The Seersucker Whipsaw (10 page)

“You remind me of a fish I once knew,” I said.

She laughed and picked up the towel, shook it, and began to dry the water from her body. I watched with interest. “When I was three,” she said, “they threw me into the pool at home. It was during a party. My parents thought it was fun. I learned to swim for self-protection.”

“You weren't frightened.”

“I didn't have time to be, I suppose. Daddy jumped in and my mother followed him, fully dressed, and then all of the guests jumped in and they passed me back and forth like a beach ball. It was hilarious, they tell me. I don't remember it.

I offered her a cigarette after she had spread the towel out and was sitting on it, her knees tucked up to her chin. She refused, but said; “Could I have a swallow of your beer? I'm terribly thirsty.”

“It's warm—I'll be happy to get you one from the stand.”

“I'm used to it warm. All I want is a swallow.”

I handed her the green bottle and she drank and handed it back.

“Where do you drink your warm beer?” I asked.

“In Ubondo.”

“You live there?”

“I teach there. I'm with the Peace Corps.”

“I never met a Peace Corps before,” I said. “Do you like it?”

“After a while you don't think about whether you like it or not. You just do it.”

“How long have you been here?”

“In Albertia?”

“Yes.”

“Fifteen months. I came down to Barkandu to have my teeth checked. The Baptists have a good dental clinic here. How are your teeth?”

“My own.”

“Somebody told me once not to think about yourself anymore than you do about your teeth. That started me thinking about my teeth all the time. Do you think about yours often?”

“Every morning; also every night.”

“I like my teeth,” she said. “They seem to be the most permanent thing about me.”

“How many Peace Corps people are in Albertia?”

“About seventy. Some are up north. There are about twenty of us around Ubondo and there are about forty-five over in the east. You haven't been here long, have you? I can tell because you're still so white.”

“Just got in.”

“From the States?”

“From London.”

“For the Consulate or AID or what? I don't think you're a missionary.”

“Not an ecclesiastical one. I'm down here to stir up some interest in the campaign.”

“Oh. You're one of
those
Americans. There will be two of you, won't there?”

“Yes.”

“They're talking about you at the university in Ubondo. The students are.”

“They speak well of us, I hope.”

“Not very.”

“What are they saying?”

“Let's see—there is something about Madison Avenue techniques—”

“That's to be expected.”

“American imperialism disguised as political counsel. Then you're also supposed to be connected with the CIA. Are you?”

“No.”

“I'm glad. I really am. Isn't that strange?”

“I don't know.”

“Why are you down here really?” she asked.

“It's my job. I make a living doing things like this.”

“Aren't you embarrassed.”

“Aren't you?”

“Why should I be?”

“I mean joining the Peace Corps. Doesn't that embarrass you?”

“I'm one of those who don't mind caring,” she said. “I don't mind if people know about it either. So I'm not embarrassed.”

“Why did you join?”

“Kennedy.”

“You mean the ‘ask not what your country can do for you' thing?”

“That was part of it. I was in Washington when he was sworn in. Daddy was invited because he had made a donation or something.”

“This the same daddy who tossed you in the pool?”

“The same.”

“It was a good speech,” I said.

“So that's why I joined. I thought I could help.”

“Have you?”

She looked at me, and then out at the ocean. A breeze had come up and it felt cool against my sweat. “I don't know,” she said. “I'm involved, anyway. I was never involved before. Perhaps I've only helped myself. Maybe that's where you have to start.”

“But you don't feel the same?”

“Not since Kennedy died. I joined more than two years after he was shot to prove that it was as much me as anything else. But it wasn't really. It's different somehow.”

“He was younger,” I said. “That made a lot of difference.”

“There was something else,” she said. “They talk and write a lot about his grace and style. He had all that and he had a beautiful wife and two nice children. They looked like something out of a bad ad. Yet he didn't seem to think about how he looked—I mean he didn't think about himself so much—”

“Like the teeth,” I said.

“Yes. He knew he had what everybody else wanted, but he didn't really care anymore about having it. I'm not making sense, am I?”

“Go on.”

“They killed him because he didn't care about what they care about; because they couldn't stand him not being like they were. They killed him not because he was good, but because he was better than anything else around and they couldn't stand the contrast.”

“Who's they?”

“Oh—Oswald, all the Oswalds. There're millions of them. And they were secretly glad when he died. I know they were. I don't mean that they were Democrats or Republicans or anything. But they weren't comfortable with Kennedy around and now they're comfortable again. They're got the old shoe back, the Texas tacky, and they can snicker and make fun of him and feel superior or just as good, and they couldn't do that with Kennedy.”

“It's a theory,” I admitted.

She looked at me and the smile that came my way was chilly. “You're not one to go overboard, are you Peter Upshaw?”

“I said it's a theory.”

“I don't mean about that. That's what I feel. I don't give a damn whether you agree with what I feel or not, because I can't change the way I feel. I just said that you're not one to go overboard about anything, are you? You're cautious. And if you're cautious enough then you'll never get caught and if you don't get caught, then you'll never feel anything.”

“Tell me something, little girl. Do they still sit around the sorority houses after their Friday night dates and talk to each other about sex and God with their half-slips drawn up to cover their breasts?”

“I guess that was due.”

I said nothing and looked out at the waves playing followthe-leader towards the beach.

“You're married, aren't you?” she asked. Her voice was small and low.

“No. Divorced.”

“Do you love your wife very much?”

I looked at her. There was no guile in the question; just a curiously gentle curiosity.

“No,” I said, “I don't love her very much. I don't love her at all. Why do you ask?”

“Because you seem lonely. I thought you might be lonely for your wife. But you're not, are you?”

“No.”

We sat on the towels on the African sand in silence and watched the ocean. Some gulls tried their luck in the water. The three children chased the small brown dog with the oversized tail along the edge of the surf, then turned and let the dog chase them. They screamed and laughed and the dog barked happily.

“Would you like to go in once more?” she asked.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Who'll watch the stuff?”

“We can watch it from the water and yell if anyone comes near it. You can chase them if they try to take it.”

“All right.”

We ran down to the sea and caught the same wave and dived through it. When we came up we were very close together so I kissed her. It was a brief, wet, salty kiss and she laughed and said “Oh, God,” and I knew what she meant. So we stood there in the Albertian sea and kissed each other again and held each other for what seemed to be a long time. Then the laughter of the children and the barking of the dog drew closer. We turned and the children were pointing and laughing at us. We smiled and waved back and they laughed some more and started to chase the dog again. I held her hand and we walked back up the beach. I helped her to dry off and we didn't say anything until we were dressed and were in the jeep and driving towards my hotel. Then I asked her to have dinner with me at seven and she smiled and nodded. We didn't say anything else. She looked at me once and winked.

It has happened that way sometimes, I suppose. But not to me.

Chapter

8

After I had showered and changed I went next door and knocked. Shartelle called “It's open,” and I walked into a room that was the twin of mine. Shartelle sat on the edge of the bed, with most of the hotel-provided stationery scattered about on the counterpane and the floor. “This mess is the beginning of our campaign, Petey,” he said.

“Looks impressive. Busy, anyway.”

“How was the water?”

“I fished out a date for dinner.”

“White girl?” he asked and arranged some sheets of paper in different order.

“Yes.”

“Thought you might have latched on to one of the daughters of the opposition who would do a little peeping for us, but my luck doesn't much run that way.”

“I'll do better next time.”

Shartelle gathered up a few of the papers and put them on the desk. “This is going to be mighty tricky,” he said.

“What?”

“The campaign.”

“We have a chance?” I said, and picked up one of the sheets of paper from the floor and put it on the bed. Shartelle put it back on the floor.

“That's about it.”

“Can you buy it?”

He shook his head. “We'd have to bid too high. If we win, it'll be because of their mistakes. We just haven't got the votes.”

“So?”

“We're going to help plan their mistakes.”

“Sounds dicey.”

Shartelle got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the harbor. “Some harbor,” he said. “You know where I spent part of the afternoon?”

“No.”

“At the Census Office. There's a nice little old Englishman up there, about seven years older than Satan, and he's got the voting strength all broken down—region by region, district by district, village by village. He'd have it down to precincts except they haven't got any.”

“And?”

“Like I said, we don't have the votes.”

“Do you think Akomolo knows that?”

Shartelle looked at me and grinned. “If he had the votes—or thought he did—we wouldn't be down here, now would we?”

“You have a point.”

Shartelle walked back from the window and sprawled out full-length on the bed, his arms folded behind his head. “I think, Pete, we're going to have to whipsaw it. And I ain't done that in a long time.”

“Two ways at once?”

“That's right.”

“You're the acknowledged expert. Just tell me what you need—and when.”

Shartelle stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, then closed his eyes, and frowned. “You run along,” he said. “I'm going to have something sent up. I got an idea somewhere, nudging around in the back of my mind, and I want to see if I can get it to peek out at me. You going to use the car?”

“I don't think so.”

“Tell William to pick us up at eight in the morning. We got a meeting at noon in Ubondo.”

“Akomolo call?”

“One of his aides.”

“I'll see you in the morning,” I said.

“I think it's the only way.”

“What?”

“Whipsaw it.”

I shrugged. “Give it a try.”

Shartelle sighed and stretched. “I'll study about it,” he said. “It's nudging around there somewhere in the back of my mind.”

Outside the hotel I whistled William up and told him to be back at eight the next morning and to have the car ready to go to Ubondo. I then walked to the hotel's bar to try another of the Australian's martinis.

I was about one third of the way through the drink when the bench mark came on. I call them bench marks. The feeling is something like
déjà vu
except that there is no sense of prefamiliarity. They are simply events, not important in themselves, that become milestones in time. They are moments that I measure from. One happened when I was six years old in a park on a swing. I can still remember the touch and feel of the gray metal rungs and the look and texture of the wooden seat, green around the edges and worn to a sand color in the center by a thousand small behinds. There was another bench mark fifteen years later when I was walking across the Tulane campus in New Orleans. I can still feel the muggy weather, see the sky, describe the sidewalk exactly, even the stencilled medallion that said the cement was laid by A. Passini & Sons, 1931.