The Big Bounce Page 5

  “Boy, you take a sunbath, you like to get it all over.”

  She opened her eyes. “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ve heard about topless suits—but, man.”

  He was standing over her and now eased down to one knee and rested an arm on her chair. “You don’t realize how tan a person is,” he said, “till you see the difference, huh?”

  “I’d like to be tan all over by the end of the summer.”

  “Well, listen, go ahead. Nobody’s going to see you out here.”

  “I don’t think I could.”

  “Come on, who’s going to see you?”

  “You would.”

  “Me? Hell, you think I haven’t seen a girl without any clothes on before?”

  “Sure,” Nancy said. “Your wife.”

  Bob Jr. laughed. “Some besides her even. Hey, come on.” Serious again.

  “Please,” Nancy said. “Let me get to know you a little better.” She smiled, almost shyly. She closed her eyes, leaning back and resting her head on the aluminum frame, giving him a good profile from nose to navel.

  After a minute passed, she knew he wasn’t going to grab her. He wasn’t going to risk it. He had something here that had never been within his reach before and he wasn’t going to blow it by grabbing her the first time out.

  They swam off the boat for a while and on the way back in Bob Jr. said why didn’t they do it again tomorrow? Nancy said she was sorry, she was expecting Ray to call. She avoided him the next few days, watching from the bluff as the boat came nosing in out of the deep water, then stepping back out of sight as he lowered the revs and rumbled close to shore.

  The following week she pulled up next to his pickup at a Geneva Beach stoplight, seeing his vacant expression crack open into a big dumb grin as he looked her way and leaned out the window.

  “Hey! Where you been, stranger?”

  Going out the next day, Bob Jr. was relaxed and smiling, smoking one cigarette after another as he pointed out cloud formations and identified landmarks along the shore and commented on how nice the boat was handling.

  “You know,” he said finally, cutting the motor, “I don’t think I ever met a girl like you before.”

  “Maybe it’s just a feeling,” Nancy said.

  “Sure it’s a feeling, a pretty good one.”

  “Maybe I understand you better than your wife does.” She thought: And he says—

  “You know, it’s funny you should say that.”

  “I’ve never met a man quite like you before,” Nancy said.

  Bob Jr. drew on his cigarette and flicked it over the side, way out, then looked at her again.

  “You going to take your top off?”

  “Not today.”

  “What do you mean not today?”

  “It’s too cold.”

  “Too cold! For Christ sake, it’s eighty-nine degrees out!”

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I must have a chill or something. Do you have a sweater?”

  He didn’t say much on the way in. He kept looking at her sitting back there with her legs tucked beneath her and his sweatshirt down over her knees. She would smile at him every once in a while, letting him know that if he wanted her badly enough, it was going to take more than a boat ride, buddy.

  Now, while Bob Jr. was still trying to find out what exactly it would take, Nancy had shifted her interest.

  She had a clear mental picture of Ryan standing by Ray’s car showing her his muscle. She had met a few Jack Ryans before, in Florida, and she could see him at the dresser combing his hair, looking at himself in the mirror, or in the kitchen opening a can of beer: dark brown and stringy hard above and below the tan lines, thin and slow-moving, a poser.

  But there was more to him than that, more to him than the posing and the police record—the resisting arrest and breaking and entering and what he did to the crew leader. Nancy had a feeling about Ryan. Not an emotional feeling, a girl-boy feeling, but a clearly focused zeroed-in feeling, a seeing-him-and-knowing-right-away feeling that Jack Ryan, or someone just like him, was the answer: her way out of here with a lot more than furniture and a few clothes.

  The idea had come to her suddenly right after seeing him at the migrant camp. The idea was wild, so far out she had only smiled at first, thinking of what it would do to Ray Ritchie. But the more she thought of the idea, the more she liked it. It was fantastic, way out, and beyond anything she had ever done before. The trouble was, the whole thing would depend on Ryan. It would depend first on whether or not he was staying around Geneva Beach instead of going home, and second, it would depend on his nerve. She had a feeling that if he really wanted to stay, if he had a good reason to stay, he would.

  If he didn’t have a reason to stay, she might have to give him one. Which shouldn’t be too hard. Then play with him to see what he was really like.

  But the whole deal, staying and going along with her idea, both, depended really on how much nerve he had.

  Which she would have to find out.

  5

  * * *

  “HEY, YOU GOT TIME to have one with me?” Mr. Majestyk was swiveled around, heavy legs apart, his heels hooked in the rungs of the bar stool.

  Ryan had noticed him, three stools away: the guy looked like an ex-pro guard hunched over the bar, leaning on his stubby arms and a dead cigar in the ashtray. He had been talking to the bartender about fishing, how the perch must have all been asleep today, and Ryan had listened because they were close and he could hear them. He was going to have another beer, so if the guy wanted to buy, it was okay. He could leave anytime he wanted. The guy moved over and it was funny how they got to talking right away: Mr. Majestyk mentioning the picture in the newspaper, Ryan with the baseball bat, and saying how he had recognized Luis Camacho.

  “Sure, I see that spig before,” Mr. Majestyk said.

  He had kicked Camacho and a girl spik off his private beach about two weeks before. “People walk by, that’s all right, along the water. But this guy spread out a blanket and him and the girl are laying there on private property. I tell him nice he’s got to leave, this is private property. And he gets abusive. Christ, you should hear the language. You’ve heard it, but I mean in front of the people staying at my place. I want to deck the son of a bitch, but how does that look? What kind of a place is this, the owner gets in a fight? You have to handle it better than that.”

  “What have you got?” Ryan asked. “Cabins?”

  “Cabins? The Bay Vista out on the Shore Road.” Like, what’s the matter with you? Cabins. “We got fourteen cabana units with two bedrooms, bath, living room and kitchenette, all with a screen porch, and seven motel units. We also got a swimming pool, shuffleboard, and play area for the kids.”

  “So what’d you do about Camacho?”

  “Well, the girl, she’s nervous as a whore in church and says something to him and they leave. But walking away, he turns and sticks his finger up in the air, you know, like this is what you can do, buddy. I almost took after him.”

  “He was begging for it,” Ryan said. “If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been somebody else.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Mr. Majestyk said. “You got time for another?”

  “I guess so.”

  “How about at a table? We can stretch out more.”

  Ryan went along. It was nice here. There was a smell of beer in the place, but it was not a small-town tavern or a shot and a beer kind of bar. It was a beach bar, a marina bar, with a fishnet and life preservers and brass fixtures on white walls and a good view of the boat docks. It was quiet but not too quiet. There was record music and people were talking, having a good time, nobody dressed up: people who’d been out in their boats and stopped off for a couple. It was a nice place. He had spotted the waitress right away and that was nice too: blond ponytail and tight red pants. She had passed close to him going to the service section of the bar, where there were curved chrome handles like the top of a swimming pool ladder.

  Then at the table with a pitcher of Michelob and a couple of bags of Fritos and some beer nuts: Mr. Majestyk asking questions about Camacho and what kind of a crew leader he was—saying spig for spik and hid for hit, like “when you hid the son of a bitch”—talking easily but talking a lot.

  Then he didn’t say anything for maybe a minute. Ryan looked around and sipped his beer and finally Mr. Majestyk said, “Listen, do you want me to tell you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sitting at the bar, I wasn’t going to say anything to you. And then I figured what the hell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know they got a movie of you belting the guy?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “I saw it the other day. Three times.”

  Ryan was looking at him now. “What’d they show it to you for?”

  “Well, if they hadn’t dropped the charge and you came to trial? It would’ve been in my court.” Mr. Majestyk paused. “I’m the J.P. here, justice of the peace.”

  Ryan kept his eyes on him.

  “I’m telling you why I saw the movies, that’s all.”

  “What’s the beer for?”

  “I’m on the Chamber of Commerce.”

  Ryan didn’t smile. “I got to get going.”

  “Buddy, if you’re nervous about it, maybe you’d better.”

  “I’m not nervous about anything.” Ryan sipped his beer.

  “But they told you you had to leave.” Mr. Majestyk waited, letting him relax a little. “There’s no charge against you. How can they make you leave if you want to stay?”

  “They phony something up. Vagrancy or something.”

  “You got money?”

  Ryan looked at him. “Enough.”

  “So how can
you be arrested for vagrancy? You ever been picked up for that?”

  “No.”

  “They said something about you were arrested a couple of times. Car theft?”

  “Joyriding. Suspended.”

  “What about this resisting arrest?”

  “A guy was giving me a hard time. I hit him.”

  “The cop?”

  “No, before.”

  “With what?”

  “I hit him with a beer bottle.”

  “Broken one?”

  “No, this guy tried to pull something. I didn’t get arrested for hitting him. It was after, when the cop told me to drop the bottle.”

  “You didn’t drop it quick enough.”

  Ryan was looking at the waitress. She had the masked look a lot of waitresses put on, telling nothing, letting you know you weren’t anything special. Probably a stuck-up broad who was dumb and didn’t know it. Broads like that burned him up. She looked nice, though: starched ruffled blouse and the tight red pants, like a swordfighter outfit. She came over with another pitcher of beer. He watched Mr. Majestyk give her tail a little pat and she didn’t seem to mind.

  “What’s your name, honey?” His big hand resting gently on her red hip.

  “Mary Jane.”

  “Mary Jane, I want you to meet Jack Ryan.”

  “I’ve seen him before,” she said, looking at Ryan as she placed the pitcher on the table. He saw her eyes and it gave him a funny feeling. She had seen him before. She knew about him. She had decided things about him. He watched her turn to the bar again, the nice tight shape of the red pants.

  “Some guys I’d like to have taken and used a beer bottle on,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I had a tavern in Detroit—oh, fifteen years ago now. These guys would come off the shift from Dodge Main. They come in, every one of them, a shot and a beer. Set them right down the bar, every stool, then go back and pour another shot right down the bar again.”

  Ryan’s gaze followed the waitress. A nice little black ribbon tied around the ponytail. Nice, the black with the blond hair.

  “Then go back,” Mr. Majestyk said, “boom boom boom, pick up the dough. The third time just hit the guys that want another. This guy I don’t know is there one time and he says, ‘God damn, how do you remember what everybody’s drinking?’ Amazed. I just shrug like it’s nothing. Every Polack in the place is drinking Seven Crown and Strohs. Sixty-five cents.”

  Ryan left his canvas bag at the bar and they went to a restaurant over on the main street for dinner, Estelle’s: a counter and booths with Formica tops and place mats that illustrated Michigan as “The Water-Winter Wonderland.” They ordered steaks with American fries after Ryan bet they wouldn’t have boiled potatoes and they didn’t.

  Mr. Majestyk stared at him, hunched over with his arms on the table edge. “You like boiled potatoes?”

  “Boiled potatoes, just plain or with some parsley,” Ryan said. “It’s like a real potato. I mean it’s got the most potato taste.”

  “Right!” Mr. Majestyk said, with a tone that said it was the correct answer.

  “When I was at home,” Ryan said, “on Sunday my mother would have veal roast or pork roast and boiled potatoes. Not mashed or fried or anything. Boiled. You’d take two or three potatoes and cut them up so they covered about half the plate? Then pour gravy all over it. But try and get a boiled potato in a restaurant.”

  “Where did you live in Detroit?”

  “Highland Park. Just north of where Ford Tractor was. Up by Sears.”

  “I know where it is. Your father work at Ford’s?”

  “He worked for the DSR, but he’s dead now. He died when I was thirteen.”

  “I had some friends worked for the DSR. Hell, they started when they still had streetcars. All retired now or doing something else.”

  “I don’t think my dad ever ran a streetcar. What I remember, he drove a Woodward bus. It’d say RIVER going downtown, you know? And FAIRGROUNDS coming back.”

  “Sure, I’ve ridden it.”

  They didn’t talk much eating the steaks and fries. Ryan pictured the Sunday dinners again in the dining room that was also his bedroom: his mother and his two older sisters and most of the time one or the other’s boyfriend; his dad not always there, not if he had to work Sunday. It was a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, the top floor, of an old building; his mother and dad in one bedroom, the two sisters in the other one, which was always messed up with clothes and magazines and curlers and crap. He slept in the dining room on a studio couch with maple arms and kept his shirts, socks, and underwear in the bottom drawer of the secretary in the living room. He’d be sitting there at the dining room table doing his homework hearing the television in the living room, and his dad would come in carrying his changer, his blue-gray DSR hat on the side of his head and crushed in like a World War II fighter pilot’s hat. If he had stopped for a drink, just a couple, you could tell it. On his day off his dad would sit at the dining room table with a clean sport shirt on, his hair combed and his shoes shined, and play solitaire. He would play it most of the day, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his head raised and his eyes looking down half closed. In the afternoon he would drink beer and read the paper. The paper was the only thing he read.

  “You want some A-one?”

  “No, just ketchup.”

  His dad never looked like a bus driver. He was nice looking. Dark hair. Sort of a slick guy. Good dresser. But he was a bus driver in his forties, making about a hundred and a quarter a week with a wife and three children and living in an apartment building with kitchen smells and peeling plaster out in the hall. He could crush in his hat and wear it hotshot on the side of his head and pretend he was piloting a 707 or a truckload of explosives up the Alcan, but it was still a DSR bus and there was no way to make it something else.

  “How about dessert?”

  “I don’t think so.” Ryan sipped his water. “You know, my dad died when he was forty-six.”

  “Well”—Mr. Majestyk was looking at his hand on his water glass and now Ryan’s eyes dropped to the hand, a thick, toughened hand with swollen knuckles and cracked, yellowed nails, a hand that made the heavy restaurant tumbler seem thin and fragile—“I don’t know. I guess a person just dies.”

  “Yeah, I guess we all have to die.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I don’t mean it that way. I mean we’re supposed to die. You can’t kill yourself, but that’s what we’re here for, to die. Are you a Catholic? With your name, I mean—”

  “Yeah. I was.”

  “Well, don’t you know what I mean?”

  “I never was an altar boy or anything.”

  “You don’t have to be an altar boy, for Christ sake. You were taught, weren’t you? You went to church.”

  “Let’s not get into all that.”

  Mr. Majestyk’s serious gaze held, then began to relax, and he smiled with his perfect-looking false teeth. “What’re we talking about dying for. Come on, let’s go over the Pier.”

  He didn’t see the waitress in the red pants. She was gone and a dumpy Indian-looking waitress was serving the tables. There were girls scattered around the place, but none of them seemed to be alone. There was more noise, the lights were on and there were a lot more people now. There was a long table of beer-drinking college-looking Hermans who had probably been out sailing or cruising around in their cruisers and were loud and never shut up. It wasn’t as good as before.

  When they were at a table again with a pitcher of beer, he saw Bob Jr. come in with the girl. He didn’t recognize the girl right away because he was watching Bob Jr. as they moved through the people down to the end of the bar. Bob Jr. was all slicked up in a real slick checkered sport shirt with the collar tips pointing out to his shoulders, short sleeves turned up once, silver expando watchband and everything, big can hanging over the bar stool now and his hair combed back like Roy Rogers. The girl with him went on to the ladies’ room.

  “You get these guys from Dodge Main off the shift,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “But get them in at night, that’s the trick.”

  Bob Jr. looked this way, toward the front end of the bar, and, sure enough, his forehead was pure white.

  “Well, it was August, so we figure how about fresh corn? All you can eat for fifty cents with this sign out in front. Now we only have one pot,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “On purpose. One that would hold maybe a dozen and a half ears. So the guys come in and order the corn; they’re going to see how much they can eat, see? Fifty cents, you can’t beat it. But they got to wait because only with the one pot we can’t cook more’n a dozen and a half ears. So while they wait they’re drinking, I mean throwing it down. We make money on the booze and, listen, we make money on the corn. Because, see, we get it for twenty-five cents a dozen out by Pontiac and these guys, they pay fifty cents, right?” Mr. Majestyk sat back, the winner. “But none of them eat more than twelve, fourteen ears apiece!”