The Big Bounce

“It’s all right when there’s a breeze from the front. I can leave the door open and just lock the screen.”

“I’ll look at it. Number Five.”

“When do you think you could?”

“Well, I’ll finish this, then I got another thing.”

“Thank you very much.” Her eyes dropped to McCall’s and she turned a page. She had spoken to him.

Ryan circled the pool, around the diving board, and moved down to the shallow end. That was enough bug- catching for one day. He carried the pole across the shuffleboard courts to the equipment storage room in the motel, mounted it on its wall hooks and picked up the toolbox, then cut across to No. 9 and knocked on the door. A little girl came and stood looking up at him through the screen.

“My mother’s still asleep.”

“I just want to fix the shower.”

The place smelled funny; it needed to be swept out and the kitchen cleaned. The little girl’s milk and cereal were on the table with an open loaf of bread and open jars of peanut butter and grape jelly.

“You had your breakfast?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I haven’t had mine yet,” Ryan said. “Hey, you know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Course.”

“Why don’t you make me one while I’m fixing the shower?”

The bedroom door was open, but he didn’t look in going past it. The bathroom was a mess, sand and dirty towels on the floor, the top of the toilet tank heaped with curlers and cosmetics. He had noticed the redhead yesterday, alone here with her little girl, not bad looking and built, but now he crossed her off as a possibility. He got the shower head loose with a wrench-easier than he thought it would be-and went back to the living room.

“Hey, that looks good. You’re a good sandwich maker.”

“My mother taught me,” the little girl said.

“It’s perfect. Listen, I’m going to take it with me, okay?”

He got out of there. He ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the way over to Mr. Majestyk’s, cutting around behind the cabanas, taking his time. The Bay Vista wasn’t a bad-looking place: two rows of identical tan- painted cement-block cottages extending to the beach and hidden from the Shore Road by a seven-unit motel. Ryan was in No. 7, the end one behind the office. All of the cottages faced in on the swimming pool or the patio or the shuffleboard courts or the barbeque grilles except No. 1 and No. 14; they looked out over the beach and rented for twenty dollars a week more than the other units.

Mr. Majestyk’s tan ranch house was on beach frontage adjacent to No. 1. His beige Dodge station wagon was in the garage next to his light-duty bulldozer with a scoop on the front. Mr. Majestyk was in the breezeway between the house and the garage, in the screened area he used as a workshop.

“Here’s the shower thing.”

Mr. Majestyk nodded. “You got the beach done?”

“I’m going to do that next.”

“I’ll show you how to clean this.” Mr. Majestyk wiped his hands on a rag and took the shower head. “It’s got to be freed up. Clean out all the corrosion and crap.”

“Maybe I better do the beach first, you know, before a lot of people get down there.”

“Yeah, what if the lady wants to take a shower?”

“I don’t think she ever does.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Well, what would she take a shower for now? Ten o’clock in the morning?”

“Go on do the beach. I’ll clean it. Listen, we eat at noon or six, depending whether I got to be in court.”

“I forgot you’re a judge.”

“J.P. Today we eat at noon.”

Ryan went to the garage and came back. “I don’t see the rake.”

“It’s around by the front.”

Ryan moved off again, rounding the corner of Mr. Majestyk’s house into sun and evergreen shade, the sun hot on the thermopane picture window, flower beds edged with stones painted white: an Army-post garden except for the birdhouse and the plastic flamingoes feeding beneath it.

He picked up the rake and went down to the beach and started cleaning up, raking the charred wood and wrappers and pop bottles left from the hot dog roast. He’d have to get a box or something. But first he’d work along the beach and make about five or six piles. It was good being in the sun, hot, with a nice breeze every once in a while. He put on his sunglasses and lit a cigarette. There weren’t many people around. The beer drinkers from No. 11 were still quiet, not talking yet. The couple from No. 10 were on a blanket, off by themselves. The little kids from No. 1 were playing in the sand and a few boys were fooling around with a plastic baseball and bat.

He watched the ball sail up against the sky in a high arc, an easy one, the kind you camp under that Colavito would punch his glove waiting for; as the ball came down he saw the girl in the bathing suit walking along the edge of the water, a good fifty yards off, but Ryan knew right away who it was: the dark hair and sunglasses, the slim dark girl figure in a yellow two-piece suit that was almost but not quite a bikini: flat brown stomach and the little line of yellow, good legs, thin but good.

She looked his way, brushing her hair aside with the tips of her fingers. She saw him, he was sure; but it didn’t mean she recognized him, he could be just a guy raking the beach. Maybe he should wave or move down to the water to meet her, but he decided right away that would be dumb. He let her go by, watching now as she moved away, until she was so small she blended into the shapes and colors far down the beach.

If Ray Ritchie’s beach house was in that direction, she was going home. If it was the other way, she’d be back. He thought about her looking at him in the bar and he thought about what Mr. Majestyk had said, about Ray Ritchie keeping her. He had never known a girl who lived with somebody. He knew all kinds of girls, but not one like that. She should have blond hair and great big jugs and be taller and older and wear high heels. And he remembered Mr. Majestyk saying, “How old do they have to be?” He wondered how old she was and where she was from and where she had met Ray Ritchie and how he had got her to live with him, how he had put it when he asked her.

He would say something to her if she came back, but he couldn’t think of what to say and began smoothing the sand again with the rake.

Just relax, he told himself. What’s the matter with you? It was funny, he knew she was going to come back. It didn’t surprise him at all to see her, finally, a spot of yellow in the distance, coming slowly, taking forever, but he still couldn’t think of anything. He said in his mind, “Hi, how you doing?” He said, “Well, look who’s here.” He said, “Hey, where you going?” He said to himself, “For Christ sake, cut it out.”

Ryan moved closer to the water and started raking the sand, smoothing it, not looking at the girl but still seeing her, the slim dark legs and long hair.

He timed it right, straightening up when she was only a few yards off, to lean on the rake like a spearman.

She looked at him, then, unhurriedly, away from him. Ryan waited until she was past, so she would have to turn around.

“Hey.”

She took two or three more steps before turning half around slowly, legs apart, and looked at him.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” Ryan said. He gave her time to say what?

But she didn’t. She waited.

And finally Ryan said, “I was wondering what you were looking at me for in the bar?”

She waited a moment longer. “Are you sure I was looking at you?”

Ryan nodded. “I’m sure. You think it’s about time we quit fooling around?”

She smiled but barely. “What’s the matter with fooling around?” The wind blew her hair and she brushed it from her eye, the hair slanting across her forehead, dark brown and probably brown eyes.

“I mean wasting time,” Ryan said.

“I know what you mean.”