Read Online The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
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utterly gentle. Poor ordinary chick-child, scared almost sick of all the richnesses of maturity. Poor eagle-scout child,with its mama herding it relentlessly toward the ministry. Poor trembler, facing now the fleshy actuality, quite different from all those erotic little night-thoughts it fancied so evil.
“I really got to leave,” he said in the golden stillness, his voice unsteady.
“Of course, dear Oliver. I know.”
Six
AT CRISSY HARKINSON ’ S isolated and luxurious house on lower Biscayne Bay, the servant’s quarters were above the detached two-car garage and utility room. Crissy’s white Mercedes convertible was in one of the stalls. The vehicle of the young sailing instructor was parked in the turnaround area, inside the open vehicle gate, near the redwood fencing, a weary and solemn car, orange rust and blue paint.
Outside stairs were affixed to the side of the carport structure, leading up to a shallow open porch which ran the length of the building. Raoul Kelly sat placidly on the railing of the porch smoking a cigar and watching the sunset, waiting for Francisca to return. From there he could see a few glints of his own car beyond the fence where he preferred to leave it, some beetle-blue gleamings between the fence boards and the broad leaves of the outside plantings.
She came swiftly from the house, grinned up at him, waved, and came hurrying up the stairs, along the porch, gave him a quick hug,a little pat, and said, “It was an excellent guess. The working classes are given a little holiday. Until breakfast. And I think noon would be a very good guess for breakfast time.”
“He’s a little out of his class, ’Cisca. He’s overmatched.”
It was their practice for him to speak English and for her to respond in her brisk Cuban Spanish. Her understanding was far better than her ability to speak English.
She leaned against a nearby porch post, hands in the pockets of her vivid red skirt. She made a face. “It is a common thing, they say, for women of her age to covet strong young men, just as fat bankers seduce school girls. I feel like an accomplice, Raoul. She had me bring the fat worm and drop it right into the web. He seemed extremely nervous. And she had set the stage very shrewdly, and dressed appropriately.”
Sometimes, infrequently, he would detect in her voice some of the cadences and inflections of upper class pre-Castro Havana, the echo of yacht club, house parties, diplomatic functions.
She had been born to that world twenty-four years ago, and after the convent school and a proper marriage she would have become one of the chattering vivid young wives of Havana, all giggles and gossip and sideglance of flirtation, shopping at El Encanto and in Nassau, playing tennis and poolside bridge while the maids cared for the babies, flying to New York in the spring or the autumn with her husband. It was what the young Señorita Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar had expected her life to be.
Had that world not changed, Raoul Kelly might even have met her there, but not as a social equal. Only child of a shop-keeper, he had been awarded a scholarship to Columbia University, had elected to enter the School of Journalism, had returned and gone to work on a Havana paper. He had heard of the Torcedo family, had not met them, knew that the wife had died as the result of a fall from a horse, knew that the father was so closely associated with Batista incertain business matters it would have been better for him to have left, as did so many others, before the bearded ones entered the city.
Later, after Raoul became a very good friend of the brother, Enrique Torcedo, during the training for the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had learned what had happened to the father. He had been too stubborn to leave. Those first days of the change of regime were days and nights of confusions, foolish acts, wildness. The papa had been clumsily and stupidly slain, not by one of the bearded veterans, but by a bewildered boy
“I really got to leave,” he said in the golden stillness, his voice unsteady.
“Of course, dear Oliver. I know.”
Six
AT CRISSY HARKINSON ’ S isolated and luxurious house on lower Biscayne Bay, the servant’s quarters were above the detached two-car garage and utility room. Crissy’s white Mercedes convertible was in one of the stalls. The vehicle of the young sailing instructor was parked in the turnaround area, inside the open vehicle gate, near the redwood fencing, a weary and solemn car, orange rust and blue paint.
Outside stairs were affixed to the side of the carport structure, leading up to a shallow open porch which ran the length of the building. Raoul Kelly sat placidly on the railing of the porch smoking a cigar and watching the sunset, waiting for Francisca to return. From there he could see a few glints of his own car beyond the fence where he preferred to leave it, some beetle-blue gleamings between the fence boards and the broad leaves of the outside plantings.
She came swiftly from the house, grinned up at him, waved, and came hurrying up the stairs, along the porch, gave him a quick hug,a little pat, and said, “It was an excellent guess. The working classes are given a little holiday. Until breakfast. And I think noon would be a very good guess for breakfast time.”
“He’s a little out of his class, ’Cisca. He’s overmatched.”
It was their practice for him to speak English and for her to respond in her brisk Cuban Spanish. Her understanding was far better than her ability to speak English.
She leaned against a nearby porch post, hands in the pockets of her vivid red skirt. She made a face. “It is a common thing, they say, for women of her age to covet strong young men, just as fat bankers seduce school girls. I feel like an accomplice, Raoul. She had me bring the fat worm and drop it right into the web. He seemed extremely nervous. And she had set the stage very shrewdly, and dressed appropriately.”
Sometimes, infrequently, he would detect in her voice some of the cadences and inflections of upper class pre-Castro Havana, the echo of yacht club, house parties, diplomatic functions.
She had been born to that world twenty-four years ago, and after the convent school and a proper marriage she would have become one of the chattering vivid young wives of Havana, all giggles and gossip and sideglance of flirtation, shopping at El Encanto and in Nassau, playing tennis and poolside bridge while the maids cared for the babies, flying to New York in the spring or the autumn with her husband. It was what the young Señorita Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar had expected her life to be.
Had that world not changed, Raoul Kelly might even have met her there, but not as a social equal. Only child of a shop-keeper, he had been awarded a scholarship to Columbia University, had elected to enter the School of Journalism, had returned and gone to work on a Havana paper. He had heard of the Torcedo family, had not met them, knew that the wife had died as the result of a fall from a horse, knew that the father was so closely associated with Batista incertain business matters it would have been better for him to have left, as did so many others, before the bearded ones entered the city.
Later, after Raoul became a very good friend of the brother, Enrique Torcedo, during the training for the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had learned what had happened to the father. He had been too stubborn to leave. Those first days of the change of regime were days and nights of confusions, foolish acts, wildness. The papa had been clumsily and stupidly slain, not by one of the bearded veterans, but by a bewildered boy
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