a man, I would much rather stick my head into a bucket of snakes.”
“I keep seeing that kid in the blue dress, wanting to be admired.”
“So do I, Alex. She was so vulnerable. She can break my heart. You won’t mind being a friend of the curious and unnatural Miss Larkin?”
“Not at all. I’m honored, Miss Larkin.”
She grinned at him. “Thanks. Say, is there any bread and anything to put between it?”
She made hefty sandwiches and they ate them on the beach. She went back to work. He baked himself in the sun and thought about her. It seemed curious that she should have such a distorted idea of her own appearance. That was probably part of the quirk. She thought of herself as big, bungling, bovine, cowy. At about five nine and an estimated hundred and thirty-five or forty pounds, she was certainly not tiny. But in the configuration of her body, in the walk and the grace of her, she was superbly feminine.
And, to his own wry amusement, he found himself composing mental charades in which he taught her that she could fulfill her role as a woman. It was a tantalizing situation, and he suspected that any other attitude toward her would be rather less than normal. But it was, of course, impossible. At the very first gesture toward any kind of intimacy, she would be off and running, never to look back.
He swam again, deliberately taxing the sore muscles, getting a certain satisfaction out of feeling the stretching and the pain. The club lumps on his skull were smaller, but still tender to the touch.
He showered and dressed and, at five o’clock, drove over into town. He went to Bolley’s Hardware and bought another spinning rig and got a receipted bill to give Celia M’Gann. He had time to pick up some more groceries. He saw Junie Hillyard in the supermarket. As soon as she recognized him, she deliberately turned her back.
He started back toward the beach but, on impulse, just as he reached the foot of Bay Street he turned left on Front Street and drove along the bay shore and parked across from the Spanish Mackerel. As he walked toward the Mack he saw that it had changed very little. It was still a fisherman’s bar that managed to look like a seedy lunchroom.
The late afternoon sunlight flooded in through the front windows. It sat in shabby patience looking across the street toward a fishing dock and boats and rotted pilings, and a pelican sitting on a slanting channel marker, and the green jungly growth of Ramona Key beyond the blue bay water.
The walls of the Mack were painted a soiled cream and green, cluttered with calendars, smutty mottoes, dusty mounted fish, pieces of net and old cork floats. There were warped Venetian blinds at all the windows. The bar was on his left as he went in, topped with that imitation marble that used to be used on soda fountains. There were a dozen wooden bar stools stained dark. On his right were a dozen round tables with green formica tops in a green that clashed with the green on the walls. Across the back wall was a huge juke box, and two pinball machines, and a bowling game machine, a wall phone, an open door that exposed a narrow dingy area containing a blackened hamburg grill and a big tarnished coffee urn; a closed door that, he remembered, gave access to a back room for card games, a kitchen, a staircase to the upstairs where Harry Bann lived.
The only customer was a man sitting on the stool farthest from the entrance. He wore a blue work shirt and denim pants, with the shirt sleeves rolled high to expose muscular arms thickly matted with curly black hair. He had an empty beer bottle and an empty glass in front of him. In profile his face looked dark and predatory under a forehead so high and bulging that it gave him something of the look of a surly embryo. The girl behind the bar was leaning on it and talking to the man in a voice so low that Doyle could not distinguish a word. But it all had the flavor of argument. She gave Doyle a casual glance when he took
“I keep seeing that kid in the blue dress, wanting to be admired.”
“So do I, Alex. She was so vulnerable. She can break my heart. You won’t mind being a friend of the curious and unnatural Miss Larkin?”
“Not at all. I’m honored, Miss Larkin.”
She grinned at him. “Thanks. Say, is there any bread and anything to put between it?”
She made hefty sandwiches and they ate them on the beach. She went back to work. He baked himself in the sun and thought about her. It seemed curious that she should have such a distorted idea of her own appearance. That was probably part of the quirk. She thought of herself as big, bungling, bovine, cowy. At about five nine and an estimated hundred and thirty-five or forty pounds, she was certainly not tiny. But in the configuration of her body, in the walk and the grace of her, she was superbly feminine.
And, to his own wry amusement, he found himself composing mental charades in which he taught her that she could fulfill her role as a woman. It was a tantalizing situation, and he suspected that any other attitude toward her would be rather less than normal. But it was, of course, impossible. At the very first gesture toward any kind of intimacy, she would be off and running, never to look back.
He swam again, deliberately taxing the sore muscles, getting a certain satisfaction out of feeling the stretching and the pain. The club lumps on his skull were smaller, but still tender to the touch.
He showered and dressed and, at five o’clock, drove over into town. He went to Bolley’s Hardware and bought another spinning rig and got a receipted bill to give Celia M’Gann. He had time to pick up some more groceries. He saw Junie Hillyard in the supermarket. As soon as she recognized him, she deliberately turned her back.
He started back toward the beach but, on impulse, just as he reached the foot of Bay Street he turned left on Front Street and drove along the bay shore and parked across from the Spanish Mackerel. As he walked toward the Mack he saw that it had changed very little. It was still a fisherman’s bar that managed to look like a seedy lunchroom.
The late afternoon sunlight flooded in through the front windows. It sat in shabby patience looking across the street toward a fishing dock and boats and rotted pilings, and a pelican sitting on a slanting channel marker, and the green jungly growth of Ramona Key beyond the blue bay water.
The walls of the Mack were painted a soiled cream and green, cluttered with calendars, smutty mottoes, dusty mounted fish, pieces of net and old cork floats. There were warped Venetian blinds at all the windows. The bar was on his left as he went in, topped with that imitation marble that used to be used on soda fountains. There were a dozen wooden bar stools stained dark. On his right were a dozen round tables with green formica tops in a green that clashed with the green on the walls. Across the back wall was a huge juke box, and two pinball machines, and a bowling game machine, a wall phone, an open door that exposed a narrow dingy area containing a blackened hamburg grill and a big tarnished coffee urn; a closed door that, he remembered, gave access to a back room for card games, a kitchen, a staircase to the upstairs where Harry Bann lived.
The only customer was a man sitting on the stool farthest from the entrance. He wore a blue work shirt and denim pants, with the shirt sleeves rolled high to expose muscular arms thickly matted with curly black hair. He had an empty beer bottle and an empty glass in front of him. In profile his face looked dark and predatory under a forehead so high and bulging that it gave him something of the look of a surly embryo. The girl behind the bar was leaning on it and talking to the man in a voice so low that Doyle could not distinguish a word. But it all had the flavor of argument. She gave Doyle a casual glance when he took
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