AT THE BOAT, which was called the Daisy Mae, Sonny Duval was ready and waiting for me. He hauled the boat in to the dock by its painter, and held out his hand to me. I ignored it and long-stepped aboard quite handily by myself.
I figured we better get this point about my knowledge of small boats out of the way right at the start.
“Thanks,” I said.
He just looked at me. Then shrugged. He went aft and backed the boat and threaded his way out through the boats and anchored yachts, and started to run down along the shore lined with the high-walled white houses that I had passed along in the horsecab the night before.
“You know boats, hunh?” he said after a while, amiably enough.
“I used to do a fair amount of small-boat running.” I grinned. The truth was I was happy as hell to be out in one again.
Sonny studied me. “A lot of people say that.” Under his bushy brows, which echoed that Elliot Gould mustache, his small eyes looked away from me. “You like to try her?”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Sure. Why not?” I said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
I moved aft and he passed me the helm and I settled down to get the feel of her. It was not a wheel helm but an old-fashioned bar helm: a two-by-five adzed down to round it off and bolted-in into the rudder. I used to love them in the Caribbean.
It was a nice smooth boat. All those Greek boats were. After a minute I maneuvered it, running out deeper and quartering the incoming swell cleanly. When I turned her, I did it on the top of a swell, instead of turning her in the trough and taking the swell broadside and making her roll. She winged back nicely. So I took her closer in, and did the same thing to starboard, and brought her back out. I gave the bar back to him.
“That was nice,” Sonny said. “Very deft. Very deft. You want to try docking her, when we get to the Port?”
I was not expecting that, either. “Sure. I guess so. If you think I can.”
“I think you can.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll smash up your boat?”
“I don’t think so. You won’t smash it.” He grinned. I did not know what he was trying to prove. He seemed indifferent, not even to care. Maybe it was because he was so rich and he could afford to buy another boat, or two of them. I knew I certainly would not let any new man run my boat in to dock it until I had tested him more than he had tested me.
It was all more than I could fathom, around here. I didn’t know what was going on. You gave people a paradise like this and they immediately tried to turn it into a club, with all sorts of secret games. I didn’t like it worth a damn.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take her in, then.”
We settled down to the ride. I stripped off my shirt and stretched my arms along the rail behind me. I am built pretty rough, and I noted Sonny noticing this. He was strongly built himself, but had gotten flabby. I looked back at the land, and at all of the different houses. No two of them were even remotely alike. I liked that. All of them were pretty in the sun. At one spot there was an Orthodox church, with widely spaced olive trees in its sere yard down the slope to the road and the water, and a low whitewashed wall around the yard. A goat was tethered in the yard by the white wall. All the masonry around here was white-lime-washed.
It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful view, and a beautiful ride.
I didn’t know why my problem of Freddy Tarkoff’s job I had done for him picked just that moment to seize me, and come to the fore of my mind, and demand to be looked at. But it did.