She drank and smiled and said, “But you had eyes for all the great huge broads, sweetie. What was that funny name everybody called that dancer? The one named McCall?”
“Chookie. She married one Arthur Wilkinson, who builds spec houses and makes her very happy indeed.”
“And Meyer?”
“Sends his love. He’s as hairy and bemused as ever.”
“And the Alabama Tiger?”
“The party still rolls on, never really quits.”
“It’s a lot cozier aboard the Flush, Trav. Golly, I miss that whole bit, you know? If Fort hadn’t come along just when he did, I could have turned into a beach girl forever, and ended up as one of those nutty old biddies who go pouncing around after seashells. It was just right, you know. My whole damned life fell all to bits and pieces, and you helped me put the pieces back together, and then I had to have somebody who needed me instead of the other way around, and Fort came by But… it was too short. Four years. Not enough, Trav. Very good years, but not enough by half.”
“I would have come up, but I was over in the Islands, and when I got back your letter was two weeks old at least.”
“He was buried on October tenth. My God, a beautiful day, Trav. One of the greatest you could ever see. A real sparkler. We knew. Right from the first night I dated him, he leveled with me. I went into it knowing. But you kid yourself… when you’re that happy.” She lifted her shoulders slowly, let them fall, then grinned at me and said, “You are certainly a pretty spectacular sight, man, around this pasty old town. I never saw you out of context before. You’re a little startling. I was aware of people looking at you, saying with that size and that much tan, he’s a TV actor hooked on sun lamps, or from an NFL team in Texas or California, or some kind of rich millionaire playboy up from Acapulco, or you have this big schooner, see, and you go all over the Pacific. Hell with them. Let them wonder. Now let’s go home.”
The rain had stopped but it seemed darker. The highways were wet. She had a very deft little hunk of vehicle, a Mercedes 230 SL, in semi-iridescent green-bronze, automatic shift. I am no sports-car buff. But I enjoy any piece of equipment made to highest standards for performance, without that kind of adornment Meyer calls Detroit Baroque.
She said, “I better drive it because I’m used to the special ways they try to kill you here, and the places where you’ve got to start cutting out of the flow or get carried along to God knows where.”
“Fine little item.”
“Fort’s final birthday present, last May. It’s a dear thing. If I do anything that bothers you, McGee, just close your eyes.”
Glory and the car were beautifully matched. They were both small, whippy, and well-made, and seemed to understand each other. There was that good feel of road-hunger, of the car that wants to reach and gobble more than you let it. We sped north on the Tri-State, and she had that special sense of rhythm of the expert. It is a matter of having the kind of eye which sees everything happening ahead, linked to a computer which estimates what the varying rates of speed will do to the changing pattern by the time you get there. The expert never gives you any feeling of tension or strain in heavy traffic, nor startles other drivers. It is a floating, drifting feeling, where by the use of the smallest increments and reductions in pedal pressure, and by the most gradual possible changes in direction, the car fits into gaps, flows through them, slides into the lane which will move most swiftly. She sat as tall as she could, chin high, hands at ten after ten, and made no attempt at chatter until the stampede had thinned.
“We jump off this thing at Rockland Road,” she said, “and take a mess of shortcuts you couldn’t possibly find again, and end up at Lake Pointe, with the terminal E, twenty-five **** miles from O’Hare, where awaits a shaggy house, shaggy beach, shaggy drink in front of one of the better fireplaces in the Western world.”
“Will I be staying near there?”
“In there, stupid. Not in the fireplace. There’s a ton of room, and help to run it. And a lot of talking to talk, dear Travis.”
On some of the curves of her shortcuts she showed off a little, but not enough to break the rear end loose. She knew the route through the curves and laid the little car on the rails through each one, steady as statues.
She laughed, and it was a fond laugh. “That man of mine. That Fort. Do you know what came with this thing? Lessons from a great old character named Kip Cooper who raced everything on wheels on every course there is. When old Kip finally approved, then and only then was this my car. Have you still got that absolutely ridiculous and marvelous old Rolls-Royce pickup truck?”
“Please, you are speaking of Miss Agnes. Yes, but lately I’m feeling wistful about her. She’s becoming obsolete. You have to be up to speed when you bust out into the turnpike traffic, or you’re a menace, and the old lady just hasn’t got enough sprint. She accelerates like the average cruise ship. I’m going to have to save her for back roads, lazy days, picnic times.”
We slowed and went between fat stone columns. Private. Slow. Lake Pointe. Residents and guests only. In the gray light through the branches of the bare black trees I saw fragments of houses, a wall, a dormer, a roof angle. When the leaves were out it would be impossible to see them from the smooth curves of wide private asphalt road.
Glory drove to the far end of the area, by a sign that said Dead End, and into a driveway. She parked by garages. The house faced the dunes and the lake. It was a long house, of gray stone, pale blue board and batten, dark blue tile roof
