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

of a silk handkerchief in your teeth, left hands tied behind you, six-inch knife in the right hand.”
    “Skip it, McGee.”
    “It’s just that the way you two go around chuckling and laughing, it gets on my nerves. I keep wondering what could make two people so hilarious.”
    “Maybe you could guess. I’m a big girl. I’m a big healthy girl. And I’m leading a very healthy life. I’m sleeping with him, in that half acre bed of yours. And that’s the precise word, McGee. Sleeping. Just that. So I thought maybe he was well enough, and it was going to take you a long time to get back with the groceries. I showered first, and got into a sexy little thing made of black cobwebs, and dabbed a little Tigress here and there and yonder, and spread myself out like picturesque, with my girlish heart going bump bump bump. It’s not as if it had never happened with him before. And the son of a bitch acted as if I’d solicited him on a street corner. He was offended, for God’s sake. He made me feel sleazy.”
    “Maybe you’re putting the wrong interpretation on it.”
    “There comes a point when I stop being understanding,friend. And that was it. It’s his move. And unless he makes one, there’s an invisible wall right down the middle of that bed. It’s made of ice cubes. All he’ll get from me is some practical nursing care.”
    In the night I was awakened by the creak of the lines as the
Flush
was trying to go around on the tide change, swinging further each time until pushed back by the breeze, I always rig two bow hooks in such a way that she shifts her weight from hook to hook when she changes end for end. As this was the first night at the new anchorage, I wanted to check and see that she wasn’t working loose with all the swinging, and that she would swing the way I had guessed. As a rule of thumb they will always swing with the bow toward the nearest shallows. But the wind can make a difference, and there can be a tide current you didn’t read.
    So, as the easiest way out, I went forward and up through the hatch. I pulled the line she was still on and found it firm. I have a reflector plate under my riding light, and it keeps the decks in relative shadow, but just enough gets past the plate so you can check lines when your eyes are used to the darkness. From the relation of the way she was swinging to the lights along the keys, I could tell she was going to go around the right way. I decided to wait until she was around and then check the other anchor line. I had a lot of scope, big Danforths and a good bottom, so it was a thousand to one I was fine. But there are a lot of dead sailors who took things for granted. On a boat things go bad in sets of threes. When you pull a hook and then go hustle to get the wheels turning, something will short out on you so that you go drifting, dead in the water.And that is the time when, without lights, you drift right out into the ship channel, see running lights a city block apart coming down at you, run to get your big flashlight, fumble it and drop it over the side. A boat is something that never has just one thing wrong with it.
    As I sat on the corner of the bow hatch, waiting, I felt a little faraway thud. I felt it through the soles of my bare feet, wondered what the hell, then realized it was the dink tied astern, swinging in the wind, nudging mother. I padded back along the side deck, put another line on its little stern cleat and snubbed it up against the two fenders hanging over the transom. I’d gone aft on the port side, and went forward on the starboard side, and came suddenly on a pale ghost that nearly made me leap over the rail. It startled her too, and then she made a miserable snorting sound and came into my arms for comfort. She had on a skimpy white hip-length nightie. She clung, snorting again. Her body heat was high, her breath hot and humid. She had that flat-sweet unmistakable scent of female sexual effort. Her nipples were hard as little pebbles