The Lonely Silver Rain Read Free Page A

Meyer.
    It is his declaration of surprise and satisfaction. It is what he would have said were he to have discovered the theory of relativity.
    "What's with the humpf?"
    "I was looking for a recognition factor which would probably remain the same. Take a look." He held up the photo taken from about two hundred feet above the vessel, running at cruising speed across a calm blue sea. He held it so the bow was at the top of the picture, the wake at the bottom.
    For a moment I didn't see it, and then it jumped out at me. The bow made a pointed hat. The life rings on the aft corners of the superstructure made the eyes. The half circle of padded bench around the aft of the cockpit made the clownish grin. "A face!" I said. "A damned face!"
    "Which can be looked for from the air." Which was worth a humpf from Meyer. His little blue eyes were bright with satisfaction. Meager as it was, it was still more of a starting point than I'd had before. The profile of a boat can be easily altered by someone intending to deceive. But that someone would not be thinking about how it looks from directly overhead.
    So I locked away the photography, and we went out to eat. Meyer waited while I locked my old houseboat and activated my inconspicuous little security devices which would let me know when I returned if there was a stranger aboard, or if a stranger had been aboard while I was gone. In the old days Meyer seemed mildly amused by all this caution. But in recent years he has seen things in a different light, and now uses similar precautions, even though the chance of harm coming to that hairy econornist is considerably less than of it coming to me.
    Once you have made enough people sufficiently unhappy with your activities and the effect on their lives and fortunes, it is wise to live as though there is a small deadly snake in every shower stall, cyanide in the tastiest cookie. You can solve the problem by becoming a drifter, changing your base at random intervals. But my home is aboard the Busted Flush at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, and there I intend to stay until finally no one is able to either drink the water or breathe the air.
    It was a pleasant night, so we walked the long mile to Benjamin's and had the good Irish stew at a table in the back. As we were finishing, two of Meyer's newest friends moved in on us. Denise and Frieda, visitors from England. He had met them on the beach that morning when one of them had asked him to identify something horrid which had washed up on the sand. Meyer is always being asked questions by strangers. He looks reliable. It was a sea slug. Both women were celebrating simultaneous divorces, and it was easy to see they would look splendid in beachwear. I managed to detach myself, and walked back to the marina alone.
    When I opened the little panel in the port bulkhead outside the lounge, the fail-safe bulbs were all glowing, telling me everything was secure. I turned the system off and reactivated it once I was inside. I got out the photographs and sat and studied them.
    It struck me that the young man and woman in the pictures-Cannon and McBride-looked dead. When you look at pictures of people you know are dead, there is something different about the eyes. As if they anticipated their particular fate. It is a visceral recognition. These two young lovers had that look. I told myself I was getting too fanciful, and went to bed.
    It had been an oddly aimless year for me. Old friends had died in faraway places. In the spring of the year there had been some weeks shared with a lonely woman. We liked each other. We laughed at the same things. The sex was good. Nothing electric. More like cozy. Lois came down to manage a new health spa, one of a chain. What we tried to do, out of mutual loneliness, was make more out of the relationship than it could support. Then it becomes pretend, and you are both saying things cribbed from halfforgotten books and plays. So the structure slowly topples over,