“I didn’t promise.”
“Ah, yes, you did. You most certainly did.”
Lionel resumed steering his boat. “If you’re an admiral,” he said, “where’s your fleet?”
“My fleet. I’m glad you asked me that,” Boo Boo said, and started to lower herself into the dinghy.
“Get off!” Lionel ordered, but without giving over to shrillness, and keeping his eyes down. “Nobody can come in.”
“They can’t?” Boo Boo’s foot was already touching the bow of the boat. She obediently drew it back up to pier level. “Nobody at all?” She got back into her Indian squat. “Why not?”
Lionel’s answer was complete, but, again, not loud enough.
“What?” said Boo Boo.
“Because they’re not allowed.”
Boo Boo, keeping her eyes steadily on the boy, said nothing for a full minute.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, finally. “I’d just love to come down in your boat. I’m so lonesome for you. I miss you so much. I’ve been all alone in the house all day without anybody to talk to.”
Lionel didn’t swing the tiller. He examined the grain of wood in its handle. “You can talk to Sandra,” he said.
“Sandra’s busy,” Boo Boo said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk to Sandra, I want to talk to you. I wanna come down in your boat and talk to you.”
“You can talk from there.”
“What?”
“You can talk from there.”
“No, I can’t. It’s too big a distance. I have to get up close.”
Lionel swung the tiller. “Nobody can come in,” he said.
“What?”
“Nobody can come in.”
“Well, will you tell me from there why you’re running away?” Boo Boo asked. “After you promised me you were all through?”
A pair of underwater goggles lay on the deck of the dinghy, near the stem seat. For answer, Lionel secured the headstrap of the goggles between the big and second toes of his right foot, and, with a deft, brief, leg action, flipped the goggles overboard. They sank at once.
“That’s nice. That’s constructive,” said Boo Boo. “Those belong to your Uncle Webb. Oh, he’ll be so delighted.” She dragged on her cigarette. “They once belonged to your Uncle
Seymour.”
“I don’t care.”
“I see that. I see you don’t,” Boo Boo said. Her cigarette was angled peculiarly between her fingers; it burned dangerously close to one of her knuckle grooves. Suddenly feeling the heat, she let the cigarette drop to the surface of the lake. Then she took out something from one of her side pockets. It was a package, about the size of a deck of cards, wrapped in white paper and tied with green ribbon. “This is a key chain,” she said, feeling the boy’s eyes look up at her. “Just like Daddy’s. But with a lot more keys on it than Daddy’s has. This one has ten keys.”
Lionel leaned forward in his seat, letting go the tiller. He held out his hands in catching position. “Throw it?” he said. “Please?”
“Let’s keep our seats a minute, Sunshine. I have a little thinking to do. I should throw this key chain in the lake.”
Lionel stared up at her with his mouth open. He closed his mouth. “It’s mine,” he said on a diminishing note of justice.
Boo Boo, looking down at him, shrugged. “I don’t care.”