Free The Beach Girls by John D. MacDonald Page B

north of town, and they live fast and hard, and party a lot. Beezie is scrawny and beautiful and mostly drunk. Stan found out about it and tried to make an issue of it, and got the hell beat out of him by Rex. They’re the same size, but Rex’s intake is two drinks a day instead of a fifth.
    And he caught Amy Penworthy in a reckless mood. Ithad rained for three days and poor Amy was so blue she didn’t care what she did. So that hardly counts. And I’m not counting the women on the tourist boats. When three or four of them pull in, traveling together, and tie up close, and set up a party, Rex has a way of easing himself into the group, knowing that sooner or later, if he’s careful and patient, he can talk some gal into walking around onto D Dock and taking a look at the way he’s got the
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fitted out below. Few men have ever had a better chance to combine their business and their hobby.
    But he has been smart enough to stay away from Ginny Linder. And he has scored zero with Anne Browder, Christy and Helen Hass. He came close to getting to Helen. But she’s such a serious, intense, humorless little thing, that it was taking him a long time to manage it—so long that the others caught on. Orbie and Lew went and had a little talk with Rex. They never let on what they said to him, but from then on Rex has stayed forty feet away from Helen. She looked wistful for a few days until she got over him.
    Anne let on right away that she wouldn’t dip him up a bucket of water if he was on fire. Christy played up to him. When she came up to my place with Gus and Orbie and Joe and told us about it, we all got laughing so hard we were crying.
    It was late night and it happened on the dock. She let him kiss her. She dropped her cigarettes and when he reached for them, she accidentally stepped on his hand. And apologized something fierce. They walked out to the end of the dock. He kissed her again, and then her foot slipped, sort of pitching her forward so the top of her head hit him in the nose. He had to go change his shirt and she got an ice cube and held it against the back of his neck. He kept trying to get her aboard the
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. They went out and sat on the fish box at the end of D Dock. She said he sort of soft-talked her until all her reserve was gone and then she turned and kind of plunged against him. He gave one yelp and went over backward into the water, about a seven-foot drop because the tide was way down.
    She said that at that point she thought she could get one more chance at him, and having been raised withfour older brothers, she had tricks he’d never heard of. It was just a case of keeping her voice under control while she apologized. But he floundered around in the water and said bitterly, “I’m wearing my new slacks and sandals, damn it all!” And that set her off. He got the message. He despises her. Nothing is so unforgivable to a tomcat man as to be laughed at by a girl he thinks has been taking him seriously.
    The next day he left and was gone for almost a month. It must have been a good month. When he came back he bought the little Triumph.
    No, I won’t miss Rex, not a damn bit. But some I’ll miss so bad it will hurt like an abscess. Gus, Orbie, Joe, Cindy, Jack, Jimmy, Lew, Amy. And I’ll be alone again. That will be the worst of it. Except for the farm, and that was so long ago, this is the only place where I’ve put roots down, this rackety old sun-bleached marina.
    I yawned. I felt sad and dead and old. I wished old Gus would chunk a pebble against my window so I could go down and let him in, so he could tiptoe up the stairs like a sneaky rhinoceros. It wasn’t that I felt heated up, but just wanting somebody close to hold on to, and not feel so lonely. Just to hold that sweet, sturdy old clown, the third man in my life, and the last.
    But that Annabelle daughter is in town with her husband and kids, walking around looking like she bit on something sour, taking Gus out to dinner every