The Big Bounce

Ray Ritchie, father number two, the one who had taken Nancy for the ride up toward Pompano, looked at the note and said to his wife, “I like girls, you know that. But I draw the line.” That would serve as his statement. Ray Ritchie almost always had something going on the side, from out-of-town weekends to downtown year-rounders, and he knew his wife wasn’t going to make a case out of this one. He was busy, he traveled a lot, he had interests in several companies in addition to Ritchie Foods; his wife had a $150,000 home, live-in help, clubs, charge accounts, their one child in a good school and she could believe whatever she liked.

Nancy didn’t see Ray Ritchie again until the next season. She wasn’t babysitting anymore, she was working in a casual shop at Ocean Mile. This time when Ray Ritchie ran into her, he didn’t take her to Bahia Mar or up toward Pompano. He took her to the Lucayan Beach Hotel on Grand Bahama for the weekend, Saturday through Tuesday.

The following 4th of July, Nancy was Miss Perky Pickle; she wore a dark green bathing suit and dark green high heels and rode through Geneva Beach behind the Holden Consolidated Marching Band, waving to everybody from the top of Ray Ritchie’s Continental. In August she wrote to her mother to say she was taking a job in Ritchie Foods’ P.R. department. She wrote the letter from her $400-a-month apartment overlooking the Detroit River.

As Miss Perky Pickle, she attended conventions, promotional parties, and store openings. She went to Cleveland, Chicago, and Mi

There was sunlight in the windows and on the pale blue carpeting, an afternoon in late May, quiet in the apartment because Ray had turned off the radio when he came in. He had ten minutes to change and pack an overnight bag for Chicago; forty minutes to get to the airport. She had fixed him a Scotch and soda and now sat on the couch while he changed his clothes, came out of the bedroom several times with the drink in his hand, took two phone calls and made a call, and finally stopped long enough to mention the beach house.

“What about your wife, doesn’t she go up?”

“A couple of times, maybe. She stays home and plays golf. She plays golf every morning and drinks gin and tonic in the afternoon.”

“What do I do when she comes?”

“You go to the hunting lodge. Or come back here if you want.”

“Slip out the back door as she comes in the front.”

“If you don’t like the way it is,” Ray Ritchie said, “I’ll have somebody drive you to the airport.”

“It’s nice to know you can’t live without me.”

“Did I make any promises to you? We’re square right now aren’t we, if you want to take off? Do I owe you anything?”

“The businessman.”

“Right, a deal. Have I said it was anything else?”

“You’ve never said what it was.”

“You’re a cute kid, Nancy,” Ray Ritchie told her. “If I had to replace you, it would probably take me a week.”

She remained on the couch after he had gone, aware of the afternoon stillness and aware of herself alone. She sat quietly while Ray and his group whipped off to Chicago to attend the dumb meeting or look at the dumb plant and make big important decisions about their dumb business.

Wow. And she sat here waiting for him.

He would call tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon, and show up about seven with one or two of his group. She would broil steaks as they continued making big important observations and decisions until about eleven. Then she and Ray would be alone and the corporate executive turned lover would say something unbelievable like, “Come here, doll. Miss me?” God. And the big passion scene would get under way. She would give him a look with her hair slanted across one eye, then go around turning off lights and taking glasses into the kitchen and by the time she got to the bedroom, he would be waiting with his one-button Italian-cut suit on the floor, his stomach sucked in, and Scotch and Lea & Perrins on his breath.

Unbelievable.

And he can replace you in a week, she thought. Did you know that?

Okay. She could pack her clothes right now and walk out.

She could smash the lamps, the glasses, and the dishes and then walk out.

She could have Ivory Brothers come in the morning and move out all the furniture and put it in storage.

But she didn’t. She got up and turned the radio on and started thinking about the beach house, wondering if she would like it and if there would be enough to do. After a year with Ray Ritchie the severence pay would have to be more than furniture and a few clothes. You bet your ass it would, Raymond.

During the first part of June she was content to lie in the sun by the pool and work on her tan; but by the end of the month there had to be more to do than lie around or play house with Ray when he came up.

The target pistol was fun for about a week. It was a long-barreled .22 Woodsman she had bought in Florida because she liked the look of it or just to have, to know she had a gun; maybe that was it. Her first target was the window of a grocery store way out the Shore Road. She would remember driving by in the early evening, then turning around and coming back about forty miles an hour, seeing it on the left side of the road, closed but with a light on, coming up on it and holding the gun extended in her left hand, arm resting on the door sill, not sighting but pointing in the general direction. She fired three times and heard the plate glass shatter as she sailed past, flooring the accelerator to get out of there. The game was to see if she could knock out a window without really aiming, with the right or left hand, at cottages, storefronts, signs, going by at speeds up to seventy: a shooting gallery in reverse. She had tried boats, firing at them from the trees or vacant frontage, but the boats were usually too far out and it was hard to tell when she scored a hit. Officially Nancy went shooting only four times in June, but it was enough to make front-page “Phantom Sniper” stories, with pictures of broken windows, in the Geneva Beach and Holden papers. She looked through the Detroit papers but never found a single mention.

Once, she had almost told Bob Jr. about it but at the last moment decided not to. He wouldn’t have got it. He would have frowned and said something dumb. It had been fun though, in the begi

While Bob Jr. worked on the new stairway down to the beach, putting in the support posts and nailing on the side rails and steps, Nancy sunbathed on the beach. It took him a week, though she was sure he could have finished the job in a few days. Nancy would lie on a straw mat in her faded light blue bikini and every once in a while look up at him: Bob Rogers Jr. bare to the waist with his cowboy hat and his apron full of nails. His body was dark reddish brown and the hair on his chest and arms glistened in the sun. He wasn’t bad-looking at all, very animal, though his stomach was begi