nice woman. And she’s just about to crack up.”

“You think so?”

“I sure do. And I’m guessing that it’s all because of you, isn’t it?”

Grant wanted to talk suddenly. “Well, it is and it isn’t, you know? This thing you see in her’s been going on a long time, growing a long time. I’ve been there and seen it grow. She used to be marvelous. When she was younger. Or else I was just too young and green to see that she wasn’t.” He stopped to collect his thoughts, which were in some confusion. He couldn’t remember what he meant to say next. He found he was both shocked and surprised by Cathie Finer’s sympathy for Carol, and a little angered. “Well, you see, I don’t know what I can do about it. If she is beginning to crack up.”