“You can stay aboard my houseboat until you find a place.”

“All right.”

“Maybe you’d like to go back to New Haven to be near your brother.”

“Maybe I would.”

“You should be feeling well enough to travel pretty soon.”

“I guess so.”

“Would you rather I found you a place of your own right away?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Which would you rather do?”

The effort of decision brought her out of torpor. She made fists and her lips tightened. “I guess I have to be with you.”

“For a little while.”

“I have to be with you.”

The patient becomes emotionally dependent upon the analyst. She said it without anxiety. She stated her fact, strangely confident I would accept that fact as completely as she did. In a little while she slumped over against the door and fell asleep. I felt indignant.

How could she be so damned certain she had not given herself over into the hands of a Junior Allen of another variety? Where did all this suffocating trust come from? Here was a mature woman who did not seem to know that the wide world is full of monsters, even after one vivid example. I had the feeling that if I told her I was takling her to the cannibal isles to sell her for stew meat, she would wear the same Mona Lisa smile of total acceptance.

I am just not that trustworthy.

Below decks the Busted Flush was very hot and very stale and offensively damp. A power failure had kicked the air conditioning off. I had set the thermostat at eighty when I left, minimum power expenditure, just enough to keep it from getting the way it was. I reset it for sixty-five. It would be an hour before it was comfortable. I took her to a place where we could get a good lunch, and brought her back. She came aboard. I toted her gear aboard. She looked around, mildly and placidly interested. I stowed her and her gear in the other stateroom. She took a shower and went to bed.

I found nine days of mail clogging my box. I weeded it down to a few bills, two personal letters. I phoned Chook. She wanted to know where the hell I’d been. It pleased me that Cathy hadn’t told her. I said I’d been staying with a sick friend. She gave me Cathy’s number. I phoned her. She sounded very guarded, but said she was alone and told me I could come and see her, and told me how to find it. It was over in town, the top floor of a cheap duplex behind one of the commercial strips along Route One. Pizza, Guaranteed Re-treads, Smitty’s Sheet Metal, Bonded Warehouse. She lived beyond neon and the windwhipped fragments of banners announcing forgotten sales.

It was stinking hot upstairs. All buff plaster and ragged wicker, straw and old bamboo. A big fan whizzed and whined by a window, blowing the warm air through. She wore sleazy shorts and a faded halter top. She explained that she shared the place with another dancer from the group and a girl who worked in the local television station. She had two card tables set up. She was stitching away on new costumes for the group. Extra money, she explained. She offered iced tea.

I sat in a wicker chair near the hot breath of the fan and told her about Mrs. Atkinson. Not all of it. She worked and listened. When I leaned back my shirt stuck to the wicker. It had become August while I wasn’t looking. She moved around the tables, nipping and stitching, bending and turning, and I was too aware of the modeling of those good sinewy legs, agleam with sweat, and the rock-solid roundness of the dancer butt. What I didn’t tell her about Lois, she seemed perfectly able to guess. She carried pins in her mouth. The material she worked with was gold and white.

“I thought you’d changed your mind,” she said.

“No.”

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Trav.” The pins blurred enunciation.

“Were there names and addresses in the letters?”

She straightened. “The ones there were, I put them separate. I can get them for you.” She brought them to me. I read them while she worked. She had a little blue radio turned low, the music merging with the noise of the fan. CMCA, Havana. Voice of the land of peace and freedom and brotherhood. No commercials. Nothing left to sell.

V-Mail, from a long-ago war.

Dear Wife: I have been well and hopping you are the same and the girls too have bought a money order and sending it along later do not try to save all instead buy what you need. I have had a lot of flight time this pass two months but for me it is all cargo work and not dangarous so dont worry about it none. It rains a lot this time of year, more than home even. Since Sugarman got sent elsewhere, we have a new pilot his name is Wm Callowell from Troy New York, a first Lt. and a good safe flyer and he fits in okay with me and George so no worry on that acct. The food isn’t much but I am eating good and feeling fine. You tell Cathy I am glad she likes her teacher, and kiss her for me and Christy too and a kiss for yourself as always your loving husb. Dave.

There were other names in other letters. Casual references, less complete. Vern from Kerrville, Texas. Degan from California. I wrote down all the fragments.

She sat with the showgirl brevities in her lap and stitched neatly and quickly. “I didn’t know Mrs. Atkinson would be like that,” she said thoughtfully.

“It wasn’t anything she wanted to get involved in.”

“No more’n me. She’s beautiful.” The brown-eyed look was quick. “You keeping her right there on your boat?”

“Until she feels better.”

She crossed the room and put the costumes in a small suitcase and closed the lid. “Maybe she needs help more than I do.”

“She needs a different kind of help.”

“What are you going to do next?”

“Find out where your father got the money, if I can.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after five.”

“I’ve got to change and go out there.”

“Have you got a ride?”

“I take a bus mostly.”

“I can wait and take you on out.”

“I don’t like to be a trouble to you, Trav.”

I waited. She showered quickly and came out of the bedroom wearing a pink blouse and a white skirt. In moments the blouse was damp and beginning to cling. I drove her on out to Teabolt’s Mile O’Beach and went on back to Bahia Mar. My ward had arisen. She had slept so hard her eyes looked puffy, but she had acquainted herself with the equipment in my stainless steel galley, and she wore a pretty cotton dress, which hung just a little loosely on her, and she had taken two generous steaks out of the locker and set them out to thaw. She seemed a little more aware of the situation, shyly aware that she might be a nuisance.

“I could cook and clean laundry and things like that,and take care of and anything else you want me to do, Trav.”

“If you feel up to it.”

“I don’t want to be a dead weight.”

“Your job is to get well.”

I guess I wasn’t particularly gracious. Mine are bachelor ways, tending toward too much order and habit. Some affectionate little guest for a few days is one thing. A party cruise is another. But a lady in residence is potential irritation.

“I can pay my share,” she said in a small voice.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” I roared. She fled to her stateroom and silently closed the door.

In twenty minutes I felt sufficiently ashamed of myself to look in on her. She was diagonally across the big bed, sound asleep. I made a drink and carried it around until it was gone, and made another, and then went in and shook her awake.

“If you want to cook, it’s time to cook.”

“All right, Trav.”

“Medium rare.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Don’t be so damned humble!”

“I’ll try.”

After dinner, after she had cleaned up the galley, I brought her into the lounge and asked her if she felt well enough for questions. “What about?”

“Junior Allen.”

Her mouth twisted and she closed her eyes for a moment. She opened them and said, “You can ask questions.”