Vanity Fire

by John M. Daniel

  “How much will that cost?” Kitty asked.

  “It’s provided by the Pirate’s Paradise. You might want to tip the man twenty bucks.”

  “How will we recognize him?”

  The shop owner tossed us each a tee shirt. “Put these on over your swimsuits, and he’ll recognize you.”

  “Good,” I said. “How much do we owe you for these?”

  He grinned at Kitty, then winked at me. “Not a dime. Having you two wear those shirts is better than any advertising I could buy.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later we stood on the dock wearing our flip-flops, bathing suits, and bright orange-and-purple “Snorkel Morgania” tee shirts, plus our touristy shades and sailor hats from the hotel gift shop. We looked out across a sparkling blue harbor full of gently bobbing yachts. Beyond that was a bay and on the distant side of the bay were a couple of small jungly islands. Halfway across the bay a spiny brown wreck rose from the surface like a band of Giacometti ghosts.

  “Lookee them two,” a voice behind us cackled. “Miss Catherine and Mister Guy, my friends already, from last night. Thass right!”

  Kitty and I turned, and there was our Morgania cabbie, same Satchmo grin on his face. “Heard you folks want to go round the island, see the sights,” he said. “All aboard, my friends, because Oliver’s your man. Your main man. Yes, sir.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kitty said. “It’s good to see you and all that, Oliver, but we don’t want a taxi tour of the island today. We’re going snorkeling.”

  “Yeah, snorkeling. You came to the right island is all I can say, and you in good hands. Good hands. Less go, folks, right this way. Yep, the snorkel express. I’m your man,” Oliver repeated, smiling like daylight. “You think I just drive an automobile? Thass my boat yonder. Right this way, folks. Right this way. You just stick with old Oliver. Yep, right this way.”

  Kitty and I shrugged at each other and followed. Oliver led us to the end of the pier and bowed us aboard a skiff rigged up with an outboard motor.

  “Oliver’s limousine service,” he announced, untying the line that held the boat to the pier. “On land and sea.”

  When we were settled in the two forward seats, with our snorkeling gear, tote bags, and sandals in the bow of the boat, Oliver climbed into the stern and the boat tilted us up. He grabbed the engine rope and the motor fired up on the first pull. He grinned. “Tug tug chug chug,” he pronounced. With that he opened the throttle and we wove our way out of the marina and into the harbor. Oliver guided us through the community of yachts and out onto the bay.

  As we got closer to the rusty metal rising from the water, Kitty pointed and said, “Is that a shipwreck?”

  “Thass right,” Oliver shouted over the roar of his outboard and slapping of the waves. “Shipwreck. The captain was drunk.”

  “Was that a pirate ship?”

  Oliver shook his head. “Shrimp boat.”

  “Can we get closer to it?” I asked.

  Oliver nodded. “Closer, but not close. Too dangerous. Tetanus, sharp. Like a razor, every piece of it. And you gotta be careful where you steer in this bay. Gotta know the channels, yes sir. Stay in the channels. Otherwise, you’re a shipwreck yourself. Look like that ugly boat.”

  It was indeed an ugly boat. The closer we got to it, the larger and scarier it loomed. All that remained was a complex skeleton of ragged rusted metal, about sixty feet long and thirty feet high. The whole thing listed to the side and sat in its reflection, a spiny pool of shimmering blood.

  Kitty said, “Gah lee.”

  “Gah lee,” Oliver repeated. “Thass right, Miss Catherine. Gah lee is exactly right. Less get moving. Can’t snorkel around here, no ma’am. Can’t snorkel here.”

  With that he turned his boat away from the wreck and headed west, parallel to the shore.

  Kitty pointed back to the two silhouettes of jungle behind the shipwreck. “Is one of those islands Polly’s Key?” she shouted.

  “You don’t want to go out there, no, sir. No, ma’am.”

  “Does Roger Herndon live on one of those islands?”

  Oliver ignored the question.

  “How does he get to shore?” she persisted. “He’s got to buy groceries, right?”

  Oliver cut the motor and we bobbed on the suddenly quiet bay. “Miss Catherine, you want to forget all about that man and that island. You hear me? You better off climbing on that old rusty shrimp boat than climbing on that island. You hear?”

  She took off her shades and gave him a sparkling smile, with the late-morning sun lighting her teeth like silver-white pearls. “Just wondering,” she said. “No biggie.”

  “Biggie,” Oliver insisted. Then he smiled. “Less find you a place to snorkel.”

  Tug tug, chug chug, and we were skipping west again over the water. Turning south, we left the bay and continued, staying about a hundred yards from the shore. Fifteen minutes later Oliver steered us toward a small cove with a sandy beach. Behind the beach, on all sides of the cove, was a forest of palms. Oliver slowed down and brought his boat close to the beach, then cut the engine just before the bottom touched the sand. We hopped out into the warm water and he and I dragged the boat closer to the water’s edge.

  “Thass good,” he said. “It ain’t goin’ nowhere. Here you go, Mister Guy.” He reached into the boat, behind his seat, and pulled out an Igloo cooler. Then he put it back. “Full of sodas and beer,” he told me. “Sodas and beer, Cap’n. You gone get thirsty, thass for sure. Snorkeling is thirsty work. Sodas and beer.”

  “Thanks, Oliver. You think of everything.”

  “You got plenty of sunscreen?” he asked.

  “We’re all lathered up,” Kitty said. We peeled off our “Snorkel Morgania” tee shirts and threw them with our sailor hats and sunglasses into the boat. Kitty wasn’t wearing a top, and Oliver instantly turned away and looked out to sea.

  “I got more sunscreen for when you need it. You can snorkel out there in this little bay. Lots of nice coral, beautiful, yeah, coral. Beautiful.” Then he turned around but kept his eyes on the water lapping gently against his shins. “Coral. Fishes, too. And squid.”

  “It’s okay, Oliver,” Kitty said. “You can look.”

  Oliver shook his head and said, “Y’all have a good time out in the water. I’m going over there to the trees and find us some nice coconuts. Then when y’all get hungry, we’ll go on back to the harbor and you can sample some local shrimp. Snorkeling is hungry work. After lunch, we’ll go the other direction. Yeah. Other direction.” He splashed through the water and onto the dry sand, then trudged across the beach, leaving a wet trail with his broad bare feet.

  Kitty and I took the flippers and masks out of the bow of the boat. “You ever done this before?” I asked.

  “No, you?”

  “Never.”

  “Then I’ll show you how to do it.” She snapped the flippers onto her feet and put her face into the mask, then dropped to her knees in the water, fell forward onto her face so that her rainbow-colored hair floated like a nimbus around her head, then stretched her body out toward the open water and began wiggling. Graceful as an otter, she scooted out to sea, her purple snorkel pipe pointing to heaven. My God, she was young.

  Nowhere near so young, I struggled with my flippers, falling twice into the water. Finally I got myself into the equipment and followed her lead. Turns out snorkeling is the easiest thing in the world.

  And the loveliest. Before long we were gliding over fan corals bright as a garden of summer flowers. Little yellow and blue fish swam with us, surrounding us for a closer look. A cloud of silver minnows flashed back and forth before our eyes, catching the sunlight and tossing it this way and that. And clinging to the rocks on the ocean floor only five or six feet below, cobalt blue starfish glowed in the dappled light. Lazy parrot fish, green and orange, blue and yellow, nibbled at the coral and vanished like magic when we got close enough to tickle them.
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  We popped our heads above the surface and took off our masks while we treaded water. By now we were far from shore. “Ready for a beer?” I asked.

  “You bet.”

  So we donned our masks again and flapped our flippers toward the sandy cove. When we got close enough, we took off the flippers and masks and walked the rest of the way to shore.

  When we were almost there, wading through water up to our thighs, we heard a squawk from the dense palms on one side of the cove. Suddenly two brilliant, blazing macaws flapped out of the trees and flew directly over us on their way to the other side. When they were right above our heads, Kitty tilted her hips, stretched her right hand high into the air and pointed, her smile lifted to the noontime sky. The pose lifted one breast a couple of inches higher than the other, and drops of saltwater dripped from her puckered nut-brown nipples. Her navel was stretched vertical, like the door to a tiny cavern behind the glistening skin of her belly. I saw rapture on her shining face as she watched the birds disappear into the forest behind me. When she looked at me her eyes were moist and bluer than the sky.

  “Guy,” she sighed, “have you ever seen anything so beautiful in all your life?”

  ***

  We were back in the bay, but still far from the harbor when Oliver told us, “You folks got to put your shirts back on now.”

  “How come, Oliver?” Kitty asked. “We put on more sunscreen.”

  “I don’t mind how much sunscreen you got on, Miss Catherine. Fact is, you gone upset folks if you don’t dress nice, hear what I’m sayin.”

  “Aw.”

  I got into my tee shirt and said, “Better do as he says.”

  “There’s nothing dirty about my body,” she said, pulling the tee shirt over her head and down over her skin. “I’m an ecdysiast, Oliver.”

  “Well ma’am, you can act easy-ass up north. Down here folks don’t appreciate it. I’m trying to get you to some lunch, and if you want lunch—”

  “Fine,” Kitty conceded. “You said the magic word. Where are you taking us?”

  “Colonel Ben’s,” he answered. “Colonel Ben’s Bar and Grill. Serves the best shrimp you ever tasted. Also snapper, also hamburger, also cheeseburger, also peanut butter and grilled cheese, but I do strongly recommend the shrimp salad for lunch. Shrimp salad. Morgan Shrimp Company’s finest. The finest.”

  Oliver brought the engine down to a gentle putt-putt as he negotiated the channels of the bay. He wove his way among the yachts, then headed to the other side of the harbor from the Pirate’s Paradise resort. We tied up at a dock at the base of a steep hill, alongside several other dinghies. “This here’s the parking lot,” he said. “Parking lot.”

  We stood on the dock and stretched our legs. “Who owns all these dinghies?” I asked.

  “Yachties,” he answered. “Folks on the yachts. They come here for lunch and dinner. And to drink. Right this way. Yes, they do like to drink.”

  He pointed to a weathered wood staircase and we shouldered our tote bags and followed him up. At the top was a flagstone terrace with a dozen picnic tables. Each table had a giant umbrella advertising Heineken, but no customers sat outside.

  “They’s all indoors,” Oliver explained. “They serve lunch inside, where it’s air-conditioned. Y’all wait here a second, I’ll be right back.”

  He went inside and we took a seat at one of the tables, under the shade of the umbrella, and looked out across the harbor to the small islands in the distance. “We have to get out there, Guy,” Kitty said. “I’m having fun snorkeling, but that’s not why we came. We have to go confront that stinking sack of shit. That’s why we’re here.”

  I nodded. “Oliver isn’t going to take us there. That’s clear.”

  “We’ll rent a boat. Do you know how to drive an outboard motor?”

  “No. You?”

  “No, but it looks simple. Starts like a lawn mower.”

  “What about the channels in the bay?” I asked.

  “Channels, my ass,” she answered.

  “Not to mention we don’t know which island it is, and, and Christ, Kitty, we don’t even have a plan worked out. I mean—”

  “We got this far, and I’m not turning around. I’m not abandoning my Gracie, and you’re not abandoning me. Right?”

  For her it was all so simple. She loved Gracie, Roger had fucked Gracie over, and she was going to fuck Roger over or die trying, which was more than likely. You don’t really need a plan to die trying. Fine for her.

  Okay. Fine for me too. I was bumping along on borrowed money that I had no way of repaying. I knew this downfall was my own fault. I had been stupid in business, a dumb risk-taker, vain enough to fall for the scams of Fritz Marburger and Roger Herndon. Marburger was good and dead, but Herndon was still alive, Herndon who cheated dozens of authors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, who burned down my warehouse and murdered two men, who stole Carol’s car and stole Worsham’s yacht, who framed Gracie and left her to rot in prison, who welched on every promise he ever made and who still owed me for four slices of pizza. Plus he was a drug-runner. Was I with Kitty? What choice did I have?

  “Right,” I said. “Of course. I’m with you all the way.”

  “Good. I knew it. How come Oliver made us wait outside?”

  I didn’t have a chance to guess the answer to that question, because right then Oliver burst out the door, letting it slam behind him. “Come on, you two. We’re going someplace else. Someplace good.”

  “What’s wrong with this place?” I asked.

  “No good,” Oliver said. “No good. I went in to check on the shrimp, see how it smelled. No good. Smelled bad. No good. Come on, less go. Less go.”

  “Wait a minute, Oliver,” Kitty said. “I have to go use the ladies’ room.”

  “No time for that, Miss Catherine,” he told her. “No time. We have to get moving here.”

  “Oliver, calm down,” she said. “I have to pee, okay?”

  “Miss Catherine, I think—”

  “I should have peed in the ocean, I suppose,” she said, “but it didn’t seem like a nice thing to do. So if you don’t mind waiting for two minutes, I’ll be right back.”

  He did not step aside for her, but she walked around the table and sidestepped him. She reached the door of the restaurant before he did, and then she vanished into the dark inside.

  Oliver turned back to me with a scowl. “Cap’n, that woman’s going to get you into a lot of trouble. Unless you’re trouble, too. Is that what it is? Are you trouble? You told me last night no funny business. Now you tell me right now, are you trouble? Are you funny business?”

  I didn’t get a chance to answer that one either. Kitty stepped outside the restaurant door and called across the patio, “Guy, get in here. Get in here now.”

  I stood up and said, “Oliver, I’m afraid—”

  He pointed a finger at my throat. “You on your own. I ain’t going in there with you. You understand me? You go in there, you on your own.”

  Kitty walked across the terrace to us and said, “Oliver, we won’t be needing a cab anymore. We have a ride back to the hotel. Give him a twenty, Guy.”

  I fished in my tote bag for my wallet, but Oliver held up his palm like a traffic cop. “Keep your money.” He turned on his heel and strode toward the wooden staircase, and we could hear his heavy feet clump down and out of earshot.

  I took Kitty by the shoulders and made her look me in the face. “Now you can tell me what you’re up to,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Come with me,” she answered. Her fists were clenched, her eyes were squinty and her nostrils flared, her shoulders were hunched, and she was moving her lips fiercely across her teeth. “Showtime, gentlemen, showtime. Please put your hands together for Miss Pussy Katz.”

  “So he’s—”

  “Not just him,” Kitty said. “Fuckin both of them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

&nb
sp; Oliver was right about at least one thing. It smelled bad inside Colonel Ben’s Bar and Grill. I didn’t smell any bad shrimp, but I smelled griddle grease, spilt beer, and tobacco smoke in spades. Not that I mind smells like that as a rule; some of my pleasantest memories involve smelly taverns. But I was nervous, and my defenses were turned up to nine. Ready to bolt. It was that kind of smell.

  Kitty was all business. She strutted through the lunch crowd, ignoring the swiveling heads and lusty glances, while I followed in her wake. She marched right to a wooden booth in the back corner, then stopped, turned to me, put a hand on my cheek, and whispered, “Guy, you’re going to hate me for this. I’m so sorry!” Then she let me see her face morph from angry to surprised and overjoyed. She winked at me twice, once with each eye. She spun around again and faced the two men who were just looking up from their platters of shrimp gumbo, shock on their faces.

  “Roger!” she cried. “Roger baby! God, shit! I’ve been looking all over for you!” She plopped down on the bench beside him and planted kisses on his flummoxed face, first on the cheek, and then a long wet one right on his mouth. “God! Good to see you, lollipops! Shit!”

  Huh? I shook my head to get the gnats out of there, then turned to the bald man. “Howdy,” I said.

  Lew Pomeroy gave me his Sean Connery smile and said, “Guy. Fantastic. We were just talking about you. Sit down, sit down. Have you tried the shrimp gumbo here? It’s outrageous. Sit down.” He wore an impeccable, starched white guayabera.

  He moved over a bit and I did as I was told. That put me diagonally across the table from the one and only, whose guayabera was wrinkled and stained and had obviously been washed in the same load with red socks. Kitty was snuggling up to his arm and he was grinning at me with his eyebrows sailing high on his forehead.

  “Hey, Guy,” he said. “Hey, hey, hey!”

  “Hello, Roger,” I said. “Burned any good books lately?”

  Kitty scowled at me and said, “Guysie, be nice.”

  I hate being called Guysie. Hate it.

  Roger said, “Great to see you. Both of you. Welcome to paradise. I was going to send for Kitty—in fact I was just now making travel arrangements for Kitty and Gracie, right, Lew?—but I didn’t expect to see you, Guy. What brings you to Honduras?”