“She doesn’t like my pants,” Dinky said, standing up again. He planted a noisy kiss on Katharine’s cheek. “Hey. Where’s my beer?”
“It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that Parker wouldn’t wear anything like that,” Mary Bliss said hastily, from the bathroom where she had fled.
“She’s got a point there,” Katharine told Dinky, tossing him a towel. “Sorry. No more beer. It’s show time.”
“Fuck,” Dinky said. He wrapped the towel loosely around his waist.
Mary Bliss went to her suitcase and handed Dinky the stack of clothes she’d packed back in Atlanta.
“Here,” she said. “Put these on.”
Dinky let go of the towel and it slid to the floor. He held up first a pair of pink-and-white striped seersucker Brooks Brothers swim trunks, and then a pink Polo golf shirt. “You’re kiddin’, right?”
“She’s serious,” Katharine said. “As a heart attack. Now get dressed.”
“Jezebel? Could you come in here for a minute?” Mary Bliss was hiding in the bathroom again.
She slammed the door shut behind Katharine and locked it for good measure.
“We’ve got to call it off. This is not going to work,” Mary Bliss whispered, her voice fierce. “Did you see him out there? There’s something bad wrong with that man.”
“Of course there’s something wrong with him,” Katharine said, laughing. “He’s got a dinky little wee-wee. I told you that already.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mary Bliss said. “He’s definitely drunk. And possibly stoned. He can’t even put on a pair of pants right. And he looks nothing like Parker McGowan. We can’t go through with this. We’ll get caught and I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life. And Erin will end up in some foster home…”
“Calm down,” Katharine said. “Middle-aged white women from Fair Oaks do not go to prison. Everything will be fine. You just stay right here and drink your Coke and eat your soda crackers. And when I call, you come look. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Mary Bliss put the lid down on the commode, sat down as she was told to, and took a deep breath and a sip of Coke. She took a tentative bite of cracker and tried to think positive thoughts.
“All right,” Katharine called finally.
Mary Bliss opened the door.
“Ta-da!” Katharine said, clapping her hands and pointing at Dinky. “Meet the new Parker McGowan.”
“Not bad,” Mary Bliss said, circling Dinky. “Not bad at all.”
The former Dinky Davis had been transformed. There was no sign of the drunken, nude lout who had sprawled on the floor of this room only minutes earlier. In his place stood a somewhat nattily attired Atlanta businessman, ready for a day of Mexican water sports. On his head he wore a white panama hat with a green Master’s golf tournament hatband. The pink shirt was stretched a little tightly over the belly, but it was neatly tucked into the pink-and-white-striped shorts. On his feet he wore a pair of new-looking Topsiders. The expensive mirrored sunglasses reflected the surprise in Mary Bliss’s eyes.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, circling him again. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think…”
“Never mind,” Katharine said. “It’s five after ten. Get out of here. The boat should be down at the dock.”
She gave Dinky a stern look. “You know the plan—right?”
He scratched his crotch and tried to look bored. “Right. My motor-bike is hidden down the beach. I swim in to shore, ditch the clothes, meet you back in town tonight, pick up the rest of my money.”
“What about the scuba gear?” Katharine prompted.
“Oh yeah. I was gonna say about that. I leave a flipper and my mask and air hose in the water.”
“And forget we ever met,” Mary Bliss prompted.
“After I get my money,” Dinky said.
30
The boat was called the Miguelita. It was battered, but painted bright blue with red trim. Black smoke billowed from the noisy outboard motor as it bobbed up and down in the chop of the surf. A young Mexican man stood in water up to his waist and waved at Mary Bliss and Dinky.
They waved back and waded out to meet him, holding the bags containing their scuba gear high over their heads to keep it dry.
Dinky spoke to the man in Spanish, he nodded, and Dinky hoisted himself over the side of the boat, while Mary Bliss struggled valiantly to find a foothold on the slippery wood.
“Hey,” she called finally. “Remember me?”
Dinky’s head appeared over the side of the boat. He popped the top on a can of beer. “Oh yeah. My wife.” He reached down, hauled her up, and left her flopping around on the floor of the boat like a half-gaffed marlin.
Once she was inside the boat, Dinky called to the Mexican. The man pulled up the anchor and handed it to Dinky, who casually tossed it onto a pile of life jackets near Mary Bliss, who was still struggling to right herself.
“Anchors aweigh!” Dinky hollered, as he pushed the boat’s throttle all the way down.
The outboard roared and the boat lurched forward into the waves, sending a shower of water over the bow and completely soaking Mary Bliss.
“Slow down,” she screamed, but her protests were lost in the din of the motor.
“Oh Lord.” Mary Bliss mouthed the words. Her fingers fumbled as she hastily strapped one of the life jackets over her dripping bathing suit. “Forgive me for what I am about to do.”
Dinky Davis’s navigational technique was crude but effective. He pointed the bow of the boat on a course parallel with the shore and floored it. The Miguelita bounced and shuddered and slammed through the waves. Mary Bliss gripped a brass boat cleat with both hands to keep from being tossed overboard.
Dinky headed the boat north. Gradually, the white sand beaches and string of shoreline hotels disappeared. The terrain turned rocky, and jungle greenery tumbled down to meet the sea. No other boats were visible on the horizon.
Wave after wave poured over the bow of the boat, and the sun beat down on her head. Her eyes burned from the salt water. She could feel blisters forming on her neck and nose. Her carefully wrought plan was being smashed to bits. No sunblock, no bottled water, no skillful maneuvering into just the right position to stage the accident. Mary Bliss hung on to the boat cleat for dear life. Dinky drank an alarming number of beers, throwing the empty cans into the water with maniacal glee.
After an hour of being jounced around like the proverbial Mexican jumping bean, Mary Bliss grabbed one of the life preservers and aimed it at Dinky’s head to get his attention.
“Ow. Fuck.” He glanced her way and rubbed his head accusingly. “You made me spill my beer.”
“Slow down,” she screamed. “You’ll wreck the boat and kill us both.”
“I thought that was the plan,” he hollered happily, aiming the boat directly into another towering wave.
But this time something went wrong. The engine faltered and choked. The wave slammed into the powerless boat, lifting it up and up. Mary Bliss lost her grip on the cleat. She heard herself screaming. From far away, she heard Dinky’s voice too.
“Fuuuuuuuuuck.”
Then she was out of the boat. She felt herself being hurtled through the air, weightless, for only a matter of seconds. She felt her body hit the surface of the water with an angry smack, felt the burn of the water on her eyes, on her throat as it rushed into her open mouth. A sharp blow at the back of her head was the very last sensation she remembered.
Now she was having a dream. She was drifting through a curtain of green. Schools of fishes darted in and out, showing flashes of silver where the sunlight caught their iridescent scales. She felt a shadow fall over her. Parker? She lifted her head, opened her eyes. The pain was blinding.
“Owww.” Water rushed into her mouth and she choked violently.
“Señora?”
When had Parker learned Spanish?
“Señora?” Now she was being dragged on her belly through sand, sharp ed
ges digging into her skin.
Stop, she tried to call. But her throat burned, the words wouldn’t come out.
Arms lifted her. Pain. Her head throbbed. Her skin was on fire. Suddenly it was all very clear. She knew where she was. Hell. She had planned to kill her husband. Failed. And now she was in hell, where she would burn for eternity. Funny. She had known there would be flames, but nobody had ever mentioned the sand.
Or the torrent of Spanish flowing over and around her.
Mary Bliss forced herself to open her eyes and keep them open.
“Señora McGowan?” A wizened face hovered over her own, a long, gray braid grazing the flesh of her neck. It tickled, actually.
Tickled? Mary Bliss was woozy, but she did not think one could be tickled in hell.
“Yes?” she croaked.
A smile wreathed the mass of wrinkles. Now the old lady took a long drag from a cigarette, the ash dropping on Mary Bliss’s chest. “Bueno,” the old woman said. “Muy bueno.”
31
Later on, when it was all over and she was back in her bed at La Casa Blanca, cool, clean sheets pulled up to her chin, a thick wad of bandage wrapped around her head, Mary Bliss could recall only pieces of the events that transpired.
“The woman who found me on the beach, it was the old woman who drives the hotel’s courtesy bus. She put me in that VW van,” she told Katharine, who was hovering about with cold Cokes and painkillers she’d bought who knows where. “God knows how she lifted me, that old lady probably only weighs eighty pounds herself. And she took me into town to that building where you caught up with me. Was it a jail or a hospital?”
“Both, actually. They called it la clinica. I guess that’s the jail infirmary.” Katharine smoothed back a strand of hair that had fallen over Mary Bliss’s eye. “How’s your head feelin’, hon?”
“All right,” Mary Bliss said, touching it gingerly. “Mostly pretty numb.”
“Good,” Katharine said. She popped one of the pain pills into her mouth and took a swallow of her own Coke. “Mine is just a throbbin’. You have no idea of how terrified I’ve been for the last day and a half. I’ve been half out of my head.”
“Day and a half!” Mary Bliss tried to sit up, but she still felt groggy. “What day is today?”
“Night. It’s Monday night, Mary Bliss.”
“It can’t be,” Mary Bliss said, sinking back down into the pillows. “We got on the boat Saturday. Saturday morning at ten o’clock.”
“And you washed ashore three miles down the beach around sunset Saturday,” Katharine said. “Although, of course, I didn’t know that then. Had no idea where you were for a full twenty-four hours, nearly out of my mind with worry.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary Bliss said wanly.
“I don’t blame you,” Katharine said. “It was that goddamned Dinky Davis.”
“Dinky,” Mary Bliss said, closing her eyes. She could hear his voice, the long echoing expletive ringing in her ears. “What happened to Dinky?”
“You tell me,” Katharine said. “He never did show up at Pablo and Paul’s on Saturday. I waited and waited. I even went to the bar where he works, kinda asked around. Nobody’s seen him.”
Katharine leaned in close to the bed. “You did real good with the police, M. B. I don’t know what you told ’em, but they believed every word. That woman they brought in to interpret was bawlin’ her eyes out after you told them what happened out there. And Estefan showed up here at the hotel last night, just like he promised, with the death certificate. He was acting kind of funny, though.”
Mary Bliss was getting sleepy again. “Death certificate?”
“Parker’s death certificate. We’re all set, Mary Bliss. The doctor wants to check your head again in the morning. He didn’t want you to fly until the concussion thing was cleared up. But after that, we’re flying back to Atlanta. Just like we planned. Only a little bit later.”
“Home.” Mary Bliss was so very tired.
“Erin!” Her eyes flew open. “My God. What about Erin? We were supposed to be home yesterday.”
“Calm down, now,” Katharine said soothingly. “Don’t go getting yourself all upset. Erin knows.”
“She knows?”
Katharine hesitated. “About her daddy. The interpreter lady called and told her.”
“No,” Mary Bliss wailed. “A stranger? A stranger called and gave her the news that her father was dead? How could you, Katharine?”
“I couldn’t help it,” Katharine protested. “I’m not supposed to be here, right? The police just think I’m an American woman you met here at the hotel. A new friend. I couldn’t very well be the one to call Erin and tell her what had happened. It would have spoiled everything. And you certainly couldn’t tell her. You weren’t even really fully conscious until just a little while ago.”
“How was she?” Mary Bliss asked, a tear spilling down her cheek.
Katharine bit her lip. “Upset. She wanted to fly down here, but Jessica’s mother persuaded her it would be better to stay put, wait for you to get home. Josh Bowden was over there when I called today.”
“My poor baby,” Mary Bliss said, sobbing. “Erin. I’ve got to call her.”
“No,” Katharine said. “I called her this morning myself. I talked to Erin for a long time. She’s shook up. But I told her I was flying to Cozumel, and I’d bring you home myself. On Tuesday.”
Mary Bliss turned her head and wept into her pillow. “My baby.” The words were muffled, but Katharine could make them out just fine. “My baby. I’ve ruined her life. She’ll never forgive me.”
Katharine lay down in the bed beside Mary Bliss and wrapped her arms around her best friend. “Shh. Shush now,” she crooned. “You didn’t ruin her life. You did what you had to do, and it’s over and done with. It’s going to be all right now. The worst part is over. Tomorrow we go home. And everything’s going to be just fine. I promise.”
Mary Bliss’s body shuddered. Katharine heard her hiccup, then catch her breath. She stroked Mary Bliss’s hair. “Shh, baby. Katharine’s here. Right here.”
32
On Tuesday morning, the manager of La Casa Blanca trundled them tenderly into the back of a shining new white Lincoln and personally drove them to the airport.
“Why is he being so nice?” Mary Bliss whispered.
“They’re afraid you’ll sue,” Katharine whispered back. “That piece-of-crap boat belonged to the hotel. One guest dead, another injured? Honey, they’re just waiting for your lawyer to call up and take them to the cleaners.”
Mary Bliss nodded. The ache in her head had started to subside. Her doctor spoke very good English, and he had assured her the dizziness and nausea, along with the headache, would soon be over.
She had managed to piece together most of what had happened on Saturday.
Dinky Davis had gotten drunk, and then nearly gotten them both killed. He’d deliberately steered the boat into a killer wave, and the engine had cut off just at the moment of impact. Probably, the doctor told her, she’d been hit in the back of the head by a piece of the boat, which had shattered like a child’s toy.
“You were lucky,” he’d told her, his voice somber. “And smart. To wear a life jacket. Your husband apparently was not so smart. And not so lucky.”
And that’s when she remembered. All the life jackets were in the bottom of the boat. Poor Dinky hadn’t bothered to put one on.
“My husband,” she’d said slowly. “He’s really gone, then. Have they found…anything?”
The doctor busied himself changing the bandage on her head. “A pair of flippers. Some empty beer cans. And the life jackets, of course. You have my sympathy.”
The Lincoln stopped in front of the airport. The manager stepped out, grabbed their bags, and led them inside to the departure gate. Katharine and Mary Bliss trailed along behind him.
He stepped up to the desk and whispered something to the ticket agent. Then he turned, bowed, kissed Mary Bliss’s hand
, and walked rapidly away.
The agent waved Mary Bliss’s proffered ticket away. “Arrangements have been changed,” she said softly. “We have you seated on the next flight. Nonstop to Atlanta. And first class. We thought you might be more comfortable that way.”
“First class,” Katharine repeated happily. “I think we’ll be much more comfortable.”
The gate agent let Mary Bliss and Katharine board the plane before anybody else, and the flight attendant tucked them into their leather recliner seats and handed them the new issue of Vanity Fair and steaming hot coffee.
When she’d gone, Mary Bliss let out a long, troubled sigh. “What have I gotten myself into?”
Passengers trooped down the aisle past them, giving them the kind of resentful looks they’d always given people sitting in their current situation.
“First class,” Katharine said. “You were born for first class, Mary Bliss. And so was I, of course.” She put her mouth very near Mary Bliss’s ear. “You’re doing great with the grieving-widow thing. Very convincing. But I know you, Mary Bliss. And I can tell you’re having second thoughts.”
“That’s an understatement,” Mary Bliss said, sipping her coffee. “I am scared totally out of my mind. All the time I was in that clinica, I kept thinking, any minute now, somebody is going to step up and arrest me. And at the airport, same thing. I won’t feel safe until we land in Atlanta. If I’m going to jail, I just want to go to one with flush toilets and running water.”
“Stop that talk!” Katharine said. “Parker is dead. Things went even better than we planned. Except for your concussion. That means it was meant to be. God wants Parker dead. Why else would he have arranged that boat wreck like he did?”
Mary Bliss turned and looked at Katharine with amazement. “How can you say such a thing? Parker is not dead. We have no idea where he is, and whether he’ll show up again. And in the meantime, how can you be so callous about Dinky? The poor man. We suckered him into our plan, and now he’s dead. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? That somebody died because of our selfishness?”
Little Bitty Lies Page 16