by Anna Roberts
“Joe?”
“Yeah, I’m down here.”
Gabe followed the sound of his voice and sighed. So the shower saga was not over. Yay.
The hurricane hatch was open. Gabe wasn’t a tall man – barely five foot eight in his bare feet – but he had to duck to keep from beaning himself on the floorboards above as he descended the steep wooden stairs. Joe, who was over six and a half feet tall, had smacked himself on the head so often that it was a wonder he could still see straight.
Or maybe he couldn’t. Hence the tire tracks.
Joe was kneeling in the corner of the basement, the floor strewn with silicone sealant pumps, tubs of grout and bits of old pipe. Ever since he’d smelled damp he’d been obsessed, no matter how many times that Gabe reminded him they were living on a goddamn archipelago that hung off the bottom of a swamp. Damp was kind of par for the course.
“So. We’re still on this?”
“Yep,” said Joe, not looking up. “It’s still not waterproof. I’m going to have to take the floor up.”
“No-oo. That’s not a thing that’s going to happen.”
He swiveled round on his knees and looked up. He had grout in his blond hair so that it stuck up in fierce spikes at the front, like the styles sported by those big crazy Celts who had used to stiffen their hair with lime, the better to scare the crap out of the Romans. “You want to lose your house in a sinkhole?” he said.
“No,” said Gabe. “But you said yourself that this leakage has been going on for a while. And so far the house has not fallen into a sinkhole.”
Joe frowned. “What kind of reasoning is that? Can’t you smell it?”
“No,” said Gabe. “I can’t. And speaking of smells, there’s a problem with the hotel restrooms. Charmaine is planning to kill you.”
“Shit.” Joe rose carefully from the floor. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her to get in line.”
Joe sighed. “If this is about your statue - ”
“ - oh, you wish that was the worst thing you’ve done today. When were you going to check on Gloria?”
Joe bit his lip. “Oh.”
“Oh? Are you kidding me? Is that all you have to say for yourself? Luckily she only wandered into Charlotte’s this time; Stacy called me, I tried to call you to go get her and you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry,” Joe said. “I left my phone upstairs. I was down here and I got caught up - ”
“ - caught up? You’re obsessed.”
“Can’t you smell it though? The damp?”
“This is Florida. It’s like ninety-eight per cent humidity all the time. You’re gonna have to get used to it.”
“We just won’t use the basement shower until I can get to the bottom of it, okay?”
Gabe gave a long sigh and went back up the stairs before he said something really stupid. It wasn’t Joe’s fault; if anything it was his, which only made it worse. He flung open the fridge and helped himself to a much-needed beer.
He told himself he was going to be reasonable, but then Joe came up and said he was sorry all over again and it all came spilling out.
“Enough,” Gabe said. “Please. Don’t apologize. Just do better. Do I need to explain to you what could happen to her? She weighs eighty pounds wet and doesn’t even know what planet she’s on half the time. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of people sick enough to take advantage of a crazy little old lady - ”
“ - she’s not any crazy little old lady,” said Joe. “Come on. She may look like one, but she’s still...you know...Gloria.”
“No,” said Gabe, slamming his beer down too hard on the counter. The foam came up and sloshed over his fist. “That’s just it, Joe. I don’t think even she knows who she is or what she is any more.”
For once even Joe was smart enough to know not to say anything.
Gabe took a long drink. On the fridge was a rectangular magnet depicting a botanical drawing. Aconite. A gift from Gloria. The edges were beginning to rust a little. He kept his eyes on it and spoke once more.
“She asked me five times if I was taking her to the bus stop. I counted.”
“That’s rough.”
“It’s bullshit is what it is. I know she was always nuttier than squirrel shit, but this is...this is different. Wrong. It shouldn’t happen to her. Everything she’s done, everything she’s been, and it all gets taken away from her by some boring-ass illness that could happen to anyone.”
“I know. It sucks.”
Gabe crumpled the beer can in his fist. “It more than sucks, Joe. And I need you. I need you to help me with her.”
Joe pressed his lips together. “I know. I get that. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say it. Mean it.”
“I do. I will. And listen, about your statue...”
Gabe shook his head, too tired to return to his previous state of indignation. “Oh God, don’t worry about it. Like St. Benedict has ever done dick for me anyway.”
“I couldn’t see it,” said Joe, flopping down on the futon. “The shrine, I mean. It was just another shade of gray against the lawn.”
Gabe sat down beside him, his gaze drawn back to the mismatched socks. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Meh. You don’t miss what you never had, I guess.”
“You could see some colors before.”
“Not many.” Joe swallowed a yawn. “What did Charmaine want?”
“The restaurant bathrooms. Smells like death, apparently.”
Joe leaned back and groaned. “Jesus,” he said. “Again? I’ll bet you anything it’s the ladies room. Don’t they tell them not to flush tampons?”
“Sure. There are special trashcans and everything.”
“Then why don’t they fucking use them?”
“I have no idea.”
A fly buzzed lazily round and round above the kitchen sink. They both stared at it for a while, Gabe thinking of Gloria’s place and how lately it had started to look more than just a little neglected. And she had been so house-proud once; scrubbing the linoleum on her hands and knees, lining the bottoms of drawers with scented paper.
“Did they get that new maid?” asked Joe.
“Huh? Who? For Gloria?”
“No. At the hotel.”
“Oh, right,” said Gabe. “Yeah. Started today, I think.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So is she hot?”
Gabe had only caught a glimpse of the girl, walking across the grass, cleaning supplies in hand. Slender, dark skinned, her hair tied up in a big frizzy ponytail at her nape. “I don’t know,” he said, half his mind still on Gloria. “She’s young, I guess.”
“That’s a start. Considering the rest of the housekeeping staff consists of two grandmas and a lesbian.”
This was assuming the new maid was on fire to get with a lanky, sunburned Minnesota plumber who spent his days obsessing about damp and yanking rotten tampons out of U-bends in the ladies’ bathrooms. Gabe almost hoped not. For her sake.
Joe’s thigh was warm against his, but the fly above the sink kept on buzzing in the same old infuriating circle, reminding Gabe that there was a problem still unsolved here. “Can you sit with Gloria tomorrow night?” he said.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think I’m gonna go up to Tavernier. Talk to Eli about the situation.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Why? What do you think he’s going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“Nothing would be more likely.”
“I know that,” said Gabe. “But you know me. I’m an optimist deep down.”
Joe patted his knee. “Yeah. You should get that looked at.”
*
Blue slept - or tried to – in the attic of the hotel.
The notion of live-in staff had lost its old world refinement almost immediately. The AC unit was cranky and the waitress next door had not only a genius for smuggling boys upstairs but
a loud repertoire of screamy sex noises probably borrowed from porn. Blue suspected that the management had also been similarly disappointed when they added beds and baths in the hope of drawing a better class of staff. Already she had noticed that there was something about the Keys, some strange quality that attracted rare birds like Gloria.
In New Orleans Blue had always been aware of the odd suction effect that the Gulf Coast winds sometimes had, blowing into town the exotic, the dangerous and the just plain weird. She had imagined the Keys populated with the kind of well-read, well-heeled tourists in search of whiskey sours and the ghost of Hemingway, but instead she had found the same effect was in action here. It was like all the world’s flotsam and jetsam got caught in the teeth of the coral reefs, and it actually wasn’t so bad, being just another thing that floated on down. In fact, once you’d been adrift the way Blue always had, it was something like a welcome respite. You might find yourself snagged in fishing nets, itchy with sand and smelling like a week old mackerel, but at least you got to come to a stop.
She lay listening to the steady shh of the ocean and the faint, fleshy sound of palm fronds rattling in the breeze. Paradise. Her mother had painted it over and over and again, childish paintings, each one so similar that they blurred into one. Sometimes a boat, sometimes a leaping dolphin, but always with a palm tree, a crescent of white sand beach and a tropical sea. One time Regina had painted the whole living room wall, in a burst of activity so fierce and ecstatic that Blue dreaded the inevitable crash more than any that had come before. When it came the mural was nearly finished; Blue found her mother kneeling in front of a half painted conch shell, brush drooping between her fingers and her eyes staring straight through the wall into the inevitable abyss.
You kept busy. You tried not to dwell. That was the knack of it.
Footsteps on the stairs. A chorus of drunk giggly shushing. Blue heard the door slam.
She turned on the light and sighed. In a few moments the sex noises would start again. The AC unit rumbled and creaked, finishing the job that the sauna of a night had started. There would be no sleep for a while, especially not now that the waitress had once again entered the bone zone.
The box was in the nightstand. Blue would never admit it to herself (could you really be creeped out by the body of the person whose body had been your entrance to the world?) but it was losing her sleep. Ever since she had come to Islamorada she had found herself checking out each palm-fringed beach for its potential, its resemblance to Regina’s drawings. But there were always people on the beaches, and it was then that Blue realized that there had never been a person in the paintings. And now she would never be able to ask why; if it was because her mother couldn’t do people or whether the pictures, with their prayer-like repetition, were some kind of invocation to solitude.
It was as good a time as any. She took out the cardboard box and slipped her key into the pocket of her robe. Next door the waitress moaned, a low, nerve-jangling note that made anger flash up Blue’s spine, settling in the vertebrae of her neck. Not for the first time she imagined yelling, pounding on the wall. Selfishness – that was all it was. An inability to think about anything beyond her own itchy crotch. Some people had bigger problems; money, jobs, hurricanes, mothers in cardboard boxes.
Blue tiptoed down the creaky attic stairs, down onto the balcony above the laundry and down those steps to the ground. The sea was louder now, a steady, low roar behind the softer sound of the tamer waves on the shore. The beach was still so new to her that just that afternoon she had wished she had a child or two, so as to have an excuse to build sandcastles.
She opened the lid of the box where it was still light enough to see. The plastic bag inside was white, opaque, and when she lifted it she was shocked by its lightness. This was all, in the end. They gave it grand words – ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the Lord is my shepherd – but here, in her daughter’s hands, what was left of Regina Beaufort felt as prosaic as a package of cornstarch.
Determined not to cry, Blue walked down the lawn towards the water. The grass was soft under her feet but beneath it she could still feel the heat of earth that had yet to cool down completely from the day. Cicadas chirred in the deep, rustling darkness. There was a light on at the end of the jetty. A boat bobbed just beyond, its white side (port or starboard – she didn’t know) gleaming like a beacon against the black of the waves. She ducked her head and kept walking, unable to go back now. The prospect of goodbye was almost obscenely desirable; how many times had she braced herself for this over the years? Now that it was nearly upon her she knew there was no way she was taking that package back upstairs, where it would sit in the nightstand and make her dreams uneasy with the worry of duties undischarged. It was time. Long past time to go.
She dipped her feet into the ocean. The waves caught the hem of her robe and tugged it here and there, but she was beyond worrying; as she tried to tear the plastic the cardboard box slipped from her hands and bobbed off on the waves. Litterbug. God, what was she going to do with the plastic afterwards? Normally she would have crumpled it up and taken it to the non-recyclable trash bin, but how did that work when you had the residue of a human being still clinging to the inside? You couldn’t dump your own mother in the garbage, even if it was less than a gram of her ash.
Her anxiety got the better of her and she put her thumb through the plastic, so that the ash trickled out without ceremony or prayer. She pictured it sticking to the wet hem of her robe and let out a small yelp of horror or hurt; she wasn’t even sure which. She just wanted to shake it all out, get it over with.
The bag was empty. She held it firm and bent to dip it in the water. It bulged up white and swollen, like a jellyfish, and she pushed it down frantically, trying to rinse out the last of the ashes. She realized she was breathing hard. When she straightened up, wet plastic screwed tight in her hand, the stars and the sea whirled around her head. She thought she was going to throw up, but then a chill breeze brought her up sharp, and it was so welcome that she poked the tip of her tongue out as if she could taste the brief, blessed coolness. Whisper of cold salt – wasn’t that what the old lady had said?
Done. She was done. The End. Finally Reggie’s complicated relationship with her own demise had ended, too, as all things must. The stars took another waltzy twirl, but this time Blue’s feet stayed firmly rooted on the sea floor. She dug her toes into the wet sand, anchoring herself against an unseemly exhilaration as sudden and bright as lightning.
In the midst of life we are in death. Or in the midst of death we are in life. Which way around was it supposed to go?
As she walked back along the beach she saw a dark figure moving around in the boat. Gabriel, she guessed. She thought it would be impossible for him to see her, but then he stopped what he was doing out there and straightened up - stock still, like a gundog sniffing the wind.
His eyes must have been something, because the next thing she knew his hand was in the air, waving at her.
She could have run to him right then, letting her robe flap open and peel off into the wind. But she didn’t. She tugged the white cotton tighter around herself, conscious of the speed of her heart, appalled at how suddenly the hunger for wild, raw life had leapt up inside her; she still had the crumpled plastic bag in her pocket.
Gabriel walked up the jetty with the same jaunty gait she had seen when he was escaping Charmaine that morning. He didn’t look especially tall, but he had that solid swagger that went with good muscle tone. His feet were bare.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
The word came out in a gasp and no sooner was it out of her mouth that she realized she had no idea what to say to him. She’d only seen enough of him to sketch the briefest impression – a bare shoulder flexed to pull in a rope, the wind ruffling his black hair. Up close he was even more of a stranger.
Quickly, fumbling to keep the ball in the air, she nodded towards the boat. “Are you taking it out in the morning?”
She stared at him for a second and he laughed. “Kidding,” he said. “I’m not really a serial killer, I promise.”
“You see,” she said, feeling dizzy all over again. “That’s exactly the kind of thing a serial killer would say.”
He gave her a long, assessing look. “You must be Blue,” he said, holding out a hand. “Gabe Arnot. What are you doing out here at two o’clock in the morning?”
His hand was thin and rough in hers. She hesitated, trying to think of some explanation that didn’t make her sound bugnuts or burdened with so much baggage that any sensible man would run screaming. You’ll laugh, but I was actually getting rid of a body.
She never got to try out the line, because right then a loud, horny shriek floated downwind towards them. Gabe raised a thick black eyebrow as the scream died away, giving way to the usual chorus of ‘I’m coming’ and ‘yes, yes, yes’.
“I’m right next door,” said Blue.
He laughed. “Holy shit.”
“I know.”
“Well, someone’s been watching too much porn.”
Her own laughter surprised her. She felt weightless, impossibly young. “I’ll have to get some earplugs, I guess,” she said. “Although I can’t do a damn thing about the heat.”
“Yeah. I’d say you get used to it, but...”
“...you don’t?”
He laughed. “Nope. The heat’s one thing, but the humidity is the real killer.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’m bringing the afro back here.”
Gabe’s almond shaped eyes glinted in the dark. Even in this low light she could see he had one of those clever, mobile faces which meant the wearer would never be any good at poker; his curiosity was immediately obvious. “Hee-yah,” he said, mimicking her. “Now there’s an accent. Let me guess. Texas?”