Everglades Assault (10 page)

“My God, I think they were really going to kill you!” It was Stella. She had gotten back to her feet. Her blond hair was mussed, and there was a growing bruise on her chin. She was still shaking.

I went over and took her by the arm gently. “I think they were considering it.”

“I just can't believe it. I'm going back inside and call the police.”

“You do that. And then you can have some supper with us.”

She looked at her wristwatch and shook her head wearily. “I still have another hour before I'm off duty.” She locked her blue eyes in on mine. “But afterwards? I'd like to see you afterwards. Maybe we can have a drink. And calm down.”

“Sure,” I said.

She took out her order pad and scribbled something on the back.

“That's my apartment number. Stop by in an hour or so. I need a shower. Maybe that'll help. I'd like to wash this whole night away. . . .”

She was still in the shower when I got to her apartment.

The room smelled of light perfume and soap, and there was a maidenly neatness about the place.

Earlier, before I left to see her, there had been an awkward moment with Hervey. After all, it had been pretty obvious that his daughter was interested in me—and that I was interested in her.

But he had just laughed it away. “My God,” he had said, “go see the poor woman. After what happened to her, she's in no frame of mind to be alone.”

So we had eaten our steaks and walked back to
Sniper
to present Gator his. He accepted the pound of raw meat from my hand as if it was expected—and just what in the hell took me so long?

“I probably won't be gone more than an hour,” I told Hervey.

“For God's sake, MacMorgan, quit actin' like a guilty husband. You're a growed man. Stay as long as you like—or for as long as that lady needs you.”

“I'm just trying to tell you what my plans are.”

“And damn it, I'm just tryin' to tell you I don't care what your plans are. I'm gonna have me another shower; carry a couple of cold beers up to that motel room, turn the air conditioner up full, and then watch Johnny Carson on TV. I got a feelin' we ain't gonna have much time for fun up in the 'glades.”

“It hasn't exactly been a circus here.”

“That's the damn truth!” He eyed his swollen hand ruefully, then chuckled. “But hell, it's been too long since I've been in a fight. Makes a guy feel young. I have half a mind to pay a visit to that pretty blond waitress myself.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “Sure.”

I walked along the docks and across the parking lot through the warm September night. There was the fragrance of lime in the air. Mosquitoes whined in my ears, and far out in the darkness of Florida Bay was one frail light—the solitary light which marks the night strongholds of human existence in all rural or desolate places.

When I knocked on her apartment door, I heard Stella call, “Dusky?”

“Right.”

“Give me just a sec, huh?”

I waited outside, swatting mosquitoes. Finally, the door cracked open. A pale eye ascertained that it was me, then the door swung open completely, accompanied by a cold blast of air-conditioning.

I hurried inside.

She told me she hadn't finished her shower. She had a big bath towel wrapped around her, and a smaller towel tied around her hair.

“Boy,” she said awkwardly, “I'm glad you came.”

And for lack of anything better to say, I answered, “Me too. Go on and finish your shower.”

With her hair covered by the towel, the bare lines and structure of her face stood out. She had one of those ranch-woman faces: skin weathered and slightly lined, the childish blue eyes peering out tremulously and in mild surprise that she, too, was growing older.

And if her face didn't tell you that she had once been the vision of youth and beauty, the rest of her certainly did. She had long tapering legs woodcolored with sun, and her hips were so slim they suggested that, at one time or another in her life, she would probably have trouble with childbirth.

“You want a drink?”

“Beer's fine.”

“I brought some of the Tuborg with me—isn't that the kind of beer you were drinking tonight?”

“That was thoughtful, Stella.”

“It's in the icebox. If you don't mind, I'd like a gin and tonic. And call me Stell, okay? All my friends call me Stell.”

Stell went back to her shower while I fumbled around in the little kitchen, making her drink.

If you want to really learn about someone, study the place where he or she lives. It can tell you more about what people are and who they are in five minutes then they can tell you in an hour.

So while I made the drink, I studied the apartment of this new woman, Stella.

She liked photographs better than paintings. It's the hallmark of the pragmatic type. At school, she had probably been better in math than art or English. On the wall was a black-and-white photograph of a pelican in flight. There was a snapshot quality to the photograph. It captured nothing of that normally awkward bird's grace in the air.

The living room was small and neat, with the typical apartment furniture: couch and two chairs stuffed with foam, made to look expensive and sell cheap—and disintegrate after a couple of years' wear. There were little plaster knickknacks on the shelves and tables; toadstools and elves and green frogs. On the coffee table was a stack of benign magazines—
Ladies' Home Journal
and
Apartment Life
—and the only books around were a couple of gothic-romance paperbacks.

There was a sterility about the place that bothered me. It was like walking into a model home—nothing homey or human about it. The barrenness of her apartment was in complete contradiction to the woman's eyes, which suggested her share of miles on that living road of hurt and joy and the day-to-day routine.

Ever the snoop, I listened at the bathroom door to make sure she was still busy, then glided into her bedroom.

It was not exactly a gentlemanly thing to do—but then I've never claimed to be a gentleman.

On the night table beside her bed was one of those little gilded picture frames you buy in the dimestore. On one side of the frame was a photograph of her in a cheerleader's uniform. There was a big blue C on the front of her sweater, and she wore a short blue pleated skirt. She was a very pretty sixteen.

I studied the face of the teenager she had been. She had had a lot more confidence in those days. The blue eyes were a combination of joy and expectation. On the other side of the frame was a reduced copy of her diploma. I was in the room of Stella Catharine Cross, who had graduated from Central High in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-five.

So that put her in her mid-thirties. I wondered what had happened to Miss Cross between then and now; what had stolen the confidence from those lovely blue eyes and added lines and worry.

I didn't have a chance to pursue it much further. I heard the water switch off in the bathroom, and I hustled back to the living room, grabbed my beer, and took a seat.

She came out dressed in a long blue bathrobe that set off her eyes. Her hair was wet, and she rubbed it with a towel. There was a growing nervousness about her, underlined with shyness. She reminded me of some small creature who, after deciding to venture out into sunlight, is suddenly frightened and unsure.

“I must look awful,” she said, trying to comb her hair with the towel.

“Not at all.”

“I dropped the soap and when I bent down to get it, my hair got soaked—so I just decided to go ahead and wash it.”

“I can smell the shampoo. It's nice.”

She exhaled slightly, trying to relax, then found her drink.

“I hardly ever drink,” she explained as she toyed with the wedge of lime I had cut. “I guess it's because I see so many drunks at work. But after tonight . . .” She rolled her eyes. “I feel like I could use one.”

“What did the police say?”

“They said they'd try to catch the guys on the road from Flamingo to Homestead. They said if they didn't get them there it might take a while. They're going to send someone here tomorrow to get a report from you and your friend.”

“We won't be here tomorrow.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

She sat in one of the chairs. I sat on the couch. Her body language told me much. She kept her legs pressed together beneath the robe, and she unconsciously crossed her arms across her breasts, sipping at her drink.

I could almost read her mind. She was wondering why in the hell she had invited some big blond stranger to her room. She was lonely, but had she sunk to the need of one-night stands? Maybe....

She worked more steadily at her drink now, hoping it would relax her. We made small talk; superficial conversation about Florida and the weather and our jobs.

Stella Catharine Cross was much like her apartment. There was a surface blandness to her that implied a good bit. It told me that beneath the surface was probably a complex and lonely human being who camouflaged her vulnerability with things sterile and plain and undecipherable.

When she was ready, I got up and made her another gin and tonic. She took it carefully, and didn't bring it to her lips until I had taken my seat on the couch.

And then, suddenly, her eyes were bugging wide, and her face was bright red. She choked, gagged—then coughed an ice cube clear across the room.

She looked at me wide-eyed, terrified with embarrassment. For a moment I thought she was going to run and hide.

It was all so ridiculous—and so touching—that I found myself laughing.

Then roaring.

“God, I thought things like that only happened to me!” I said, still laughing.

“They do? They do?”

And then she actually started laughing herself. She suddenly seemed to feel better. She got to her feet to retrieve the ice cube, but when she bent down to pick it up, she clunked her forehead on the coffee table. And when she brought her hand up to touch her face, she knocked over a vase of sea oats.

And suddenly she was about to cry again. “My God,” she said. “I'm so . . . so
awful.
”

I stood and went to her. She eyed me fearfully for a moment, then allowed me to take her in my arms.

“You're not awful.”

“Then why do I feel so awful!”

“Maybe it's because you're nervous. Maybe it's because you think I'm going to try to hustle you into bed.”

“Well, aren't you?”

“No. It's nice just holding you like this.”

“I want to tell you something. When I invited you here, I was hoping you would take me to bed. You seemed so nice, like the kind of person you know you can trust.”

“So what happened?”

She put her face down, on my shoulder, as if we were dancing. She exhaled wearily. “I don't know. I'm just such a mess lately. I came down here almost a year ago. I had had some . . . problems in my life. I came down here thinking that if I just got away everything would be all right.”

“A bad divorce.”

“Yes. But . . . but I don't want to talk about that.”

I walked her across the carpet to the couch, then sat down beside her. She kept her face turned away, but she still clung lightly to me.

“You don't want to talk with someone you'll probably never see again, right?” I said.

“I don't know. I don't know what I want.”

“As I told you, my reason for coming here wasn't to take you to bed.”

She snorted. “Jesus, I don't blame you.”

“Damn it, Stella, it's not because you aren't attractive. You're very attractive.”

She rubbed her face against my shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you—even if you don't mean it.” She was quiet for a time. I waited for her to speak, knowing she was deciding if a stranger could be trusted to share her burden. Finally she said, “I don't know what's happened to me. I'm thirty-four years old, but I feel like a scared little kid of eight. Can you understand that? It seems like every day I get smaller while the world just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. I'm scared all the time—but I don't know why or of what. I look in the mirror and I see the wrinkles growing on my face, and I just feel so damn . . .
alone.
”

“If it makes you feel any better, everyone on earth feels like that from time to time. Presidents, waitresses, fishing guides—everyone.”

She turned her face toward me, and I saw that she had begun to cry. “But Dusky, I feel like I'm going crazy. I feel like I'm losing . . . my
mind.
”

“Maybe you are.”

“Thanks!”

“What I'm saying, Stella, is not to let it frighten you to the point where it does drive you crazy. When I'm scared of something, I've got a trick that always makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“I bet.”

“No, I mean it. I think carefully about the thing that is scaring me. And then, very honestly and very methodically, I decide what the very worst thing that can happen really is. I don't sugarcoat it; I don't lie to myself—but even so, the ultimate reality of the fear is never as bad as the fear itself.”

“Sounds like great fun.”

“It's not. But it works.”

She was quiet for a long moment. And very still. Slowly, she turned her head to face me. There was a look of mild surprise in her blue eyes. “You know,” she said, “you're right. It
does
work. Just for a moment, the briefest moment, I could
see
the very worst thing that could happen to me. It was real, and it wasn't very nice—but the moment it seemed real, it was no longer frightening.” She smiled. “Are you sure you're just a fishing guide?”