“No,” he agrees, “she’s pretty decent. But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” I say lamely, “I know what you mean.”
I look up. The sandhills and Ollie have been luffing in the low thermals. Now they drift down out of sight, heading for home. Roach, his back to them, didn’t see them, fortunately. I doubt that he’d know what they were, but I don’t want anyone spotting them under any circumstances.
“I can’t see you as a bird-watcher,” he goes on. “You’re too much a man of action to take up an activity that sedentary, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Bird-watching’s not for me.”
Roach looks up the river. “We’re almost home.” He sighs. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”
“Not one I’m going to forget soon,” I tell him.
“Nor I.”
• • •
Joe and I tie up the boat to Roach’s dock. The kid’s still shaken; he threw up twice more as we crossed the Bay.
Roach turns on Wallace as soon as we’re on dry land. “Get off my property,” he says tersely. “You’re fired. I should never have hired you.”
Wallace stares at him, stunned. “It was an accident!” he protests vigorously. “Besides, you’re the one who brought the shotgun on the boat.”
Roach’s face is purple in anger at Wallace’s insubordination. “I’m not the one who shot at two people point-blank. And who the hell are you to talk to me in this fashion?” he declares. “You’re a hired gun. You work at my pleasure and you leave at my pleasure. Now take off, before I really lose my temper.”
Wallace looks at him, starts to say something in return, decides not to. He glances at Joe and me. “It was an accident. I slipped.”
Roach puts up a warning hand. “Don’t make a bad situation worse. Do us all a favor and leave peacefully. I’m going to forget this happened, and I suggest you do the same.”
Wallace stares at him rigidly. Then he turns on his heel, marches down to the end of the dock, gets into his Toyota 4Runner, and peels out, leaving a cloud of dust.
“I hope you won’t hold this against me,” Roach says to me as he watches his security chief disappear down the road. He seems to be genuinely shaken up by the near-fatalities. We all are.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I answer listlessly. I want to get home and have a stiff drink. I’m not going to tell my mother about this part of the day—she’s a spry old lady, but I don’t know if her heart could take this news.
As Roach talks to Joe about the yacht’s maintenance, Flaherty sidles over. He looks at me almost as if he’s looking at a ghost; which I nearly was. “Wallace is an oaf, but he was right—Jim was a fool to have brought that shotgun out,” he says quietly, so Roach, his friend and host, won’t hear him. “Jim’s ego can’t tolerate criticism of any kind—one of his imperfections. We were lucky you were with us today.” He takes my hand in both of his, like a priest with a supplicant. “Very, very lucky.”
I can barely move, I’m so limp. I walk down the dock, get in my Jeep, and slowly drive home, where I have two stiff belts of Maker’s Mark bourbon before I have the energy to jump in the shower, put on fresh clothes, and head over to my mother’s house for dinner.
That was too damn scary. I’ve never come that close to dying before, and I don’t want to again—not for several decades, until I’ve lived into my ripe old age, like my mother. The only consoling thought I have is that if troubles do come in threes, as I had thought about when I heard Marnie’s voice on my phone machine, then this near-death experience was number three. I’m safe—I hope.
It’s been a week since the shooting incident on Roach’s yacht, more than two since the murder on his airstrip. I’ve had nightmares about the boat shooting, and I’ve thought about the murder more than I’ve wanted to. The two scariest experiences of my life. A few times I’ve thought about digging into that murder, but then I remember Buster’s fierce admonition to keep my dumb-ass amateur nose out of it and I push the thought under the pile, along with the rest of my dirty emotional laundry.
It’s early morning. I return from a session of shooting pictures of the birds to find a wild woman sitting on my front porch, on the old metal rocker swing I salvaged from a junkyard. Wild-looking, anyway. Her hair is a thick tangle of coal-black coils that frame a heart-shaped, strawberries-and-cream face. Blossomy tits strain against her Save the Whales T-shirt. She’s wearing shorts to mid-thigh, her tanned legs are stupendously long, her inseam must be thirty-six inches.
She sits up as I approach from behind the house, where I’ve tied up my skiff. Her gray Dodge Stratus is parked in the yard next to my Jeep; a rental car, I see the Dollar sticker on the bumper.
This woman is one of the most exotic-looking females I’ve ever seen in my life. And she’s sitting on my front porch. Emerald eyes staring at me like she’s a bird of prey and I’m the rabbit she’s about to have for breakfast.
Maybe she’s a dream. I was drinking last night, and smoked some righteous grass, too; what else is new? I thought I was okay; I’ve been out hanging with Ollie and the other birds since dawn, now at nine o’clock I’m back, ready to screw around for the rest of the day. Eat a high-cholesterol breakfast, maybe write some in my journal, which I’ve been keeping haphazardly since I returned home, play with my computer, nothing heavy. My usual routine. But maybe it’s all been a hallucination, and I’m dreaming this.
“Are you Fritz?”
I’m not dreaming. “Who’re you?”
“I asked first.”
“You’re sitting on my porch.”
“So?”
“So you’re on my property, so I want to know who you are.”
“This property belongs to Mary Tullis.” Pause. “Fritz. You are Fritz?”
“What?” Where is she coming from? How does she know this? Who the hell is this apparition?
“Mary Tullis is your mother. She owns this”—she makes a dismissive hand motion—“dump, right?”
“Don’t change the subject, okay? My property, my mother’s, it doesn’t matter, it’s my family’s. So tell me again—I missed it the first time—your name is . . . ?”
“Maureen O’Hara.” Said with a perfectly straight face.
I’ve never met this woman and already she’s playing head-games with me. “Maureen O’Hara? What is this, some kind of joke? Why not Scarlett O’Hara?”
She locks me in place with those eyes. “My mother was a movie fan.” Defiantly: “My name is definitely not a joke, although I was teased about it plenty as a kid. Anyway, what kind of name is Fritz, if you want to talk about names? Nobody in the world is called Fritz, except in Germany.” She smiles. “Or in the comic books.”
“It’s a family name,” I say stiffly. When I was a kid they used to rag me about my name, too. “Anyway—back to my question. What’re you doing here? Who told you you could come here? This is private property.”
“Your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Your mother said I could come here. She said you’d help me.”
The sun’s beating down on my head. It must be giving me heatstroke. My mother said I could help her? I know damn well my mother doesn’t know this woman from Courtney Love. I walk closer to the house, into the shade. “How do you know my mother?”
“I don’t. We talked on the phone. She told me how to get here, that you’d help me.”
This is getting more and more convoluted. “How did you get my mother’s phone number?”
“From Johanna Mortimer.”
Oh, fuck.
“Johanna’s a friend of mine, from Boston. She said . . . never mind what she said about you. Do you remember her?”
“Yes, of course.” Between this and getting caught in my lie by Roach, I’ll remember Johanna Mortimer to my dying day.
“Johanna told me you’re an avid bird-watcher.” She pauses. “And a very nice man. A helpful man.”
“Johanna said that?”
�
��She did.” Then she laughs. “With a straight face, even.”
I hate being hoisted on my own petard. I’m feeling tired, suddenly, from what I ingested last night and getting up early. I walk up onto the porch and sit down next to her on the rocker, keeping plenty of distance between us.
“So, Maureen O’Whatever. What are you here for, anyway?”
“I want to look at birds.”
I almost choke. “Look at birds?”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s what I do—look at birds. I’m an ornithologist. I teach ornithology. You know—bird-watching. What you do for a hobby.”
Christ Almighty. You tell one little white lie, like throwing one harmless snowball, and look at the avalanche of shit it causes.
She digs into her purse, takes out a card, hands it to me. The card has the Harvard University crest on it. It lists her name, with a Ph.D. behind it, just like me, her address—so and so, Cambridge, a phone number, and her position—associate professor, Department of Biology.
If I didn’t have crappy luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all. This woman is a Harvard professor in ornithology! for crying out loud. A freaking bird-watcher, the one class of subspecies I’ve been working like crazy to avoid.
If this woman sees my bird, it’s all over. Bye-bye Ollie. Bye-bye peace and quiet.
“I’m not a bird-watcher,” I tell this creature whose own plumage is itself as extravagant as that of a bird from the Amazon.
She looks at me as if she’s misheard me. “I don’t understand. Johanna told me you’re such an avid birder that you . . . never mind about you and her, that’s your business and none of my own. But she did tell me, very clearly, that you are a birder.”
I look her straight in the eye, as straight and unwavering as I can look given the shock my system has just suffered.
“I was lying.”
She stares at me.
“I’m not a bird-watcher. I’m not a nature lover in general, except to catch a few fish that I eat.”
“Then . . .” She still isn’t getting it.
“Sometimes things happen fast between people and one of them can’t handle the speed,” I explain. “So they have to get off the train. Telling her I was a bird-watcher—that’s how I got off the train.”
She nods slowly. “Now I get it.”
“Look,” I say, feeling like an ass, “I could’ve done it differently, I know that. It was late, I had a lot on my mind, I was feeling the pressure of—” Why am I telling this to a complete stranger? Even if she is drop-dead gorgeous and a brain to boot.
She finishes for me. “Entanglement. The possibility.”
“Yeah.”
She reaches over and takes my hand. It feels like a thousand volts rushing through my body. “You’ve been hurt not so long ago. You don’t want to take the chance of that happening again, not yet anyway.”
Who the hell is this woman and how does she come up with this stuff? “I thought you were an ornithologist, not a psychologist,” I answer stiffly.
“I’ve been through that mill pretty recently myself,” she says. “I know how it feels. How you can’t be honest about anything, even if it’s meaningless or unimportant. Or worse, you can’t be honest about what is important.”
“I guess.”
I stand up, move away from her a few feet, so as to not lose my edge. I’m at the best place I can be, given the circumstances. I don’t need to reopen freshly healed scars. I need peace, quiet, serenity. No surprises, no rocking the boat.
“Hmm,” she says from her throat, pulling her legs up to her chest. “This messes me up but good.”
“Sorry about that, but it’s not my fault.”
She turns, staring at me accusatorily. “But it is your fault. If you hadn’t lied to a friend of mine I wouldn’t have called your mother and asked if I could come down here and go bird-watching with you. I wouldn’t have given up a trip to the Andes. So yes, it is your fault.”
“You should’ve checked up on the situation more. Called me, for openers.”
“I did,” she says. “You never called back. That’s when I called your mother, who couldn’t have been more gracious.”
Now I remember. There was a message on my machine last week. A woman’s voice I didn’t know, asking me to call back about bird-watching on the Chesapeake Bay, particularly around here.
I didn’t return the call, of course. I erased it from my machine and hoped never to hear that voice again.
Now I have.
“I’m sorry. But I can’t help you. Wish I could.”
She nods. I can tell she’s thinking about what to do. “Well,” she says, after some time, “I’ll have to do it on my own.”
“Do what?” I ask apprehensively.
“Go birding. It would be preferable to go out the first time with someone who’s familiar with the area, but I can do without that. I do it all the time, all over the world.”
“Go bird-watching? Around here? On this property?”
“Of course. I’m here. I’m not going to waste this trip.”
Fuck. This can’t be. “You can’t do that,” I tell her.
She looks up at me; then she stands up. Her eyes are almost level with mine. She might be over six feet tall.
“And why not?”
“Because . . .” Shit, I might as well tell the truth, a partial truth anyway. Lies haven’t done me much good. “Because I couldn’t handle you being around me. I need solitude now. No people, not in any kind of close contact like what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, fine,” she answers breezily. “I’ll go by myself, or with another birder from around here, there’s lots of them, this is one of the prime birding areas in the country, the lower Chesapeake Bay.” She favors me with another brilliant smile. “I’m not pressuring you, believe me, but you ought to try it, one time. It’s really fun. It might help you lighten up . . . Fritz.”
“Thanks, but no, not now. Having you on my property, even if I’m not with you, I can’t have that. I’d feel your aura. It would put me off balance.”
She stares at me. “Your mother gave me permission,” she reminds me.
“I don’t care,” I answer curtly. “I’ll have her unpermission you. I live here. And I don’t want you around. Or any other bird-watcher.”
Her eyes widen. “You’re more fragile than you look,” she says bluntly.
That stings, even though I set myself up for it. “I’m fine with the way things are,” I tell her. “It’s none of your business or anyone else’s, including my mother.”
She hesitates a moment; then she nods. “I guess if I lost my university position I’d be fragile, too.”
I stare at her. What the hell?
“Professors on sabbatical don’t screw around taking pictures and drinking beer all day,” she says, looking me square in the eye. “They do work elsewhere that’s related to their field. You’re not at Texas anymore, are you?”
This rips it. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I’ve left. My decision,” I add hastily. I have to preserve my status, even if it’s unwarranted.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I’ve gone too far.”
“No shit.”
“I’ve embarrassed you,” she says. “I apologize.” She looks around. “I don’t want to intrude where I’m not wanted. I know about respecting space, I feel the same way about my own. So . . .” She puts out her hand. “There’s other places I can go birding besides your property. Maybe we’ll run into each other.”
I take her hand. “Maybe we will.” And maybe we won’t.
She starts toward her car.
“Hey . . .” I call after her.
She turns to me.
“I wish I could help you. But I can’t, not now. I hope you understand.”
She nods. “Like I said, I’ve been there myself, not too long ago.”
“ ’Bye, then.”
“ ’Bye. And listen—I’m not going to tell anyone about your jo
b situation. In case you’re worried.”
“I’m not,” I tell her. “You can tell anybody whatever you want, I’m not hiding anything from anyone.”
She raises an eyebrow, contemplates me for a moment, then leaves.
• • •
In less than an hour, the telephone rings.
“Fritz,” my mother reprimands me over the line, “how could you be so rude? I didn’t raise you to have bad manners, son.”
The exotic and pushy Maureen O’Hara hadn’t wasted any time. “I wasn’t rude, mother.”
“You told this sweet young woman to bug off,” my mother insists. “That is being rude.”
“I never used the words ‘bug off.’”
She isn’t budging. “It amounts to the same thing, whatever you said.”
I get a grip on myself, as she’s been admonishing me to do for a year. “I know you have my best interests at heart, mother, as well as those of every single human being in the world. When you die and go to heaven there’s going to be a special place for you, right near Mother Teresa.”
“Fritz! Stop that foolishness. I am no saint, nor am I close to dying, I hope.”
“You’re definitely not, mom. Close to dying. But you are a good woman, and God will reward you. And in your infinite compassion, I want you to do one little thing for me, Fritz, your son, the sinner, the prodigal son who did not deserve to eat of the fatted calf.”
“Stop this theatrical talk, Fritz,” she complains, “you’re giving me a headache. What is wrong with helping this woman? She has a Ph.D., she must be intelligent. And if she’s a friend of that lovely Johanna Mortimer’s she must be a worthwhile person.”
I hold the phone away from my ear for a moment and stare out the window at the water and the bald cypresses that grow in the middle of it, my own private jungle. I can’t stand up against these women, not the old ones like my mother, the middle-aged ones like Marnie, or the younger ones, like Johanna Mortimer and now Maureen O’Hara, who’s as beautiful as her famous namesake was in her prime.
“Mother, listen to me. Just listen, and don’t talk for thirty seconds.”
I pause, waiting for her to interrupt in protest. But she doesn’t, she’s wisely giving me my space. That’s the thing about mothers, they know how to handle their children.
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