Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  "What is it?" Thorn said.

  Jaspers turned and his smile deteriorated.

  "They're beautiful," he said.

  "Glad you like them."

  "Damn beautiful."

  Thorn was silent.

  "They're all the same," Jaspers said. "Identical."

  "Small variations," Thorn said. "But yeah, I've been trying to perfect this style."

  "I'm afraid I don't want them."

  "Oh," Thorn said. "Okay."

  "Don't you want to know why?"

  "All right."

  "These are exactly like the ones you sold me last week and the week before."

  "That a problem?"

  "Well, they haven't been catching fish, Thorn. None at all. First time that's happened with one of yours. I had close to a hundred anglers down two weeks ago, eighty-five last week, a dozen guides taking turns with them. Skunked. Every one of them, guides included. Two weekends on the water, sixteen hours a day. No bones. Zip, not a snapper, a jack, not even a trash fish. Damn embarrassing. They're beautiful flies though. Had a lot of comments on them."

  "Thanks."

  "But if they aren't catching fish, you know, they're worthless to me. Impractical."

  "I understand."

  Thorn stared out at a catamaran, its sail down, motoring along the channel.

  "Hell if I can say why they aren't working. Damned strange. Anglers spotted plenty of fish, but just couldn't get anything to hit. So here's what I've decided. I'm going to have to give you a breather, Thorn. I'll stop back around, say the middle of December, see what you're working on. If it looks good, if it looks like the old stuff, we're back in business."

  "Sounds fair."

  The catamaran was towing an inflatable raft. A black dog was in the raft barking furiously at a flock of trailing gulls.

  "Sorry, Thorn. I hate to drop this on you."

  "It's okay. No problem. I'll see you in December then."

  "No hard feelings?"

  "None," Thorn said. "None at all."

  He turned to go, then swung back around. "You got any explanation for it, son? You've always had such a magic touch."

  Thorn glanced down at the custom vise that gripped the fly he'd been working on. "Maybe I've lost it."

  "No, I'm sure it's just a slump. You'll get it back. Just keep swinging at those pitches."

  "I'll do that, Reverend."

  "You feeling all right, son?"

  "I'm fine. Never better. Very relaxed."

  "Well, maybe that's it," the preacher said. "Maybe that's the whole thing right there. It's possible, you know, for a man to feel too good for his own welfare, lose his edge."

  Thorn waved a mosquito away from his ear. "That one of your religious doctrines?"

  "Uneasiness is good," Jaspers said. "A man who doubts is a man who tests things, doesn't get sluggish. As I used to say, lazy faith is no faith at all."

  "Hey, they're just bonefish flies, Reverend. A hook wrapped with colored threads, some feathers and fur. That's all they are."

  The man smiled. "Sure, son. If you say so."

  He hesitated a moment more with an odd look in his eyes, then turned and walked away. Thorn felt his smile wither from within, but out of stubbornness and recent habit he kept it there for a few' moments more.

  Upstairs, he found Rochelle hunched over her portable sewing machine. He stood in the doorway and looked at her for a moment. Last summer's sun still shone gold in the tips of her hair. A month or so ago, shortly after she'd moved in with him, she'd cropped her shoulder-length auburn hair very short, just barely enough to part. Now' she looked like a penitent. A sexy penitent.

  The new cut seemed to enlarge Rochelle's green eyes. It emphasized her cheekbones too. Her lips. Thorn liked to hold her face in his hands. He liked to kiss her that way, face cradled in his palms. He liked to massage her head, scratch her scalp, which made her hum and rock her head to loosen the muscles in her neck. He liked to feel the shape of her skull, molding his hands around it.

  He couldn't remember liking to do any of that with other women. He'd been in love a few times and each time was very different. Every instance seemed to have nothing to do with the ones before. Of course the women made it different. Each of them distinct, and Thorn kept changing as well. That must've been why the pleasure he felt with Rochelle, the melting away, the angles of stimulation, the exact weight and complexity of his feelings, all of it was mysterious and unfamiliar. The rhythms of their conversations, the silences, the grammar of their touch. New cadences, new junctures of flesh.

  Even with years of experience with other lovers, it was as though Thorn were starting fresh with her. All his education didn't help, made no difference whatever. Love, it seemed, was one of those things about which it was impossible to be wise.

  Rochelle had finished making curtains for the west windows and was working on the east ones now. White Spanish lace. Simple and elegant, tossed easily by the sea breezes. They gave the room a soft, sleepy feel. A room to nap in.

  He'd never had curtains before. No need, with a jungle of Florida hollies and seagrape, ironwood, gumbo limbo and strangler fig cloaking the perimeter of his property, any voyeurs would need a week of hard labor with a machete to get within peeping distance.

  "What's wrong, Thorn?"

  Rochelle's sewing needle was still, the machine humming before her. She was holding a hem of the white lace, poised to feed more of it through the guide. Rover was asleep, lying on his plaid mat near her feet. She wore an ankle-length dress in a blue paisley print, a scooping neckline that gave a generous view of sun-freckled flesh. A hippie costume making the rounds again. But underneath the dress, Thorn knew she wore black scalloped lace panties. A bra that was barely a whisper of fabric. That was Rochelle. A junk painting that the world saw, a sensuous masterpiece underneath. Scratch away that hippie dress, you found a woman who loved to rollick. A woman who'd refreshed Thorn's interest in the erotic, reminded him how to caper, how to laze away an afternoon, smooth his jagged brainwaves.

  "You're not smiling," she said. "What is it?"

  Thorn told her about Jaspers and her face softened. Oh, only that.

  "Well, I like them. I think they're beautiful. Much prettier than the flies you've done in the past."

  "You're not a fish."

  "No," she said. "Would you like me better if I were?"

  "I like you fine."

  "If I were a fish," she said, making a sly smile. "You could mount me. Hang me on the wall."

  "I don't mount fish."

  "Sorry," she said. And she looked at him a moment more as if trying to decode this new disposition. Something she hadn't seen before. It had only been a month, living like this.

  Thorn wished he could tell her how to deal with him, what to say to make this uneasiness disappear, but he didn't know himself.

  "You could mount me anyway," she said quietly.

  "I could," he said. "Yes, there's always that."

  He tried to smile but could feel it turn sickly on his lips. "It's okay, Rochelle."

  "Is this just a mood?"

  "Yeah, I guess it's that."

  "Well, then I get to have one too."

  "Fair enough." He felt his smile coming back. "We could take a gigantic mood swing together. Get seriously cranky, go out on the porch, shake our fists at the sky."

  Rochelle stood up, started over to him.

  There was a breeze stirring the curtains. When they bloused out, the room changed, waves of light trickling across the walls.

  He'd spent more hours in that room than any place on earth. Sitting at his fly-tying desk, he could hear the quiet ticking of the wood, knew all its creaks and groans and crackling as it weathered the years. He could tell the hour of the day by the shape of the shadows lying across the floor, could name the bird by the sound of its claws scratching across the wood shingles.

  But just then those curtains and the tricks they were playing with the light made him dizzy and confused. Giving
him a breathless vertigo that passed almost as quickly as it came.

  Rochelle took him in her arms and Thorn fit himself against her. His hand rising to touch the back of her head, the soft bristle of her scalp. The embrace snug and familiar.

  "Glass of wine?" she said, her mouth at his throat.

  "I've still got work to do."

  "You work too hard."

  "I like to work. It's what I do."

  He felt her body flush against his, so close it seemed they were seeping into one another. She smoothed a hand across his bottom, let it linger.

  "It's almost happy hour," she whispered.

  "Well, maybe just one glass."

  Rochelle peeled slowly from the embrace, went to the wine rack. It was a simple teak arrangement she'd given him as a gift. The wine rack held ten bottles, mostly Cabernets, which was what she favored. She uncorked last night's bottle, pulled two glasses from the shelf. Hers as well. Long-stemmed glasses etched with a lacy design around the rims. Not the heavy squat things Thorn used for wine—a half cut above jelly jars.

  They went out into the sun, leaned against the porch railing and gazed at Blackwater Sound, the harsh concussions of light against its surface. Another cool front had moved through overnight and the sky was scraped clean again. A frigate bird was suspended a mile up in the perfect blue, a winged dragon searching for prey. The sunlight was sharp and pure, cleaner than light ever was on the mainland. Temperature in the low seventies, a breeze from the north carrying a hint of evergreen.

  "You're not one of those men who works so hard because he's got to leave an empire behind, some monument with his name carved on it."

  "No, no empire. Nothing like that."

  "Or maybe you use work to block out some dark, tormented interior life." Smiling playfully.

  "I like tying flies. It's not complicated. I just like doing what I do."

  Her forehead smoothed. Rochelle raised her glass. "Well, then. Let's drink to doing more of what we like to do."

  "A worthy toast," Thorn said.

  "And to spinning our cocoon against the poisons of the world."

  Thorn hesitated, then lifted his glass to hers.

  "To cocoons everywhere." he said. They clinked.

  The noise woke Rover. He hustled out to the porch, giving himself an ear-flapping shake as he came. Lately Rochelle had started pouring out little puddles of wine on the bare planks for him to lap up, and now whenever he heard the tinkle of glasses, he came mooching around.

  "What would you think," Thorn said, "about inviting Sugar and Jeannie over for supper one night this weekend?"

  A strained smile played on her lips. "Sure, of course, invite them over. I like Sugar."

  "You do?"

  "Sure. Any friend of yours."

  "Tonight or Saturday?"

  "We've got martial arts Saturday, Thorn."

  "Tonight then."

  "Oh, God, I forgot," she said, topping up her glass, then his. "Sugarman called."

  "Called? How'd he do that? There's no phone."

  "My cellular. He called my dad, got the number from him."

  "What'd he want?"

  "I don't know. He didn't tell me."

  Rochelle had a sip of wine. She lifted her free hand and pointed at the lazy arc of an osprey as it crossed overhead.

  "Where's your phone, Rochelle?"

  "In my purse. What? You're going to call him now?"

  "I thought I would. Yeah."

  "He's left by now."

  "Left?"

  "He was going somewhere, just wanted to tell you good-bye, I think. This was a couple of days ago."

  "Couple of days?"

  "Three maybe. Four, I don't know. Since I've been living here. I've been losing track of time."

  "Four days ago. And you just now remembered?"

  She narrowed her eyes. Set her wineglass on the railing, turned to face him full on.

  "Yes, I forgot," she said precisely. "I'm sorry. But, Thorn, you don't even own a phone, no clock, no calendar, now all of a sudden you're worked up at me for not being a good personal secretary?"

  "I'm sorry."

  She turned away. And when he put his hands on her back, she was stiff. It took a full minute massaging her shoulders, her neck, before her muscles relaxed, and she closed her eyes, let her head slump forward. Made a small croon of pleasure.

  The bay still dazzled, boats left their luminous signatures across it. The sky was an empty, perfect blue, and butterflies making ditzy gyrations around the geraniums at the far end of the porch. A glorious day. A beautiful, alluring, and highly intelligent woman groaning beneath his hands.

  But Thorn was not there. Thorn was not anywhere.

  CHAPTER 5

  Irma Slater. That's what she called herself. The ugly name she'd plucked out of the air. Grating, off-key, a handful of sour notes. Irma Slater. She'd considered Earlene, Eunice, briefly toyed with Brunhilda. But no one would believe those. Even Irma was pushing it, not a name you heard anymore. Someone born in a tarpaper shack, had pine twigs for toys, illiterate and malnourished. Ozarks, Appalachia, one of those hill women who looked twenty-five years older than she was. Washed clothes against the river rocks. Lucky to get out of the hollow once a year.

  The young woman known as Irma Slater was having her Friday evening fish sandwich at the Mangrove Bar on Sugarloaf Key, seventeen miles up the road from Key West. Feeling the usual salty crust on her arms and throat from the day's accumulated sweat. She wore a blue denim shirt, washed so often it was fragile as cobweb, faded pink Bermudas, and a pair of rubber flipflops she'd picked up for seventy-nine cents at the Price Mart.

  Hell, if she amortized the cost of her five identical outfits over the three years she'd worn them, frayed cotton panties included, her whole damn wardrobe probably worked out to something like point zero zero two cents a day. Maybe she should sit down, do the math, have the exact number ready. A good conversation killer.

  Add in all the money she'd saved these last three years in the Keys, no makeup, jewelry, perfume, manicures and facials, no panty hose or bras, purses or cashmere sweaters or Armani suits. Throw in the hundreds of sad, hollow afternoons of impulse shopping at Neiman-Marcus she'd missed out on, and she'd probably saved enough money to put a dozen kids through college. Buy each one a Ferrari.

  As it was, she'd saved four hundred and eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents in the last three years. Hid her stash in a Tampax box under the lavatory. Her nest egg. Her run money. In case she had to leave in a hurry, hit the road again, bus tickets, a few weeks' food until she got established somewhere else.

  And it was a damn good thing she'd learned to be thrifty, because on what she made at Sugarloaf Retreat she barely had enough to cover her seven fish sandwiches a week. Coffee for breakfast, skipping lunch so she could splurge on Heineken instead of Busch at dinnertime.

  It was the seventeenth of the month, middle of November, less than a week till Thanksgiving, the tourists just beginning to trickle down the highway again, shed their sweaters. Tonight, like every night, she sat on the corner bar stool, her razor pen, her drawing pad lying beside her dinner plate. An empty space on either side where the waitresses gave their drink orders. Jesse called her spot the cockpit.

  Jesse was the bartender, chief bottle washer, and owner of Sugarloaf Retreat. Kinky gray hair in a ponytail. He was in his mid-fifties, from Indiana, retired real estate broker who'd scored big in shopping plazas, retired early, bought this broken-down motel. Now he spent his days roaming the ten acres of his bayside property in a red thong bikini, no shirt, barefoot. Nights he played bartender, and as a concession to the tourist crowd, he put on a flowered shirt. Like most everybody else in the Florida Keys, Jesse was going through a very public second childhood.

  Reason he saved the cockpit for her was to help her ward off the bozos—the turkeys who slugged down a couple of courage beers and came sidling over to hit on the lonely lady with the short blond hair. Between the waitresses coming a
nd going and Irma Slater's sour tongue, the bozos were usually back with their buddies in less than a minute.

  "Hello, pretty lady," they'd say. Some variation.

  Beautiful, gorgeous, ravishing, luscious, stunning. Heard it all her life. First words she remembered. Beautiful face, gorgeous sunny golden hair. Grown-ups always touching her curls as if to check that she was real. Touch, touch. And even when they didn't speak the words aloud, they said it with their eyes, said it with the change in their voice. Beautiful, gorgeous.

  The boys were the worst, and later the men, the ones who winced but kept on staring as if her beauty caused an ache in their guts. A painful affront, a challenge. They stared at her as if she were a museum goddess. Marble, granite. Cold stone. That's how they treated her. Left room around her as they circled, marveling. While she waited for the inevitable—for one of them to break out of the orbit, move in, mutter the words, beautiful hair, a knockout, all that. As though she hadn't heard it before, hadn't already come to despise them for what they said, despise herself for making them say it.

  In the process she sank away inside that museum goddess. Became a woman no one knew, no one cared to know. They saw the sculptured face, the large blue eyes, the sharp cheekbones, the figure that swelled and narrowed in extravagant proportions. You should be a model, they said. You should be an actress, they said. So she could get paid to be gawked at. Yeah, right.

  She found she could go anywhere, do anything, the doors always swung open for her. The doors inside those doors. It was hers, the ripe world, the plums. The gorgeous sweet secret heart of things was laid out before her. Hers for the selecting. All she had to do was show up, point an elegant finger at what she desired.

  And as though that weren't enough, there was the money. The cash, the lucre. Tainting everything, infecting it. Formidable wealth. Born with it, surrounded at every turn. Lavish house with Miami's most expensive vistas, childhood vacations to Paris, Zurich, hundred-thousand-dollar cars to chauffeur her to tennis classes and cotillion. Wealth so abundant there came a time when she was no longer sure where the money started and she began, no longer clear on which passion she aroused in those who professed their love. Which were the playthings, which the players.