A guy called Harry was hoisting a girl on his shoulders and she had only half of her two-piece suit on. But nobody paid any attention to that. Instead they all started a dance, with Tober providing the music and lyrics. It went, “Harry likes to carry little Mary” and on and on, and by the time that game was over Tober had forgotten all about the phone call. And later that night, when he saw Pat, he didn’t think of it either, because she and the rest were doing handstands on the beach and there was much brushing of sand and drinking of beer from cans.
Benny had awakened after she’d left. He had run down as he was, unshaven and hungry, but when he saw where she was, on the beach, he had gone back to the house and taken a shower. Then he shaved, found some food in the kitchen, and sat on the dark veranda watching the beach. Later, when Pat went to bed, he saw to it that it wasn’t with Tober, and for the rest he left her alone.
They took care of two more days like that, until they hit one of those afternoons when nobody was partying. The sun made a thick heat outside, noiseless, and the cool house was like a tomb. He heard her bare feet padding on the tile of the hall and he followed her out to the back. From the veranda he could see the beach chair farther down, and one brown leg stretched out He sat and smoked. He had been wondering how long she could stand it there when her leg moved out of sight and then her face looked at him, around the back of the beach chair. “Seen enough, Tapkow?”
He didn’t answer.
She got up, shrugging the thick bathrobe over her shoulders, and came to the veranda. “I asked you a question,” she said. Her knee showed bare when she sat down on the railing.
“Don’t waste your talents,” he said. “I’m just the chaperone.”
She laughed. “I forgot. I’m business. And Saint Benny doesn’t mix business with pleasure.”
He flipped his cigarette across the railing and watched it hit the sand. “Pleasure!” he said, and started to get up.
It had stung her. She jumped off the railing and stood in front of him. “How would you know, choir boy?”
“I’m not buying.” He pushed her aside and walked into the house. Even when he heard her come after him he didn’t stop, and all the way up to the room, while she talked at him with her voice like steel bars hitting each other, he never turned or opened his mouth. Then she slammed the door and they were alone in the room.
He turned and his face made her stop short. “What do you want?” he said.
She didn’t answer right away.
“What do you expect?” he said.
“From you? Nothing.” She sat down on the bed, not caring about the bathrobe, and lit a cigarette.
“One dull afternoon,” he said. “It’s one dull afternoon, so with nobody else around, why, let’s go pick on Tapkow.” He went to the bureau and pulled out a shirt “Would you believe it, Pat, I’m sorry that this happened.”
“What a stink!” She got it out like a hiss. “What a stink when you open your mouth! You know something, Tapkow? You don’t know your place. You’re a thing in a gutter and don’t know it” She was standing again when he turned around. “And I’m only trying to help, making it easy, so you don’t have to overreach yourself.”
He shook the clean shirt out and gave her a short look. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Just leave the robe the way it is.”
When she jumped forward to claw at his face, his hands came up fast and she couldn’t move. A short push and she fell back on the bed.
“You don’t understand.” He said it before she was up again. “I don’t go to bed with a machine. Like a cash register where you push a button and the drawers fly open.”
He was changing shirts now and couldn’t see her. And there wasn’t a sound from the bed. Then she was still sitting there. her eyes looking almost white in the tanned face, with no expression that he could place. So her voice, low, came as a surprise to him. “And I’ve always been that. It’s either been business or a machine with a button to you.” It sounded like a question.
“No,” he said.
“No? In the cabin?” But when she said it she left herself a safe half-smile, crooked and hard.
He reached for her face, slowly, and stroked his thumb down her cheek. “Don’t laugh,” he said.
And then she wasn’t laughing; she cried. She cried not showing him her face, until he held it in his hands, close now, and after that close had no meaning because there was no distance any more between them.
When she woke it wasn’t all good. The bed was empty and he wasn’t there to hold her and make it real. She got off the bed, still tired, and through the windows, in the yard, she saw him by the car, leaning across the door and straightening up. He looked dark in the setting sun, and the way he walked back across the yard-a meaningless thing-became a terrible casualness in her anxious imagination. Because why was she here? Because he’d lied, pretended, to make good some large, ugly plan in which she was the button that made the thing fly open.
Her eyes narrowed into nervous slits and she started to pace. A shower, maybe. She took a shower, first hot, then cold, and dried herself hard. When she was dressed it wasn’t any better. The tense and anxious fear was there, unnamed, and even Benny, had he been there, couldn’t have made it go.
She left the room and went downstairs. Seeing Benny in the distance, she turned the other way in order to avoid him. Then she found Tober. And a little later, not much, in the soft skin inside her arm, there was another small red dot.
She was peaceful now and went back to her room to sleep on the bed.
Once Benny looked in on her and found her all right He hadn’t come to check, he had just wanted to find her all right. Then he went downstairs.
They were still going strong. They had drinks on the veranda, more on the dark beach, and somebody was making a racket with the piano. Benny stood in the night air outside and then he went to the kitchen. He sat at the long table and drank a cup of coffee. While he sat he watched the tall girl in slacks at the stove, heating some beans from a can, and once she asked him for a cigarette. He watched how she moved and he watched the smoke curl from his cigarette. Then he finished his cup and left the kitchen.
He didn’t go into the room with the racket, but stood near the door. Some had their clothes on, some didn’t. There were beach clothes, swim suits, or improvised things, and then there was one in an overcoat. The man had a hat on his head, and his legs, Benny saw, were in regular trousers. And another man was walking around the piano. He had no overcoat, no hat on his bald skull, but there was a suit and a tie. The bald man was short and beefy, the one in the overcoat tall, with an Adam’s apple bobbing along his neck. Benny saw that they both held drinks, but they weren’t drinking. They were looking.
Benny stepped back from the door.
“Afraid of big crowds?” said Tober, and he made to pass Benny, heading for the door. “Now watch how I do this, Benny boy, fearless, forward, fanatic-”
“Wait a minute, Tober.” Benny caught him by the sleeve. “Look inside. See those two guys?”
“Really, Benjamin. I’d rather look at the dolls. And speaking of Santa Claus-”
“Will you shut up for a minute? Take a look, Tober. Who are they?” Benny pointed.
“Aah!” Tober craned his neck and then said, “Aah!” again. “They are dressed to kill, I would say.”
“Tober, concentrate. Who are they?”
“Vagrants, I think. I can always tell vagrants by the way they are dressed. They look different.”
“Tober-”
“Now there’s no sense in those clothes, now is there, Benny? Unless you are dressed to kill-” Tober hesitated and stopped. He took Benny by the arm and started to whisper. “Never trust a junky, Benny, I’m telling you as a friend. Never, not even your own friend. And I’m-”
“Tober, let go.” Benny was tensing with anger.
“And I’m your friend, Benny, from long ago. Please, Benny, listen!” Tober talked fast now, and urgently. “You should listen, Benny, because all I did was forget. I’m a junkhead and you should have reminded me.”
Benny was listening now. The words didn’t make sense, but the voice was almost normal.
“It’s just that I forgot, Benny, I swear it. Do you know Fingers?”
“I know one Fingers.”
“And he’s with Pendleton, right?”
Tober made sense now.
“Go on. What’s on your mind, Tober?”
“He called, only I forgot. He asked about you.”
