Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling

by Pamela Browning

  “Aunt Sophie took an interest in her clients, always telling them that they were like her children. ‘But you don’t know what it is to have children,’ people said. ‘Ha!’ Aunt Sophie told them, ‘it’s what’s in the heart that ties you to children, and these clients of mine are in my heart.’

  “Then, when she knew she was dying, she told Uncle Nate that she wanted to give me Rent-a-Yenta. ‘Karma is in my heart,’ she told him, and later she told me that too. Giving me Rent-a-Yenta was a loving act, the nicest thing anyone ever did for me. I will never forget it, and I will never, ever forget her. And sometimes I feel that she’s right beside me, guiding me as I try to make Rent-a-Yenta my own.”

  Karma paused, biting her lip.

  “That’s beautiful, Karma.” Slade was touched by Karma’s simple but eloquent words.

  Karma released a sigh. “Now I should scatter the ashes, I think.” She picked up the container and hesitated. “Like I said, my aunt wasn’t religious. But I don’t feel right about not saying anything about God. She did believe in God.”

  Slade cleared his throat. “All I can offer is to repeat the Twenty-Third Psalm. I had to learn it in Sunday school when I was a kid.”

  Her smile was grateful. “That would be perfect, Slade.”

  He recited the psalm, stumbling a couple of times but getting most of it right. When he had finished, Karma removed the lid and held the container up over her head. When she lofted the ashes into the wind, they rose and glimmered briefly, then caught the golden rays of the sinking sun before swirling away on the breeze.

  “Goodbye, Aunt Sophie,” Karma murmured. “I love you.” In her eyes, tears shimmered unshed, and she fumbled in her pocket and said, “I didn’t bring a tissue. That was dumb, wasn’t it?”

  It was as he handed Karma his handkerchief that Slade first noticed the rolling black clouds churning toward them from the west. “Whoa,” he said. “What’s that about?”

  “It’s that I really loved my aunt Sophie,” Karma said before blowing her nose.

  “No, I mean those clouds,” he said, jerking a thumb westward.

  Karma stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket. “Yikes,” she said, looking alarmed. “Looks like a major storm.”

  Slade squinted toward the setting sun, almost obscured now by the encroaching storm. “Phifer didn’t warn me about storms. He told me about the channels and how to start the motor and about staying out of the path of big boats, but he didn’t say a word about storms.”

  “More fool Phifer,” Karma muttered under her breath. She shoved the tissue into her pocket, keeping her eyes on the changing panorama to the west.

  Slade shot her a skeptical look. “Look, if you think you can get us out of here better than I can, feel free,” he said.

  She backed off at that, sinking further down onto her seat. “Nope, I know little about boats. All I can say is that we’d better make a run for it.”

  Without saying another word, Slade hauled anchor and started the boat’s motor. It sprang to life, and he turned the bow back toward land, keeping a sharp eye on the clouds, which were trailing gray curtains of rain over the surface of the sea. He was aware that no other boats were in sight and that they were alone—completely and utterly alone and at the mercy of the elements.

  “Slade,” Karma called to him over the noise of the motor and the keening of the rising wind, “do you think we’ll make it before the storm hits?”

  He tried to sound reassuring, though he was feeling anything but optimistic as the blue of the sky above was obscured by scudding clouds. “I hope so,” he said.

  As he spoke, a wave splashed over the side of the boat. The seas had risen alarmingly, and the wind had begun to blow in strong gusts.

  Karma wrapped her arms around her against the sudden chill in the air. It looked to her as if Slade were having trouble keeping the runabout on course. She regarded the advancing rain with trepidation. It had not escaped her that the runabout was equipped with two life vests, and she reached under the seat to drag them out.

  “Good idea,” Slade told her.

  It was a struggle to get into the life vest with the boat rising and falling on choppy waves, but she managed, and when she again looked at Slade, he was wearing his. As a gust of wind swerved the boat around sideways, Karma gripped the gunwales and held on tight. Rain began to pelt down out of the sky in rapid, stinging drops.

  “What’s that?” Slade called, waving his arm toward her left.

  She let go of the gunwale for a moment to wipe the rain out of her eyes. “I think that’s Stiltsville,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the wind.

  “I give up—what’s Stiltsville?”

  “A bunch of old houses on pilings. They’re built in the shoals, abandoned now.”

  The boat was being hammered by repeated gusts, some of them so strong that the bow bucked up and down like an unruly horse, slapping back down again with enough power to toss them from the boat. “We’d better head for the houses. They’re shelter,” he shouted over the keening of the wind.

  Rain had soaked Karma’s hair, and she huddled in the bottom of the boat, hanging on as best she could. Slade did his best to turn the runabout toward the houses in the shallows. There looked to be seven of them, though the rain was pouring down from the sky in such heavy sheets that visibility was severely limited. A huge wave lurched over the side of the boat, and all he could do was hold on.

  “You okay?” he shouted.

  Karma nodded, but he saw that she was scared. She began to bail with the bucket that had held her aunt’s ashes. Spunky woman, he thought, and then he turned his full attention to getting them to one of the houses that had appeared so providentially out in the middle of the bay.

  Rain stung his eyes, water swirled around his feet in the bottom of the boat, and a wind gust whipped them around counterclockwise. So much water spilled into the boat that he almost couldn’t maintain his grip on the throttle, and as he dashed the water from his eyes, he realized that the anchor line was washing overboard. He made a last-minute grab for it and missed.

  Karma shouted—he couldn’t hear what she said—but the next thing he knew, the motor choked and died, which was when he realized that the anchor line had become fouled in the propeller.

  He was no sailor—that was obvious by now to both of them. If anything the storm was growing stronger, the seas higher now, their little boat pitching and yawing frantically as it tossed upon the swells.

  With a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, Slade realized that they were in an extremely precarious situation. The clouds overhead were thickening and seemed more sinister; the water was as black as night.

  For the first time he wondered if they would make it to safety.

  5

  THEY WERE AT THE MERCY of the sea, and he hunkered down in the bottom of the boat, moving closer to Karma so he could protect her.

  “…jump? We could swim to the houses,” she shouted directly into his ear, but in Slade’s judgment, they were less than a hundred yards away from the nearest house and it would be foolhardy to leave the boat when they were so close.

  He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, becoming aware of her warmth. She had given up bailing, and she clung to him, too.

  Lightning rent the air above them, which was frightening but illuminated Stiltsville so that he could see that they were closer than he’d thought.

  “Give me the oar!” he shouted to Karma, and she pushed it toward him.

  He paddled as best he could, but it was the waves that provided the most momentum. In a matter of minutes, they had banged up against one of the pilings attached to an abandoned house.

  Despite gulping more seawater than he’d thought he could hold, he managed to help Karma crawl toward the stern of the boat and the piling, which was studded with boards that made a kind of ladder.

  “You go up first,” he gasped, and she climbed ahead of him while he prayed that she would not slip on the wet w
ood.

  When he saw that she was safely clinging to the platform surrounding the house, he secured the runabout as best he could with what was left of the anchor rope and made his way upward.

  Karma pulled him up the last two rungs. “The house is locked,” she shouted, bracing herself against the railing as a particularly hard gust rocked her sideways. “I already tried the door.”

  For an answer, he removed one of his soggy boots and dealt the window in the door a heavy blow with the heel. Then, cushioning his hand and wrist with his sock, he reached inside and unlocked the door.

  They blew in on a gust that he would have bet was gale strength, and it slammed the door behind them.

  “Here,” Karma said, yanking a blanket off a couch right inside the door. “Stuff this in where the glass is broken.”

  While he tended to the window, Karma caught her breath and assessed their quarters. It was a small cottage, equipped with basic furnishings—long wood table for dining, small cubbyhole of a kitchen, and through a door, a bedroom.

  “This place will do,” she said. “If it survived Hurricane Andrew some years back, it’ll make it through this storm.” She pulled off the life vest and tossed it beside the door.

  Slade did the same. He also yanked off his other boot and sock. “Damn right it will, but the last thing I expected was to find a fully equipped house out here in the middle of Biscayne Bay.” He was dripping on the floor, but that was a minor problem. They were lucky that they weren’t lying at the bottom of the ocean, or at least the part of it that they hadn’t swallowed while trying to survive the storm.

  “Uncle Nate told me about these places,” Karma said. “They were built in the 1930s, starting with a bait and sandwich shop that catered to fishermen. My uncle knows a guy who worked here.” She slid the band from her hair and tried to fluff it without much success.

  “All these houses to serve fishermen? No way.”

  Karma went and peeked into the bedroom. The furnishings consisted of a double bed, its spread old and rumpled, and a scarred wooden trunk in a corner. She turned back around. “Later more houses were built, and one of the charms of the place was that it was out of the reach of law enforcement so that people could gamble. Families kept vacation homes here in the fifties and sixties, but Hurricane Andrew leveled all but seven of them.”

  He looked past her into the bedroom, wheels beginning to turn in his mind when he saw the bed. He didn’t have any trouble picturing the two of them in it.

  Karma stood at the window gazing out at the roiling sea, now mostly blotted out by the rain. He walked up behind her, which seemed to make her so uncomfortable that she slipped out of the space where she stood and sort of hopped sideways. Graceful it wasn’t, but it was amusing.

  He’d noticed that she was shivering, and he cleared his throat. “I think we should scout around for dry clothes, and I’ll check to see if there’s food and candles or hurricane lamps. We may have to stay here for a while until the storm lets up.”

  She looked concerned, but Slade felt exactly the opposite. To be shipwrecked with Karma somewhere where she couldn’t run away—or hop out of reach—was his idea of really good luck.

  “SO DO YOU WANT CORNED BEEF hash or corned beef hash? There’s only one can of food in the pantry,” Karma called to Slade from the kitchen. She’d found a tank top—too small—in the trunk in the bedroom, and she wore it with a pair of shorts—too big. Still, she was dry, and that increased her comfort level considerably.

  “Fortunately I like canned hash.”

  She shrugged. “I won’t eat it, so it’s all yours.”

  “Oops, I forgot you’re a vegetarian. But you’ll have to eat something,” Slade called from the bedroom. He emerged wearing nothing but a pair of shorts—too small. The sight of his bare chest, braided with muscle and deeply tanned, flooded Karma with the kind of heat that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. She wheeled around and concentrated on opening the can with the primitive can opener. That way she didn’t have to look at him looking at her, which was what he was doing. And her tank top didn’t cover much.

  Slade began to rifle through the kitchen cabinets. “Don’t know who owns this place, but I’ll leave them a check to cover the food and damage. Say, here’s a rice cake. You can have it,” he said. He tossed it on the table, where it landed next to the hurricane lamp he’d lit earlier.

  The rice cake didn’t sound appetizing, but she supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers, as Aunt Sophie would have said. She busied herself freeing a saucepan from the tangle of pots underneath the counter while Slade prowled around the cabin, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. On further thought, it wasn’t so tuneless. The song he was whistling was an old one and had lyrics along the lines of, “Oooh baby, you’re so sexy.” If he was trying to send a message to her, it was getting through loud and clear.

  She slammed the cover on the hash.

  “Here, I’ll take over,” he said, moving closer.

  She sat down at the table and unpeeled the rice cake, keeping her arms up to cover her breasts. This would hide the fact that her nipples were puckering beneath the thin fabric.

  “You don’t want any of the hash?”

  She took a bite of the rice cake, but it was so dry that she almost spit it out. “No, thanks. I wish we could go fishing.” She eyed a fishing pole that was propped in a corner.

  Slade gave the hash a stir. “We’re not going to do any fishing with this storm going on. But, my friend, when you come to Okeechobee, I’ll take you to a great catfish restaurant.”

  “I never said I would go to Okeechobee,” she told him.

  “I never invited you, but I’m inviting you now.”

  She made herself eat the rest of the rice cake. Would he still want her to come once he’d gone out on a date with Jennifer? She studied his back in the flickering lamplight.

  “Will you go to Okeechobee with me?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m mostly concerned with getting out of here. It doesn’t look as if we’re going to be rescued any time soon.”

  “This may be a big storm front. There won’t be any recreational or Coast Guard boats coming along until it’s over, I reckon. We may be stuck here until morning.”

  Her watch had stopped over an hour ago. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eight o’clock.”

  When the hash was hot, he brought the pot to the table and spooned half if it onto his plate.

  “The rest of this is yours if you want it.” He held the pan out toward her so that she got a hearty whiff.

  “I told you, I won’t eat it.” It smelled wonderful, though, and the rice cake sat in her stomach like lead.

  He sat down across from her, straddling the bench. “Suit yourself.”

  The food on Slade’s plate steamed invitingly, and she found herself staring at it.

  Slade grinned. “Your hunger is showing,” he said.

  “I was thinking that I could pick out the pieces of potato and eat them,” she said grudgingly.

  “Go with it.” He went to the stove, scraped the rest of the hash onto a plate for her, and handed it over.

  She separated some of the potato from the meat. Her stomach rumbled, and she nibbled at a potato chunk. “It tastes pretty good,” she told him when she noticed how intently he was watching her.

  “Well, sure. Why don’t you try a taste of the meat?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” but her mouth was watering and she couldn’t help wondering what canned corned beef would taste like.

  “You want it. You know you do,” he teased.

  Wasn’t this what Mandi had said she wanted to hear him say? What guys usually said to Mandi? Mandi hadn’t, Karma was sure, wanted Slade to utter that particular phrase in the context of food, but she certainly would have been impressed that Karma had heard him say it. This made her smile. “Stop being funny. I can’t think, I’m so hungry.”

  Slade became more serious. “You’d better eat
whatever you can. If we have to push off in our own boat, you may need all the strength you can muster.”

  “The anchor line is caught in the prop. I doubt that the boat will take us anywhere.”

  “One word, Karma. Oars. As in row, row, row your boat.”

  She groaned. “I’m hoping for a luxury rescue by a sleek cabin cruiser on a fishing trip.”

  “Don’t depend on it.”

  Seeing how serious he was and realizing that he was right, she took a small bite of the hash, meat included. It tasted heavenly and was all crispy on the bottom where Slade had browned it.

  She saw that he was waiting expectantly for her reaction, and she didn’t disappoint him.

  “I think it’s the best thing I ever ate,” she said fervently, forking in another mouthful. So much for principles. So much for sticking to them.

  Slade laughed uproariously. “That’s very funny. Canned corned beef hash wouldn’t be on anyone’s list of favorite meals.”

  “That depends on how hungry they are.”

  “Don’t scarf it all down at once,” he teased. “Make it last. You never know when you’ll get a chance to eat meat again.”

  She entered into the spirit of fun. “I’ll savor every bite. And I’ll make them real small bites so that there will be more of them.”

  Once her plate was empty, Karma wished she hadn’t eaten so fast because it suddenly occurred to her that after they ate, there wasn’t much to do.

  She got up and rinsed off her plate. Slade did, too. She was certain from the way he studied the curve of her backside in those ridiculously baggy shorts that he had something in mind for a pastime and that she’d better find something to do—fast.

  She dried her hands on a dishtowel and went to the bookshelf that divided the kitchen from the living area. She knelt on the floor to browse through the pile of games on the bottom shelf.

  Slade went to look out the window at the thrashing sea. “I think our boat’s still there,” he reported.

  “That’s good news. I guess.” She couldn’t feel too hopeful about their prospects of leaving anytime soon.