Read Go to the Widow-Maker for Free Online Page A

the boat at the Yacht Club tonight. He was getting bored with that crapped-up dirty commercial dock, even if it was closer to the shop. Something about his face, looking straight ahead out through the windshield, gave Grant a distinct impression that there was more to it than that, and that the something more had to do with himself, but Bonham did not admit more. Nor did Grant question him. And as they ran on in, his diction and his grammar began to undergo that peculiar change from educated and expressive to uneducated and laconic, which Grant had noticed now several times before. He was evidently preparing the personality he wished to present at the Yacht Club—for whatever reasons. When they came abreast of the Club, he swung the boat hard left at full throttle in that violent style of his, immediately and at once cutting throttle (as he had to do or crash), then skillfully and easily wove his way in amongst the small launches and sailboats to a mooring close to the dock. From there Ali rowed the two of them in to the long wooden dock in the bathtub-sized plastic dinghy which Bonham kept lashed down on the cabin roof, and returned for the tanks and regulators and to clean up. Bonham and Grant had already dressed on the boat, and went on to the bar. Bonham had covered his slicked back, thinning hair with a beatup, old, but expensively made and very salty looking yachting cap bearing a crusted gold Captain’s symbol, which he had pulled from the drawer where the gin bottle was.
    Grant had been to the Yacht Club twice before, both times late in the evening for a drink after dinner, both times with his ‘mistress’ and her husband. Both times he had found it nearly deserted and pretty dull. The only amusement was a European-type pool game with holes in the middle of the table protected by skittles which must not be knocked over, where for a shilling you could play for x number of minutes before the timer shut off and retained the balls. He and the husband had played. It was a pretty middleclass, pretty deadly place in a way which only certain British or British-Colonial institutions can be. Built modern of concrete in four stories (each with its veranda) up the side of a bluff from the water’s edge to the street, it was much prettier outside than in, which was not saying much. Now, however, at the cocktail hour, it was cheerfully crowded with a harddrinking crowd of local members, residents, and ‘winter visitors’. Bonham knew them all, and he introduced Grant to all of them. Most of them were sophisticated enough, and had money enough, to spend a couple or three weeks once or twice a year in New York, be knowledgeable of American theater, and so knew who Grant was, had heard he was in town, and were glad to have him down they said. Grant was personable and charming with all of them; but he would much have preferred getting off in a corner and talking diving, to being Bonham’s celebrity. This, however, was impossible since Bonham, after ordering the two of them drinks, was now engrossed in a conversation with two Club members about a 38-foot Matthews marlin boat which had been put up for sale over in Montego Bay. The gist was that Bonham, as he made plain in his deliberately bad diction and bad grammar way, wanted to buy it but was afraid it was not in good shape. The two Club members were assuring him that it was in good shape, that they had seen it, and then Bonham would only shake his head dubiously and it would all start over. When Ali came up from the boat and Bonham, after ordering them both still more drinks, sent him off on foot to go get the station-wagon at the commercial dock, Grant was glad. But by the time he got back, Bonham, after ordering them drinks a couple of times more, was heatedly discussing with the chairman of the PTA (of which organ Bonham it turned out was vice -chairman!) the meeting they were calling for next Thursday. And Grant was defending his old pal Tennessee Williams from three