Free The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald Page A

lips, and back to whatever he was doing. When it was happening often enough, and I was trying hard, I could stay far enough up sometimes, in between times, to make it, but when you have to be worried about not making it, it isn't all that good when you do. And when you don't and you have to ask somebody to help you afterward, it's another kind of turnoff."
    And by the time they had reached the Virgins, the edge was off his appetite to the point where he would take her at those times when he was awakening her to take the watch, or she went below to shake him awake. But it was not ritual. It was now and again.
    "My father was gone and Scott turned out to be a terrible mistake, and when I finally could lift my head and look around, there was Howie, taking care of things, taking charge. And it seemed as if that might be a good way for life to be. Sort of safe and steady."
    "You began to have, very bad dreams?"
    She cocked her head. "How'd you know that? Very foul and very vivid. They'd cling in my mind for days. Something wrong with me, usually. Like in one I looked down and there were two smooth holes in my chest. Somehow I'd gotten my breasts on backwards and the nipples were way inside there someplace. I was frantic to keep people from knowing it. It was so shameful. I kept hunting for round things I could hold there with my bra, but they'd fall out."
    "Numb places on your hands?"
    "You know, you're a weird person, Travis? Right along here, on the edges of my hands and around the base of my thumb. And I would get numb around my mouth sometimes too."
    "And diarrhea?"
    "Where'd you graduate from, Doctor? Constantly!"
    "Now think back. Was there ever a time in your life when you felt as if you were utterly without any value at all, completely worthless and contemptible?"
    "Yes. After my mom died. It didn't make any sense, but I had the feeling it was my fault somehow, that if I hadn't been such a total nothing of a person, she wouldn't have gotten sick and died and left me. I sort of went down and down and down. I slept all the time, practically. Food tasted vile. I didn't want to leave the house. Daddy took me to a clinic, some kind of diagnostic thing, and they gave me every test known to man. Then they recommended some kind of special school. But my father got a prescription from them for something that made me feel edgy and jumpy. We had some terrible scenes. He yelled at me that I was letting him down, and I, by God, was going to learn navigation, small boat handling, marine engines, map reading, scuba diving. When he wasn't yelling at me, he was telling me what a wonderful person I was, how special I was. How smart and pretty and outgoing and all. And… I began to work hard, and I came out of it, and by the time we got to Florida, I was pretty much okay again."
    "I've got one last question, Lou Ellen."
    "Oh, it better be the last. My head is trying to fall asleep and my stomach is trying to throw up."
    "Do you like yourself?"
    "What the hell kind of a question is that?"
    "Do you, Linda Lewellen Brindle, like Linda Lewellen Brindle as a person."
    "How can people like themselves anyway?"
    "Do you like yourself?"
    She shuddered. "You mean really?"
    "Really"
    "Oh, God. No. I just don't think about myself if I can help it. I'm such a wormy kind of sneak. I'm a nothing, pretending to be something. Can't you see me? Fat thighs and dumb lumpy breasts and nothing-colored hair and weird-looking teeth. People are always talking about things I don't understand. I like real square dumb things. I got through school, almost. I just can't… respond to life because I don't know what is really going on most of the time. Why are you doing this to me? I'm practically dead!"
    "I'm no doctor. I can't shoot you with sodium Pentothal. I shot you with booze. This is a small group for group therapy. I've been pushing you. Lou Ellen, dear, you are, I think, an anxiety type. Sometimes I detect a whiff of it in myself. What is that bit about the