Vickers had not gone to bed at all. Quiet and detached, he had played host until nearly daybreak, and then had watched the party pour itself away. No one had questioned him. No one had said his name. He was not surprised. Most of them could not have said their own names.
He stood alone on the terrace for a long time. The sun came up and touched the morning mist to opalescent warmth and then burned it slowly away. Down in the cove the dinghy looked small and lonesome beside the mooring buoy. It was very quiet. The cruiser had not come back.
There were only three cars left on the flat space below. One would belong to Angie, one to the Crandalls, and one to Bill Saul. Bryce’s car was where Vickers had left it, down the drive.
Vickers flung away his cigarette and went inside. The house was buried under used and empty glassware. In the kitchen he cleared away enough of the litter to make coffee. By the time it was ready the smell of it had begun to bring people out of their holes.
Bill Saul came first. His eyes were bloodshot and there were dark smudges under them, but otherwise he showed no signs of a hangover.
He said, “Hello, Vick,” and nodded toward the huge Silex. “I can use about four gallons of that.”
“Help yourself.” Vickers took his own cup and sat down. He started violently as Saul clashed his saucer on the stove. Saul smiled. “Hasn’t Angie come back yet?”
“No.”
Saul walked over and sat down, not quite opposite Vickers at the kitchen table. He studied him obliquely. He had strange eyes. They seemed to suck every detail into themselves and drown it in some dark and quiet well, from which it could be resurrected at need. Like the corpses in the laboratory vats, Vickers thought.
Saul said, “Well, are you going to talk?”
“When I get ready.”
Saul nodded. “I’ll save my questions, then.” He leaned back and suddenly he was laughing. ‘I’m glad you’re back.”
Vickers raised an eyebrow. “You sound as though you meant that.”
“I do. This is going to be fun.”
“You always did have a weird sense of humor.”
“At least I have one, which is more than you can say. Unless...” He studied Vickers shrewdly.
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’ve acquired one in your travels, along with that scar. You know, you really ought to change your name.”
“Why?”
“Well, a name is a label. You associate it with a particular thing. Take your big hound, Coolin. Suppose he vanishes for four years and comes back with horns, a ridge of bony spikes down his backbone, a fine soprano voice and a passion for artichoke hearts. He’s something, all right, but he isn’t Coolin.”
Vickers smiled. “Study your semantics, Bill. Coolin One is not Coolin Two. Coolin the puppy is not Coolin the hound. And yet it’s all the same dog.”
Bill Saul drank coffee, his eyes pale and intent and faintly malicious over the rim of the cup. “Which are you, then? Vickers One or Vickers Two?”
“Believe me,” said Vickers, “I’ve lost count.” His smile went no farther than his lips. “Which do you think you’d prefer, Bill? You weren’t overly fond of Vickers One, as I recall it.”
“I don’t like people very much,” Saul said. “Even people I like.” He glanced at the door, then rose. “Good morning, you sweet bitch,” he said pleasantly to Harriet Crandall. “Guess who this is? Or did you know?”
Harriet Crandall stood quite still, watching Vickers’ body unfold lazily. Her eyes slid upward to his face and stayed there. In the clear morning light she looked pinched and waspish and old, and her red hair had no life to it. Her body was incongruously young and curved under the dove-gray housecoat she wore.
She put both hands over her face. “Bill,” she said steadily. “I had a lot to drink last night. I may still be drunk. I seem to be looking at a man who looks like Michael Vickers. Not exactly like Michael Vickers. Just enough to make me uncomfortable.”
Vickers said pleasantly, “You go right on being uncomfortable, old girl, because I am Vickers. Have some coffee?”
“Coffee,” said Harriet. “My God.” She sat down. “I need something stronger than that.” She was suddenly angry. “Well, if that isn’t just like you, Vick! To turn up here without a word of warning and frighten the living...”
“Vick!”
The voice came from Job Crandall. It was like a grunt produced by being kicked fairly hard in the stomach. And Crandall’s face had that kind of a look on it. He reached out blindly for the door jamb.
Vickers walked over to him. “Hello, Job. I spoke to you last night, but you were a little confused. Coffee’s just ready. Come on in.”
Crandall didn’t move. His eyes didn’t waver from Vickers’ face. He began to tremble, particularly along the right side and arm. His jaw lifted, and his head drew around toward his right shoulder. His face was quite calm, bronzed and handsome, almost boyish.
Harriet said between her teeth, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop him!”
Vickers said to Saul, “Get some ice.” Saul went off quickly. Vickers put his hand on Job’s shoulder, and shook him gently. “Job. Here, now.” Saul came back with ice cubes wrapped in a dishtowel. Vickers took the cold bundle and held it firmly against the back of Crandall’s neck. Crandall caught a long shuddering breath and went rigid. Vickers led him to the breakfast nook and sat him down on the padded bench. He began to rub the ice over Crandall’s face and neck. Presently Crandall took the ice away from him, pressed it to his own forehead, and leaned forward over the table. His voice was uncertain, embarrassed, desperately unconcerned.
“Hello, Vick,” he said. “How are you? When did you get back?”
Harriet flounced over to the stove. “He got back last night, he says. Just walked in. Just like that. Not a word to anybody.” She splashed coffee into a cup and turned around. “If that isn’t just like him! Selfish son of a bitch... missing four years, nobody knows whether he’s alive or dead, and then he just turns up. I suppose that warning people beforehand would have spoiled his dramatic entrance.” She advanced toward Vickers. “And what I want to know is, what in hell happened to you? By God, if I were Angie, I’d cut your throat!”
Vickers said softly, ‘I’m just wondering if anybody made this much of a fuss when I went away.”
A woman’s voice said yawningly, “Who went away? You talking about my husband?”
A tall brunette came sleepily into the kitchen. She was strictly the showgirl type, long legs and a sharp, upthrusting bosom, all of which were displayed in a turquoise jersey sun-suit of the smallest possible dimensions. The bleached blonde who had been with Bill Saul on the sun deck was right behind her. She went over and draped herself quietly around Bill. The brunette looked around the kitchen, glanced incuriously at Vickers, and demanded,
“Where is that no-good louse, anyhow?”
Bill Saul said, “Mrs. Bryce, allow me to present Mr. Michael Vickers. Mr. Vickers, this is Jennie, who is not, I fear, as bright as a penny – the fourth Mrs. Harold Bryce. And by the way, where is Harold?”
The brunette Mrs. Bryce smiled at Vickers, measured him up and down, added coquetry to her expression, and tossed her breasts ever so slightly. “Pleased to meet you.”
Vickers bowed.
‘I’m getting sliced from Harold,” she said. “The bum.” She walked to the stove, her hips swinging. The blonde had gone to sleep on Saul’s shoulder. Job Crandall reached out suddenly and caught Vickers’ hand.
“Vick,” he said. “What happened to you? What did happen?”
Vickers looked down. His face was bland and innocent.
“You were with me, Job. You and Bill Saul and Harry Bryce. You should know what happened.”
The kitchen was quiet. Very, very quiet. And then, creeping small into the stillness, came the distant hum of a motor. Vickers straightened and turned away from Crandall and went out, to the living room, to the front door that stood open to the sun.
He watched it come, a little roaring speck that grew across the blue water and made a clean white arc into the cove. It slowed and came daintily to rest by the mooring buoy, and the motor choked, bubbled, and died. The sharp wailing cry of a gull sounded loud in the sudden silence. Vickers stood motionless, watched the lithe figure in striped jersey and dungarees make fast and then climb into the dinghy and start to row ashore. A vein began to beat in his temple.
He returned to the kitchen. The people in it had leaked out, little by little, to watch. They fell back before him. Only Bill’s nameless blonde didn’t care. Jennie Bryce said plaintively, “Won’t somebody for Chrissake tell me...” Saul slapped her bottom hard and said, “Be quiet, darling.”
Vickers said, “Sit down, everybody. What’ll you have for breakfast?”
Crandall said, “But Vick...!”
“What will you have for breakfast?”
“Bacon and eggs,” said Bill Saul. “That’s always easy.” He sat down. His eyes were very bright, amused and cruel. Vickers got bacon and eggs from the refrigerator and set the heavy skillet on the stove. Jennie Bryce sat on the corner of the table and drank coffee and looked hurt and sullen. Job Crandall was in the breakfast nook, leaning on his elbows, his face suddenly lined and very tired. Harriet sat opposite him, perched on the edge of the bench. Bill’s blonde was happy, curled in Bill’s lap.
Vickers tied a heavy apron around him and put the bacon in the pan.
Harriet rose behind his back and went quickly and quietly toward the door.
Vickers said, not turning around, “Harriet.”
She stopped. She looked over her shoulder at Vickers, who was not looking at her. She looked around the room, and then back at Vickers. Then she went back and sat down. Bill Saul smiled.
Light quick footsteps came into the house.
Vickers turned the bacon carefully. There was no sound in the kitchen but the hot sibilance of the fat. The vein lay like a knotted cord across his forehead, below the white scar.
A voice called out from the hallway, “Hi! Who’s the good samaritan? That smells wonderful – and am I starved!”
He could feel her behind him, a movement, an aliveness, even before she came into the doorway. He could feel the others, too. Silent, watching. He turned swiftly and looked at their faces, at the things caught naked behind their eyes, and the same thing was in all of them. Fear.
They tried to hide it from him, all but Bill Saul, who was enjoying himself and who never hid things anyway. And then Angie came, and she was just as he remembered.
He saw her walk into the kitchen. Black hair the color of smoke, without shininess, thick and tangled by the sea wind; her skin a glowing brown. He saw her stop, puzzled, and frown, and start to speak, half laughing, and he thought, Her mouth is just the same, her breasts are still lovely... Her eyes were golden, and as warm as the morning.
She saw him.
He watched her. He could not see clearly. It was very hot, and there was sweat in his eyes. He did not know whether the others were still there or not. The kitchen was long, very long, as long as four years, and Angie was walking toward him. She came slowly. He pulled off the apron because he couldn’t breathe, it was so tight around him. He watched her face as it came closer, and suddenly he could see it with a terrible clarity, and it had a quivering, defenseless look. It was like a small creature stricken suddenly, stunned, still not sure. He tried to look into her eyes, and could not.
She put out her hand and touched his chest. She said. “Vick,” just once. He caught her as she fell.
She was very light in his arms. He carried her out of the kitchen, and down the long hall, with the garden bright and fresh beyond the windows. He carried her into the big room on the corner and kicked the door shut behind them, and laid her gently on the bed. Her head moved restively. She whispered, “Vick! Vick!”, half whimpering, and he bent and kissed her on the mouth, with a great tenderness. Her lips parted under his, not with passion but a sigh, and then she was looking at him, herself, Angie, awake and curiously still.
“Are you sorry, Angie? Sorry I came back?”
“Vick, I...” She shook her head, because the words wouldn’t come. She lay and stared up at him. He sat on the edge of the bed, with one hand braced across her, close to her body, and he could feel the racing beat of her heart.
She whispered, “I think I always knew you’d come.”
She put her hands up, slowly, and brushed her fingertips back along the sides of his jaw, back of his ears, into his hair. The palms of her hands folded in, cupping his head as though it were something infinitely precious and beautiful.
“I’ve missed you. Oh God, how I’ve missed you!”
Her eyes were wonderful. They had a light in them. Her fingers pressed his neck.
He bent again and lifted her into his arms, and they lay without moving for a long while. They did not kiss. Her cheek against his was wet, and finally, when he straightened and looked down at her and touched her hair, she said wonderingly, “I never saw you cry.”
He got up then, and turned away from her. There was a pressure in his temples. She said, “Darling, what happened? Tell me what happened!”
Vickers said slowly, “What did they say had happened? My friends – Job Crandall and Bill Saul and Harry Bryce?”
“They didn’t know. They wired me from Mexico that you had disappeared. They did everything, and they couldn’t find you-not even any trace of you. Job and Harry flew back, and Bill got some men and brought the boat back himself.” She sat up on the bed. “They didn’t know, Vick. You were with them, and then suddenly you weren’t. That’s all.” His back was toward her. He said nothing. She burst out, “Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you send word?”
He faced her. He took hold of the footboard and leaned over it.
“Are you sorry I came back?”
She did not try to evade. After a time she said quietly, “I don’t know.”
He nodded and turned away again. He lighted a cigarette, moving as he did so to the wide corner windows. He leaned his shoulder against the frame and looked out at the sea, and began to talk in a noncommittal way, as though none of it were very important.
“We had chartered the Lady B, remember? Job and Harry and Bill and I. A stag cruise down the coast. It was a good cruise, as far as it went. We had a lot of fun, caught a lot of fish. We went ashore one night at a little port, way down the coast. I’ve forgotten the name of it now, if I ever knew it. And I was drunk.
“That’s odd, if you’ll remember, Angie. I never drank much, and I was never drunk. But that night I had one highball aboard the Lady B, and I got drunk. Very drunk. You know Bill and Job and Harry. We all went ashore very high and happy. I remember how funny everything looked. There was no shape nor size nor distance. The town was like something painted on water, and the streets were very dark. I don’t know where we went, or what we did, or who was with me. I mean, whether it was all three or only one of them, at the end. A man’s voice – it sounded like the voice of God – spoke to me out of a singing mist, my head was full of it, and it said, ‘Turn around, Vickers. I’ve waited a long time for this – I want to watch your face as you go down.’
“I suppose I remember the words, because even when you’re drugged you remember a sentence of death. By that time I was blind, I could hardly stand. I don’t know what hit me. I don’t know how long it was before I came to. When I did I was aboard a Portuguese tramp, headed south, nothing in my pockets to tell me who I was, and nothing in my head, either. Only a damn big hole. They told me they’d found me in an alley off at the edge of town, and they thought I was drunk. They’d had pox aboard the ship, and they needed men. After they found I was really hurt, they were sorry they’d bothered, and by Jesus they made me work! After that – well, it doesn’t matter. Only it was three years before I could remember my name.”
He turned to Angie, his eyes hooded and dark. “You see why I didn’t write. A corpse doesn’t write to the executioner and say, ‘Hullo, old boy – I’m coming back.’”
He waited for Angie to speak. She sat quite still, her face intent, somehow withdrawn, as though busy with her own thoughts.
“You don’t seem very surprised,” he said.
‘I’m not. It’s what I’ve been afraid of.”
He smiled, with a certain gentle irony. “My friends.”
Angie said, “You were never a man who could make friends, Vick.”
“Even of you.”
“No.”
“You hated me, really.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes – yes.”
“So you were afraid one of them had killed me. Afraid – or glad?”
Her eyes flashed yellow like an angry cat’s. “That’s rotten even from you, Vick!”
“They’re here. You drink with them. From what I hear, you sleep with them. You can’t have been too much afraid.”
She said levelly, “I’ve been trying to find out. For four years I’ve been trying to find out.” After a moment she said, “And I don’t owe you any apologies.”
He stood watching her. His face took on a still, half sleeping look. He said softly, “You owe me something, after four years.” He waited, and saw the small movement of herself toward him, and then he went to the foot of the bed, and stopped. “Not unless you want it, Angie. I won’t touch you, unless you want it.”
Again the wondering question in her voice. “You’d never have said that four years ago.”
“No.”
“Oh Vick, if you’d ever let me love you as I could!”
“Why didn’t you leave me?”
“You wouldn’t have let me, even if I’d wanted to. And...”
“And what?”
“I kept thinking, something will change him.”
“Have you wanted me back?”
“Oh, darling...” She had no more voice. Her eyes were huge and gentle and shining with the soft brilliance of tears. She lay back on the pillow and held out her arms.
The knocking on the door was very loud. Bill Saul was calling, “Vicki God damn it, Vick, get up! Harry Bryce...” He stopped, then went on in a different tone. “Well, he’s come back, Vick. I think you’d better see him.”