Jamie had overcome one great hurdle, though not intentionally. Stripping naturally for bed, he'd completely forgotten about his scarred back, until Michelle gasped, "Oh, what happened to you?"
Jamie froze for a second. He didn't want to tell them he'd been shot by the police—there were people in Hawkes Harbor who had been frightened of him ever since, though Jamie thought it would be more logical to be frightened of the cops.
After all, he had been saving Katie, not hurting her.
"Were you in Vietnam?" Diane asked, looking closer.
Jamie thought of the men he'd known in hospitals who had been to war. It would be sacrilege to claim their pain.
"A bank robbery." Jamie had drunk enough not to stammer, which he usually did when he lied. "In Jersey. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy went nuts and started shooting. It was years ago."
He hated lying to the girls, with their disdain of bullshit, but he was not going over the whole Katie Roddendem thing again.
"I remember reading about that," Diane said. "Wow. How many times were you hit?"
She was naked herself by now, sitting next to him, caressing his back lightly, feeling the scars left by the bullets, by surgery.
"Three times," Jamie said shortly. He took a breath, determined not to cry at their kindness. It was the first time since the shooting anyone other than a doctor had seen his back.
On his rare and strangely listless trips to one of the Ocean City whorehouses he hadn't thought it necessary to remove his shirt.
Michelle sat on his lap. Her lips were soft against his, her hands played with his hair. She was all gentle curves. He ran his hand over her lightly. She traced his lips with one finger.
"You have the most incredibly beautiful mouth." Jamie slid an arm around her waist, rolling back on the bunk, bringing her on top of him.
"Yeah? Thanks," he muttered. "I like yours, too."
"Make room," Diane said. They moved over. There was enough room after all.
Jamie woke when Diane slipped out of his arms. He'd been sleeping on his side, the three of them huddled together spoon fashion. Her hair in his face smelled of baby shampoo.
"First dibs on the shower," Diane called.
Jamie felt Michelle snuggle closer, her arm tighten around him.
"She's an early bird," she said. "I'm not in any hurry."
Then she said, "Your poor back."
Her lips softly kissed the scars on his shoulder blade; he felt her tongue lightly caress him. Gently, tenderly, she acknowledged each old wound.
Jamie felt the tears running down his face. No one had ever expressed sympathy for his pain.
He shivered when he felt her lips move to the back of his neck, felt her take his ear lobe into her mouth and suck it gently.
"Turn over," she whispered.
He didn't know how much later it was when he opened his eyes. It was like returning to consciousness.
Diane was toweling off in the middle of the small cabin.
"My turn next!" she stated.
"It'll have to be later," Jamie said honestly.
"Okay. But remember, it's my turn."
After lunch, and two Bloody Marys, Jamie and Diane lay on a single lounge chair next to the pool.
Michelle had gone to a makeup demonstration.
"Is it my turn yet?" Diane whispered to him. "I bet I'm better than Michelle."
"I don't know, she's awfully good."
"I'll prove it. Let's go back."
Diane was better, she used more tongue, but Jamie diplomatically declared it a tie.
Then fell asleep and slept through the twilight.
"Hey, Grenville!"
Jamie was waving at him from the side of the dance floor.
Grenville felt annoyed for a moment. He and Leslie were in the middle of a waltz, one of his favorite dances, Jamie was dressed in the atrocious fashion most of the young people on this boat adopted—cutoff jeans and a souvenir T-shirt—and he'd have to be introduced.
You would think Jamie would have learned some taste after all these years ...
Grenville gracefully danced Leslie to the deck side of the dance floor.
"Leslie, this is my man, Jamie Sommers. Jamie, this is Leslie Anderson."
Grenville hoped against hope that he was misreading the phrase on Jamie's T-shirt.
Grenville noticed the hot red flush spreading up from Jamie's neck across his face, and attributed it to his embarrassment at meeting such a lady in such attire.
"Glad to meet you," Jamie said politely. "Grenville, could I speak to you for a minute?"
"Certainly. Excuse me, Leslie, I'll only be a moment."
Leslie found a chair to watch the dance floor, and Jamie and Grenville walked to the railing overlooking the night sea.
"Goddamn it, Grenville!" Jamie spoke though gritted teeth. "I'm not your fucking man! Stop calling me that! I hate it. 'My man'—you might as well call me a fuckin' dog and get it right!"
Grenville stood amazed. Jamie had never spoken to him like that. Once the sheer surprise was over, Grenville said, "Jamie!" in a tone that made the young man's knees turn to jelly, made him grab the railing.
Jamie, suddenly frightened, blinked back tears.
"It ain't fair, Grenville," he said. "You get mad at me all the time. Can't I be mad at you once in a while?"
He looked out across the ocean, afraid to meet Grenville's eyes.
Grenville was thinking he actually preferred this little spat of anger to Jamie's usual muttering sulks.
"First of all, how exactly would you like to be introduced? In my day it was common to refer to one's manservant as 'my man.' But if you prefer something else ... just exactly what would you like to be called?"
Jamie, a little heartened by the lack of rage in Grenville's voice, thought: Chauffeur? Cook? Repairman? Restorer? Errand boy?
"How about Jamie Sommers? Okay? Just Jamie Sommers."
"All right. And exactly when and where did you inform me that the phrase 'my man' was so offensive to you?"
Jamie's eyes went wide. He had never mentioned that title grated so strongly—he never had the courage. Suddenly he thought, I could have just told him, a long time ago, instead of getting madder and madder about it.
"So you'll concede that this is the first I've heard of it? I will take note. Now, surely you didn't call me out here to discuss your job description?"
"Oh." Jamie remembered. "No—you know I didn't come in last night?"
"Yes," Grenville said dryly. "I noticed."
"Well, I got another invite for tonight. So I thought I'd tell you. So maybe if you wanted to have somebody in for a brandy or something ..."
Jamie's voice trailed off. Then he finished, "Anyway, I won't be barging in."
He was as red as he had been before.
Grenville paused. Of all the impertinent... but Jamie was just trying to be thoughtful, in his own blundering way.
"Thank you, Jamie. I'll see you sometime tomorrow." Grenville left Jamie standing at the railing, the cool night air taking the heat from his face.
A nightcap, Grenville thought. A pleasant idea.
Jamie and the girls danced all the way to the cabin from the disco, where they'd danced for hours before.
"Oh man, am I tired," Jamie said, sitting on a bunk, his head spinning from beer, scotch, and music.
"Too tired?" Michelle pulled off her T-shirt, unzipped her jeans.
"Naw," Jamie said, hoping he was right.
Diane, still dancing, paused to kiss the top of Jamie's head.
"Listen, you girls have been awful sweet to me. Anything special you like? Just tell ol' Jamie. Anything at all."
Diane stopped dancing. She and Michelle looked at each other.
"Well," Michelle said, "instead of us telling you..."
"We could show you," Diane finished.
Jamie suddenly felt very alert, almost sober, not tired at all.
Diane unzipped her minidress and let it fall t
o the floor. Michelle jumped onto the bunk across from Jamie, and Diane crawled in beside her.
"So show me," Jamie said. "I'll take notes."
They did.
"Good evening, Grenville."
Grenville turned to see Jamie joining him at the sedate first-class bar.
At least he was presentably dressed in slacks and polo shirt, Grenville thought.
He hadn't seen Jamie for days, except to pass him at the pool, see him in the horrible pizza parlor, playing some game called Ping-Pong—each time Jamie was behaving in a disgustingly familiar way with a couple of young women.
Grenville couldn't even tell from his behavior or theirs which was the girlfriend.
But the voyage was turning out much better than he'd hoped—partly because of Leslie, the very personification of the saying "Lady in the parlor ..."
And partly because Jamie was in his own cabin only long enough to shower and shave. Unfailingly neat in Hawkes Hall, here Jamie left the small bathroom a pigsty.
Grenville thought he should be able to civilly converse with Jamie for a few minutes—then changed his mind as he realized Jamie was already quite drunk.
"I'll have what he's havin'," Jamie told the bartender.
He took a sip of the small glass set in front of him and violently grimaced.
"What the hell is this?"
"Sherry."
"Geez, you drinkin' or cookin'? Here, take mine. I'll have a Chivas," he told the bartender.
Grenville frowned, a thought trying to form ... "So, Grenville. How's it going?"
"Quite well," Grenville said. "These stabilizers are amazing. Very different from passenger ships in the eighteenth century."
"I bet," Jamie said. They remained silent for a moment.
Jamie was thinking that two girls were even more fun than he'd hoped, and no problem at all.
Michelle was so sweet, she'd melt in your arms like sugar in warm rain. Diane was very athletic, with a wicked sense of humor. Except for being scrupulously careful of whose turn it was to finish with him—and fortunately they didn't expect him to keep track—they were happily content to share. And they had the best way of waking him from a bad dream....
"The girls are trying on clothes," Jamie said. "They got off the boat today to shop. I took a nap. There's no room in there for me, they got stuff piled all over. You guys get off the boat?"
"We went sightseeing. Visited a museum." Grenville tried not to be offended by the phrase "you guys."
No doubt this was the kind of conversation Jamie had with his peers.
"Tell me, Grenville." Jamie sipped philosophically at his scotch. "I know you're cured and all that, but do you ever kind of get the urge to bite somebody? Just for old time's sake?"
Grenville blinked, unable to believe what he was hearing. Then he said, "If I ever do, Jamie, once again you'll be first on the list. Just for old time's sake."
Grenville took a malicious satisfaction in the fleeting look of terror on Jamie's face, the long swallow he took from his drink.
The glass shook a little as Jamie set it back on the bar and motioned for another.
Grenville decided he'd said enough to shut Jamie up, and raised his glass.
"So Grenville," Jamie said conversationally, "yours give good head?"
Jamie never thought he'd see Grenville spew a drink all over a bar, and thought it was worth it if he was killed for it. He had to laugh, although he also had to clutch the bar, expecting to feel those iron fingers gripping his throat.
No one else was near, the bartender busy elsewhere, and Grenville took his cocktail napkin to his mouth.
"Jamie," he said, his voice muffled, "go while you can."
Jamie didn't have to be told twice, even though he'd heard, in the deep voice of anger, the unmistakable sound of laughter.
Grenville entered his cabin intending to read his Wall Street Journal on the shaded balcony.
Leslie was taking her parents on a glass bottom-boat excursion—entirely too much sun for him to tolerate. Though it was no longer fatal, direct heavy sun was never comfortable. But perhaps that was just his East Coast upbringing....
He paused, hearing a sound from what he took to be a pile of dirty wet laundry on Jamie's unused bunk—on second glance it turned out to be Jamie himself.
Sobbing uncontrollably.
"Jamie?" He took a step nearer. "What's wrong?"
Jamie's voice, distorted by the pillow, by tears, told him nothing; Grenville listened to the distasteful sailor vocabulary without learning any more than Jamie was in extreme distress.
His first thought was to take his Wall Street Journal and go— perhaps Jamie had had a quarrel with those brazen young women—surely he'd prefer to be alone...
Jamie rolled to a sitting position on the bunk, still hugging the pillow.
"Grenville, I can't fuckin' swim anymore." He sobbed, in that heartbreaking, confiding voice he'd sometimes used since leaving Terrace View.
Like Grenville was his best friend in the whole wide world. Like he could tell him anything.
Louisa said that was one way of Jamie's dealing with their past relationship—if Jamie voluntarily made himself dependent on Grenville, twisted their past bond into one of deep friendship, it gave him a measure of control.
There was a whole new name for this behavior, studied more since the war—post-traumatic stress syndrome. Louisa said Jamie was classic.
Whatever it was, the rare times Jamie used that tone Grenville felt unbearably guilty.
Sighing, he sat down on the bunk—as far away as he could, since Jamie, T-shirt, cutoffs and all, was soaking wet. "What do you mean?" Grenville said.
"I can't—my shoulder, it catches my shoulder, the goddamn fuckin' bullet holes—my whole back froze up and I almost fuckin' drowned—those asshole cops—I was a good swimmer, a motherfuckin' great swimmer. Kellen always said you couldn't sink me with an anchor—I was pearl diving in fuckin' Tahiti and those guys said I was good—now—my whole right shoulder's useless—feels like I'm bein' knifed."
Jamie choked out his pain and despair.
"Let me make sure I understand you. You can't swim anymore? This is the first you've tried since the shooting? Jamie, that's been years."
"Well, where am I gonna swim around Hawkes Harbor? It's got that weird current and it's colder than ..." He wiped his face on the pillow.
His shoulder bothered him a lot when he had to do lifting, digging, physical labor—the shoulder blade was shattered, muscle and nerve had knit back over sharp edges of bone—sometimes it ached so badly he couldn't sleep. It was one of the main reasons for his addiction to muscle relaxants.
But he never dreamed it could stop him midstroke after diving into thirty feet of ocean, he forgot about his damaged lung ... His whole back cramped, he'd barely made it to the surface.
If Michelle hadn't had lifeguard training...
"You know what that's like? To be really, really good at somethin' and then find out you can't do it anymore?" Jamie raised his tearstained face. "It was something I was great at and now I can't fuckin' swim."
"Actually, Jamie," Grenville said. "I am relieved. For a moment I thought you were referring to fucking."
Jamie's reaction to hearing Grenville say that word for the first time was the same as if he'd been slapped.
Wordless, knocked out of hysteria, he stared at Grenville. After a minute, he half laughed.
"That sounds like something Kell would say."
Grenville disliked intensely being compared to that blackmailing scum Kellen Quinn, who'd more than justified every eighteenth-century prejudice against the Irish that Grenville had ever harbored—but Jamie evidently meant it as a compliment, so Grenville tried to take it that way. "Jamie, I know it must be a shock to you, but you do realize you have little need for swimming these days...."
Jamie slowly shook his head.
"You don't get it, Grenville. It was one of... I don't have a lot of stuff to be proud of like you do .
.." He stood up.
"I'm gonna take a shower."
Grenville left the damp bunk to sit in one of the lounge chairs on the balcony. He stared at the Wall Street Journal without reading.
He felt rather ill.
There was a frantic pounding on the door of the cabin. Grenville opened it to face those two friends of Jamie's.
They were still in their beach clothes, one of them openly crying, the other close to it.
"Is Jamie here? Is he okay?"
"Yes. He's showering at the mo—"
They pushed by him without ceremony, threw open the bathroom door.
Grenville stood aghast.
Jamie, drying himself off, dropped the towel, startled to have the girls fling themselves on him. "Don't be upset, Jamie."
"It's okay, we don't care."
"It's not your fault."
They hugged him fiercely, kissed him frantically, and he put an arm around each of them, pulling them close. "Please don't be sad."
"It doesn't matter."
"We want you to be happy."
"Okay," Jamie said. He kissed each of them. "I'm okay. Don't worry."
He was still red-eyed but was no longer sobbing.
"Hey, I'm okay. Come on, we'll go to the Sugar Shack again tonight. Okay? Shut 'em down."
They seemed reluctant to release him, but he gradually pulled one from his neck, the other off his waist.
"Come to our cabin right away?"
"Please, it's empty without you."
"Sure," Jamie said.
"Right away. Don't forget."
"I'll be there in five minutes. Promise."
He gently herded them out of the bathroom and shut the door.
The girls looked at Grenville apologetically.
"Sorry, Mr. Hawkes."
"We didn't mean to disturb you."
"We just..."
"Wanted to see Jamie."
"He's the nicest person ..."
"The sweetest guy ..."
"But you know that..."
"We just love him."
They left, leaving the room smelling of suntan lotion and seawater.
In a moment Jamie came out, a towel wrapped around his waist, and went to paw through his laundry stack, looking for something relatively clean.