by Anna Roberts
Eli shook his head. “Relax. Lyle knows I’d put his white trash ass in the ground if he steps so much as a pinkie toe south of Miami. I am King of this hill and you,” - he tipped his beer bottle - “are under my protection.”
“And what about Charlie?”
“Give the guy a break, Gabe. He’s not all rotten.” Eli waved a beer bottle at a passing waitress and held up two fingers. “How’s that tooth, anyway?”
Gabe bared his teeth, showing the chip.
“It’s cute,” said Eli. “Gives you character.”
“It’s gonna give me cavities. I don’t know about much else.”
“You worry too much. Everything is going to be fine; we’re home and dry.”
Gabe shook his head again, irritation pricking the top of his spine. “No, we’re not,” he said. “And I came up here to talk to you about Gloria.”
Eli leaned forward. “Why? What’s wrong? Is she sick?”
“You know she’s sick, Eli. And she’s getting sicker. It’s getting to the point where I can’t deal with it anymore.”
“What are you saying?” said Eli, frowning across at him. “You’re saying you want to put her in some kind of a home, because - ”
“- no. Goddamn it, why do you have to make this more difficult than it already is? I knew you’d get defensive.”
“I’m not getting defensive. I’m just saying. After everything she’s done for us - ”
“ - yeah, and that’s the point, Eli.” God, he was obtuse sometimes. “She needs help. And I can’t be with her twenty-four-seven. Neither can Joe. We have to work.”
Eli sighed. “This is Gloria we’re talking about. You know what she’s like. She’s independent.”
Gabe quickly swallowed down his anger; yelling wouldn’t help. “No,” he said. “You don’t know what she’s like. Because you haven’t seen it. Last night some dog walker found her face down on her front lawn wearing nothing but an old black bra. She almost got called in as a dead body until she moved and started singing some song about fifty shades of green. And don’t you dare smile, you asshole – this wasn’t just Gloria getting her drink on. It wasn’t all booze. It’s not even just Gloria being Gloria. It’s the fucking Alzheimer’s, and you don’t see it. Because it’s that fast, Eli. These last couple of months - every single day it seems like it takes something else from her.”
“Shh. It’s okay.” Eli reached over the table and touched his wrist.
Gabe sat there for a moment, breathing hard and hating that Eli could still make him all but sit up and beg with nothing but a single touch. Another bullshit promise of intimacy. “You don’t understand what it’s like,” he said.
“You’re right,” said Eli. “I don’t. All I do is drink and fuck and fall in love, and sometimes not in that order, but look around you, Gabe. Business is great. I don’t have your patience, but I can help. We get her a nurse. Someone who can give her the care she needs.”
“Right. And you’re gonna pay for that?”
“Absolutely.” Eli pushed back his chair. “Wait there for a moment, okay? I think I can get the ball rolling on this right away.”
Gabe watched him go. As he passed the women all turned and shimmered, like the shoals of tiny, silver fish on the reefs, moving as one. Patience. It was a cop out and he knew it. Eli was just one of those beautiful people who lived a charmed life; this was him in his element, pressed on all sides by the perfumed breasts of admiring young women. He didn’t do well in the presence of age or sickness. It simply wasn’t a part of his world.
The auburn waitress brought fresh beers. She had arched eyebrows and piled up curls and when she looked at Eli’s empty chair she sort of drooped. Deflated.
“He’ll be back in a moment,” said Gabe.
“Oh. Okay. Can I get you anything else?”
The phone number of a woman who doesn’t collapse in a puddle of goo whenever Eli is within a five mile radius? “No. Thanks. We’re fine.”
She smiled and walked away. He thought of the brunette with the Lana del Rey lips, but his mind skipped over her like a stone and the next picture in his head was that Beaufort girl.
Pretty. No, beautiful. Brown and long-waisted, her curls threaded with gold and her nose dusted with a band of dark tan freckles. Thin wrists, wide hips. And those eyes. That startling gray-blue that had caught him by surprise the first time he had seen her close up in daylight.
He tried to picture her melting and cooing over Eli, but he couldn’t do it. She always seemed so alone, even when she wasn’t. Just yesterday he had found her sipping cold water on the stoop with the other maids, but even with Stacy sitting close enough to bump elbows, Blue had looked lost somehow.
No. Lost was the wrong word; lost implied a degree of fear about being alone, and she didn’t care. If anything she seemed at ease with it.
Eli came back. “I got it,” he said. “I knew there was an RN around here somewhere. I remember talking to her just the other night.”
Gabe tried – and failed – to hide his annoyance. “So you just hired some random nurse you found drinking in your bar? Isn’t there like a vetting process or something?”
“I was just sounding her out. Jesus, Gabe – what crawled up your ass and died lately?”
“I’m sorry.” Gabe took a mouthful of beer. A real drink; it tasted like adulthood, not like that blue, sugary shit. Trust Eli to come up with a cocktail that made you feel like a kid all over again. “I guess I’m just stressed. Worried about Gloria.”
“I told you. You worry too much. Everything is going to be fine; wheels are in motion and she’s going to get the best of care. That chick just hooked me up with some phone numbers - people who specialize in elder care. Gloria’s going to get the best nurse in the whole damn state if I have anything to do with it.”
“Thank you.” No matter how much he told himself Eli was serious, Gabe couldn’t help but think Eli was already fantasizing about hot girls in candystripes. Even Eli’s accountant wore sexy librarian glasses and often had so many top buttons undone that you could see her bra. It was like he lived his life in some kind of strange, real-life porno.
“No problem. I’m here to help.” Eli waved to someone. The next thing Gabe knew that brunette was making her way over to the table.
“Hi...”
“...oh, you look good enough to eat...”
She laughed knowingly, like she knew what it meant to be eaten. Gabe pictured Eli’s tongue snaking between her thighs and shivered, his stomach tightening at the thought. He imagined her pink and shaved and soft and how she’d still taste of Eli when he got to go down, her body and her pleasure like a barrier between him and Eli, keeping everything where Eli wanted it, even in the heat of their wildest nights.
“Gabe, this is Monica.”
“Hey, Gabe.” Lazy cat eyes with thick wings of eyeliner. Her hand was soft and bony. “This your little brother, Eli?”
“Cousin,” said Eli, pushing Gabe’s foot under the table so that his knee nudged against hers.
Monica raised her eyebrows. “Kissing cousins?” she said.
Eli laughed. “No, not quite,” he said. “But that’s no reason we can’t have fun.”
4
The boat was back. In the daylight it was brilliant white, and for the first time Blue saw that it had eyes painted on its prow.
She tried not to stare too much at it, but as the crowd of embarking tourists thinned on the jetty, she kept catching glimpses of Gabe. His laughter carried up the beach, and she was surprised to find how much she wanted to run down there and ask him what was so funny. Share the joke.
She knew what it meant, this small but sharp tug towards him. She recognized the symptoms, but right now she was going for an afternoon drink with Stacy, and she had never wanted to be the kind of woman who neglected her female friendships the moment a man came along.
“Shit,” said Stacy, digging her ringing phone out of her pocket. “One second. I gotta get this.”
“Okay.” Blue tried to look indifferent, but she found herself turning back towards the sea. He was standing on the edge of the jetty, mask in hand, nodding at something that a couple was saying. Two tan young bodies, newlyweds. So far they had proved to be early risers and given Charmaine no cause to grumble.
“...what do you mean, playing dumb?” Stacy said, into her phone. “No, he’s not playing dumb...he can’t tell the green worksheet from the pink one...”
The bride flipped her hair and laughed too loud at something Gabe said. So stupid; the woman was on her goddamn honeymoon. Why would she be flirting with the dive instructor?
Stacy glanced over, frowning. She shook her head and started speaking again. “...if anyone’s playing dumb around here, it’s you. It should be on his records. Kid’s colorblind as shit. Somehow I figured that out back when he was playing with alphabet blocks, and me just a lowly goddamn chambermaid.” She rolled her eyes at something that was being said on the other end of the phone. “...no, I’m telling you. He’s not trying to be disruptive...he has a genuine medical thing. It all checks out...oh. Oh, I see. Okay.”
She hung up the phone and stuck out her tongue. “Ugh.”
“Everything all right?”
“Nope,” said Stacy, stuffing the phone back into her purse. “I’m sorry - I’m going to have to bail. My darling little firstborn shithead has just earned himself a trip to the principal’s office.”
“Oh dear.”
She shook her head and gave a long, growling sigh. “Hormones,” she said. “And he’s only the first one to hit puberty; I’m gonna have to go through this with the other two. Goddamn, why couldn’t I have had girls? I know what to say to them.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember making it that easy for my mother.”
“I guess not,” said Stacy, settling her purse on her bony shoulder. “I’m sorry about this. For what it’s worth I would much rather be having a beer than discussing why my fifteen year old son thought it would be a great idea to call his teacher a ‘cockwaffle’.”
“Cockwaffle?”
“Yeah, I don’t know either. These kids make up their own weird curse words these days. I’d blame the internet, but you start blaming the internet for things and you start sounding like fucking Methuselah, you know?”
Blue laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
“Shut up,” said Stacy, good naturedly. “You know nothing of the sort; you’re like twenty. I’ll catch you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. Good luck.”
Stacy was already halfway to the laundry gate. “Gonna need it,” she called back, and kept walking.
“Hey.”
Blue turned at the sound of the voice behind her. Gabe was standing there, his wetsuit half off and his hair still partly damp. “You clocking off?” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m done for today.”
He narrowed his eyes and nodded in the direction of the gate. “What was all that about?”
“Her kid,” said Blue. “He got into trouble at school or something.”
“The eldest?” said Gabe, with a short laugh. “Well, her first mistake was naming him Axl.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not being mean. I’m just saying. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you name a kid after Axl Rose you shouldn’t be surprised if he grows up with anger issues.”
“He has anger issues?”
“He’s a teenage boy. He’s basically a towering beanpole of rage at this point.”
Blue laughed. “You say that like someone who knows.”
“Me?” he said, pressing a hand to his chest. “No. I was an angel of endless delight at that age. Courteous, charming, considerate...” He grinned, playing directly to her incredulous expression. “Nah, who am I kidding? I was a self-absorbed little shitbird.”
This time she laughed too long and loud and made herself feel silly, but he didn’t seem to mind. If anything his eyes lingered on her lips in a way that made her heart skip stupidly. In the striped sun under the palms his eyes were lighter than she remembered – a kind of tiger’s eye brown, fringed with thick, black lashes.
“So,” he said, swallowing a yawn and showing the red, wet inside of his mouth and his bright white teeth. “You wanna come for a ride?”
“On the boat?”
“Sure. I’ve got some time before I have to get ready for the sunset cruise. We’ll only go out about a mile.”
“I don’t...I mean...I don’t have a wetsuit or anything like that,” said Blue, conscious that she smelled strongly of sweat and bleach.
“You don’t need one,” said Gabe. “I only wear this because it’s easier than slathering on sunblock every time I get in and out of the water. Go grab your bikini – it’ll be fun.”
Blue went up to her room, trying not to run as she went. It was one thing to look enthusiastic, another to look desperate. She quickly changed into her sensible black bikini (the tiny flowered one was way too tryhard for a boat trip) and cursed the growth of stubble on her legs that she’d had no time to do anything about. For a second she considered giving them a brief swipe with a razor, but in her current dumb, fluttery state of mind it was probably a great way to go about accidentally opening a vein. Gabe would just have to deal with her hairy legs. Besides, if he was the kind of manbaby who freaked out over any kind of female body hair then he wasn’t worth her time.
Not that she was assessing him in that way. Yet. Obviously.
“Don’t. Look. Desperate,” she told her reflection in the mirror, and scrunched back her hair as best she could. The smell of dust and cleaning products lingered, but she hoped the wind and waves would wash it away. No point dumping perfume on top of the bleach and floor cleaner - it would just make her smell even weirder.
He was already on the boat when she came back out. A paranoid little part of her thought he was going to drive away, like those mean boys who asked her to the dance just so they could watch her walking around on air and laugh when she fell. Hard to believe people were still pulling that old Carrie trick in this day and age. Harder to believe that she had fallen for it.
But then that was back in Houston; she had never believed anyone could be quite that cruel until she moved there.
She hurried to the end of the jetty. “Hey.”
“Hi,” he said, and when he looked up there was a brief, dark, male look in his eyes. Just a split second, but enough to let her know that what he saw pleased him, and that she wasn’t making a total fool of herself. He held out a hand and helped her down into the boat, making her heart beat faster for all the wrong reasons. The boat swayed and the gap between it and the jetty seemed like it could swallow her whole. When she set foot on the boat she wanted to step back; such a heaving, unstable surface.
“You okay?” said Gabe, when she was on board.
“Yeah,” she said, although she wasn’t. The thing dipped and lurched beneath her and already she had a terrible feeling that her empty stomach was going to be in knots before they had even loosed the mooring. “I may as well tell you I’m not really used to boats. Probably don’t have the best sea legs.”
“Relax,” he said, handing her a little orange foam life vest. “We’re not even going that far out. I’m assuming you can swim?”
“Of course.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.” He untied the boat from the jetty, then reached down beneath a seat and fished out a large, crumpled tube of sunscreen. This he tossed to her.
“Seriously?” she said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not hurting for melanin here.”
Gabe shook his head. “Put it on. I’ve seen people darker than you get burned out on the reefs. The water acts as a reflector. Be sure to get the backs of your knees.”
She didn’t answer back. There was no point anyway; he had started the engine and wouldn’t have heard. Her stomach gave a nervous roll as the boat drew away from the end of the little pier, and she could have yelled right then - take
me back - but before she knew it the gap between boards and boat had widened to what looked like half an ocean, and there was no turning back.
The boat rocked and shuddered under her. She opened her mouth and breathed the salt air in deep, deep, just to remind herself that it wasn’t like the last time. Not like it was with the stink of death all around and not knowing if the next thing to nudge your oar was going to be a body, floating and bloated to grotesque Violet Beauregarde proportions. Everything wet and filthy.
Let me die dry, Lord. All I’m askin’ is that I die dry.
“Okay?” Gabe yelled over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Fine,” Blue shouted back, filling her palm with coconut-smelling sunblock. It chased away the other smells, the ones she could never forget. And it wasn’t so bad once they were moving. The faster Gabe went, the smoother it felt, like the boat was skimming across the surface of the water instead of pitching and wallowing around in it.
She gingerly made her way to the front to join him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. What?”
“What’s with the eyes?”
Gabe laughed, his own eyes screwed up against the glitter of the sun on the water. “Superstition. Something my grandpa said some of the old Cubanos used to do. The really old guys, the ones who could remember Spain.”
“What does it do?”
“Nothing. It’s a superstition. Superstition doesn’t do shit, except make you feel better.” He cut the engine. “And maybe score you days off every month.”
“You go to church?”
He grinned. “Hell, no. But the story goes that the eyes get all confused when the full moon’s shining; can’t tell the moon in the water from the moon in the sky. That’s how you get wrecked; moon’s a trickster.”
Blue hung onto the side. The boat was rolling again. “You believe that?”
“Nope, but I take the days off anyway. And Kate can’t do a damn thing about it.”
Kate owned the hotel. In an off-moment Charmaine had allegedly once called her the Great White Queen, and Stacy had loved it so much she had all but forgotten Kate’s real name. Kate was from New York originally – tall, model-thin and blonde. Blue tried to imagine her passing up her cut of Gabe’s cruise revenue for three days out of every month and couldn’t do it.