Chapter 13
The next morning at nine, Jamie answered my call on the first ring, and confirmed my suspicion.
"Carl, I'm sorry I lied to you yesterday," she said, in a flat, weary voice. "I felt so awful and it was the only quick way I knew to get rid of you. I simply can't see you today, or see you again at all. Won't you please accept this, Carl, and leave? Surely our little bout in the car showed you I'm not the girl you thought you loved in Rome."
"You won't even meet me for a drink?" I asked, debating about what to say.
"Oh, no, Carl, that's no good," she said. "Please, if you do love me you'll believe what I say and leave me alone before you make things infinitely worse."
"I see," I said quietly. "Well, maybe that's that, Jamie. I don't know what else to say. I love you, but it's obvious you don't love me. All right, baby, I'll leave. But Jamie, I'm going down to New Orleans for a week or so. I'll be at the Jung Hotel. If you change your mind, please, come down."
"Oh, Carl, I do like you," she said. Then she seemed to catch herself. She cleared her throat. "I'll call you at the hotel, at least. And you know, when you're gone a couple of days and I have a chance to relax and think about things, you know, I might just go down there and spend a few days with you and who knows what might happen."
"That would be great," I said, and babbled on and we said goodbye and talked again and finally she did cry, and finally she hung up.
I checked out of the hotel, found the Avis agency and got another car, one entirely different from the one I had been driving. Then I bought a pair of powerful binoculars.
I knew it would be impossibe to wait for Jamie anywhere qn the street, but fortunately her house was at the edge of town, and all the houses out there were actually estates, with gardens in the back, often lakes, and behind the Meadow's and the Conway's a sloping hill, covered with a cane growth that grew down to a narrow, rushing twisting stream.
I could watch Jamie's from the cane growth with my car parked on a little-used blacktop road a couple of hundred yards behind the growth across the stream. When Jamie left her house, she might turn left, back into town, which would make it difficult to get to the car and catch her, because she could turn so many different ways.
But if she turned right, the street bled off into a blacktop road that went straight for some ten miles, through meadowland and cane growth. And the road my car was on paralleled it and finally intersected it, about a mile before the swamps began. I had a very strong feeling that Jamie would turn right.
But she did not leave the house for hours. I sat, squatted, stood in the cane and watched her house in detail through the binoculars, or sometimes, just with my eyes, and what I saw was that Jamie spent several hours lying on the bed.
Then, as dusk came and I finished the last of the beer and sandwiches I had brought with me, Jamie bolted up, and ran from her room. And I noticed in the Conways' that Peggy Sue was standing by the telephone. I couldn't see Jamie but I knew somehow she was talking to Peggy Sue, and when I looked through the glasses, I could tell Peggy Sue was angry and nervous. Those heart-shaped lips were moving in angry speech and she paced back and forth as she talked. And then she smiled abruptly, shook her head up and down, and hung up. A moment later, Jamie hurried into her bedroom.
She peeled off the jeans and blouse in which she had been sleeping and she wore nothing else. I leaned forward and adjusted the glasses and saw that stark-white, luscious body and the mound of silky hairs and I swallowed and felt a little warm.
Jamie stood strangely still a minute or two, as though undecided. Then she tentatively rubbed a hand down over her stomach to her thighs, her stomach jerked, and she touched at her vagina. She bit her lower Up, and closed her eyes and threw her head back, then turned and ran into what I guessed was a bathroom. There was small, frosted window there and I could see nothing.
But I saw that Peggy Sue was driving down the driveway of her house in a small red sports car. She paused at the street, turned right and drove rapidly away, toward the swamp.
Ten minutes later, Jamie emerged from the bathroom and ran to a closet, paused, turned, went to a chest of drawers, paused again, shook her head and brushed at her hair with her hand, then went back to the closet.
She dressed quickly, in a light blue blouse and short, blue skirt, and she wore no socks. She glanced quickly into the mirror, picked up a brush, put it down, then picked up a tube of lipstick, threw it down, then pivoted and ran from the room.
A minute later, she emerged from the side of the house and climbed into a white Volkswagen. She backed from the driveway, turned right, and drove very slowly down the street.
I turned and fought my way through the cane to my car, jumped in, and lurched down the narrow road, through meadowland and cane growth pushed steadily down on the accelerator, my heart pounding, and after several miles, through a break in the cane, I saw that I was even with Jamie's white car, though it was moving faster. I pumped down on the accelerator and sighed, wiped sweat from my forehead, and raised my shoulders, tensed my muscles.
After all the merciless waiting, the uncertainty, the sense of being helpless and being toyed with, I felt that now I was making a move that would somehow resolve things.
I drove faster and easily reached the intersection before Jamie, and backed into a growth of small white oaks that shielded my car. Jamie passed the intersection in a couple of minutes, driving straight ahead, into the thickening swamp growth.
It was deep dusk now, the sky that last purple before black, and moss-laced, overhanging trees blotted out what light of day remained. I waited a minute, then pulled out and followed Jamie, my lights off.
The road got worse as we got deeper into the swamp, and huge pot-holes I hit because. I had no lights rattled the car to the very frame. Once, I thought I had lost her, as she turned onto a narrower road which twisted treacherously among the bogs and bayous. I passed a huge growth of hulking trees and a brilliant purple blaze of bougainvillea vines, and I realized I had passed the same spot with Emily Ann-we were obviously on the way to her fishing camp.
Another turn off, a twisting road-and I did lose Jamie. I stopped, cursed, mopped sweat from my forehead, as the night sounds throbbed from the swamps and water thrashed and something squealed nearby. I drove off slowly, and flicked my lights on. To my right, a long, black and beaded snake slithered lazily around the limb of a cypress and my lights caught for a second the frenzied rush of a possum across the narrow, hole-marked road.
I stopped again, drove off, made a wrong turn, then saw something else I remembered, an abandoned shack, its walls covered with huge white vine flowers.
Finally, I found the road to the camp. I paused, glanced around and backed up, climbed out and with slow, prodding steps discovered a piece of solid ground in a tangle of thorn vines and plum trees. I carefully backed in, and cut off the motor and lights. I found a flashlight in the glove compartment, and holding the beam down so it could not be seen far ahead, I started down the road.
After walking five minutes, I saw lights ahead, and hurried on. Once, I thought I heard something behind me and stopped abruptly, but there was only the steady, eerie throb of swamp sounds, and the shrill call of some bird and a thrashing of wings back in the darkness.
The lights were distinct now and in their glow I saw the fishing camp, and fifty yards in front, the fence and gate that spanned the road. I kept well the farthest side of the road and easily climbed the fence, the flashlight off now.
As I crouched in the dark shield of the swamp growth, I heard voices now, not distinct as individuals, but each high-pitched and filled with tension.
Then I stopped abruptly as a loud, pain-ridden groan filled the night. "Oh, God, not that again," Jamie wailed, quite distinctly.
I ran forward, past the parked cars, and around to the side of the building. I paused, caught my breath, then climbed a huge twisting vine that was shielded by its flowers and leaves, and looked into the building, and I had to clamp my lips to supress a gasp that would have betrayed my presence.