anymore in the world. We've got the rights that only men used to have. Well, just hold me like this and kiss me like you did before, for a little while, and then I better be going, and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
And in about ten minutes we were on the mattress together. Her flesh was cool, and as pale in the darkness as the uniform had been. Her thick curls had trapped odors of medication and asepsis. I heard the muffled bong of the corridor call bell, a night shriek of city brakes, the thunder-roll of a jet, fast and high, and soon the more immediate bumpity-thud, bumpity-thud of Mrs. Norman Lewandowski's pale, pretty and earnest hips against the compressed kapok of the thin, hard, rollaway mattress. Thus we exorcized our private ghosts, leaving old and dying far behind as sensation rushed forward in the rich, frictive celebration of life and living.
I dozed after she was gone and awoke with a start, chilled to the bone by the air conditioning, which had dried the sweats of effort while I slept. It was only 12:11 by the little red Pulsar digits. I buttoned my shirt wrong on the first try, and when I did it wrong again on the second try, I seriously considered sitting down on the floor and crying a little.
I drove stately old Miss Agnes home through the tropic night, sitting at the big wheel in one of the deepest, saddest, most dismal postcoital depressions I have ever known. I was an absolutely trivial, wasted,. no-good son of a bitch. I wanted to moan, tear my hair out and gnaw my hands raw. This had really been one great December. Point with pride, you dumb horny old scavenger. You zapped Pidge just because you missed her the first time around, and you're trying to make a perfect score, right? And since you got back, there have been a halfdozen casual availables, and if you put your mind to it you can remember four out of six of their names and maybe three out of six of their faces. And now this lonely nurse person. Like shooting fish in a barrel. No. More like using a shotgun to kill a minnow in a teacup. What is wrong with you this year, fellow? Should you be married, for God's sake? Should you look in the yellow pages for your friendly neighborhood monastery? Should you sign up for a double orchidectomy? You have to do something, because something is definitely wrong with a grown man who spends the idle hour ramming his rigid self into chance acquaintances, no matter how willing they might be, no matter how far away Norman is.
When have you been like this before?
I locked Miss Agnes and walked the empty dock to Slip F-18 and boarded the Flush. Tired as I was, I went through the motions of checking the little panel in the bulkhead to see if any uninvited visitors had been aboard in my absence. I cut the switch with the special key, let myself in and remembered to use the key again on the inside switch. That is where most security systems fail. Thieves wait for you to deactivate it on the outside, then jump from cover and make you take them inside. If you have a double switch on the alarm circuit, with a sixty-second delay, it can be wired so that if the inside one isn't deactivated in time, you get sirens, bullhorns, calliope music, anything you might want to hear.
I remembered when I had been like this the last time. The last time it had been a defensive reaction. I had suspected a far deeper involvement with a lady than I had wanted. And so I had tried to cure it with warm poultices of other ladies, or at least to muffle it, blur it, diffuse it.
Pidge? Lou Ellen? Oh, no, McGee! She's just a kid. Well, not quite. She used to be a kid, and not too long ago. She's not at the bottom of all this cutrate Lothario routine. Couldn't possibly be. Use the acid test on her. Okay. Would I, Travis McGee, bring thee, Linda Lewellen Brindle, aboard this houseboat to live herein and hereon, with me, happily, so long as we shall all remain afloat?
Hell, yes!
I went to bed then, dismayed, not knowing I would get her letter
And in about ten minutes we were on the mattress together. Her flesh was cool, and as pale in the darkness as the uniform had been. Her thick curls had trapped odors of medication and asepsis. I heard the muffled bong of the corridor call bell, a night shriek of city brakes, the thunder-roll of a jet, fast and high, and soon the more immediate bumpity-thud, bumpity-thud of Mrs. Norman Lewandowski's pale, pretty and earnest hips against the compressed kapok of the thin, hard, rollaway mattress. Thus we exorcized our private ghosts, leaving old and dying far behind as sensation rushed forward in the rich, frictive celebration of life and living.
I dozed after she was gone and awoke with a start, chilled to the bone by the air conditioning, which had dried the sweats of effort while I slept. It was only 12:11 by the little red Pulsar digits. I buttoned my shirt wrong on the first try, and when I did it wrong again on the second try, I seriously considered sitting down on the floor and crying a little.
I drove stately old Miss Agnes home through the tropic night, sitting at the big wheel in one of the deepest, saddest, most dismal postcoital depressions I have ever known. I was an absolutely trivial, wasted,. no-good son of a bitch. I wanted to moan, tear my hair out and gnaw my hands raw. This had really been one great December. Point with pride, you dumb horny old scavenger. You zapped Pidge just because you missed her the first time around, and you're trying to make a perfect score, right? And since you got back, there have been a halfdozen casual availables, and if you put your mind to it you can remember four out of six of their names and maybe three out of six of their faces. And now this lonely nurse person. Like shooting fish in a barrel. No. More like using a shotgun to kill a minnow in a teacup. What is wrong with you this year, fellow? Should you be married, for God's sake? Should you look in the yellow pages for your friendly neighborhood monastery? Should you sign up for a double orchidectomy? You have to do something, because something is definitely wrong with a grown man who spends the idle hour ramming his rigid self into chance acquaintances, no matter how willing they might be, no matter how far away Norman is.
When have you been like this before?
I locked Miss Agnes and walked the empty dock to Slip F-18 and boarded the Flush. Tired as I was, I went through the motions of checking the little panel in the bulkhead to see if any uninvited visitors had been aboard in my absence. I cut the switch with the special key, let myself in and remembered to use the key again on the inside switch. That is where most security systems fail. Thieves wait for you to deactivate it on the outside, then jump from cover and make you take them inside. If you have a double switch on the alarm circuit, with a sixty-second delay, it can be wired so that if the inside one isn't deactivated in time, you get sirens, bullhorns, calliope music, anything you might want to hear.
I remembered when I had been like this the last time. The last time it had been a defensive reaction. I had suspected a far deeper involvement with a lady than I had wanted. And so I had tried to cure it with warm poultices of other ladies, or at least to muffle it, blur it, diffuse it.
Pidge? Lou Ellen? Oh, no, McGee! She's just a kid. Well, not quite. She used to be a kid, and not too long ago. She's not at the bottom of all this cutrate Lothario routine. Couldn't possibly be. Use the acid test on her. Okay. Would I, Travis McGee, bring thee, Linda Lewellen Brindle, aboard this houseboat to live herein and hereon, with me, happily, so long as we shall all remain afloat?
Hell, yes!
I went to bed then, dismayed, not knowing I would get her letter
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