Some Faces in the Crowd by Budd Schulberg

Author:Budd Schulberg [Schulberg, Budd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6182-8
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-07-06T15:51:00+00:00

THE DARE

PAUL MAXWELL WAS STARING out across the light-green sea. He was watching a small white outboard plowing up the water some hundred yards off the end of the pier. Skimming along behind in a golden blur was a water-skier. It was one of those things, Paul was thinking, for which you remember a vacation day when you’re back in the city grind, the color of the sea sparkling green as champagne, the busy sound of the little outboard motor and its foamy white wake, and behind, the little human figure balanced gracefully on water skis that seemed to be flying over the surface of the sea.

Paul rose, and leaned on the railing of the pier to watch the sport. Only then did the yellow-brown halter above the deep-tan midriff inform him of the sex of the skier. Suddenly the outboard skidded to a daring turn and seemed to head directly toward him. It raced for-ward until he was sure it was too late to turn away. But in a last-moment swing of the stick, the small boat veered to safety by inches. But the girl behind, flying toward the pier—how could she possibly veer in time? It didn’t seem real that anything so free, so perfect could come to such a brutal ending, but in his mind’s panic he was already diving in to grope under water for the broken body. Then, close enough to Paul for him to see the smile on her face—more than a smile, a look of exhilaration—she calmly leaned out from her skis, in the opposite direction from what Paul would have thought logical, and shot away from the pier, streaking around the boat in a sweeping arc before coming back into position behind it again.

Twice more the boat and the skier made passes at the pier that seemed to make collision inevitable. But Paul was not to be taken in again and watched in fascination instead of panic as boat and girl dared themselves to see how close to the pier they could come without crashing into it.

“That first time I really thought they had it, General,” Paul said to a little hard nut of a Cuban who looked as if he had been put in to bake and left too long. The General, who took care of renting boats and beach equipment, had won his rank in a now-forgotten South American war.

“Oh, that’s Gerry Lawford. She’s crazy.” He said it as if everybody already knew it.

“What kind of crazy?” Paul asked, as he always did about words that had lost their original cutting edge.

“Real crazy,” the General said. “Bats in the belfry crazy.”

Paul did not have to ask the Cuban to enlarge on this. In these two weeks he had come to know the General.

“Always doing crazy things. Like last year, she tried to sail a dinghy to Cuba all by herself. The Coast Guard had to fish her out of the drink about thirty miles out. That crazy enough for you?”

Paul liked the story.

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