Salty Sky (17 page)

Van double blinked. He looked like he’d been punched. He bent forward, laughing, and tried to gain control. He put his left hand on Cale’s shoulder. His head hung down, facing the crushed gravel. Water dripped from his eyes. Cale couldn’t help but start laughing without knowing the punch line.

The girls looked at the laughers and started walking over, suspicious they were the brunt of the joke. Van pulled it together and whispered, “Big man, what kind of circles do you run in that those are your thoughts? These girls are working girls, and they do work together, but they aren’t
that
kind of working girls doing
that
kind of work together.”

The shorter girl waved and went inside with Van, who hooked his elbow to hers. Cale watched them go inside and heard them go out on the back porch and yell down to the others. He turned to the blonde and felt a little intimidated. Neither her smile nor her sundress, which stopped mid-thigh, was untying his tongue. But he was a diligent host, so, finally, he said, “So you’ll find this so funny. I was just telling Van I thought you were a prostitute. You know, a lady of the evening. And your clients were the old Mafia-type guys from the boat and bar. But he says you don’t even have to pay to have sex with you. Isn’t that the funniest thing ever?”

Actually, he didn’t say that. But that thought ran through his mind, and Cale capably returned her smile. She finally started the conversation.

“SORRY WE DIDN’T
get introduced before. I’m Ashley Walker. Thank you for what you did with Gino. You know—the big guy in the T-shirt. That was a brave thing to do. He is …” she started and then shook the thought out of her head.

She studied Cale. His hair was thinning. There were deep sun lines around his eyes, and his skin was a golden tan like hers, not dark olive
like Joe’s. His face looked friendly, reminiscent of a successful municipal politician. Confident. At this point in his life, he had probably earned that face. The honesty and the laugh lines—he had a nice smile.

She noticed his proportion hid his size well. His arms were roped with muscles. He held the cement pots without effort. His T-shirt fit a V-shaped body. She thought maybe he wasn’t being brave with Gino. He might not have had reason to be scared.

She surprised herself. “I saw you surfing.” Now, embarrassed, she kept talking. “You look busy. Can I help you with something?” Suddenly, she was rambling. “I don’t want another drink, but I know it will be a while before they are ready to go, so I might as well be productive.”

Ashley paused for half a second, thinking over her use of the word
productive
. Who said
productive
on Saturday at midnight? She got her mouth going again. “I got the driver’s cell number, so I can call him directly when we’re ready to leave. He said to give him a half hour heads-up. I gave him a pretty big tip, so I think I can count on him to want another.”

HER NERVOUSNESS RELAXED
Cale. He wondered how in the world she could be nervous unless it was from constantly being pursued. He wondered if he hadn’t spent most of his adulthood following drug dealers whether he would have assumed she was a call girl. He told her about the hurricane.

Ashley asked, “Do you think I need to call Joe and let him know about the storm? Or will the captain know?”

“That is a heck of an expensive boat. His captain ought to know.”

“I don’t even want to know how much that boat cost. It would make me even more convinced Joe was in the Mafia, and I don’t want to think that.” She wanted to change the conversation from Joe and said, “Well, at least it’s good that it’s going to just be a tropical storm.”

“The wind is less intense, but sometimes the rain is worse because the storm doesn’t move on as fast. I think that was the problem with Katrina. Once it got onto land, it stopped moving but kept raining until the flooding got out of control.”

“Could something like that happen here?”

“I don’t think so. The land isn’t as low. No levees that I know of, not as many people. Sometimes the hog farms have their waste lagoons blown out, and that gets into the rivers, and all that bacteria gets built up and comes down and ruins our oysters. There was a real bad storm like that in the mid-nineties.”

Hmm. Cale wished he hadn’t said “mid-nineties.” She was probably thinking,
Oh, I remember reading about that when I was in preschool
.

“Is a waste lagoon what I think it is?”

“Only for a couple of hundred thousand pigs. You should see the lagoons from the air. Drive to or from the coast on I-40, and there is about a fifteen-mile stretch of road where you catch the scent.”

“I think I’d rather see it from an airplane than smell it on the ground.”

She helped Cale wedge twenty-four potted plants against a section of shadowbox fence away from the house. They took the front porch furniture into the house. He showed her how to unhinge, shut, and lock down the storm shutters, turning the house into a fortress. They took care of the outdoor items except the Adirondacks and part of the kitchen, which were in use. None of their friends paid any attention to the preparations. He learned about her job and how the trip evolved. The process took an hour.

Ashley needed to use the restroom. They stepped inside. Cale took the opportunity to straighten things up. Seven guys in a small space put a lot of things out of place. When she got out of the restroom, he noticed her studying his picture wall.

“Is this your wife and daughters?” she asked, looking at a picture taken on a ski slope ten years prior. This was the first time the subject had arisen.

He answered yes, and preempted the follow-up. “Maggie, my wife, died not too long after this picture was taken.”

She glanced at his hand then responded, “I’m sorry.” She caught Cale noticing that she was looking at his hand. Her next statement came out awkwardly. “I guess … I guess … I just assumed you were … still married.”

He spun the silver ring on his left with this right hand. He did this often. Caught in the unexpectedly awkward moment, he said, “When I’m not paying attention, I still think of myself that way.” Hoping to stay at the surface, he changed topics and pointed to another picture. Three men stood in flight suits, arms outstretched like crosses, their fingertips touching. In the background stood a sequoia with a trunk whose girth exceeded their outstretched arms. As the tallest, Cale was, for symmetry, set in the middle. “Have you ever been to Northern California?”

“Just once. Chief and I—that is, my grandfather and I—drove to Yosemite. The trees and rocks are from another world. Did you work there?”

“A good bit while in the DEA. My favorite assignment. Even the bad guys were good guys.”

They took the conversation outside and joined those who were still awake. Blake’s date sat on an arm of his chair, her legs across his lap, ankles resting on the far arm of the chair. Her side leaned into the chair’s back, and her arm ran across the back of the chair behind his head. They looked quite familiar with each other. He was still on fire.

“Big man! So what were you going to do at the bar if that frog decided to jump? I was just getting into ninja kung fu mode when you jumped in. Man, I’d have torn that big gorilla apart. Done it silently too. You might have forgotten: I took several karate classes at the Y in the mid-eighties.”

Mid-eighties. At least Cale said mid-nineties. If his girl did the math, she would realize she was at least minus five at the time.

“And don’t forget,” Blake continued. “I had the famous Bruce
Lee–Chuck Norris fight in the warehouse on tape growing up, so I know some moves. Speaking of Chuck Norris, do you know why Chuck Norris kills two white guys each week? To prove he’s not a racist. Author. Movie star. TV star. Republican pitchman. I bet he would win
Dancing with the Stars
.”

He was funny. Really funny if you were cross-eyed but not so cross-eyed that you couldn’t keep up with his stream of consciousness. Cale sipped some water and tuned out. It had been a long weekend that he was ready to see wind down.

Ashley placed a hand on his thigh. Oh yes, he quickly tuned back in. They started a side conversation, a discrete tête-à-tête. What island was in front of them? Where were they now versus earlier today? She got that the coastline basically ran north and south but with a lot of jut-outs and jut-ins going east and west. That sped things along. Somewhere, they left geography and weather. He found himself talking about Maggie and the girls. They didn’t come any smoother than a guy who thinks you’re a hooker and then tells you all about his dead wife. Maybe he should mention how great it was to be called Grampa. He noticed her hand left his board shorts.

ASHLEY WONDERED WHETHER
that was what rejection felt like. When she had flirtatiously touched Cale, he changed the subject to talk about his grandkids.
Was that the message he wanted her to hear?
At the same time, listening to Cale, Ashley, for the millionth time, imagined growing up like other kids. What would life have been like having loving parents, siblings, this year’s styles, and normal teenage worries?
Does he like me? Does she like me? Will I make the team? Does this outfit look good? Am I cool? Hot? Smart?
Not
Is Mom about to shoot the sheriff?
Not
Excited my parents are in jail and social services forgot me
. Now, despite the perspective that hard knocks were supposed to provide, she had the
normal worries of a person in her mid-twenties.
Am I a good person? Why don’t I have a boyfriend? Do I want to have kids? Do I drink too much? Do I like work? Where am I going with this life?

IF SHE WAS
flawed, it was deeply hidden. Perfection. Physically, for sure. Cale, due to some unresolved adolescent self-consciousness, refused to mention that he noticed her on the beach. He still couldn’t show his underbelly. Surfing today, when he saw her walking, he let a good set go past so she could get a little closer to watch him.

She was funny, quick, self-deprecating, and seemed tough, too. Not calloused-hands tough, more rode-through-the-badlands-and-came-out-the-other-side tough.