The Beach Girls (17 page)

“My first one didn’t harm me a bit. Carry it along, old boy. Nurse it, if it alarms you. Just return the mug.”

“You look a little blurred around the edges, Joe.”

“It’s my leaky old heart that’s blurred around the edges, Leo. She utterly refuses to admit I’m unique, charming, loveable, tender, imaginative, sensitive, manly and indispensable. The woman is a fool. I can make no deal, on any terms, up to and including Platonic marriage, if that’s what she wants. Best legs in the whole Congressional district.”

“Keep trying. I’ll nurse this thing. Carefully.”

After Leo walked into the men’s shower room, he took an icy gulp of the Marterror and put the mug on the window sill. He took a long shower and another gulp, dried himself and gulped again, and had a few more gulps while he shaved. He was surprised when the final sliver of ice slid up the inside of the empty mug and clicked against his teeth.

He checked himself in the bleary mirror near the urinals, bulging his chest and shoulders, sucking his belly deep as he could. A hell of a drastic change from all that executive type flab, those old rolls of suet. “Fine figger of a man,” he muttered, and then grinned at himself in a shamefaced way. But, oh, so much better for all this that was happening with Christy than the way it had been before. Like preparing a gift for her without knowing that was what he was doing. Lean and brown for her. Strong for her. But he had been doing it for Rigsby. Getting ready for Rex. Then doing nothing about it. Delaying the inevitable. But you can’t delay it much longer and still live with yourself, or with anybody else. Or shave this face again.

When he put the robe back on and went out into the sunshine the world had that particularly vivid look which made it clear to him that Joe’s one Marterror had gotten to him. A lot more people had arrived. The slanting sun was not as vicious. The place was beginning to teem and ferment. The natives were restless.

He stood for a moment outside the shower room, looking at the idiot range of color and costume. Two men in swim trunks, straw sandals and coolie hats. Some men in crisp khakis, bleached almost white. A man in a cord business suit, with a violent tie. A girl in a white dress, with red hat, shoes and purse. A bulbous, barefoot, bleary old female type, in purple slacks and an orange shirt and
gold hoop earrings. A stunning girl in a white strapless swim suit, laughing with a less happily endowed girl friend in a cotton sunback dress.

The people from the boats were beginning to mill around with the crowd. Sweating bartenders drew beer in the hot shade of the striped tent, handing it out to the three-deep crowd. Two girls in waitress uniforms were setting up the first installment of the buffet. Cars were parked thick in the lot and along the boulevard. Sid Stark had cut in his special music installation. The hi was very fi, and the tempo was tirelessly jump. Women laughed, showing their teeth and arching their backs. Already great exponents of comedy were slyly spilling dabs of icy beer on the bare feet of the unsuspecting.

As he started back out D Dock there was a gust out of the east, and then the beginnings of a gentle steady breeze. The entire east coast raised its elbows and said, Aaahh.

Just as he reached Joe’s boat, he saw Jannifer Jean standing on D Dock by the stern of Sid’s
Pieces of Seven
. Captain Jimmy was with her. And a group of males, some familiar to Leo, some not. Moonbeam attracted no sidelong looks or stolen glances. The group of awestruck men had braced their feet, faced her squarely, and were boggling at her. She had evidently fashioned her own Bikini, using three blue bandanas, knotted rather than sewn. The final touch was added by silver sandals with extremely high plastic heels. There seemed to be an almost alarming amount of Jannifer Jean. She was as improbable as any calendar. It brought Leo to a sudden stop.

Joe stepped up onto the dock, took Leo’s mug and handed him a full one, and said, “Hold any self-respecting asp to that bosom and it would call for help.”

Leo took a gulp of the new drink and said, “Captain Jimmy looks like the little gray duck who hatched the ostrich egg.” He looked down at the mug. “Hey! I didn’t want this.”

“You’re committed now, old buddy. Take it along and …”

“I know. Nurse it and return the mug.”

“Look!” Joe said.

Leo looked back at Moonbeam just in time to see one of her circle of admirers ease up behind her while Captain
Jimmy was engaged in conversation and give one decisive and strategic tug at the blue knot between her sallow shoulder blades. Moonbeam’s reaction time was dim. The fabric fell to the dock. She looked stupidly down at it.

Captain Jimmy turned and saw his unencumbered bride, yelped and pounced toward the bandana halter, snatched it up and thrust it at her. Moonbeam took it and held it, turning it this way and that, trying to figure out how it should go. Captain Jimmy was trying to keep himself between her and avid eyes. But as the spectators were standing in a half circle, he was a very busy man. At last she held it against her. Captain Jimy did the knot job. And he made of it a rock-hard knot the size of a hazel nut. As he stepped back from her, one of the spectators turned dreamily away and walked off the dock.

Orbie Derr appeared beside Leo and said, “Looks like things getting off to a good fast start this year.”

Leo walked out to the
Ruthless
. The breeze made it bearable below. He put on a dark gray sports shirt and linen shorts in a natural shade, plaid canvas shoes with rope soles. By that time he had nibbled his way through three quarters of his second Marterror.

He walked to the
Shifless
, stepped down onto the stern deck, knocked at the curtained cabin door and heard Christy call, “Just a minute! Who is it?”

“Reo Lice,” he called, deliberately spoonerizing his assumed name.

A few moments later she swung the door open and stared round-eyed at him and at the pewter mug.

“One of those things Joe makes! Golly!”

“Everything is looking vivid, darling.”

“You’re starting mighty early, stranger. Come on in.”

“Need anything zipped or snapped, I hope?”

“No thanks. I just hope you’ll last.”

“I might. Joe won’t.”

She sat with her back to him, brushing her short hair, scowling at herself in the mirror. He liked the neatness and straightness of her back, the warm line from the narrow waist to the swell of her hips.

“I feel overdressed,” she complained.

“That can be rectified.”

“You hush up. I have to sing for the people, damn it.
Maybe I ought to dress simple now and change later.”

“Happy to assist.”

She turned and looked at him. “Leo, you are tight already!”

“Got serious objections?”

“No. No objections. Are you going to get tighter?”

“Could be. Can’t tell.”

She sighed and got up. She went and pulled the curtains more carefully over the windows. She locked the door. “Helen will be too busy to come back here,” she said thoughtfully. She strolled slowly toward him, swinging her hips. “It’s times like these,” she said as he reached for her, “a girl has to think of practically everything.” And they clung together, with the clatter of the elderly air conditioning unit drowning out all but the most spectacular sounds of the growing party.

At the same time, Joe Rykler and Marty Urban were dealing with a highly indignant Billy Looby. With an emphatic spray of spittle, Billy was yelling, “You two cheats come pushing and shoving in here and not paying the fifty cents and I—”

“Hush, you dirty little old man,” Joe said. “We’re the inspection committee. We’ve got to see if your collection is worth fifty cents a look. If it is, we’ll promote it. You’ll make millions. What do you think, Marty?”

Marty stood staring at one photograph at eye level, “My, my, my,” he said, shaking his head. “The things some folks do for a living.”

Joe went over and looked at what had caught Marty’s fancy. “Hoooweee,” he said faintly.

“And that sweet little smile on her purty little face,” Marty said. “By God, Billy, where do you get this junk?”

“I got friends,” Billy said proudly. “You fellas could give me one fifty cents. You know, cut price.”

“Hey, Marty, look at this one,” Joe said.

“Hell, that looks like Moonbeam, only cleaner.”

That started them trying to find people in the photographs who looked like people they both knew.

The game came to an abrupt end when Marty, over in a corner, said, “Now this here one has got a built like that leggy Anne Browder you’re so hot on.”

Joe turned white and said, “How would you like it if
I point out one that looks like your Mary Lee?”

Marty whirled. “You do that and I’ll plain kill you. It isn’t the same.” His eyes were narrow.

“To me,” Joe said, “it is exactly the same. Maybe you didn’t understand that before.”

Marty looked sheepish. “Hell, I’m sorry. I’m sorry all to hell, Joey. I shouldn’ta said a thing like that.” He set his half glass of beer carefully on the floor, locked his hands behind him and said, sticking his jaw out, “Take a free swing.” He closed his eyes. “Come on. I’ll feel better.”

Joe put his empty mug down and swung. Marty bounced off the wall with a thud that shook the shed, landed on his hands and knees, shook his head violently, spat blood and then grinned up at Joe and said, “Man, you got no more punch than Mary Lee. You’re plain pathetic.”

“So give me another.”

Marty got up and picked up his beer. “There doesn’t one of ’em look a bit like Anne. Not a bit.”

“She makes them all look like dogs.”

“Sure does.”

As they strolled out, Billy trotted after them, saying, “You goin’ to tell around how good it is this year, with the new stuff I got?”

Joe shook his head sadly, “It isn’t anywhere near as good as last year, Billy.”

“We couldn’t rightly recommend it,” Marty said. “I’m sorry all to hell.”

“Look at all the new customers!” Joe said.

“What’ll we do now?”

“I’m going to switch to beer, to extend my effectiveness over a few more hours, and then go boat-hopping. Come on.”

“I better go hunt up Mary Lee afore she goes weasel-eyed on me. Anyhow I see enough of boats all day long to last me.”

Rex Rigsby, in a white mesh shirt and pale blue shorts that set off the dark tone of his thick muscular legs, stood apart from the throng in the shade of a storage shed, sipping a Scotch and water and watching the younger women, assaying, with the cool appraisal of the expert, the merit of a golden thigh, the telling sensuousness of a mouth, the
tilt and texture of a breast.

When they were aware of him, he was immediately aware of their awareness and could then index them on the basis of age, income level, probable experience and the ease or difficulty of acquisition—much like a cattleman at a stock show making an educated guess as to a specified blood line and placing his bid by a deft signal with pipe or program. He saw nothing he could not index, nothing that could possibly astonish him.

When he finally saw what he had been waiting for, he felt a strengthening of the pulse in his throat, felt his neck and shoulders bulge. She was strolling toward the tent with her husband, Jack Engly. He was holding her hand. Judy wore a rather prim little outfit, a yellow blouse and white skirt, with a wide shiny cheap-looking green belt.

This particular magic had happened to him many times before. He could see her flaws readily—the too-round childish face, rather dull and sulky, her plump, long-waisted, short-legged build, with too much width of hip and sturdiness of thigh and calf, the suggestion of a double chin, the thick stubby hands, the pigeon-fullness of her breast—but even her flaws excited him. He knew that even without the evidence of the wild night-howling that her rangy young husband could so readily induce, he would have known she was one of that rare minority, a woman so deeply and blindly sensuous that little else in life had any meaning to her. With those few, their special dedication is an almost visible aura, a plangent musk, a textured pungency.

But she was being far more difficult than he had expected her to be. She now knew what he was after, and even though there was a provocative air of willingness about her, she had sidestepped all his careful arrangings thus far. When he had been with her over at the public beach, her conversation had been so crashingly inane that it had almost cooled him off. “So that’s what you think.” “So it’s a free world, ain’t it?” “Geez, Rex, you say crazy things, hones’.” But when the brown eyes looked directly at him, feral and aware, they spoke a private language, making unthinkable promises.

He looked closely at Jack Engly. The big young man
wore a slightly stupefied grin, and he ambled along with the looseness and carelessness of several drinks. Rigsby saw Judy notice him, standing there. She gave him a long, sidelong, sullen stare until suddenly, with a symbolism so blunt, a clue so meaningful that he felt his heart turn completely over, she yanked her hand out of Jack’s. He did not seem to mind. He brought two beers from the bar. Judy stood half facing Rex, thirty feet from him. She held her glass in both hands like a child as she drank, and all the time she drank she kept staring at him, full of her unspoken, insolent questioning.

He knew then how his night would end.

The sun went down. The western sky flamed into rose and faded to bloody gray as the first stars came out. Billy Looby, lopsided and jangling with coins, worn out with the endless trundling of ice to the boats, hoarse from explaining his gallery to the incredulous, turned on the switches that made it a different party.

Up until that moment there had been an outdoor picnic flavor about it. There had been few incidents, none of them serious. No one had been thrown out as yet. There had been the incident of Jannifer Jean’s exposure, which might have become more drastic had Captain Jimmy detected the man who had conducted the experiment in the process of yanking the knot loose. A young lawyer from Clewiston had found himself unable to resist the impulse to place his hand on the satiny concavity of the waist of a young woman in sun halter and shorts, a young woman he had never seen before. Unfortunately for the lawyer, she was the brand new twenty-year-old wife of a career Marine who had recently retired at thirty-seven and was taking a night off from tending bar. The lawyer never saw the blow that clicked his teeth, lifted him high onto his tiptoes, and dropped him peaceably onto his face in the dust beside the buffet. A man who liked to keep things neat rolled the lawyer under the buffet table and made himself another ham and cheese sandwich.