CHAPTER ELEVEN

For the next ten minutes I sat around and fidgeted while Bonnie and Dr. Kristin were rounded up. They showed up, finally, and after some discussion Dr. Kristin took Bonnie into Sandra's room to examine her.

Bonnie made a big fuss, of course. She didn't want to be examined, all she wanted was justice—meaning my immediate expulsion from the colony. But she was hushed up and bundled off into the next room.

After perhaps fifteen minutes Dr. Kristin came out. He was a thin, muscular man, a doctor by profession and a nudist by hobby, who had been the staff doctor at Sunland for years.

He was frowning.

He said, "The woman hasn't had sexual intercourse in at least twenty-four hours. I'd be prepared to swear to that."

"See!" I crowed. "Told you, didn't I? She was making the whole story up out of spite."

Dr. Richards ran a hand reflectively through his hair. "Can you be sure about this, Paul?"

"Positive."

"All right," Dr. Richards said. "Al, you can go. I think I'd better have a private talk with Bonnie right here and now."

Joanie said warningly, "You've let that woman disrupt the camp for years and years, remember, Henry—"

Dr. Richards shrugged. "Perhaps I've been too tolerant all these years. But she is an unhappy human being, after all. I'd best talk with her."

I left the cabin gratefully. As I went out, Sandra came in, wet from a late-afternoon dip, and she looked at me queerly as though wondering what I might be doing in the cabin of her parents. I went past her without a word and back to my cabin to wait for the ringing of the dinner gong.

Meehan had returned from swimming, now. He was sitting on the porch in front of my typewriter—he hadn't brought his own—-pecking away with two fingers.

"Working?" I said.

"Transcribing my notes. If I wait too long to transcribe them, I can't read what they say. Lousy handwriting, that's the trouble."

I peered over his shoulder and saw a page full of disjointed phrases, random jottings, and pure gibberish. He seemed to understand it, though. And—what the hell—somehow he managed to distill $50,000 a year worth of material out of gibberish and jottings.

He looked up. "That new one is nice."

"Naomi?"

"The one who came down to the water in the terrycloth robe. I could go for that one," Jack said.

"She's inhibited," I told him. "It took her half the afternoon to make up her mind about getting her clothes off. You should have seen her before, when she tried to go swimming in a bikini."

"What happened?"

"Elinor Richards nabbed her and gave her that robe. She would have started a riot here in that bikini."

Meehan leaned back, smiling lazily. "I could go for that one," he said again. And the way he said it told me that he was plenty interested. Remember what I said about men wanting a challenge? I guess Jack wanted to tackle the challenge of this maidenly but sexy-looking brunette. I couldn't say I blamed him.

We went inside. I told him about the Bonnie incident, and about the pow-wow up at the Richards cabin. Then the gong sounded, and we started up front toward the mess hall.

Bonnie was not at dinner. Neither were the Richardses or Joanie, at first. They came in about fifteen minutes late, looking solemn, and sat down without saying anything to me. At the end of the meal, as I was walking out, Dr. Richards gestured to me and waved me into a vacant seat next to him.

He said, "The Carter woman admitted lying about the rape incident."

"Glad to hear it."

"For half an hour that woman spewed up her filthy soul," Dr. Richards said, shivering. "Finally I had to ask her to leave the colony. I should never have admitted her in the first place. She needs psychiatric help."

"She's going?"

"She's gone. She packed in a hurry and we saw her off five minutes before we came to dinner." He frowned. "She promised not to make any trouble for us. I hope she keeps her word."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked.

"Her kind of personality reacts to what she considers an insult with hatred."

"I know."

"Hatred and lies. She might get in touch with some newspaper and tell them that there are wild and drunken sex orgies going on out here." Richards scowled. "Most of the people of this state believe that's what goes on here anyway. And if someone who's actually been here says so, there could be all kinds of trouble. A police raid, photographers, bad publicity, everything. We've had to struggle for acceptance all these years, and if Bonnie decides to stir up a hornet's nest she could come close to ruining us."

As I walked away, I wondered what effect a police raid might have on my job. "Also arrested and charged with indecent exposure and lewd behavior was Alfred Fieldston, 34, a copywriter for the advertising firm of...." That sort of stuff. If it ever got into the Chicago papers, I might very easily find myself right out on my nudist butt, lenient easy-going management and all. The top brass had a relaxed attitude, all right, but they were still advertising executives, which means they were highly conservative people. Anything that might conceivably offend a client—such as eccentricity among the underlings—was to be shunned. A copywriter who grew a beard was likely to get a polite note from J. D. telling him to get rid of it "for the sake of the team." A copywriter who got his name—and the agency's—into the papers on whatever charges they might hang on a nudist was sure to get the axe.

$14,000 a year, goodbye.

Expense account, goodbye.

All on account of a bugeyed bit of neurotic tail who was miffed at my refusal to sleep with her? No. There wouldn't be any justice in the universe if Bonnie's jealousy cost me my job.

I spent a pretty uncomfortable evening worrying about the possibilities thereof.

There was no formal program scheduled for that night. The weather turned cool again, and by half past eight it was downright chilly, and everyone was not only fully dressed but bundled up in jackets as well. I wandered around, seeing what was going on. In the music room, half a dozen people were gathered around Ted Nichols, who had a banjo and was singing folk-songs. Off in the corner, some of the older folks were having a quiet game of bridge. A few people were in the library, catching up on magazines and newspapers from the remote outside world. A couple of brave souls were even watching television. It was a typical quiet night at any country resort. Dancing in the social hall, basket-weaving for the artsy and craftsy, table tennis in the rec room. I drifted around from one group to another. I was too restless—after the scene with Bonnie—to feel much like settling down in any one place.

Joanie was in the crafts room, finishing up a professional-looking pair of leather sandals. She smiled warmly at me, but obviously was much more interested in finishing the sandals than in talking to me. I left after a little while.

Meehan had already dropped his fruitless pursuit of Mary Kinowski and had taken up the chase of Naomi Gardner. I spotted them in the social hall, Meehan looking his usual rumpled self in clothing, Naomi looking chic and gay and very happy to have her body covered again for the time being. They waved to me as they came dancing by the door.

Both Sandra and Harriet were occupied with fellows. Sandra had snared a newcomer named Davis, an architect in his middle twenties whose face, all planes and angles, looked like it had come from some surrealist's drafting board. As for Harriet, she was with the new kitchen man, a hatchet-faced friend of Riccio's who had come up to work here when the influx of guests made more help necessary in the kitchen.

I hoped he would make her very happy. In the way that she liked to be kept happy.

With both Sandra and Harriet occupied and with Bonnie gone, I felt very much at loose ends with myself. Everybody else seemed to be right at home, busily involved in whatever he or she wanted to be doing, and here I was floating from place to place. I wanted to be alone with Joanie, but I didn't know how to go about getting through the impervious layer she surrounded herself with. She was working on crafts tonight, and that was all she planned to do. Since I was a hopeless dub at anything more complicated than tying my shoes, I didn't feel like joining her in the crafts shop, and I didn't know how to get her away. So I wandered back to the social hall and danced with the wall-flowers for a while.

Meehan and Naomi slipped away around half past nine. I was dancing with Margaret at the time, and not particularly enjoying the experience.

I realized I had been pretty dumb; I had had the inside track on Naomi this afternoon and hadn't followed things up. I had been too busy daydreaming about Joanie, who couldn't be had, and I had let this girl—who probably could be, with the right persuasion—fall into Meehan's waiting hands.

Well, I couldn't begrudge her to Jack. But I told myself glumly that I could very well be exploring the contents of her sweater now, instead of dancing with fat giggly Margaret.

Human beings are weirdos, aren't they? Bonnie, Sandra, and Harriet climb all over me, and I brush them off. Then a perfectly luscious young dish, shy and virginal and ripe for seduction, appears on the scene, and despite an initial advantage I fail to capitalize. And then, after I see someone else ploughing the pasture, I get regretful. We're never happy with what we have. We only want what can't be had, or what someone else has taken.

Filled with brooding of this sort, I wended my lonely way back to the cabin shortly before ten and got into bed. I wondered idly whether Sandra would come slithering into the sack with me again in the small hours. I hoped not. I was tremendously depressed, for no really good single reason, and I just wanted to be left alone by Sandra and any other eager tail in the vicinity.

Sandra didn't bother me. I slept the night through without interruption.

When I woke, a little before seven, it was raining. The thump-thump on the cabin roof woke me up. I went to the window and looked out into a gray morning. Rain was falling in enormous drops. The volleyball court was a muddy shambles, and little pools of water were collecting on the lawn.

I turned around and got back into bed. But after listening to the pounding of the rain for half an hour, I heard the breakfast gong ringing right on time. I went to the window again. Dr. Richards was standing on his porch with a megaphone, and he was yelling to us to stay where we were, that everyone would be picked up and taken to the mess hall by car.

I woke Meehan up and we got dressed—warmly, because it was miserably nasty outside. Dr. Richards was going around with a big gray station-wagon that belonged to the camp, picking people up. We made it on the second trip. Breakfast was a welcome thing that morning—good hot oatmeal and plenty of scalding coffee.

It rained all day. For the people of Sunland, it was by way of being a major tragedy; it meant a day of fidgety boredom indoors, growing paler by the minute. Don Riemann conducted his morning calisthenics class in the social hall, and it was announced that various sessions of singing and dancing would be held during the day.

I wasn't interested. I rode back to the cabin after breakfast and set up the typewriter.

I thought it would be easier to work in complete privacy than out in the open on my porch. But I was wrong. The cabin was cold and drafty and not very well lit, and the melancholy drumming of the rain on the roof added to the general greyness of the day. I read through the chapter I had written in such a white heat the previous afternoon, and then tried to get started on Chapter Two. But getting started was hard. I typed out an opening sentence and stared at it for fifteen minutes before I could figure out what I wanted to say next. After half an hour I had managed to string one entire paragraph together, no more.

The rain and the chill depressed me. I began to think that the chapter I had written yesterday was no good. I came close to tearing it up. Then, for a while, I decided that the whole book was no good—a hopeless waste of time on which I was expending a hell of a lot of unpaid weeks, at a net cost of better than $250 a week in salary I wasn't earning. That's a stiff price to pay for a hobby horse.

It took me fifteen minutes of staring out into the rain to get me off that kick.

I got back to work, and things went a little easier. I typed for an hour, slowly and haltingly but without any real interruption of thought, and when I stopped to rest I found I had written three and a half pages. I settled down into my chair and began to type some more, adding one word after another. By noon I had done half of the second chapter.

The station-wagon picked us up again for lunch. The spirits of the colonists were as damp as the lawn. One day without sunlight had left them all pretty unhappy and irritable.

At the table some of the old-timers were reminiscing about the weather in past years. Joanie cited one year when there hadn't been any rain at all, except a sprinkle or two, during all of July and August. That had been hell for the surrounding farmers, and it had left the Sunland lawns looking brown and crisped, but the colonists had never had so much sunshine before.

Dr. Richards countered with a recollection of one of the years in the late '40s when there had been a solid week of rain. "It started Sunday night, and it didn't let up again until the following Saturday. Sometimes it was only a drizzle, sometimes it came down in buckets, but it wasn't dry that whole week. We thought we'd get floated away."

Something like that would be pretty grim, I thought. These cabins weren't built for lengthy occupancy. They were designed as places to sleep and hang your toothbrush; the rest of the time you were supposed to be outdoors soaking up Vitamin D.

Meehan disappeared right after lunch. Whether it was to while away the hours with Naomi or just to do some research in the colony library, I never found out. But I went back to the cabin alone and plunked myself before the typewriter.

It was a long while before I could get warmed up and started again. Writing a novel, I kept telling myself, was tough work. I wondered about the people who wrote books for a living. Every day of their lives they had to go through what I was going through right now: the awful moment when you apply the seat of the pants to the chair before the typewriter, roll a sheet of paper in, and command yourself to produce.

It was so easy just to get up and walk away and not produce. I began to be grateful I was swaddled in the protective warmth of an advertising agency, call it prostitution or no. I didn't see how I could take the pressure of writing novels for a living, knowing that I had to produce or there'd be no cigarettes or drinks or steaks or shoes for the baby. And facing the possibility of earning absolutely nothing for your efforts. I figured I'd be happy enough to get this one book written—and, maybe, published—and then I'd get back to the Wacker Drive womb, pick up those nice fat checks every Thursday, and to hell with creativity. Let Faulkner and Cozzens and O'Hara write the novels; I'd be content to read them instead of writing my own.

But I plugged away anyway.

One word after the next after the next, telling my story, letting my hero speak out. The important thing to remember was that I had to get the book written. I had to tell the story from beginning to end, from page 1 to page 250 or wherever. There was time afterward to go pack and polish things up, and time after that to worry about getting it published. But the rough draft had to be there before any of the later steps could come about.

I didn't look at my watch, and I didn't get up out of my chair, and I didn't stop typing. And almost before I knew it I was rolling along toward the end of Chapter Two. Twenty-five pages of manuscript sat on the table, thirteen of them written today, and I knew now that the hardest part of the job was over. I was under way, and momentum would carry me on.

In fact, I was making damned good time. I had budgeted myself to do three chapters a week, and here were two chapters done in two days. But I knew I couldn't keep up that kind of pace. Later on, the story got a lot more complicated. I would have to work things out in advance, then write the passages a few times until they made some sense. Still and all, I had five days left to get Chapter Three done. Which meant I could loaf if I felt like it—or, if the rain continued, I could get ahead of schedule and do my loafing later on.

I looked at my watch. Half past four. I had worked the whole afternoon. My clothes were soaked with perspiration, my legs felt cramped, my backside sore. I got up and walked to the window.

What I saw out there was a scene out of pagan mythology. A dozen naked figures dancing in the rain, their heads thrown back in joy, their tanned bodies bare to the winds and the rain.

Joanie was there, and Ted Nichols, and Don Riemann, and most of the volleyball set. Their hands were joined and they were going round and round on the grass in one of those Palestinian folk-dances where you run six steps to the left, kick your heels, run back to the right, kick your heels again, leap in the air, shout, run into the center of the ring, hands in the air, shout, run out, run to the left again. I watched them for a moment. They were having the time of their lives, and the rain wasn't bothering them a bit.

I had to admire them. They were making the most of lousy weather and having a high old time of it. A month before, I would have said they were all lunatics for dancing in the rain. Now I was eager to join them myself.

I got out of my clothes in a hurry, shivering a little in the draft. I toweled some of the sweat off, so I'd be less likely to catch pneumonia.

I ran out into the rain.

It was cold outside—maybe sixty degrees at best—and the rain was coming down in buckets. It hit me like an avalanche of live coals, and for a moment I almost went back inside. But only for a moment. I trotted across the grass, my feet slipping and sloshing in the soggy lawn at every step, and ran up to the dancers.

The circle opened for me as I came up. Joanie took one of my hands, Ernie Bryan the other, and I got into the swing of the dance. One, two, three, four, five, six, kick! To the right, one, two, three, four, five, six, kick! Jump in the air, now. Shout for sheer joy as the cool rain cleanses your naked body.

Breasts bob and jounce. Bodies glisten in the rain. Everybody into the center of the ring, now, naked bodies practically touching, Reena Bryan's breasts inches from my chest. Throw your hands in the air and shout again. Join hands again, now, run back to the original position. To the left, one, two, three, four, five, six, kick! To the right—

A primitive kind of joy welled up in my throat, and I yelled spontaneously for pure happiness. I was naked in the rain, feeling warm and completely at ease in my skin, and the pure water was washing away all my troubles. Two chapters were written, Joanie of the beautiful breasts was holding my hand, and life was good.

It was a moment of complete bliss, the sort of moment Faust sold his soul for. Above us the skies were menacing, below us the lawn was mushy and slippery. But for the dozen of us, none of that mattered. We were all one, one joyous group, dancing in the rain. One, two, three, four, five, six, kick!

Jump in the air.

Shout.

Everybody into the center.

We roared with delight. Finally somebody broke the circle, rolling back on the wet grass, kicking his feet in the air and laughing in pleasure. The dance ended. And in one sudden spontaneous motion everybody was hugging everybody else.

I found Joanie in my arms, her breasts hard against my chest, her loins tight against mine. For one wild moment we hugged, and then, carried away, I sought her lips and kissed her, and her lips opened to mine and my tongue slipped into her mouth.

She shivered. I didn't know if it was a shiver of delight or disgust. I released her and we backed away from each other, both of us a little surprised by what had happened. She looked confused and fuddled.

But she was smiling.