She caught on that it was uncomfortable with the screen door between us, gave it a shove with her knee. I backed away on the porch. She stepped out and closed the door.
“I’m Shirley Angela,” she said.
I nodded. She had on a red knitted thing, made of one piece. It was shorts and a top, without sleeves. The top was what I think they call a boat-neck, tight up against her throat. The whole thing was very tight on her. Her face seemed almost childlike, but she was no child.
She said, “Let’s go out back and talk.”
“Okay.”
“He’s sleeping. He only sleeps a few minutes. It might wake him if we went in now.”
“Okay.”
She brushed past me and walked down the sloping cement ramp built from the top of the porch to the front walk. There were no steps. The ramp was for wheelchair cases. I followed her.
The hair was shoulder length, and more auburn, close up. Her waist was extremely narrow. She walked on the balls of her feet, throwing her hips out in back. It was there to be looked at, and she must have known it.
“Out here, Mr. Ruxton.”
I grunted, and we came around the side of the house on a path of stepping stones. She could really do things on stepping stones. She flipped a switch on a pine tree, and floodlights came on out in the yard. We walked along that way, playing Indian, to where the path ended. She paused, but didn’t turn, and said, “There are just the two of us living here. I have to take care of everything.” Then she moved off again.
I didn’t say anything.
The lot was a big one, maybe two hundred by three hundred. It was wooded with Australian pine, a couple of big old water oaks, and royal palms. You could see soft lights in a house beyond a hedge next door. There was a sea wall down there by the Gulf, and the moon and floodlights gleamed on the water. Three weathered lawn chairs stood around a rusting steel-topped table that had once been white.
“We can sit out here.”
“Okay.”
We moved the chairs away from the table and sat.
I didn’t know what we were waiting for, but neither of us said anything for a minute or two. You knew she was young, yet there was something contained about her. She was almost serene. Her skin was pale, almost pure white. Her face was smooth and oval, but with high cheekbones under the velvety skin. Looking at her, you knew it would be something to lay your hands on that soft white skin; very smooth, like a breast, all over.
The thought did occur to me: What the hell is she doing here alone with that old guy in the bed? And somehow I knew it wasn’t any money problem. That’s all I thought, though. I decided to let her carry the ball, and quit thinking how good she looked. Grace had looked good, too, and now she had me half nuts, the way she was acting. We had had it good and then lost it, and now she wouldn’t let me alone and I couldn’t shake her. It made me half sick every time I thought of Grace. I didn’t know what the hell to do about her.
“Florida’s sure nice, nights like this,” I said. “That’s a fine breeze. Smell the salt?”
“Mr. Ruxton. It’s really going to entail a lot of work—what I want done.”
Her voice was much like her face. It seemed kind of flat and childish at first, until the overtones hit you. She leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “We have only one television set, a small one. One of these cheap seventeen- inch portable models. It’s just no darned good, what with those dog ears they use.”
“Rabbit ears,” I said. “If the set’s any good, you should have decent reception. Of course, out here on the beaches, you might have some interference. I’ll check into that.”
“Yes. But what we want are two large sets. Color. One for the living room, and then I want one suspended over his bed, so he can watch it in bed, you see?”
“Hm-m-mmm.”
“He’s able to get up, of course, when he feels well. But mostly he’s in bed, lately. It would be best to hang it right over his head. So he could see it easily.”
She leaned back and folded her hands in her lap.
“We’d pay cash, of course,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Wasn’t worrying.”
She smiled briefly.
“Think I can handle everything you want, Miss Angela.”
“And, also—a good antenna.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not all. I want one of these intercom businesses set up, too. Between all of the rooms. So he can call me whenever he needs me. Sometimes he needs me in a hurry. His voice isn’t too strong.”
“We can take care of that.”
“I have no idea which brand is best. I used to read these consumers’ reports, but I don’t keep up anymore. Naturally, Victor—Mr. Spondell, that is—doesn’t care, so long as everything works perfectly. He’s particular about buying the very best, though.”
“I understand.”
She was a puzzler. I knew she was in her teens, yet she had that direct and deadly poise of a woman beyond her years.
I was figuring Miss Shirley Angela was going to help my business in her own small way. This looked like a good deal. You’ve got to whittle every stick you get your hands on, if you expect to be big. Your business has to be the biggest and the best, if you expect it to pay off. That’s how it was going to be with me. There was the new annex, and two new trucks, and two new men. I was plenty in debt. But if you’re smart enough to find all the angles and ride them down, you won’t drown. In the beginning, you’ve got to scramble, and you’ve got to ride those angles hard, every damned one of them. You don’t let any of them throw you, not even the measliest, because every buck adds up. Either that, or you make it big and fast some way, and quit cold. I had learned the hard way, misfiring across a lot of lousy years, that I would have to slug for it—slug everybody in sight. So I was glad I’d come out here myself, instead of sending one of the men from the shop. It had been mostly by chance, and because Grace was hanging around again outside the store.
I decided to hold off the pitch till after we were inside the house. From the way it looked, the guy in there wouldn’t be any hindrance.
Things seemed a little strained, though, and I wasn’t sure why. I kept wondering what her relationship was to the guy in there.
“We can go in now,” she said. “He’ll be awake.”
We walked back the way we had come and went into the house. As we entered the living room she said, “I’ll let you decide the best place for everything, Mr. Ruxton. You’ll know best, I’m sure.”
We left his room until last. She was avoiding it, and trying every way she knew to make it look as if she wasn’t avoiding it. I wanted to get a good look at him, and that room. Her acting the way she did only made it worse. The room was like a magnet.
It was a fairly large house: large living room, three bedrooms, dinette, kitchen, three bathrooms, and a sprawling glassed-in area they call a Florida room down here. It was so quiet you could hear him clear his throat, or change position on the bed.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her legs and she knew it. We were in the kitchen when she excused herself and came back in a minute buttoning up a yellow housecoat.
“What do you think, Mr. Ruxton?”
“Well, there’ll be a few minor difficulties in the wiring, but we’ll iron them out. Maybe I’d better have a look in there, now.”
She turned quickly away. “All right.” We went into his bedroom.
“Victor?”
He opened his eyes and stared at me.
“Victor, this is Mr. Ruxton. He’s come to put in the TV sets and everything. Like we talked about. He wants to check your room.”
He blinked, just once, staring at me. Those blue eyes were really sharp. Somehow they reminded me of an eagle’s I’d seen in a Belgian zoo. It was as if he stared at the wall right through your head.
