Sunday morning, they woke early and did it again, slower and quieter, trying a couple of new kinks, nibbling and giggling and then getting deadly serious. It surprised Emma to find that Jennifer had things to teach her.
“Are we dykes?” Jennifer had asked as they were showering off.
“We’re not dykes. We’re just a couple of women who’ve successfully transcended men.”
They giggled at that. They’d been giggling most of the morning. Their secret, these new, surprising feelings.
“I like this place,” Jennifer said, getting serious. “It suits me.”
She leaned out over the railing, surveyed the view to the south. The Gulf, the colorful town with its narrow brick streets and white gazebos and park benches.
“I want to live here forever, Emma. Never leave. It’s like some perfect quaint little village in New England. Only warmer. And with a beach. And palm trees.”
“That’s because it’s Florida, not New England,” Emma said.
Jennifer giggled again.
“This place might be too good to be true,” Emma said. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Oh, Emma. Be nice. I like it here.”
“It reminds me of one of those movie towns where Jimmy Stewart owns the hardware store and everybody knows everybody else’s business. They all go on hayrides together and attend the same church and at night they sit around on park benches out under the stars and tell each other sweet, stupid stories.”
“Don’t spoil it, Emma. Don’t make fun of it. I could be happy in this place. Really, I could.”
“Hell, if the membership committee ran background checks on us, Jen, we’d be blackballed in a minute. I don’t think they have a lot of career criminals in Seaside.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Norman said.
“Well, even if they don’t, we’ll just have to be the first. Goddamn it, I like this place.”
“Does that mean you don’t want a husband and kids anymore? You giving up that fantasy all of a sudden?”
“It was a dumb fantasy. That was before I knew how it could be … You know, how it could be …”
“Without a penis,” Emma said.
And they giggled again. Emma couldn’t remember ever giggling before. Not even when she was young. Especially not then.
Below them on the brick street, a mother and her two red-haired daughters were riding clunky bicycles. The two girls noticed Emma and waved and called out hello.
Emma waved back.
“This is fucked,” said Norman.
“Norman, give it a rest, would you? We’re going to get the goddamn money. That’s our number-one priority. But the Rafferty woman is right there, fifty feet away. She doesn’t know we’re here. Let’s just take our time. Find the right moment to strike. So we can do it quiet and without any fuss. Because if me and Jennifer decide we want to stay here afterward, we don’t want to start off on the wrong foot, getting busted for murder. Okay? Can you deal with that?”
“Sure,” he said. “Whatever.”
“Good attitude, Norm,” Jennifer said. “Very laid-back. Very Seaside.”
Emma smiled at Jennifer and she smiled back.
“I think I’m hungry,” Emma said. “I know I just ate, but there it is, I’m hungry again. It must be this cool weather, or the smell of the ocean or something. But I’m hungry as hell. How about you, Jennifer? You hungry?”
Jennifer raked the hair away from her eyes.
“Oh, yes. I’m starving. I can’t remember ever being this hungry.”
“Great,” Norman said. “So go eat.”
“Yeah,” Jennifer said. “Let’s.”
TWENTY-SIX
Sunday morning, Jason slipped out of bed and snuck off, and in twenty minutes he was back with warm cinnamon buns and Jamaican coffee. Alex roused her father and the three of them ate their breakfast in the front porch rockers.
Lacy strands of fog twisted between the houses. In the pine-needle mulch in their front yard, sparrows pecked for beetles. A couple of kids on creaky bicycles rode down the quiet street, carrying their floats under their arms. A shaggy black dog waddled after them.
“Norman Rockwell,” Jason said. “Painted by the numbers.”
Alex smiled.
At nine, when the shops opened, Alex and Lawton crossed the beach road and spent an hour exploring them. They each bought a couple of new outfits. Lawton chose some garish tropical gear. And Alex found a green-and-red-plaid flannel shirt, a pair of white jeans, and some cotton mock turtlenecks. They dropped the shopping bags off at the house; then the three of them took a prowl around the town, peeking in each of the cafés, galleries, gourmet shops, and boutiques. Strolling up and down every residential street and every sandy lane.
They chuckled at the cutesy house names. Each dwelling with its hand-lettered plaque on the front gate, another detail legislated by the building code. Dreamweaver, EcstaSea, Margaritaville, Sundaze, Narnia, Pleasure Principle, Ooh-La-La.
All the buildings were gorgeous reproductions. Greek Revival, Victorian, Plantation, and Florida Cracker. Crayola colors, splashy creations of purple and teal, salmon and hunter green. Each house was a quirky blend of traditional and contemporary. In every detail, every cornice and garden and window-frame molding, there was a witty and self-conscious ingenuity. One beautiful trick after another. Towers and widow’s walks and spacious balconies and tin roofs and outside staircases and cupolas everywhere. It was like walking through a dreamy watercolor. For Alex, the place was irritating and beguiling. She felt bullied by so much cleverness and good taste, a little weary and inadequate.
“Disney World without the rides,” said Jason.
“Trickier than that,” she said. “It’s so close to being real, you’re almost tempted to believe it is. The kind of place, if you lived here long enough, you’d start dreaming in pastel. I feel guilty for not liking it:”
It was sunny, with the temperature hovering in the low fifties. Chilly gusts from the north that seemed to give Alexandra’s energy a boost. Her appetite, as well.
They had lunch at Bud and Alley’s, another fine meal of catfish fingers and grilled vegetables, a creamy risotto, a wonderful apple pie. And afterward when Alexandra proposed a nap, no one complained.
With sunlight streaming through the transom windows, she and Jason made love again. And this time as he explored her body, he whispered questions and she murmured her replies, guiding him to her favored rhythms and stresses. But Jason did not stop there. With slow and careful strokes, he found some new surprising half tones hidden inside the larger, more familiar melodies. Shades of touch, fine trills and counterpoints she had not even guessed at.
His tongue and fingers, his lips and the lean muscularity of his torso.
She stretched herself, flexed and twisted, finding fits of flesh with this new man that came and went so quickly, she could not begin to imagine how they could ever reproduce them.
It was not her release or his they worked together to achieve, but holding off their own final pleasure, they moved toward some state she’d never heard mentioned by friends or magazine experts. A place so distant from that room and time, so removed from the limitations of flesh and the noisy sludge of conscious thought, that when they arrived there, a golden hush came over her. Still joined, they did not move or speak or even breathe. A plucked string chirred somewhere near, but that was all. Otherwise, a perfect emptiness. A shedding of the weight of her life so clean and quick, it was as if the bed had been launched beyond the pull of gravity.
And then they were back.
Lawton Collins was rapping on the door. Wanting to go down to the beach, soak up some rays.
“I love this shit,” Emma said. “People going off, leaving their doors unlocked, middle of the day. Renews your faith in humanity. I think I could live in a town like this.”
They entered the Chattaway through the back door. Emma nosing the barrel of the Heckler & Koch around the doorjamb. Jennifer right behind her with the
.38 they’d taken off of Stan Rafferty, and Norman with the Mac-10 bringing up the rear.
Three in the afternoon, sunny day, walking into the bright white kitchen of that small beach house while the good folks were sunning on the beach.
“I’ve never done a home invasion before,” said Jennifer.
“You still haven’t,” Emma said. “Owner has to be present for it to qualify. You got to tie them up, pistol-whip them. This is just simple breaking and entering.”
“Cut the shit,” said Norman.
He shut the back door and stalked over to the refrigerator.
“What’re you? Hungry?”
He clinked some bottles and shuffled some things around on the racks, then shut the door and popped open the freezer.
“Here’s some of it.” Norman drew out two handfuls of frosty cash.
“Jesus, Norman. You’re quick. You must’ve done this kind of thing a couple of times before.”
Emma slipped the cash into the white plastic garbage bag she’d brought along.
“But this can’t be all of it. Christ, this isn’t but thirty, forty thousand.”
Jennifer came out of the back bedroom carrying the brown duffel with a South Miami High logo on its side. She turned it upside down and shook it.
“It’s empty,” she said. “You don’t think they spent it already, do you?”
“On what? Suntan oil?”
“It’s around here,” Norman said.
He lifted the edge of the couch, peered under it, then let it crash back down.
“Easy, Norman. We don’t want to set off somebody’s fucking seismograph.”
Emma went to the front bedroom, set the carbine on a chest of drawers, and searched the closet, under the bed, under the mattress, in the bathroom vanity, in each of the drawers.
“Bingo,” Norman called from the kitchen.
Emma picked up the assault rifle, and as she was coming through the bedroom door, she bumped into the old man.
Sixty, seventy years old, with a sunken chest and gray hair, wearing baggy yellow surfer’s shorts and a pair of aviator sunglasses.
“Hi,” he said. “You think I look sporty in my new duds?”
Emma pointed the carbine at him and backed slowly away.
The old man shut the front door and turned the deadbolt. Then he cocked up a leg and brushed off the bottom of his bare left foot.
“Goddamn sand,” he said. “It gets in your sheets, you can barely sleep.”
He cocked up the other foot and brushed it off, then glided past Emma into the kitchen.
Norman was climbing down off the stove with a floppy straw basket in his hand. Emma could tell from the way he was holding it that it was heavy. In the doorway of the other bedroom, Jennifer stood with the .38 at her side. Her mouth was sagging open.
“Freeze, motherfucker,” Emma said. But the old man seemed not to hear.
He marched into the kitchen and halted to examine the Mac-10 that Norman had left lying on the counter. He took off his sunglasses and set them down next to the Mac.
“Nice weapon,” he said. “Yours?”
Norman nodded. Then he looked over at Emma to see what he was supposed to do.
“Freeze, goddamn it,” she said. “This is your last warning.”
The old man stepped over to Norman and put a hand on the lip of the straw basket, tipped it forward, and peered inside.
“Wow,” he said. “Now there’s a pile of greenbacks.”
He turned and opened the refrigerator door and drew out a pitcher of lemonade. He raised the pitcher to his lips, tilted it, and drank. When he was done, he looked around at the three of them, wiped his mouth, and said, “Where are my manners? Any of you care for a drink?”
“Not me,” Jennifer said.
Norman shook his head.
“You, young lady?” He swung the pitcher around and offered it to Emma.
“Is that it, Norman? Is that all the money?”
“Appears to be.”
“Then let’s go.”
“What about him?”
Holding the straw basket with one hand, Norman reached around the old man and picked up his Mac-10.
“We can’t just leave him,” Emma said.
“You hit the jackpot this time,” the old man said. “Happy for you. I truly am. We just came into some cash ourselves. Rolling in dough at the moment. Apparently grows on trees around here. Can’t wait for autumn. Rake up the piles, go running, jump right in. Yes, sir. That’s going to be some fun. Money to burn.”
“He’s nuts,” Jennifer said.
“Old,” said Norman. “Not nuts.”
“Dump the cash in the garbage bag, Norman. Put the basket back up where you got it. I like to leave a neat campsite.”
When he was finished, Emma edged up to the old man and pressed the barrel against his spine.
“Don’t, Emma,” Jennifer said. “He’s harmless.”
“He can fucking well identify us.”
“No, he can’t. Look at him; he’s a pathetic old man. His brain has come loose inside his skull. He’s not going to testify against anybody.”
The old man stepped over to Jennifer and reached out for the .38.
“I’ve been looking all over for that pistol. Where the hell has it been?”
“Go on, Norman, lug the money on out of here.”
Norman looked at the old man, looked at Emma, then turned and went out the back door.
“What’re you going to do, Emma?” Jennifer was letting the old man examine the pistol without letting go of it. He was peering at the flat butt.
“That’s mine all right,” he said. “Same serial number, that little scratch on the grip. Yes, sir. That thirty-eight and I go way back. Way, way back.”
Jennifer tried to pull the gun from his grasp, but he wouldn’t let go.
And now there were voices in the street. Emma spun around, peered out the front window. It was Alexandra Rafferty and some guy, their arms full of beach towels, hurrying through the front gate.
“Come on,” Emma said. “Get the hell out of here.”
Jennifer tried once more to wrench the gun from the old man’s hand, but he held on.
“Jesus Christ, Jennifer, come on. Let him have it. Let him have the damn gun.”
“You gave us a scare, Dad, wandering off like that.”
“I was thirsty,” he said. “I wanted some lemonade.”
Through the wall, she could hear Jason humming in the shower. Her father lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Alex stood in the doorway.
“We turned around and you weren’t there, and it was very upsetting, Dad. Do you understand why?”
“You thought I was lost.”
“That’s right. We were worried. You can’t just wander off like that, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And why did you lock the front door, Dad? Why was that?”
“I always lock the doors. It’s for safety. Keeping my family protected.”
Alexandra took a deep breath.
“Do we have a lot of money?” He looked over at her, then back at the ceiling.
“What do you mean, Dad?”
“I mean money. Cash, greenbacks. Hard currency. Do we have a lot of that kind of stuff?”
“We’ve got some, yes. Not a lot.”
“It grows on trees around here. Did you know that?”
“What’re you saying, Dad?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.”
She went over and stared down at him.
“I think I got too much sun,” he said. “I think my brain’s come loose inside my skull.”
She stooped down and felt his forehead. It was cool and dry.
“Is this Ohio?”
“No, Dad. It’s Seaside.”
“Where’s that? In Florida?”
“Right. Seaside, Florida. In the Panhandle.”
“I’m going to take Grace to Florida. Start a family. I hear it’s nice dow
n there.”
“I’ve heard the same thing,” Alex said. “Orange trees as far as the eye can see.”
“Well, you should talk to Grace, then. She’s awfully stubborn. Says Florida’s just for old people. But I don’t think that’s true. I think there’re all kinds of people there. Young, old, in between. I’ve heard it’s a great place to start a family.”
“I’ve heard the same thing,” Alex said.
“Well, talk to her, then. Would you? Talk to her. She’s so damn stubborn.”
“I will,” Alex said. “I’ll talk to her.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was five in the afternoon. Jason had gone to shop for dinner at the local gourmet market. Her father was on the front porch, giving one of the rockers a workout. Sitting on the beige couch, she gazed out at her dad and dialed Dan Romano’s home number.
Sunday, Dan’s day off—this late in the afternoon, he’d still be sleeping. But that was okay. She needed to do this while the house was quiet and her mind clear.
Dan snapped up the phone on the first ring, but he fumbled it, and for a moment she thought he’d dropped it on the floor and fallen back to sleep. But then his voice, thick with phlegm and roughened by cigars and rum, demanded to know who the hell it was bothering him in the middle of the goddamn night.
“It’s almost sunset, Count Dracula. Time to rise and shine.”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“It’s Alex.”
There was a pause. A groan, the shifting of sheets, and another sleepy voice, a woman’s. Dan had been divorced for years. But he knew the first names of more hookers than any pimp in Miami.
“Alexandra Rafferty? Former employee of Miami PD?”
“That’s right.”
“Where the hell have you been, girl?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“You okay? In any danger?”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s what I’ve been telling people. You’d surface and be okay. The papers were playing it up, but I knew you’d land on your feet. Care to talk about it?”
“Not right now.”
“Okay,” he said. “But hey, you’re missing all the fun. I guess you saw your boy’s been bad again.”
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