“Dads took off someplace in Pete’s car. Pete went down to see Mitch about if he’s got the motor back on the little boat yet. Patty okay?”

“She’s still sacked out up there.”

Deeleen got up and came clambering slowly and cautiously down into the cockpit. At a thirty-foot distance she was a very attractive, ripe-bodied young girl. At close range the coarseness, and the sleaziness of the materials used in construction were all too evident. Her tanned hide had a coarse and grainy look. Her crinkle of putty-colored hair looked lifeless as a Dynel wig. The strictures of the bottom half of the bikini cut into the belly-softness of too many beers and shakes, hamburger rolls and french fries. The meat of her thighs had a sedentary looseness. Her throat and her ankles and the underside of her wrists were faintly shadowed with grime. There was a coppery stubble in her armpits, and a bristle of unshaven hair on her legs, cracked red enamel on her toenails. The breast band of the bikini was just enough askew to reveal a brown newmoon segment of the nipple of her right breast.

“Deeleen, I want you should meet Trav,” Corry said.

“Hi,” Deeleen said, looking me over. She had a broad mouth and a pink stain of lipstick on one front tooth. She was obviously awaiting further identification.

“That Marianne works at the Char-Broil, she told him one time we were out this way, and he came around. I was telling him about going on the cruise with Dads.” It was very casual, but totally explicit. He came looking for you, but I told him the score and he settled for me.

Deeleen gave a little shrug of acceptance and slumped into a canvas chair, spraddled and hot. There was a little roll of fat around her waist. She hitched the bikini top up. High against the meat of the insides of her thighs a fringe of pubic hair escaped the scanty fabric which encased the plump and obvious pudendum. A few years ago she would have been breathtakingly ripe, and even now, in night light, with drinks and laughter, there would be all the illusions of freshness and youth and desirability.

But in this cruelty of sunlight, in this, her twentieth year, she was a record of everything she had let them do to her. Too many trips to too many storerooms had worn the bloom away. The freshness had been romped out in sweat and excess. The body reflects the casual abrasions of the spirit, so that now she could slump in her meaty indifference, as immunized to tenderness as a whore at a clinic.

“What’s with squirrel-face Marianne?” she asked indifferently.

“Nothing new.”

Corry shed her cabana coat, put canvas cushions on the wide transom and stretched out. They had stopped surveying me. I had passed inspection.

“Even with that wind it’s almost too goddamn hot,” Corry said. “Anybody figured out what we’re going to do?”

“I’ll wait’n see what Dads wants.”

Corry turned more toward Dee, closing me out of the conversation. “Was it the way you figured?” she asked.

Dee gave a flat, mirthless laugh. “Only more so.”

“Anybody want a drink?”

They both stared at me as though startled to find I was still there.

“Sure,” Deeleen said. “What is it?”

“Bourbon.”

“Okay.” Corry said.

“But he locked it when he took off,” Dee said. “You can’t get down where the ice and glasses and stuff is. Corry, you want to bring stuff down from upstairs?”

“It’s after one,” Corry said. “He can get some stuff from Barney, can’t he?”

“Ask to buy some of the big paper cups,” Dee, told me. “And get a six-pack of Coke, huh?”

Barney’s service was slow, and he overcharged me for the cups, Coke and ice. By the time I returned to the Play Pen, the girls had shuffled me and dealt me. Corry informed me of their approval and of the choice that had been made. She did it by rubbing the back of my neck while I fixed her drink.

We moved back under the overhang, out of the direct weight of the sun. With the breeze, it was comfortable. As they began to get a little high, they included me more naturally in their conversation. We talked about the cruise. Pete arrived. He had a dead handshake, like a canvas glove full of hot sand. Corry gave him a key to 2A and he went up to see how Patty was. There was discussion about whether she would go on the cruise. She would have to lie to her folks.

Suddenly Junior Allen swung aboard, leaped, landed lightly. He was immaculate in white sport shirt, white slacks, pale blue yachting cap. I guessed he was nearing forty. I had not been prepared for him to look so powerful and so fit. He was broad, with shoulders so packed and corded with muscle they gave him a slightly simian posture, the impression enhanced by the extra-long weight and heft of brown tattooed arms, and the short legs, slightly bowed. He had a brown, seamed, knotty face, broad, smiling broadly, the smile squinching the small blue eyes. It was a friendly grin. It was a likable grin. it did not change in any way as he looked at me.

“Hello, kids,” he said. His voice was a brassy rumble. He rumpled Dee ’s lifeless hair with a big brown paw. “Who we got aboard, little sweetheart?”

She was transformed. She was elfin, lisping, adoring; his ripe, dumpy little child. “This is Trav, darling. He’s with Corry. Trav, this is Dads Allen. He’s the one owns this boat. Hasn’t it got a cute name?”

“It’s a very cute name,“ I said.

He was quick. He caught my hand in exactly the way I didn’t want him to catch it, and watched my mouth as he ground my knuckle bones.

“Glad you like it,” he said. “Welcome aboard.” He took his keys out and unlocked the hatchway to the cabins. He pulled Dee to her feet slapped her bare rump and said, “Little sweetheart, you go bring up some decent glasses and the vodka.”

Little sweetheart snickered and arched and went below dutifully. Junior Allen sat where she had been, and patted Corry’s bare knee and said, “What’s your line of work, Trav?”

“Whatever I happen to find. A little charter boat work in season. Take boats north and south for the winter folks. Fry cook. Half-ass marine mechanic. You name it.”

After little sweetheart brought his bottle and the glasses, he fixed himself a drink. He beamed at me.

“These kids tell you about the trip? I’m going to take four of ‘em over and show them the islands. Hell, I’ve. got the boat, the time and the money. It’s the least I can do.”

Had I not known the history, I would have readily bought the image he was projecting. Fatuous, expansive idiot, hooked by the tired flesh of little sweetheart, taking her and three of her friends on the romantic tropic tour.

“Passenger list still open?” I asked, smiling back.

That changed his eyes but not his grin. “If Pete and I sleep in the two bunks forward, that leaves the main cabin for the gals. I can sleep six, but they got to be very good close friends.” He roared with laughter. “Sorry we can’t sign you on, buddy.”

“I get to be the fifth wheel,” Corry said bitterly.

“How so, girl?”

She stared coldly at him. “What’s so complicated, Dads. You and Dee, Pete and Patty. And good old Corry. Hell, sign him on. I’ll need somebody to talk to. Maybe you’ll need somebody to run your boat.”

“I never need any help with a boat,” he said, smiling. “Or anything else, little sweetheart.”

“I’m Corry. She’s little sweetheart, Dads.” He patted her knee again and beamed at her. “You’ll have fun. Don’t you worry about it a minute.”

“Always bitching about something,” Dee said. “Always.”

Pete and Patty came aboard. And within minutes I knew what Junior Allen was after. At first glance Patty was unattractive, an impression derived from the gawkiness and the glasses. They kidded her coarsely about getting sick, and she responded by clowning. The clowning was her defense. Her breasts were high and immature and sharp against the fabric of her blouse. Her legs were long and pale and lovely. There was a colt grace about her, a loveliness of gray eyes behind the heavy lenses, a ripe warm sensitivity of mouth.