Case of Lucy Bending Read Free Page B

ex-professor of geology stuck his beak into the snifter, inhaled, then dipped his tongue.
    "Ambrosia," he said. "I saw a flurry out there a few minutes ago. Some phosphorescence."
    "School of mullet," Holloway said. "Maybe."
    "The sea, the sea," Craner recited. "A man has not lived until he has known the sea, until he has felt the giant bounds the soul takes upward when the eyes look upon a world without limit, beauty without end. Always, everywhere, the sea rolls forever. Men come and go, and nations, and civilizations. But the sea! That is life, constant, eternal."
"Very nice," Holloway said. "Who wrote it?"
"I did," the professor said. "When I was young and innocent."
"You were never innocent," his son-in-law said.
The old man showed his teeth and took a swallow of brandy.
"Excellent dinner tonight," he said.
"Was it?" Holloway said. "I can't get used to Florida lobsters. They look like amputees to me."
"Because you're from New England. They may not have claws, but the flavor is subtle."
"I'll take your word for it."
"What was the fight about?"
"With Maria? Jane said she had put too much saffron in the rice. Maria told her that in Cuba she had been a great lady who had servants working for her. Jane said maybe she'd be happier back in Cuba. Maria told her in explicit detail what she could do with the saffron rice. Too bad you don't speak Spanish; it loses something in translation."
"Is that the end of Maria?"
"Probably," Holloway said indifferently. "She's lasted three weeks; that's par for the course."
They sipped their brandies slowly. A thick southeast breeze whipped the fronds of palms screening the terrace. They heard the plash of the sea. A vee of pelicans flapped north across the glow of the moon.
"Montana was never like this," Lloyd Craner said.
"Sometimes I feel I'm living in a travel poster," Holloway said.
"I thought you liked it."
"I thought I did. Now I'm beginning to wonder. Too much sea. Too much beach. Too much perfect weather. That damned sun . . . My brain is turning to mush. I used to read eighteenth-century poetry. Now I read the National Enquirer. ''
"You still play chess."
"Badly."
"A game tonight?"
"Sorry, professor. I've got to have a drink with Luther Empt. Some business proposition he wants to talk about."
"What do you know about him, Bill?"
"Luther? He came down from Chicago about twelve years ago. Started his own business producing slide presentations for corporations and advertising agencies. Then he got into eight- and sixteen-millimeter educational and training films. Lately he's been processing TV commercials and video cassettes. Seems to be a very capable man."
"Ambitious?"
"Oh yes. Teresa is his third wife. I heard some talk that it was her money that enabled him to expand into the television field."
"Was she married before?"
"Once."
"Going to Jerusalem," the codger said.
"What?"
"That's what we used to call the children's game of Musical Chairs. He's been married three times, his wife twice. Ronald Bending has been married twice, and so has Jane. I never knew there were so many widowed, divorced, and remarried people in the world until I came to Florida."
"Going to Jerusalem," Holloway repeated. "Good name. Florida: the new Jerusalem. Let me get us a refill."
He took the brandy snifters back into the living room. It stretched the width of the house, decorated in shades of beige and brown. He hated it.
Jane was curled into one end of a ten-foot couch upholstered in chocolate velvet. She was wearing a tube of fuchsia jersey, down to her ankles. She was filing her nails, watching their oversize TV set.
"How's the movie?" he asked pleasantly.
"Shit," she said.
He poured his father-in-law another brandy and himself a double vodka on ice with a squeeze of lime.
"Where's Gloria?" he asked his wife.
"Doing her homework over at the Bendings'. With Lucy."
"And Eddie?"
"Upstairs. Unless he's gone out the window again. Let me have a gin martini. Lemon peel."
He mixed the drink and brought it to her.