"Yes, I do. I'm Seth. I was hoping I could ask you about Nancy."
Her expression changed. She frowned, as though searching for something hard to find. "Come in, Seth. You can sit on the bed, it's more comfortable than the chair, believe me. Just give me a minute."
I came in and sat on the bed. A dresser and mirror and the beat-up chair were the room's only pieces of furniture besides the bed. The room wasn't big enough to hold much more. She grabbed a stack of small papers about the size of post-it notes and rifled through them. She stopped at one and read it. Then she looked up and smiled.
"Seth and Harry! Nancy told me about you guys. She really liked you. Friends. She was happy with that. Of course she was younger than me."
She wasn't knocking being friends, she just wanted me to know I had other options with her, if I wanted them. She really was sweeter than sugar, and I still had the urge to hug her like a puppy. But I didn't want to kiss a puppy and I did want to kiss her. I tried to focus on the task at hand.
"Nancy meant a lot to us, too. I'm trying to find out what happened to her."
"Oh, it's just so awful. I have notes so I don't forget her. I sometimes forget things. I've gotten used to it but some people aren't very nice about it. Nancy was super nice."
"I think she was in good company around you."
"Thank you. I don't get too many compliments." She was sitting in the uncomfortable chair she'd warned me off. It faced the bed and she awkwardly moved from it to sit next to me. She was wearing a pair of wrinkled Dockers and a blue blouse frayed on the collar edges. Secondhand.
"She was really pretty," she said.
I nodded. "So are you, Caroline."
"I didn't mean Nancy. I meant the girl you were with yesterday at Margarita's. I wrote it down after I ate, just in case I forgot. But I didn't forget."
I hadn't realized she'd noticed. "Like I said, Caroline, so are you."
She looked at me with her half-smile, got up, and walked slowly over to the window. She slid it open, allowing the sounds of all the living going on below to waft into the room. Her prison. This was her life, trapped here because of something out of her control. I liked her more than was safe. I'd felt an attraction for her from that first moment, watching her tap the stale bread against the fountain. It was that image which had kept me awake last night, and prevented me from knocking on another door; Delana's door.
I'd felt it once before, that instant attraction that makes no sense and can turn into love just as quickly. She had loved me, too, only it hadn't been enough. She had tried harder than any girl I'd ever seen try, but she couldn't stay off the stuff. It finally swallowed her up completely. Her life had ended alone, except for the needle, in an alley. I hadn't seen nor heard from her in the six months prior to her death. She had pushed me away for my own good.
"Did Nancy ever talk about anyone else, Caroline? If you can remember, or maybe wrote down?"
Caroline turned around, her hands behind her, grasping the windowsill. "I'll look, Seth."
There was something thrilling and intimate about her using my name. It sounded pure on her lips, as though Seth had to be someone good, someone she could trust. She walked over to the chair and picked up the papers she'd set down. In a minute she looked up at me. "A backpack. Under the bed." She got down on all fours and reached under the bed. She pulled out Nancy's backpack. I recognized it.
Caroline stood and handed it to me. She turned to walk back to the window and I grabbed her by the hand. "Stay here, Caroline. Please. It's nice when you sit next to me."
She sat down, but looked straight ahead. Very softly, in almost a whisper, she said, "I like you, too, Seth. You aren't making fun of me, are you?"
I placed my hand gently on the cheek furthest from me and turned her face so that I could see it. "I think you're fabulous, Caroline." And I kissed her, soft and sweet and long while a breeze billowed the dusty curtain and cooled the room, but not my heart. When I let her go she smiled wide, her eyes bright and shiny. She fanned herself. "Wow! I'd forgotten how wonderful a kiss could be." She looked at me and said, jokingly, "Literally!"
We both laughed.
"I hope I'm lucky enough that you let me do it so often you don't have to write it down."
"Well," she said, biting her lower lip and smiling at the same time, "there is a very good chance of that happening, Seth. If you play your cards right."
I leaned in and kissed her again, shorter this time, but no less intoxicating or sweet.
"I had an early start this morning, and no breakfast. How about an early lunch? I have a car downstairs and we could take Nancy's backpack with us."
"Okay, Seth. I'll go tell momma so she doesn't worry."
And she rushed downstairs like it was Christmas morn.
Nine
There is no greater feeling than those first minutes, hours, and days of new love. Logically, Delana should have been the one. She was beautiful, available, fun, and, in essence, living on my boat. She had been dropped into my lap by fate, there for the taking when she was ready and I was ready. I liked her, and my physical desire for her came in large, almost overwhelming waves. But as wonderful as that dance of hunger and passion with Delana would certainly be, that je ne sais quoi that makes the dance more than need and pleasure, that turns it into love, simply wasn't there.
Florencia, Flo, had been on the right track when she'd said I was a Vespa kind of guy. Only she hadn't gone far enough. I was a crusty bread, Converse high-top, wounded bird kind of guy. Delana didn't need me, not really. She was the dream of a lot of guys, one of whom would help her get over her break-up and move on. She was smart enough to weed through the bad ones until she found the right one, if she was looking for him.
Caroline was my dream. She did need me, but more importantly, I needed her, even if she didn't know it. Last night I'd lain in bed listening to the gentle rhythm of the tide sloshing against the hull. Mingling with the image of Nancy buried in her turquoise shroud was a fire deep inside me, a need for release, for feminine comfort and pleasure. Only one thing had kept me away from Delana's door, preventing me from wrapping myself up in her blonde hair and white legs and hidden pink; what I'd felt in those few moments of watching Caroline eat her lunch beneath the fountain. I knew I would be seeing her in a few hours, and for reasons that had made no sense outside of my heart, I could not do that with Delana's love all over me. I might be able to wash off the perfume, the smell of warm flesh and sweat bathed in love's liquid, but I would never be able to wash the guilt. I had to know about Caroline first.
"I love this car. Is it yours?"
"No, it belongs to a friend of mine named Florencia. I'm borrowing it." She became quiet, so I added, "I have to eventually return it to the house she and her husband stay at when they're in Cozumel."
The cloud lifted and the sunshine returned. "Cool," she said. "What a sweet car. Where do you want to go?"
"You know the island better than me, the only place I know is where I saw you yesterday."
"There's a place right on the beach that serves the best fish and chips. I walk there once in a while when momma pays me for ironing or helping out with the dishes. The chips are so fantastic."
She helps me out sometimes, washes dishes, irons when I'm too tired. She earns her room.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing, lunch on the beach it is."
I followed her directions, which she didn't have to have written down. Maybe with enough repetition, things stuck.
The place was your typical fish and chips shack near the beach, very busy. The people waiting in line weren't all tourists, which boded well for the place. It took us a while but it was worth it. I carried the two big cardboard trays of fish and chips. Caroline carried Nancy's backpack. We found a spot not too close to other people lunching on the beach and plopped down on the white sand to eat.
It was warm, as it always was here, but a moist breeze was blowing across the sea inland and cooled us. The sky was blue and c
lear, and it didn't look like we'd get any of those warm tropical showers while we relaxed.
"You were right about these chips."
"I know! Aren't they great? This is wonderful, Seth." She wasn't talking about the food any longer. "I almost wish I had something to swim in."
"You like to swim?"
"Not when I'm alone. It's kind of scary then, the sea. But with you here, I just feel…free, like everything's okay and nothing bad could happen."
"That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me." My mind was far away, far out on the horizon, thinking of Nancy. "I hope it's true. You can't always protect the ones you love because you can't always see where the danger is."
"Maybe it's just the feeling that everything's okay that matters, Seth. That freeing feeling that lets you enjoy life and new experiences." She turned and smiled a half-smile, then looked down and ran her forefinger in the sand, doodling. Her voice was very soft when she spoke. "Not bad for a retard, huh?"
"Not bad for a smart pretty girl who knows all kinds of stuff I don't, even if she does have to refer to her cliff notes from time to time."
The Cozumel sun seemed dark compared to the sunshine lighting her face in that moment.
"Oh, Seth, I wish I could capture the way I feel right now and put it in a bottle. That way I could take it out whenever I'm down, and lonely."
I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her to the white sand, onto her back, and kissed her. "If we have enough moments like this, maybe you can't forget them all." She wrapped her arms around my neck and held me to her, her face pressed against mine. She finally let me go and we sat up.
"I'm okay with…things like they are now, Seth. I'm still….me, you know? But I felt something watching you with that girl, yesterday. Jealous maybe. Sad. And mad because I'm not like I used to be. But mostly stupid, because I didn't even know you and I was thinking about all that stuff, like you'd notice me, even without someone as gorgeous as her around."
I took my finger and ran it along her hair where the breeze was blowing it. I whispered, "I noticed, Caroline. And I like the girl you are now."
She gazed at me tenderly. "I'd almost forgotten what it was like to hope, Seth. When you knocked on my door this morning, something inside told me it was you. That's why I cleaned up this morning, put on my good clothes. Hoping for a miracle. My little pretend fantasy. When I opened the door and you were there, it made my silly little daydream yesterday seem not so silly, or impossible. I know that must sound crazy."
"No, it's not crazy. I think it's the luckiest break I ever got, running into you yesterday."
We sat there for a minute or two soaking in the beauty around us and the beauty of the moment. You have to enjoy them, even if they turn bitter or sour later on, so you can remember that there once was love. And if you are very lucky, you just kept adding moments over the years. Most people weren't lucky.
"Toss me the backpack."
Caroline leaned forward and handed me Nancy's backpack. I unzipped it and saw what I'd been hoping was there. I pulled out the bikini and said, "You think it will fit?"
She frowned. "Yeah, we're close to the same size, but do you think it would be okay?"
I smiled and stroked a handful of her soft hair. "I think Nancy would like you to have it now, and I know I'd like to see you in it. Why don't you go change and I'll watch the prettiest girl on the beach take a dip."
"I'll be right back."
She disappeared into a small shower stall and in a couple of minutes emerged looking white and spectacular in the deep red bikini. She came jogging over. "It fits!"
"Excuse me? I'm sorry, Miss. I'm waiting on my girlfriend while she's changing. She might not like it if she comes out and finds me talking to some hot girl on the beach."
She leaned down to kiss me, her round, lovely breasts falling soft against my chest through the bikini top. "You're right, she wouldn't."
And for the next forty minutes I watched her swim and play in the waters of Cozumel, feeling more than just desire as I had when watching Delana. I felt love. It had been a long time. Caroline was not the only one who had forgotten how it felt.
The human heart buries memories of love, files them away somewhere when they don't work out, because it hurts too much to remember feelings that you have little hope of recapturing. The truth is, you never recapture those exact feelings anyway, because love is different every time you feel it. But the head knows this, not the heart. So the heart buries them deep.
Caroline came running towards me, all wet and happy. She hadn't bothered to squeeze the water out of her hair. She was a wet noodle, a lovely, wonderful noodle I couldn't get enough of.
"Did you look?" she asked.
"In the backpack? No, I thought we'd do it together."
She kissed me, her wet hair brushing against my face. "Thank you."
Caroline stretched her blouse out onto the white sand and I dumped out the backpack. It was normal girl stuff: lipstick, compact, hair brush and comb, sunblock, a pair of jean shorts, two T-shirts, three pairs of panties, a portable CD player/radio, some old thrift-shop CDs of 70's and 80's music, most with cracked cases. Most of it I'd seen before. There were no letters, no notes from anyone, or to anyone. But there was one crumpled-up photo. Why crumple it up and then keep it? It was a photograph of Nancy with her arm draped around an older girl. Both were smiling.
The second girl appeared to be in her mid-twenties, like Caroline. She was chicly dressed. Expensive stuff, like Florencia would wear. Whereas Nancy looked white, the other girl had more of a hispanic cast. Exquisite but aloof. Even smiling there was something distant about her. I handed it to Caroline and asked if she knew who it was. She looked at it a long time.
"She told me but then said not to write it down. It…hurt her, I remember that. I almost…give me a minute, Seth."
It took three minutes.
"She came by! Before the man."
I wanted to ask about the man but let Caroline take her time.
"She came by asking for Caroline. Momma wasn't there, she was out."
"Do you remember who she was?"
"No, I'm sorry, Seth."
"It's alright. It's more than I had to go on a few seconds ago. How about the man?"
"He came by later, maybe the next day? I'm not sure. He asked for Caroline, too."
"Was Rosita, momma, out then, too?"
"Yeah, I think she was."
Both had waited until Rosita was gone before going up to talk to Nancy. Probably made sure no one else saw them. Only they hadn't found Nancy. They'd found Caroline instead. Would they know Caroline wouldn't remember much? Doubtful. She might be a loose end. I didn't like it.
"Did you tell them anything? That you can remember?"
"They were nice. I think I may have told them about your boat. That they might find her there. But I can't be sure." She looked at me, her expression pained. "Seth, did I get her killed?"
"No! If one of them was responsible, they'd have found her some other way. And besides, she wasn't murdered on the boat. And there was a drug in her system. She met someone she trusted and went with them. Maybe they poured her a drink and slipped her something."
For a moment, Caroline was very still, her face a blank. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. I had made her remember, but she'd pushed it back into some deep crevice where we all hide things too terrible to think about. Our dark attic full of ghosts and regret and demons.
"It's so sad. Nancy said she missed the house."
The house?
I looked at the picture again. It was a close-up so I'd paid little attention to the house in the background. I gave it my full attention now. It was familiar but I couldn't place where I'd seen it before. It took about thirty seconds for it to begin to come into focus. Miami Beach.
"Holy shit."
"What is it, Seth?"
"I'm not certain what's going on, but it's something more than I figured. I'll need back-up, and I need to talk to s
omeone in Miami. It'll mean leaving Cozumel for a bit. Are you okay with that?"
"Sure, I understand." Loneliness filled her and spilled out into her response.
"No, Caroline, I mean leaving momma for a while and coming with me. You might be in danger, and even if you weren't, I'd want you with me." I reached for one of the papers in her pocket and wrote something on it. I handed it to her. As she read, a smile began to form. At the same time, a tear rolled down her cheek.
Seth loves me and will never leave me by myself.
She fell into my arms and wept for a very long time.
Ten
Escobar's death created a vacuum in Southern Florida. Narcotics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Players in the traffic gravitate toward it like they're being sucked into a wind tunnel. Escobar had been a major player, so much so that when all was said and done his piece of the pie was split between two men: Fernando Marquez and Carlos Vargas. It was no secret that the two men loathed each other, but business was business, and it made more sense to eat from their own lucrative plates than try to stick their fork where it was unwelcome.
The house in Nancy's photo was the home of Carlos Vargas. I wasn't yet certain what that meant, but I was certain that it had something to do with her death. If it did, then old Carlos was going down, and no one wanted to see that more than Marquez, who could step right in and take over nearly all of Southern Florida's traffic. I knew little about Vargas, as he was a latecomer to the dance, only emerging after Escobar was in the ground. But Marquez I knew. He'd been around slowly growing his marketshare for a decade before swooping in and capturing half of Escobar's considerable action. I needed to talk to him.
Mexico is still "old world" in that I had no trouble finding a phone booth. I pulled up to it and Caroline, all cried out and feeling better, walked across the street for sodas while I dialed Sonny's number.
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