Chameleon by William Diehl Read Free Book Online Page A

you forgot.’
    ‘Not likely.’
    ‘Are you divorced?’ he asked. They had never talked about personal things before.
    ‘Widowed. Married at twenty-two, widowed at thirty- seven.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘He worked himself to death. Forty-two years old. One day he went off to the office and the next time I saw him he was lying in a funeral home with some creep dry-washing his hands over him, trying to sell me a five-thousand-dollar casket.’
    ‘A little bitter there.’
    ‘A little bitter? Maybe. Just a little. It sure turned my life around.’
    ‘Did you love him?’
    ‘Oh, I ... sure. Sure I loved him. He was a nice man.’
    ‘Christ, what an epitaph. Here lies Joe, he was a nice man.’
    ‘His name was Alec.’
    ‘It’s still a lousy epitaph.’
    ‘Well, he wasn’t a very exciting man. He was ... comfortable. Alec was wonderfully comfortable.’
    ‘So how come you end up a carpenter? On this barge, as you put it.’
    ‘I was into restoring antiques. It got out of hand. Next thing I know I was a full1ledged hardhat. How about you? A master’s degree in engineering and an armful of tattoos. That doesn’t fit, either.’
    ‘You can thank an old bastard name of Rufus Haygood for that.’
    ‘Rufus Haygood?’
    ‘Yeah. I was finishing my thesis at the University of Louisiana and these hotshot interviewers from ITT and Esso and AT&T and Bell Labs were giving me all this steam about how good it was gonna be workin’ for them, and one day old Rufus comes up to me and says he’s ramrodding a wooden jack-up rig out in the Gulf and he says, “I’ll give you ten silver eagles an hour, which is more than you can make dancin’ with those goddamn lard-ass bastards, and I’ll teach you everything there is to know about the oil game and you can teach me about books”—and I find out, you know, he never went to school. So for the next seven years I dragged around with him from one rig to another and he’d give me shale and blowholes and rigging for an hour or two, and I’d give him Shelley and Coleridge and Hammett for an hour or two back. But I learned about oil, yessiree.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘He’s with your Alec, wherever that might be. Drowned. Fishing in some dipshit lake in Florida. Got drunk and fell out of the boat. The old bastard never did learn to swim.’
    Outside, the wind wailed past the window, peppering it with sleet.
    ‘Wonderful night to stay in,’ Marge said. ‘We could build a fire and snuggle up.’
    ‘If we had a fireplace.’
    ‘We can make believe,’ she said.
    ‘I haven’t been laid for three months.’
    She held up four fingers. ‘Gotcha beat by a month,’ she said.
    ‘You’ve got a reputation as the Thoreau virgin,’ Lansdale said.
    ‘Been checking up on me, hunh?’
    ‘Well, it’s my job, make sure everybody on this rig is happy. We can’t afford morale problems.’
    ‘I’ve got one you can take care of right now,’ she said, closing in on him.
    Lansdale said, ‘You are shameless.’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘ain’t it a kick in the ass.’
    He laughed, a big laugh, and nodded. ‘Ain’t it, though,’ he said.
    And laughing too, she ripped open her work shirt. She was not wearing a bra. Her breasts, firm from the hard work on the rig, stood out, the nipples already signalling her desire.
    Lansdale stood near the wall, staring at her. He shook his head. ‘Incredible,’ he mumbled, tearing off his shirt and throwing it on the floor.
    She was still seven or eight feet from him. She zipped down the fly of her jeans very slowly.
    ‘Need some music?’ he asked.
    ‘Unh unh.’
    He sat down on the bed, leaning back on his elbows, watching every little move she made. She was swaying back and forth as she slowly slid the jeans over her hips and let them fall away. A curl of black hair peeked over the top of her bikini panties. She turned away from him, still swaying, and began to tighten and loosen her buttocks. She had an absolutely incredible