“Did you clean up this crock boat?”
“Look at my poor hands, dear. Look at my nails!”
“Seriously, how come …”
“Travis, darling, a long time ago—maybe not so awfully long ago really, but it does seem way way back—I told Meyer that you had picked up all the pieces of me and put me together, and that if you were ever in need of the same he was to find me, through my gallery, and let me know and if I did not happen to have any compound fractures, I would come to you on a dead run. I got here a week ago yesterday.”
“So that’s why Meyer has looked so bland and smug and mysterious. Why didn’t you come to the hospital?”
“Hate them, darling. Sorry. Wasn’t this better?”
“This is as good as anything can get. My God, you look lovely. You are something way out else, Heidi.”
“Do you need putting together?”
“Haven’t you noticed me?”
“Oh hell, I don’t mean looking like sudden death. That’s a body thing. I mean putting together.”
I looked at her and knew that I did. “Something was going wrong and it went further wrong. I don’t know. I lost it, somehow, without knowing what I lost. Some kind of … sense of light and motion and purpose. I went ragged around the edges and bleak in the middle. The world seems to be coarsening, and me with it. Everything that happens takes away, and less flows back. And I respond less, and in the wrong way. I still amuse myself but there’s some contempt in it now. I don’t know … I don’t know.…”
“Darling, there’s that water from the eye syndrome again.”
“Sorry.”
“There’s nothing so really wrong with you, you know. It’s second adolescence.”
“Is that it?”
“Of course, Travis, darling. I had delayed adolescence. Remember your absolutely dreadful analogy of comparing me to that old yellow Packard you bought when you were a child, and finally got running so beautifully?”
“Indeed I do.”
“In your ravings you let Meyer know you had promised the cruising month of June aboard this fine houseboat to a lady who, for reasons he wouldn’t tell me, won’t be able to make it. You may tell me or not, as you wish. But I am substituting.”
“That is very good thinking, Heidi.”
“The cure for my delayed adolescence was a grown-up man. And I think a grown-up woman can cure a recurrence of adolescence, don’t you?”
“Shock treatment, eh?”
“McGee, I am a very grown-up woman, far more so than that grim day we said good-by on that lovely island.”
“I think you are. Yes. I would say so.”
She looked at me and I suddenly knew exactly what Mona Lisa was thinking about. It was exactly the same smile, though on a face far more to my liking.
“I think, dear, that it is going to be absolutely essential for the health of both of us, and the sanity too, if you will kindly get a lot of lovely sleep, and eat the rich marvelous foods I am going to cook for you, and exercise a little more each day, and take the sun and.…”
“I guess it’s pretty essential. Yes, indeedy.”
“Because we are going to farther places on our cruise, darling, than anybody has ever reached before on a boat this slow in one single lovely month.”
I finished the drink. She took the glass. She told me later that I fell asleep smiling, and that Raoul, the cat, joined me later, curling into a warm nest against my waist.
BY JOHN D. MACDONALD
The Brass Cupcake
Murder for the Bride
Judge Me Not
Wine for the Dreamers
Ballroom of the Skies
The Damned
Dead Low Tide
The Neon Jungle
Cancel All Our Vows
All These Condemned
Area of Suspicion
Contrary Pleasure
A Bullet for Cinderella
Cry Hard, Cry Fast
You Live Once
April Evil
Border Town Girl
Murder in the Wind
Death Trap
The Price of Murder
The Empty Trap
A Man of Affairs
The Deceivers
Clemmie
Cape Fear (The Executioners)
Soft Touch
Please Write for Details
The Crossroads
The Beach Girls
Slam the Big Door
The End of the Night
The Only Girl in the Game
Where Is Janice Gantry?
One Monday We Killed Them All
A Key to the Suite
A Flash of Green
The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
On the Run
The Drowner
The House Guest
End of the Tiger and Other Stories
The Last One Left
S*E*V*E*N
Condominium
Other Times, Other Worlds
Nothing Can Go Wrong
The Good Old Stuff
One More Sunday
More Good Old Stuff
Barrier Island
A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974
THE TRAVIS MCGEE SERIES
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
The Quick Red Fox
A Deadly Shade of Gold
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Darker than Amber
One Fearful Yellow Eye
Pale Gray for Guilt
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
Dress Her in Indigo
The Long Lavender Look
A Tan and Sandy Silence
The Scarlet Ruse
The Turquoise Lament
The Dreadful Lemon Sky
The Empty Copper Sea
The Green Ripper
Free Fall in Crimson
Cinnamon Skin
The Lonely Silver Rain
The Official Travis McGee Quizbook
About the Author
John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.