Free The Drowner by John D. MacDonald Page A

signals, and he often gave me the feeling that if afterward I cheered and applauded he would spring up and take bows. If I failed to simulate a frantic ecstasy, he took it as an insult to his talent. But Sam concerns himself with me. I never knew it could be possible to laugh aloud just for joy when making love. I’d always been sort of anxious and earnest about it, and sort of dismally convinced in my heart of hearts that I was really not very sexy. But Sam has turned me into an absolute glutton. I have to keep proving the same miracle to myself, over and over. I’m such a shameless yearning wench that all he has to do is look at me just so and I turn humid and my knees start to sag no matter where I am. So I guess I never really knew who I was. I am not sure I am what Sam has made me, either. Perhaps it is a swing of the pendulum. But while it continues it is at least a very precious sickness. I want nothing beyond his great long knotty frame stretched out beside me, his slow hands and his love words. I was never all the way alive until now. When you told me about Roger I only pretended to understand. I thought I did, but in a little cold part of my Puritan soul I was aghast at my kid sister being so compulsive about sensuality, and perhaps I thought you were of some coarser fabric than I. But now, bless you, I know what you were trying to tell me, and I now respect what strength it must have taken for you to end it with such a terrible abruptness. If I were to suddenly be told I could never touch Sam again, I would rend my hair, roll in ashes and sit on public streets howling like a dog. So now you know the best or the worst of me, Barb. But we can perhaps understand each other more than ever before. The only flaw in all this electric happiness is the awareness of sin. We try to keep it quiet, but I do not think anyone can look at me without knowing. He has a little house in the woods. He calls it a shack, but it is really solid and cozy. I am at the shack now, writing this, waiting for the sound of his car on the little private dirt road, knowing my heart will jump up into my throat when I hear it. Here I am in an odd garment, one of his white shirts, the sleeves rolled up, the shoulder seams down almost to my elbows, comfortably aware he will find it a highly sexy costume. I have just enough perfume, and my bare toes are pink and lonely, and little shudders of come-what-may run up and down my ribs. You see, dear, I have fallen into the habit of telling you more than I could tell you face to face. But there is no one else to talk to this way.”
    After he had read the other letters and had turned out the light, he kept thinking back to this letter. He wondered about Roger. And he found himself wishing, with unexpected force, that he had known Lucille Larrimore Hanson. She had been so unusually articulate in her letters, he knew he would have liked her if he could have met her. It seemed wasteful and unfair.
    A dream of Lucille awoke him in the night. It was vivid, and close to nightmare. He was sweaty when he awoke. She had been in a huge glass jar, like a laboratory specimen, naked, adrift in clear fluid, her blonde hair floating wide. She kept turning, bumping the sides in a slow movement as though there was a current within the jar. Then Janey spoke to him abruptly over some sort of public address system, her voice metallic. “You were too late, Paul. You are always too early or too late. But you never listen. It never happens right. It is never going to.”
    He went up the stairs to find Janey and get her away from the microphone before everyone heard what she was saying to him. But he got into the wrong room where Rufus Nile, prancing and puffing, was working upon a figure on a slab. The figure was Barbara. Water poured from her mouth and nose. Nile was cutting her clothing off with little gold scissors. He beamed at Stanial. “Get the other jar ready, boy. She wanted you to help.”
    He broke out of the sleep