Bright Orange for the Shroud Read Free Page A

for a target of opportunity.
    I remember a very late night when I sat alone with my hairy economist friend named Meyer in the cockpit of his small cruiser which he christened the
John Maynard Keynes
, after a beach time when Wilma had been so totally on she had sparkled like the moonlit surf.
    “Wonder how old she is?” I asked idly.
    “My friend, I have kept meticulous track of all pertinent incidents. To have done what she claims to have done, she is somewhere between one hundred and five and one hundred and seven. I added five more years tonight.”
    “Psychopathic liar, Meyer?”
    “An inexact science uses inexact terms. I spit on parlor expertise, Travis.”
    “Sure. I have one suspicion, though. There is so much merchandise in the showcase there’s nothing left back in the storeroom.”
    “I wouldn’t gamble on that either.”
    “What the hell would you gamble on, Meyer?”
    “A man with no trace of the feminine in him, with no duality at all, is a man without tenderness, sympathy, gentleness, kindness, responsiveness. He is brute-mean, a hammer, a fist. McGee, what is a woman with no trace of the masculine in her makeup?”
    “Mmm. Merciless in a different way?”
    “You show promise, McGee. The empathy of kindness is a result of the duality, not of the feminine trace. Our strange friend, the Alabama Tiger, is maneuvering the lady just right. And she resents it. He moves in with a forked stick, and he’ll pin her head to the ground and then pick her up in such a wayshe can’t get her fangs into him. Maybe women are the only things in the world he knows so well.”
    I told Meyer he was crazy, that anybody could see that the Alabama Tiger and Wilma Ferner had disliked each other on sight. Meyer wouldn’t argue it. On the adjoining deck, in a big rich Wheeler, the Alabama Tiger maintains what is by now the longest floating houseparty in the world. He is a huge, sloppy guy, once a murderous All-American tackle, who later made a pot of money and decided to spend it on boats, booze and broads. He stays blandly, cheerfully tight during all waking hours. He has a face like crude stone sculpture, carved into a mild grin. In forty seconds he can make you feel as if you are the most interesting person he has ever met, and you will feel as if you never met anyone more understanding. He could charm tenement landlords, post office employees, circus dwarfs and tax assessors.
    When Wilma finally took aim, Arthur Wilkinson was the hapless target, and there was not one damn thing any of us could do about it. He had less chance than a lovely wench when the Goths came to town. His eyes glazed over. A broad fatuous grin was permanently in place. She was at his elbow, steering him, to keep him from walking into immovable objects. He thought her junebug cute, delicate and dear, infinitely valuable. He felt humble to be so favored, to be awarded this rare prize. Any hint that the junebug might be a scorpion didn’t offend him. He just couldn’t hear what was said to him. He laughed, thinking it some kind of a joke. After the minimum waiting time, they were married late one afternoon at the court house, and left in a new white Pontiac convertible, the back seat stacked with her matched luggage, her smile as brilliant as a brand new vermin trap ordered from Herter’scatalogue. I had kissed the dear little cheek of the junebug bride. She’d smelled soapy clean. She called me a dear boy. My present was a six pack—Metaxa, Fundador, Plymouth gin, Chivas Regal, Old Crow and a Piper Heidsieck ’59. For the expendable marriage, you give the expendable gift. She left a message for the yacht that wouldn’t be back to pick her up. And I knew the two of them would not come back to Lauderdale as long as she was in command. She had sensed the appraisal of the group, and would require a more gullible environment.
    Three days after they left, we all knew something was wrong with the Alabama Tiger. Instead of his benign and placid