Last Resort (26 page)

“Well-well, Professor Walker.” Halfway to sleep, Wilkie opened his eyes again reluctantly. The sissy little doctor stood looking down at him. “How are you doing?”

“Not bad,” Wilkie admitted.

“Well-well. You know, I was absolutely correct. There’s no cardiac trouble. No sign of anything of the sort. In fact, your heart should be good for another twenty years.”

“Really,” he mumbled skeptically.

“My guess is, you’ve had a gallstone attack. That’s what the tests suggest.”

“Really?” Wilkie frowned, unconvinced. “But the pain—”

“Oh, that’s standard. Gallstones can be really nasty. Famous for it.” The doctor smiled, showing small, even, yellowish teeth. “But nobody ever died of them.”

“Ah?”

“You’ve never had an attack like this before?”

“No. I told you that already.”

“Well-well. If you’re lucky, you might never have another. And incidentally, Professor Walker, you’ll be glad to know that the barium X ray shows a very healthy digestive system.”

“How do you mean?” In spite of himself, Wilkie’s voice rose.

“All clear. No sign of any obstruction.” The doctor paused, checking Wilkie’s face for comprehension and apparently not finding it. “No sign of a malignancy, for instance,” he added, lowering his voice as he pronounced the dreaded word. “We were a little concerned, naturally, because of the rectal bleeding.”

“Bleeding?” Wilkie bleated. I have been found out, he thought.

“You hadn’t noticed it?”

“No,” he lied. “You mean, you’re telling me,” he said slowly, trying to clear his head, “that I have rectal bleeding, but in your opinion I don’t have, for instance—” He took a breath “—cancer of the bowel or colon?”

“That’s correct.” The little doctor positively smirked. “But it wouldn’t hurt to do something about those hemorrhoids when you get home, especially if you see any more blood in your stools. You should be checking for that regularly at your age.”

“Ah,” Wilkie muttered, trying to evaluate the information he had just received. Keys Memorial was a nowhere provincial hospital, and this doctor was a wimp and an asshole. Possibly he was too dumb to read test results correctly and realize that Wilkie was terminally ill with heart disease or cancer of the bowel or probably both. “So I can go home now, right?” he asked.

“Well-well, no, I wouldn’t recommend that. I would strongly recommend that you stay here overnight and get a good rest.”

“Hmph,” Wilkie said, marveling again at the belief of the medical profession that anyone could get a good rest in a hospital. But he did not waste time on the paradox. What he had to consider was that possibly he was not going to die of a heart condition, at least not immediately. He could get on with his life; that is, with his death. But not today. It was already late afternoon, and after what he had been through he doubted that he had the stamina to swim out far enough. There was no hurry, after all.

“So I’ll look in again early tomorrow morning,” the little doctor was saying. “Oh, and before I forget, Professor Walker. Could I have an autograph? My nurse is a great fan of yours, it seems.”

“What? Uh, certainly.”

“Great.” The doctor produced a pen and a prescription pad. “Her name is Bessie.”

Awkwardly, Wilkie raised himself on one elbow, causing his head to spin. He scribbled the name as he had done so many times before, and now perhaps for the last time, adding the usual meaningless phrase, “With best wishes” and his signature.

“Thank you,” the little doctor told him, removing the pad and pen. “She’ll be thrilled.”

A
T ARTEMIS LODGE, THE
following day, Lee Weiss sat behind the desk trying to match guests and rooms for the months of April and May. Ordinarily this was easy, since by then the rush of refugees from winter began to slacken, and after mid-April it was mostly only Canadians who still wanted to come.

Now, though, Lee was finding it hard to concentrate. Every few minutes she raised her eyes from the schedule to stare out the window into the green jungle beyond, and think of Jenny. Sometimes, remembering her cool, soft voice, her cool, soft skin and the sudden warmth of her last kiss, she smiled. Then she frowned, recalling Jenny’s panic on the phone when she’d called an hour ago.

“I should have been there with him,” she had kept on saying, just as she had when she called from the hospital last night, “and I wasn’t.”

“No,” Lee told her. “You were with me. Are you saying that makes it worse? Would it be better if you’d been at the grocery?”

“No—yes—I don’t know.” Jenny laughed nervously.

“That’s magical thinking. If you go on that way, you’ll be telling me next that when you said you loved me, it gave your husband a pain in the chest.”

“I know it’s silly,” Jenny admitted. “But I feel so awful. I wish I could see you.”

“Then come over, why don’t you?”

“I can’t, not yet,” Jenny had half wailed, half whispered. “I have to stay here, in case Wilkie wakes up and wants me.”

Why should he want you now, he hasn’t wanted you in months, Lee had thought but not said.

She knew she had to be patient. Apparently whatever had been the matter with Wilkie Walker wasn’t serious. A gallstone, Jenny had said: that made sense—from what she’d heard, he was probably full of gall and bile. He had been released from the hospital that morning, and soon enough he would be back to his usual disagreeable normality.

Suppose it had been serious, Lee thought. Suppose Wilkie Walker were really ill; suppose he got worse and worse, suppose he died. That would be no loss, because what use was he anyhow? All he’d ever done was to write pompous articles and give poisonous advice and make the woman she loved deeply unhappy.

But whether he was ill or not, soon Jenny would be here; Lee would hold her again, comfort her, kiss her, feel her softening and warming.

Right now, though, she had to stop fantasizing and get back to the schedule for April and May. Lee bent over her desk again, but almost immediately she was distracted, not by internal clamor now but by an external one: the sound of Myra Mumpson and her daughter quarreling on the front porch, where they were waiting for Jacko and his mother. Some of this quarrel was inaudible, but the tone was familiar: Lee had heard it often in couples who came to stay at her guest house in a last-ditch effort to repair a long-term relationship.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Myra said in a voice that had some of the characteristics of a leaf-shredder. “If you really want to save manatees you can do it much more effectively in Washington.”

“There are no manatees in Washington,” Barbie said weakly but stubbornly.

“Don’t be stupid, darling. If you’re sincere about helping those peculiar animals you’re so interested in, you have to be where the power is. In Washington. You could accomplish something there, God willing. It could even become your specialty, endangered species, why not?” Her tone modulated from leaf-shredder to lawn mower and became speculative. “I could get you the help of experts. Trained lobbyists, and a good publicist. Bob might even sponsor a little bill in Congress eventually.”

There was a reply from Barbie, inaudible except for the words “spotted owl.”

“Of course he wouldn’t support anything that interferes with productivity and threatens jobs. But there must be lots of other endangered animals. You could do so much for them in Washington, with your connections.” Myra’s voice was now almost a purr. “But in this backwater, one inexperienced girl, what can you accomplish? Nothing really.”

Her daughter muttered a few words.

“They sound like a bunch of amateur crackpots to me. Besides, if you were here I’d worry about you all the time. Key West looks like a pretty resort town, but underneath it’s a corrupt, godless place, full of bums and drunks and perverts. And how would you support yourself, have you thought about that, honey? You’re used to a very comfortable life. You’ve never had to think about money for one single second.”

Again, Barbie’s reply was inaudible, but the mulish tone of it was clear.

“That’s ridiculous,” Myra declared, turning on the leaf-shredder again. “You have no retail experience, and you can’t even type. You’ve got to come to your senses, darling.”

A second of silence; then Lee heard Barbie cry, “No, I don’t!” and the sound of a porch chair scraped back and falling over.

“Where in God’s name do you think you’re going?” There was no answer, only the thump of feet descending the front steps.

“My poor hysterical daughter’s run off,” Myra announced a few moments later, letting the screen door crash behind her. “She went to some meeting last night, and now she’s suddenly got this dumb idea in her head about staying in Key West.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Lee neutrally.

“Yeah.” Myra began to pace back and forth. “And what I say is, let her try it. She’ll come running home soon enough. This is an expensive town. Barbie won’t be able to pay her way here for a week. And I don’t think Perry will feel like paying for her.”

You’re right about that, Lee thought, but she made no comment.

Myra positioned herself on the edge of a rattan rocker and set it lurching noisily back and forth. She was wearing an outfit suitable for first-class air travel: an expensive lime-green polyester blazer and tailored pants, matching lace-up shoes, and a shiny silk shirt hung with gold chains. She looked extremely out of place among Lee’s handwoven fabrics, Haitian paintings, and disheveled tropical plants.

“Spoiled,” she told Lee, rocking. “Her father spoiled her rotten. Spoiled both of them really. Not like my pa, he was the other way. Couldn’t hardly please him whatever you did.”

“Mh.” Lee raised her head only briefly.

“He was weak,” Myra continued, undiscouraged. “A pushover for anyone with a sob story, not just his own kids. If something in the house wasn’t nailed down, he’d give it away; you know the type.”

“Mf,” muttered Lee, who had been accused of being this type herself.

“I made a big mistake when I married him. I told myself he was bound to succeed in politics, because he was smart, and everybody liked him. He was the best-looking man I’d ever seen, too, and the sweetest, underneath. Too sweet for real life. You have to look soft and be hard, right?”

“Mh,” Lee said. If she didn’t look directly at Myra, and spoke only in monosyllables, maybe the woman would shut up and go away.

“Trouble was, he didn’t have the God-given ambition you need in politics. Didn’t have much ambition for anything, if you want to know the truth. Or sense. Couldn’t see ahead. Last thing he ever did in his life, he went on this real strenuous tour of England, looking for his ancestors, even though he knew he had a bad heart. Not thinking once of his Christian duty to his family, what would happen to us if he passed on. Selfish it was, really.”

“Mm.” Lee frowned. Her attempts to discourage Myra were having the opposite effect: her muttered interjections, like the neutral murmurs of the therapist she had once been, invited confidences.

“Course, it takes a special kind of gift to make it in politics,” Myra continued, almost to herself. “You have to have the personality, and you have to have the know-how. Now my son, Gary, he’s smart enough, but he doesn’t have the personality. He isn’t likable. Sometimes I don’t even like him myself.” She rocked even faster, shaking her head in time with the swings.

“Gary’s good with money, up to a point,” she added. “But he takes bad risks. Some shyster lawyer he met at the gym got him to go in on this funny-sounding land purchase. Gary should’ve smelled a rat. Lord God, the signs were there—the deal was full of rats. I could have told him that, if he’d had the sense to ask. But the money was too good and he got greedy.”

“Yeah?” Lee said, becoming interested in spite of herself. “So what happened?”

“Aw, not much in the end, thank the Lord. Most of the charges were dismissed, and they settled out of court. Except Gary was finished as far as public life went. I could see that right away, though it about broke my heart. But you have to be a realist, right?”

“I guess so,” said Lee, who considered herself one.

“Like with Barbie’s husband, Bob Hickock. Potentially, he’s a winner, but he’s got a wild streak. Impulsive. He doesn’t care anything about money; he’s not going to get into that kind of trouble. But he’s a hot-blooded bastard, excuse the language. Back when he was in the statehouse I realized what the score was. I told him straight out. Listen here, boy, I said, if you feel like fooling around behind my daughter’s back again, you go out of state. And you pay for it up front; none of this messing around with party workers that could fall for you and make a scandal, or get themselves pregnant and blab to the media. Go to Dallas, I told him. Ask somebody you can trust for a phone number.” Myra sighed.

“Acourse Bob didn’t take my advice,” she added. “So pretty soon this over-the-hill ex-Vegas showgirl got her claws into him. I figured it’d run its course, but he’s still nuts about her. Out of his mind. I phoned him day before yesterday, said would he please call my poor Barbie, and ask her real sweet to come back. She’s just waiting to hear from you, I said. Tell her you’ve given up what’s-her-name. Laverna, yeah. I told him, listen, buddy, Laverna is professional suicide. Her history and some of her old photos get in the papers, you’ll be dead politically.”

“And what’d he say?”

“Aw, he was totally unreasonable. He said maybe that’d be better than the way he was living now. Told me he wished to God he’d stayed in North Gulch and just practiced law. Maybe he’d resign his seat and go back there, he said. They were decent people, they’d like Laverna, they’d accept her. In a pig’s eye.” Myra laughed sourly. “I know those small towns.

“Course, Bob was just bluffing,” she added. “He’ll calm down in a while, see reason. If he wants to stay in Congress he’ll do what I tell him in the end, ’cause I’ve got too much dirt on him. But there’s no use talking to him again until Barbie comes to her senses.”

“Mh,” Lee uttered.

“Lord God, the whole thing makes me sick sometimes.” Myra stopped rocking and stared out the window at the pale-green palms blowing in the warm green wind. “I look back over my life, y’know, and I see what I did wrong so clear. All that time I wasted trying to get some man elected. Standing behind some dope who couldn’t learn what we had to teach him, didn’t appreciate the time and, Holy Jesus, the money we put into his campaign. If I’d seen the light sooner, I would have run for office myself years ago. I figure I could have made it to the state senate at least. Maybe further.”