“That must be very elaborate. It’s easier with an enameled cup.”
“Tin cups make it taste even better,” he said. “Not for giant killing. Just for how good it can be. But you ought to have ice cold spring water and the cup chilled in the spring and you look down in the spring and there are little plumes of sand that rise on the bottom where it’s bubbling.”
“Will we have that?”
“Sure. We’ll have everything. You can make a wonderful one with wild strawberries. If you have a lemon you cut half of it and squeeze it into the cup and leave the rind in the cup. Then you crush the wild strawberries into the cup and wash the sawdust off a piece of ice from the icehouse and put it in and then fill the cup with Scotch and then stir it till it’s all mixed and cold.”
“Don’t you put in any water?”
“No. The ice melts enough and there’s enough juice in the strawberries and from the lemon.”
“Do you think there will still be wild strawberries?”
“I’m sure there will be.”
“Do you think there will be enough to make a shortcake?”
“I’m pretty sure there will be.”
“We better not talk about it. I’m getting awfully hungry.”
“We’ll drive about another drink more,” he said. “And then we ought to be there.”
They drove on in the night now with the swamp dark and high on both sides of the road and the good headlights lighting far ahead. The drinks drove the past away the way the headlights cut through the dark and Roger said.
“Daughter, I’ll take another if you want to make it.”
When she had made it she said, “Why don’t you let me hold it and give it to you when you want it?”
“It doesn’t bother me driving.”
“It doesn’t bother me to hold it either. Doesn’t it make you feel good?”
“Better than anything.”
“Not than anything. But awfully good.”
Ahead now were the lights of a village where the trees were cleared away and Roger turned onto a road that ran to the left and drove past a drugstore, a general store, a restaurant and along a deserted paved street that ran to the sea. He turned right and drove on another paved street past vacant lots and scattered houses until they saw the lights of a filling station and a neon sign advertising cabins. The main highway ran past there joining the sea road and the cabins were toward the sea. They stopped the car at the filling station and Roger asked the middle-aged man who came out looking blue-skinned in the light of the sign to check the oil and water and fill the tank.
“How are the cabins?” Roger asked.
“O.K., Cap,” the man said. “Nice cabins. Clean cabins.”
“Got clean sheets?” Roger asked.
“Just as clean as you want them. You folks fixing to stay all night?”
“If we stay.”
“All night’s three dollars.”
“How’s for the lady to have a look at one?”
“Fine and dandy. She won’t ever see no finer mattresses. Sheets plumb clean. Shower. Perfect cross ventilation. Modern plumbing.”
“I’ll go in,” the girl said.
“Here take a key. You folks from Miami?”
“That’s right.”
“Prefer the West Coast myself,” the man said. “Your oil’s O.K. and so’s your water.”
The girl came back to the car.
“The one I saw is a splendid cabin. It’s cool too.”
“Breeze right off the Gulf of Mexico,” the man said. “Going to blow all night. All tomorrow. Probably part of Thursday. Did you try that mattress?”
“Everything looked marvelous.”
“My old woman keeps them so goddam clean it’s a crime. She wears herself to death on them. I sent her up to the show tonight. Laundry’s the biggest item. But she does it. There it is. I just got nine into her.” He went to hang up the hose.
“He’s a little confusing,” Helena whispered. “But it’s quite nice and clean.”
“Well you going to take her?” the man asked.
“Sure,” Roger said. “We’ll take her.”
“Write in the book then.”
Roger wrote Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hutchins 9072 Surfside Drive Miami Beach and handed the book back.
“Any kin to the educator?” the man asked, making a note of the license number in the book.
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” the man said. “I never thought much of him. Just read about him in the papers. Like me to help you with anything?”
“No. I’ll just run her in and we’ll put our things in.”
“That’s three and nine gallons makes five-fifty with the state tax.”
“Where can we get something to eat?” Roger asked.
“Two different places in town. Just about the same.”
“You prefer either one?”
“People speak pretty highly of the Green Lantern.”
“I think I’ve heard of it,” the girl said. “Somewhere.”
“You might. Widow woman runs it.”
“I believe that’s the place,” the girl said.
“Sure you don’t want me to help you?”
“No. We’re fine,” Roger said.
“Just one thing I’d like to say,” the man said. “Mrs. Hutchins certainly is a fine looking woman.”
“Thank you,” Helena said. “I think that’s lovely of you. But I’m afraid it’s just that beautiful light.”
“No,” he said. “I mean it true. From the heart.”
“I think we’d better go in,” Helena said to Roger. “I don’t want you to lose me so early in the trip.”
Inside the cabin there was a double bed, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs and a light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. There was a shower, a toilet and a washbowl with a mirror. Clean towels hung on a rack by the washbowl and there was a pole at one end of the room with some hangers.
Roger brought in the bags and Helena put the ice jug, the two cups, and the cardboard canon with the Scotch in it on the table with the paper bag full of White Rock bottles.
“Don’t look gloomy,” she said. “The bed is clean. The sheets anyway.”
Roger put his arm around her and kissed her.
“Put the light out please.”
Roger reached up to the light bulb and turned the switch. In the dark he kissed her, brushing his lips against hers, feeling them both fill without opening, feeling her trembling as he held her. Holding her tight against him, her head back now, he heard the sea on the beach and felt the wind cool through the window. He felt the silk of her hair over his arm and their bodies hard and taut and he dropped his hand on her breasts to feel them rise, quick-budding under his fingers.
“Oh Roger,” she said. “Please. Oh please.”
“Don’t talk.”
“Is that him? Oh he’s lovely.”
“Don’t talk.”
“He’ll be good to me. Won’t he. And I’ll try to be good to him. But isn’t he awfully big?”
“No.”
“Oh I love you so and I love him so. Do you think we should try now so we’ll know? I can’t stand it very much longer. Not knowing. I haven’t been able to stand it all afternoon.”
“We can try.”
“Oh let’s. Let’s try. Let’s try now.”
“Kiss me once more.”
In the dark he went into the strange country and it was very strange indeed, hard to enter, suddenly perilously difficult, then blindingly, happily, safely, encompassed; free of all doubts, all perils and all dreads, held unholdingly, to hold, to hold increasingly, unholdingly still to hold, taking away all things before, and all to come, bringing the beginning of bright happiness in darkness, closer, closer, closer now closer and ever closer, to go on past all belief, longer, finer, further, finer higher and higher to drive toward happiness suddenly, scaldingly achieved.
“Oh darling,” he said. “Oh darling.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you my dear blessed.”
“I’m dead,” she said. “Don’t thank me. I’m dead.”
“Do you want—”
“No please. I’m dead.”
“Let’s—”
“No. Please believe me. I don’t know how to say it another way.”
Then later she said, “Roger.”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“And you’re not disappointed because of anything?”
“No, daughter.”
“Do you think you’ll get to love me?”
“I love you,” he lied. I love what we did he meant.
“Say it again.”
“I love you,” he lied again.
“Say it once more.”
“I love you,” he lied.
“That’s three times,” she said, in the dark. “I’ll try to make it come true.”
The wind blew cool on them and the noise the palm leaves made was almost like rain and after a while the girl said, “It will be lovely tonight but do you know what I am now?”
“Hungry.”
“Aren’t you a wonderful guesser?”
“I’m hungry too.”
They ate at the Green Lantern and the widow woman squirted Flit under the table and brought them fresh mullet roe browned crisp and fried with good bacon. They drank cold Regal beer and ate a steak each with mashed potatoes. The steak was thin from grass-fed beef and not very good but they were hungry and the girl kicked her shoes off under the table and put both her bare feet on Roger’s. She was beautiful and he loved to look at her and her feet felt very good on his.
“Does it do it to you?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Can I feel?”
“If the widow woman isn’t looking.”
“It does it to me too,” she said. “Aren’t our bodies nice to each other?”
They ate pineapple pie for dessert and each had another cold bottle of Regal fresh from deep in the melting ice water of the cooler.
“I have Flit on my feet,” she said. “They’ll be nicer when they don’t have Flit on them.”
“They’re lovely with Flit. Push really hard with them.”
“I don’t want to push you out of the widow woman’s chair.”
“All right. That’s enough.”
“You never felt any better did you?”
“No,” Roger said truly.
“We don’t have to go to the movies do we?”
“Not unless you want to very much.”
“Let’s go back
