Free Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. MacDonald Page A

left sail and motor behind, climbed down into the dink, and headed across the two miles of bay, rowing with the miniature oars.
    Coming back against the wind was almost as much fun as a migraine, and it didn’t help a bit to have the wind die the instant I clambered aboard and made the dinghy fast. Chook came and took the groceries. As she did so, and with a dull red sun sitting on the horizon line, we were invaded by an advance guard of seven billion salt marsh mosquitoes. They are a strange kind. They don’t bite, but some ancestral memory tells them they should get in position to bite. They are large and black and fly slowly, and when you wipe a dozen off your arm, they leave black streaks like soot. They are inept at the mosquito profession, but come in such numbers they can rattle the most easygoing disposition. As you breathe them in, you find yourself asking in desperation—But what do they
want
?
    Chook and Arthur had showered and changed, and it was immediately obvious they had somehow made each other totally unhappy. Arthur was leaden and remote. Chook was brisk and remote. All they would exchange were the most formal politenesses. I showered amid the fading scent of Chook’s perfumed soap, in that absurd mirrored stall, big enough, almost, for a Volkswagen garage. It is a grotesque waste of space in a fifty-two-foot houseboat, even with a twenty-one-footbeam, almost as much of a waste as the semisunken pale blue tub, seven feet long and four feet wide. I imagine that the elderly Palm Beach party who lost the vessel to me over the poker table needed such visual stimulations to do right by his Brazilian mistress.
    In response to the unexplained drearies of my boat guests, I had a vicious attack of the jollies, regaling them with anecdote, absurdity and one-sided repartee, much like a solitary game of handball. Once in a while they would pull their lips away from their teeth and go heh-heh-heh. And then politely pass each other something that was within easy reach of everyone in the small booth adjoining the galley.
    I judged it a favorable development. People were choosing up new sides. Chook and I had been united in caring for the sick. Now any relationship, even a rancorous one, which shut me out, was proof that he was not entirely defeated. She had to pump some spirit into him or my chances of any salvage were frail indeed. And maybe this was a start.

Five
    On Monday we pulled the hooks and droned in stately fashion down to a new anchorage off Long Key, charging the batteries and getting beyond the range of the sooty mosquitoes which were restricting us to the belowdecks areas. During the swimming that followed, I was heartened by a small triumph. The long contest was around a distant marker and back to the boarding ladder. Halfway back she pulled even and moved a half length ahead. I knew from the pain in my side that in another hundred yards I would begin to wallow and roll and lose the stroke. Suddenly the reserves were there—missing so long it was like welcoming an old friend. It was as if a third lung had suddenly opened up. I settled into it until I was certain, then upped the tempo and went on by her in a long sprint finish, was clinging to the ladder when she arrived, and feeling less like a beached blowfish than on other days. “Well now!” she gasped, looking startled and owlish.
    “You had to let me win one of these.”
    “The hell I did! I was busting a gut trying to keep up.” She snapped her head back and gave me the first grin I had seen since rowing back with the groceries.
    “Come with me,” I said, and swam slowly away from the
Flush
, rolled and floated and, looking back, saw Arthur busy at the chore I had given him, putting new lacing in a section of the nylon fabric that is lashed to the rail around the sun deck. Chook made a surface dive and came up beside me, and blew like a porpoise.
    “I could put you two in the shower stall,” I said. “What you do, you each take a corner