The Deadlier Sex Read online

  “And then what?”

  She shrugged. “And then nothing. Our engines started again, and we were underway for a while, and that’s when I got free, grabbed my lifejacket, and jumped overboard.”

  “But you got free just about where you started. Didn’t you say you were doing your solo on White Horse Key?”

  “Yeah,” she said, perplexed. “It is kind of strange that they would have gone to meet a boat rather than letting the boat come to them—if it was the pickup boat. Frankly, I didn’t know where in the hell we were. I just knew I wanted out. So I jumped. And then I saw your boat coming along, and I tried to flag you down. Next thing I knew, I was lying on your deck bare-chested with one hell of a headache.” She smiled, slightly embarrassed, it seemed. “You know, that’s what impressed me about you two.”

  “What’s that, Barbara?”

  “You kept me covered. Most guys would have stood there gawking.” She made an oddly shy motion toward her breasts. “You know, most girls want big boobs. But believe me, once you have them they become a liability real quick. You guys don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “Saves on shopping,” I said.

  She grinned. A fine girlish grin. “Anyway, you two have been real sweet.” She got way up on her tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Soft lips, moist. “And I’m going to see if I can’t get permission to show you around the island. Most of the girls enjoy walking around naked, and that’s why they don’t allow men ashore.”

  “So I see,” I said, nodding toward the beach. The women were slowly ambling toward cover at our approach. The expressions on their faces were indifferent and slightly perturbed at being bothered. “I’m surprised the locals aren’t out here all the time with binoculars.”

  “Oh, we get some of that. But not much, because the place is so isolated. And besides,” she said, a sharp glint in her eye, “the SELF staff knows how to handle intruders. It’s a private island. And they’re pretty good at keeping it that way. . . .”

  I brought Sniper around behind Mahogany Key. The dense foliage that screened the front of the island now broke into an airy clearing of swept shell and sand, and white clapboard buildings. The paths that led from building to building were neatly outlined in old whelk shells, and hibiscus and jasmine trees bloomed red and blue and white along the paths. The flag of Florida hung below the American flag in the limp June morning.

  “How many women are on this island?”

  The girl eyed the settlement anxiously, obviously happy to be back. “About a hundred, I guess. Maybe more, but it seems like less. You get to know everyone pretty quickly, because we all eat together.”

  “You all don’t take the same classes?”

  “Not really. Except for maybe the self-image and the meditation classes, but even there we’re split up into groups. Isn’t it a beautiful place?”

  It was indeed. Before the concrete poured-to-form money mongers arrived in Florida, there was a short period in the early 1900s when craftsmen built houses of wood and tin and coquina rock. The houses were built with grace, solid as ships, and they’ll probably stand long after the condominium and stucco grotesqueries are ground to dust. And Mahogany Key seemed to have benefited from the best of that era. The buildings were squat and simple, with the whitewashed effulgence of the tropics. Only the docks were new: built of treated pilings and pressurized planking, they were broad and substantial, like all government docks. Three bright-yellow Mitchell skiffs with small outboards were moored in the shallows. On the outside of the dock’s T was a broad-beamed pontoon boat abused with hauling foodstuffs and fuel for the island’s generators. Obviously, everything they used on the island had to be shipped in. On the inside of the dock, tied off in deep water, was a twenty-foot Shamrock, a classic of small-boat design. I had to admire their taste in boats. I had run a Shamrock only once before— but fell in love with it. With its 302 inboard, top speed is right at forty, and with its heavy skeg keel the brass prop and tiller are practically untouchable. In the shoalwater area of the Ten Thousand Islands with its mixture of open sea and treacherous oyster bars, the Shamrock was a perfect choice.

  It took only one of the women on the island to recognize Barbara for the rest of them to come on the run to greet her. Somewhere an old dinner bell rang a message, and the buildings emptied.

  “Looks like you’re pretty popular here, lady.”

  She sniffed, and her eyes were brimming. “Isn’t it great? Those women . . . it’s only been a couple of weeks, and they’re already like . . . sisters.”

  “In that case, you’d better grab whatever you want aboard and get down there to greet them. If they all try to jump onto my boat, we’ll sink.”

  I brought Sniper in gently, nosing her up behind the pontoon boat, then stopped her with a reverse thrust on engines. Westy was ready with the lines, and had her snubbed off and bumpered by the time I got down to the fighting deck. He came up beside me, arms folded across his thick chest, a wry look on his face.

  “Will ye look at all the women, brother MacMorgan,” he said.

  “Every possible shape and size.”

  “An’ all that huggin’ and kissin’ goin’ on—why, it’s disgustin’ it is.” He shook himself.

  “I can see it bothers you.”

  “What I’m tryin’ ta understand is how they kin keep their hands off me! Look at the tall auburn one there, ever so handsome, tryin’ ta pretend she doesn’t notice me. Ah, the poor girl—already hopelessly in love.” He nodded his head as if burdened with some great knowledge. “What amazin’ self-control the lass has, Dusky.”

  “And what an amazing actress she is. Pretending she couldn’t care less.”

  O’Davis waved his hand as if shooing a fly. “You’ll see, Yank. Yer sarcasm is wasted.”

  There were a number of beautiful women in the crowd, but the one the Irishman had mentioned was striking indeed. Even dressed as she was in simple white baggy pants and jersey, she had an aristocratic air. Nothing aloof or affected—just that look of total self-confidence that makes certain people natural sovereigns. Her hair was autumn-colored and swayed behind her in a loose ponytail. She was a woman of length and lines; the sort you see on yacht-club tennis courts, or on the covers of certain magazines. She walked with her arms folded across the loose folds of her jersey.

  “Shame it is, Yank, to break the heart of the likes of that,” he said sadly. “But Wes O’Davis, meself I’m speakin’ of, is not the marryin’ kind.”

  “Just be kind when you let her down, O’Davis—but you’d better make it quick before she ignores you right out of her life.”

  The crowd of women parted as she approached. Barbara stood tearfully in the middle of the throng on the dock. Her smile broadened as the woman with the auburn hair approached, and she went running to her and they hugged. The nobility on the face of the auburn-haired woman melted into a warm girlish smile. They stood away from each other, hugged again, and then Barbara began to talk. She wore my T-shirt, and she had the old life vest slung over one shoulder. She said she wanted it as a keepsake. The other women on the dock stood back and watched happily. Obviously the woman with auburn hair was one of their leaders. And just as obviously, they all knew that something had gone wrong on Barbara’s solo.

  “I think it’s time we made our exit, O’Davis.”

  The Irishman conjured up a look of shock. “What, Dusky? An’ leave all these lovely ladies? Me boy, ye’ve spent too much time alone.”

  “You grab the lines and we’ll get under way.”

  Anything else Westy had to say was drowned out by the roar of Sniper’s twin diesels. Reluctantly, he went to free bow and stern lines. Barbara looked surprised when she saw that we were about to leave. And actually disappointed. She said something hurriedly to the woman with the auburn hair. And for the first time, the woman turned to face me, locking in on my eyes. Hers was a face with impact—not so much beautiful as it was singular and lovely. She tilted her head slightly, said something to Barba
ra, and Barbara came toward Sniper on a light trot, hips swaying in an awkward girlish gait.

  “Ye see, Yank, the princess there won’t let me leave!” O’Davis said gaily.

  “She looks smarter than that.”

  “Ah, she’s only human, Dusky.”

  “And that makes it even harder to understand why she would be interested in the likes of you.”

  The Irishman just chuckled to himself and began to hum his strange little tune, “tum-de-dum-dum,” as he threw a couple of clove hitches, retying us.

  “Dusky, it’s okay! You can come ashore and look around!” Barbara stood on the dock looking like a kid at Christmas. Apparently this was some kind of unprecedented honor. The other women of Mahogany Key looked on, surprised, but not necessarily happy about it.

  “Actually, we’re in kind of a hurry.”

  “And how could we turn down such a charmin’ invitation?” O’Davis interrupted loudly, making a sweeping gesture with his thick right arm. He looked up and gave me a private wink. ‘We’d be pleased to tour yer lovely island!”

  So what do you do? I shut down Sniper’s engines, stuffed the keys into my pocket in some unconscious mood of mistrust, and went ashore. Except for Barbara and the woman with auburn hair, the others moved off the dock at our approach. They walked a little too quickly down the shell path that led toward the whitewashed island houses. Something bothered me about the way they paired off. They were women of varied ages, most between twenty-one and thirty-five it seemed, many of them scantily dressed in shorts and bikini tops, and some damn attractive. But they walked away from us, oiled legs gliding, hips swaying, holding hands or bumping shoulders like schoolgirls. And their was an exclusiveness to their pairing that disturbed me. Watching them, I felt an uneasiness, something that offended some submerged animal instinct. And then I knew: these were the physically and emotionally battered, women who, for reasons good or bad, had grown to hate men and finally had taken love and refuge in the safest of harbors—homosexuality.

  I watched them walk away, lithe and oiled and lovely, buttocks and breasts like warm fortresses, solitary women with hair of blond and brown and black, shoulders held proudly erect.

  “Ah, brother MacMorgan, let’s not be rude now.”

  “Hum? What?”

  I hadn’t even noticed Barbara and the woman with auburn hair come up beside me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking.”

  The woman with the auburn hair seemed not—or chose not—to hear me. She was lovely indeed. She stood looking into my eyes, only an inch or two shorter than I. She was so striking that it took me a long moment to notice her eyes. They were the softest of soft blue, and each just the tiniest bit off center, so that she seemed to be focusing on the edges of her fine cover-girl nose.

  She extended her hand, a look on her face of neither approval nor disapproval. “Welcome to Mahogany Key, Captain MacMorgan,” she said, her voice almost warm, her handshake firm, dry, and hard.

  7

  Her name was Saxan. Saxan Benton.

  Unusual name for an unusual woman.

  She was one of those ageless ones. At nine, nineteen, or forty-nine, she would always and forever be a classic beauty. As she walked Westy and me across the island, I tried to get a reading on her. But it was tough. She said little about herself. Her voice was clear, woodwind-like, and edged with the slightest of accents. French, perhaps. Or a light mixture of French and rich. There was a Southhampton roundness to her vowels, and the same careful use of syntax you hear at the ritzy lawn parties on Long Island or in Beverly Hills. There was a natural aloofness to her, but none of that hateful contrived air of superiority. She made conversation—conversation didn’t flow from her. She was the hostess and we were strangers being briefly entertained—that sort of polite congeniality. Saxan Benton walked with her arms folded lightly across her chest, the length of her strides almost matching mine. She plied us with questions, the friendly kind, and she listened well, drawing into her own little world again when she came across some plant or tree or land snail that interested her. She would say their names out loud, but to herself, and then add the Latin name—not to impress, but more to firm them in her own mind, like an exercise.

  “An interesting lantana here,” she said, stooping to touch a small shrub.

  “Very interestin’,” O’Davis said, exchanging looks with me. She didn’t even hear him, concentrating on the tiny flowers the way she was, and the Irishman seemed to think that kind of funny.

  “Saxan is a botanist,” Barbara said. She had been walking Mohogany Key with us, eyeing the auburn-haired older woman with an obvious fondness. “She took her master’s at Smith.”

  “Ah, Smith,” said O’Davis. I gave him a look of warning. This wasn’t the place for his dry Irish sense of humor.

  “Camara of the verbena family,” Saxan said softly. “The flower clusters display all three of the common colors—pink, orange, and yellow. It’s rather unusual to see all three colors on one shrub. The petals are deadly poison, of course.”

  “Of course!” said O’Davis.

  Without standing, the woman turned her face up. “Are you interested in plants, Mr. O’Davis?”

  “Love broccoli, hate peas, Miss Benton.”

  I didn’t expect her controlled expression to fall from her face the way it did. The laughter tumbled from her. Her eyes, blue and slightly off center, glistened. And in that moment, she seemed wonderfully open and vulnerable and human. And in that same moment, I began to like this new woman. Very much.

  “Your friend is very funny, Captain MacMorgan.”

  “He’s a regular circus, Ms. Benton. And my name’s Dusky.”

  She stood, dusting her palms together. “Okay, then—Dusky it is.”

  “And Westy?”

  She nodded and smiled at the Irishman. “And Westy—if you two will call me Saxan?” She laughed self-consciously as we walked with her up the Indian shell mound toward the largest white clapboard building on the island. “You see, I’m afraid my father was a terrible Anglophile. Was absolutely fascinated with the English—which is odd, since he was born in Paris.”

  “Would a been much odder had he been Irish,” O’Davis said darkly.

  “Yes, that’s true! My father wanted to name me Britton, but my mother insisted on a compromise, so it was Saxon, with an o, and then Saxan with an a, because it seemed more feminine.”

  “And you agree?”

  The smile left her face as suddenly as it had appeared. “Unfortunately, the only thing my father and I ever agreed upon was that plants are extremely interesting. You see, he was a botanist, too.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. It was like slamming the door on her past. Case closed. Period.

  It took us the better part of an hour to tour the island. It was impressive, indeed. Mahogany Key had been the private retreat of a millionaire Chicago sportsman in the early 1920s. It had been donated to an Illinois university after the Depression and converted into a research center for the nation’s marine biologists. When the upkeep became too high for the university, it was given to the government, and except for being used for some commando training during the war years, it was allowed to fall into disrepair.

  “The place was an absolute wreck when the government decided to lease the island to us,” Saxan Benton said. She sat behind her desk in her office on the big house on the mound. The office was surprisingly Spartan: metal desk and chair, one old couch for visitors. On the wall were photographs of island birds: ospreys in flight, and a fine shot of skimmers, their orange beaks trailing in a mirror sea. The office smelled of old wood and plaster, and of the woman herself: a light sandalwood musk.

  “Your organization—SELF, was it?—must have some money behind it to have restored the place so well,” I said. The Irishman and I sat on the couch across from her. Barbara had excused herself to visit with her other friends on the island and get back to classes.

  “I wish that were true,” she said. Her hands played absent
ly with a blue Flair pen, and I noticed for the first time that she wore absolutely no jewelry. “Fortunately, HEW provides the financial backing—some of it in matching funds. We just supply the workforce.”

  “Ye mean you women did all this?” O’Davis said incredulously. “Why, the place is a paradise.”

  “Don’t be so surprised, Mr. O’Davis,” she said shortly. Saxan Benton was not amused this time. But with her off-center eyes, the look she gave him seemed anything but fierce; only endearing. “That’s what Self-Education and Liberation for Feminists is all about. I find the idea that only men can be competent carpenters, plumbers, and electricians to be totally absurd. And I think we’ve proved it here—and at our other centers around the country.”

  “Me dear, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “And I am not ‘your dear,’ Mr.—”

  “Hold it, hold it, time out,” I said. I was as surprised as the Irishman that she had flared so quickly. The conversation was taking an unhealthy turn, and there was nothing to be gained by any of it. Besides, I wanted to learn more about Mahogany Key before they kicked our butts off. I had dealt with a frighteningly similar organization less than a year earlier. Not feminists, but religious fanatics. There was just something all too strange about four boats exploding in the same area where SELF had established its Ten Thousand Islands retreat. Maybe there was a connection, maybe there wasn’t—but I wanted to find out more before our welcome was worn out. When people tie up with a cause—any damn cause—the first thing they forfeit is their desire to relate to others outside their cause. Whether the cause is right or wrong, human understanding becomes a casualty. And without understanding, people can get dangerous. Damn dangerous.

  I gave Saxan Benton the most disarming smile I could muster.

  “Look,” I said, “you’ll have to forgive us both, Saxan. Westy there is one of my best friends, and like me he’s all for women’s rights—is that true?”

  “Ah, it’s true, it’s true,” O’Davis joined in in his heavy Irish brogue.