B0092XNA2Q EBOK (14 page)

“Define ‘been.’ ”

“You know… ‘been.’ ”

I shook my head.

“How old are you?”

“Fortyish.”

Her disbelief was difficult to hide. “You’re over the hump and you’ve never slept with a woman?”

I didn’t respond.

She put both hands on her hips. “Come on. Are you telling me the truth? I thought everybody had slept with somebody, or lots of somebodies, by the time they were your age.”

“Never found the right—”

“The last romantic. Somebody should make a movie about you.” She looked away, her mind spinning. “If I were still alive, I’d direct it and with your Coppertone face and island-man hair the tickets would sell like hotcakes.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m being serious. I mean you’re… you’re not normal. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who hasn’t been with a woman, and didn’t want to be with me.” I kept my mouth shut. She sat. “I guess maybe you would have a tough time with me sunbathing in my birthday suit.” She curled up one side of her lip. Sucked through her teeth. “You sure you’re not gay? I mean, it’s okay if you—”

I nodded. “Pretty sure.”

“How do you know?”

I turned away, smiling. “I just know.”

She laughed. “Your face is really red.” One hand on her hip.
“Just how much did you see on my balcony and the back end of my boat?”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“Yeah, but you still ‘saw’ me. You’re human, right?”

“Yep.”

“So, how much?”

“Enough.”

She threw a pencil at me. “There I was the whole time thinking you were some guy like Steady.”

I stared east through the mangroves toward Miami. A pause. “I’m nothing like Steady.”

She stepped closer. This was the most talkative she’d been. And she’d just stepped into and violated the unspoken and yet consciously observed bubble of my personal space. “What do you mean?”

“Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I was.”

“How so?”

I paused. Tried to put it into words. “He sees clearly.” I opened the screen door. “For what it’s worth, I’ve talked more with you in the few days I’ve known you than any person other than Steady for the last decade.” She took another step. “Combined.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?” It was a sincere question.

“Haven’t wanted to.”

She nodded, once. A long, purposeful blink. “Then—thank you for the gift of that.”

So while the world searched, mourned, and tried to make sense of Katie’s death, Steady returned to Miami, and I taught a Hollywood icon with her own star on the Boulevard how to bait her own hook, how to throw a spinning reel, how to read the surface of the water, how to tie a double surgeon’s knot, how to connect leader to braid, and how to rub lime juice on her hands to get rid of the fishy smell.

All was not Edenic. Hurdles appeared. Not insurmountable. Just unexpected. The first morning, sunlight just breaking the treetops, I offered her a pole and a live shrimp. Still kicking. Her top lip curled. “Do I have to put that nasty, smelly thing on that hook?”

I considered this. “No.” I offered the pole again. “But if you want to catch a fish, it helps.”

She gritted her teeth, baited her hook, and we fished in silence. Easy with one another. Not talking. Not filling the air with nervous chatter. She didn’t feel the need to give me her résumé detailing the worlds she’d conquered and I didn’t pepper her with questions about what it was like to be her. We sat in the quiet, on the edge of the world where the Glades melted into the islands, casting across the current and letting arms of the mangroves envelop us in shade and easiness.

We watched each other out of the corners of our eyes. Comfortable but not demanding comfort. When she did talk, she did so in passing. Not in an effort to justify, but understand. Make sense of.

I listened. Something I’ve always been good at. Steady says the ocean is the bosom of God—if it is, then cradled there in that faraway place, we nursed.

And with every quiet moment that passed, every hook baited, every fish landed, every word unspoken, my wall—my very fortified, very carefully constructed, very calculated, protected, unscalable, and impenetrable wall—began cracking.

F
our days later, the call came in from Steady. I picked him up in the airboat and returned him to the island, where we found Katie comfortable on the porch. Hands in her lap. A thought on her mind, but not yet on her tongue.

We went inside.

He emptied his satchel and set the newspapers on the table. “They buried you.” She picked up the papers, studying the pictures. The color in her face had slowly returned—mixed now with hours in the sun. And yes, I’d long since had the thought that she was in fact the most beautiful human being I’d ever been this close to. She asked, “What’d they bury?”

“Memorabilia. Ticket stubs. Show programs. Posters. A scarf you sold for charity. Some jeans they said were your favorite.” He waved his hand across an imaginary area of the table. “You’ve got your own section of the cemetery. It’s a mausoleum, complete with all-night lighting and twenty-four-hour security paid for by your estate that,
thanks to you, I’m now overseeing. Although…” A slight chuckle. “I’m soon to be embroiled in a nasty lawsuit with ex number three.”

She waved him off. “All bark. No bite.” She sat, reading the articles. Clicking her teeth on a single fingernail. She turned the article sideways, studying it. She nodded. “Yeah, I did like those jeans.”

Steady had some questions, but he let her finish. When she laid down the papers, he opened his mouth but she beat him to the punch. Her words were cleanly articulated and echoed around the inside of the cabin. “I need to go to France.” She said this with the same tone of voice with which she might order a Diet Coke.

Both our heads turned. I suppose our open jaws prompted her to explain. She drew a picture of the country of France in the air. “France. You know, west of Italy. North of Spain.” She nodded. “You’ve seen pictures.”

Steady sat back, realizing she’d made up her mind. He knew her pretty well. “I suppose you’re going whether I like it or not.”

“Oh, you’ll like it ’cause you’re going with me.”

Steady looked caught off guard. “What?”

“It’s your fault. You got me into this mess. I’m dead because of you.”

I admit, I liked the thought of getting her off my boat and returning to my uncomplicated life. “I think that’s a great idea.”

He tapped his chest. “Sorry. Bum ticker. Can’t fly. Doctor’s orders.”

She crossed her arms, chewed on her lip, and turned to look at me.

I didn’t like what I saw.

She considered me for some time. Finally, she nodded. “You’ll have to take his place. As long as you don’t get in my way.”

Being around her was like riding Space Mountain at Disney World. I looked at both of them. “Me? Why me?”

Steady smiled. “She obviously can’t go alone.” He placed his hand across his heart. “I can’t go and you’re the only other person who knows she’s still alive.” A shrug.

I spoke to both of them, shaking my head. “That does not mean I have to go.”

She protested loudly. Reminded me of Veruca Salt in the chocolate factory. When I didn’t react, she took a breath and said, “This is serious.”

“I’m being serious.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not even listening to me.”

“Yeah, I did. You said you wanted me to go to France and I said no.”

Steady interrupted. “She needs you.”

His support of her was not what I had in mind. “She doesn’t need me. She needs a priest and probably a good shrink.”

She turned her thumbs in her lap, whispering below her breath. “It’s important.”

My voice rose. “What could possibly be important in France? I just helped you blow yourself to bits in the Gulf of Mexico!”

She crossed her arms.

Steady was still trying to get her point across. He patted me on the shoulder. “You should definitely go.”

I looked at him like he had lost his mind and wondered how he’d gotten out of this so easily. He, of all people, should know that I couldn’t go to France. I said, “You haven’t answered my question.”

She looked at me and spoke without emotion. “
Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.
”

I knew it was French, but I had no idea what it meant. My deer-in-the-headlights stare convinced her of this. She said, “ ‘The heart has its reasons that reason ignores completely.’ ”

“You make that up?”

A single shake. “Pascal.”

She had me there but I tried not to let on. “Quoting dead philosophers sounds great but it’s not getting me to France.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and spoke with conviction. “Writers die, not their words.” Had me there, too.

“So, what’s so important?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Not good enough.”

She responded quickly and without measure. A true emotional response. Uninhibited. She was yelling. “ ’Cause it hurts. ’Cause I don’t want to talk about it. ’Cause I can’t. Haven’t ever…” She hid her scarred wrist under the other.

Steady touched my arm. “A minute please?” I followed him outside. He slid the cabin door closed behind me. She sat arms crossed, glaring through the glass, shut out. Liking the idea that we were talking about her behind her back about as much as the fact that she had to beg us to get her way. The smell of salt washed over us. He spoke softly. “Go with her.” He waited. Hands in his lap. Silence was response enough.

“Why?” I finally asked.

He pulled out a fingernail clipper and began trimming his nails. Trimmed three before speaking. “Because you need this.”

“Me? This is about her.” I waved a finger in the air. “This has got nothing to do with—”

He closed his eyes. “It has everything to do with you.”

“What could this possibly have to do with me?”

He clipped a nail, which fell on the deck. His nails were always trimmed short. “That’s for you to figure out.”

“Steady, you of all people should know that I cannot do this.”

Another finger. Another clip. “And you of all people should know that you can.”

I shook my head. “Being around this woman is like walking across a dormant volcano. You’re never quite sure when the mantle is going to blow. My primary thought every time I get within five feet of her is that I want her off my boat.”

He switched hands. “If you go to France with her, she will be off your boat.”

“That solves the second problem. Not the first.”

He shrugged. “She’s an onion.”

“Meaning?”

“Multilayered.”

“Oh, I thought you were going to say she leaves a bad taste in your mouth and brings tears to your eyes.” He didn’t bite. I said, “If she’s an onion, what am I?”

He spoke matter-of-factly. “A coconut.”

I tried to deflect. I countered. “Why, ’cause I’m hardheaded?”

“No, because a steady diet of coconut juice will give you the runs.”

I was not winning this. “That’s not funny.”

He slid the trimmers back into his pocket, which meant this conversation was coming to a close and he’d made up his mind.

I turned and walked back through the door, intent on proving that she’d not thought this through. I stood across from her. “Let’s assume for one minute that I agreed. That I said I’d go.” She let out a deep breath. “You’ve got other really big problems.”

“Such as?”

“Crossing the ocean. You don’t have a passport and you can’t get one without some black market help.”

She looked away. Her voice softened. “I already have one.”

“I’m sure Katie Quinn has one. I’m not so sure that”—I pointed at her—“you do.”

She nodded. “I have a passport.”

“How?”

“I’ve had it since I was fifteen.”

“But—”

“Katie Quinn is not my real name.”

Even Steady looked surprised. He asked, “It’s not?”

“ ‘Katie Quinn’ is the name I created when I needed it.”

“It’ll never work.”

“It worked for Jason Bourne.”

“He’s fictional.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been traveling back and forth to France for years without anyone knowing it.”

“How?”

“It’s simple, I make myself look like someone else.”

I didn’t respond. Steady smiled at me and whispered, “See, you two have more in common than you thought.” I brushed him off.

“I’ll pay you. I can pay you more than you make in a year. Or five years.”

“You don’t know how much I make.”

“I’ve seen how you live. It can’t be much.”

“I don’t want your money.” I leaned forward. “And even if I did, you couldn’t afford me.”

“ ’Course I could. I could buy everything you own ten thousand times.”

“What’s my trust worth?”

“Please don’t make me beg any more than I already have.”

Steady sat back. Almost smiling. He knew she was winning and he almost seemed to enjoy the banter.

“We have to go to the bank.” She pulled a small key with a rope fob from her front pocket. “Safe-deposit box.” She’d already begun planning our trip.

“You mean, I have to go to the bank.”

She nodded.