“So glad you could make it! We’re out back. Come along. Tommy fogged the yard before he went to work, and there’s hardly a bug. He should be along any minute.”
She kept chattering away, slightly nervous, as I followed her out to the slope of lawn overlooking the lake-shore. Tall hedges of closely planted punk trees shielded the area from the neighboring houses. There was a redwood table and benches under a shade tree, a flourishing banyan. The two-story boathouse was an attractive piece of architecture, in keeping with the house. There was a T-shaped dock, iron lawn furniture painted white, a sunfish hauled up onto the grass, a little runabout tethered at the dock. The makings of the picnic lunch were stacked on one end of the redwood table. A charcoal fire was smoking in a hibachi. She pointed out the pitcher of fresh orange juice, the ice bucket, the glasses, the vodka bottle, and told me to make myself a drink while she went to tell Maurie I’d arrived.
In a few moments Maureen came out through the screened door of the patio, moving down across the yard toward me, smiling. Her dead mother had written me that she was stunning. In truth she was magnificent. Her presence dimmed the look of Biddy, as if the younger sister were a poor color print, overexposed and hastily developed. Maude’s blond hair was longer and richer and paler. Her eyes were a deeper, more intense blue. Her skin was flawlessly tanned, an even gold that looked theatrical and implausible. Her figure was far more rich and abundant and had she not stood so tall, she would have seemed overweight. She wore a short open beach robe in broad orange and white stripes over a snug blue swimsuit. She moved toward me without haste, and reached and took my hands. Her grasp was solid and dry and warm.
“Travis McGee. I’ve thought of you a thousand times.” Her voice was slow, like her smile and her walk. “Thank you for coming to see us. You were so good to us a long time ago.” She turned and looked over her shoulder toward Biddy and said, “You’re right. He isn’t as old as I thought he’d be either.” She stretched up and kissed me lightly on the corner of the mouth and squeezed my hands hard and released them. “Excuse me, Travis dear, while I go do my laps. I’ve missed them for a few days, and if I stop for any length of time, I get all saggy and soft and nasty.”
She walked out to the crossbar of the T and tugged a swimcap on, dropped the robe on the boards and dived in with the abrupt efficiency of the expert. She began to swim back and forth, the length of the crossbar, so concealed by the dock that all we could see were the slow and graceful lift and reach of her tanned arms.
“Well?” Biddy asked, standing at my elbow.
“Pretty overwhelming.”
“But different?”
“Yes.”
“How? Can you put your finger on it?”
“Maybe she seems as if she’s dreaming the whole scene. She sort of… floats. Is she on anything?”
“Like drugs? Oh, no. Well, when she gets jumpy, we give her a shot. It’s sort of a long-lasting tranquilizer. Tom learned from one of the doctors and taught me how.”
I watched the slow and apparently tireless swimming and moved to the table to finish making my drink. “There’s nothing vague or dazed about her eyes. But she gives me a funny kind of feeling, Biddy. A kind of caution. As if there’s no possible way of guessing just what she might do next.”
“Whatever comes into her head. Nothing violent. But she is just… as primitive and natural as a small child. Wherever she itches, she’ll scratch, no matter where she is. Her table manners are… pretty damned direct. They get the job done and in a hurry. And she says whatever she happens to be thinking, and it can get pretty… personal. Then if Tom or I jump on her about it, she gets confused and upset. Her face screws up and her hands start shaking and she goes running off to her bedroom usually. But she can talk painting or politics or books… just so long as it’s things she learned over a year ago. She hasn’t added anything new this year.”