by Farris, John
"Gracie, there was a time when I'd have given up my front-row seat in hell for you."
"Was a time? Oh, heavens, am I about to be rebuffed?"
"I like my life," he said. "I've bought into the firm, and I don't watch the clock. I sail, I swim, I fish. I say my prayers at night."
"I hope you're not going to tell me you're some sort of defrocked priest, clinging to the ideals of celibacy."
"Far from it."
"Is it the little brown sloe-eyed creature in your office? The one with the cunning braids and the uppity ass?''
"Miranda's boyfriend is getting his Ph.D. in marine biology at the University of Miami. And I wouldn't play around with the help."
"Well, can you remember the last time you got laid?"
Joe thought about it, and laughed.
"Maybe, it was around this time last year. I'm not sure."
"We are both long overdue. The last time I made the attempt with Jerre, all I did was blow in his ear, and he convulsed."
And thus it had started, so many times before; and he knew how it would go from here, if he desired. She would be ravenous, desperately full of gemutlichkeit, she would fall in love with him, then dig in her nails in a different kind of desperation. The husk of Jerre Beerman would soon fall from the earthly vine. Grace would be worth, depending on how sharp Jerre had been about avoiding probate and the IRS, say six to eight million. He could pick Grace clean with his eyes closed. A man who knew how to take his time with a woman could take her for everything else. And he'd been the best. Lottie, Adrian, Clare, Magdalene, Sarafina, a dozen others—if you pressed them, in spite of heartbreak they'd admit it. Joe had been the best.
He could feel a lustful twinge or two looking at Grace Beerman; but there was nothing he really wanted from her.
"Let's be friends, Grace."
Her lips pressed together; she sighed, and it turned into a tremor.
"I'm not so bad, though; am I? It's just that the timing's wrong, or something."
"For me. The truth is, I'm still trying to get the hang of being a reformed bastard."
After his leisurely lunch with Grace Beerman Joe looked at a property on Bolongo Bay that its owner, a British rock star whose albums no longer sold, was eager to be rid of. Architecturally the villa was interesting, but with too many exterior plantings that kept the sun away and promoted mildew inside. The plumbing was wrecked, windows were broken, there were stains on the grass cloth walls that looked as if guests had vomited repeatedly on them, and the terrazzo floors were blackened and ashy in places, suggesting that the rocker or his guests had enjoyed their driftwood fires indoors. With a cleanup and substantial pruning of the purple bougainvilleas and sea grape outside to enhance the view, Joe thought the villa might list at a million-two.
By the time he had completed his assessment and taken some Polaroids it was a quarter to four, and he decided against returning to town. He drove through the rush-hour traffic in his Land Cruiser past Lindbergh Bay and the airport to the West End, then down a private road in Perseverance to the cottage he owned that overlooked an anchorage so small it had no name, and no significant beach to attract developers. There he docked his treasured thirty-one-foot Hallberg Rassy motor sailer.
He fed the cats, Branca and Poor-Eye, stripped and went comfortably naked down to the end of the dock past some roseate terns peaceably occupying a couple of pilings. He plunged in and swam straight at the sun, as far as the reef five hundred yards offshore. Back at the cottage, he drank a beer in the shower and another on the deep piazza paved with quarry tile. Bamboo shades defused the power of the setting sun, which at this time of the year lit up every comer of the small rooms inside. The cottage was poured concrete and required little maintenance: he could push the solid, island-made, termite-proof furniture to one side and hose the place down in twenty minutes. He had Scarlatti in a minor key on the stereo and was thinking about throwing a steak on the outdoor grill for supper when a good-looking schooner came into view beyond the reef, traveling east on diesel with sails furled.
Forty-eight or fifty feet, at least forty of those feet at the waterline, meaning she was built for speed. The hull was flared widely near the sheer, useful in preventing the schooner from burying her bow at more than eleven knots. The handsome deckhouse was split at the mainmast. He couldn't make out the helmsman against the glare of the sun, now close to the horizon, but he wanted to see more of the regal schooner, and reached for his binoculars.
The yacht was seconds from disappearing behind a forest of red and black mangrove to the left of his anchorage when he brought it into sharp relief. A woman with a good figure and flying sunset-tinted hair had the helm. She was wearing a sweatband on her forehead. Sunglasses obscured a third of her face. She had a companion, half-naked, broad-shouldered, who appeared to be tinkering with a jib winch from one of them. Young, rich, with leisure time to tour the islands in their superb boat for several weeks or months of the year.
The man in the forward cockpit turned and said something to the woman, who changed their heading slightly just as Joe's view of the schooner was obscured. But the transom had come around enough for him to read the name and home port.
She was the Dragonfly, out of Nimrod's Chapel, South Carolina.
There was a lot of partying going on aboard some of the impressive yachts taking up every available slip in the Crown Marina of St. Thomas harbor. Three big cruise ships, marvelously alight like a wandering city, were anchored at the West Indian pier. The ships and pleasure boats and resorts made up the rich crust clinging to the undernourished economies of islands everywhere in the Caribbean. The U.S. Virgins were bustling, overbuilt and suffering from the demands of tourism. St. Thomas had too much traffic on inadequate roads. Drugs and AIDS were a problem. Pollution of once-pristine little bays had begun to kill off the coral reefs and foul formerly dependable fishing grounds. Pregnant women from island nations all over the Caribbean were flying in to have their babies born on U.S. soil, thus insuring them citizenship and causing great strain on V.I. medical facilities. The crime rate was up, with muggings and break-ins crowding the police blotters. It was no longer safe at night in most of Charlotte Amalie or on any of the island's beaches.
Given time, Joe thought, it would all resemble south Florida. These days life seemed to be a succession of things that were bad for you, and some pretty sunsets. But as long as the sun was hot and the sea was blue and the tradewinds sang in the riggings away from the mendacity and the tawdriness, there still must be some promise left in the world.
The Dragonfly was moored stern-to in slip F-18, showing lights below. The gangplank was down. Quiet aboard, except for the homey sounds of someone washing pots in the galley sink. He loitered on the dock for several minutes, admiring the craftsmanship. Hard to tell by the dock lights just how well she was kept, but Dragonfly's teak decks were uncluttered and salt-free, the brightwork in the stern had no traces of corrosion. A great boat: trim, seaworthy and well-loved.
He listened to music from adjoining vessels—everything from little O'Days to huge oceangoing cats far from Southampton or Marseilles—to the salsa and the disco and the rockabilly; he heard laughter and ice cubes popping into glasses beneath a nearly full moon the color of Edam cheese. And rationally decided he'd seen enough and needed to go quietly away. Because, by this time, she must have her life in order, and be well loved by someone who deserved her.
And yet she had named her schooner Dragonfly.
He was still wondering about that when she came up on deck, barefoot, wearing khaki shorts and a yellow Polo shirt. Her tawny hair was tied behind her head. She had a Walkman CD player in one hand. She was as thin and wiry as a distance runner, so tan her eyes shone like hot rivets above prominent cheekbones. She took a deep contented breath and looked around and saw him on the dock fifteen feet away. She smiled.
"Hi, there."
"Hi," Joe said. "Just admiring your boat."
"Admire all you please. She is one damn serious
boat, every inch custom. Wish I could give you a tour, but not without permission."
"I understand. Who are you crewing for?"
"Pamela Abelard. The novelist. I guess you've heard of her."
"The name rings a bell."
"Abby's my second cousin on my daddy's side. I'm Wanda. Abby went into town a little while ago with my better half to see if the replacement burners for the Luke got flown in yet. We've been mostly without a stove since we left Grand Turk."
"How long have you been cruising?"
"Seven weeks. We picked up the Dragonfly in Lauderdale: It's about over for Donnie and me. She's certified seaworthy now, and Donnie's got to finish his damn dissertation."
"What are Miss Abelard's plans?"
Wanda gave him a less-admiring reappraisal. "You'd have to ask her."
"Maybe I will." Joe smiledand nodded and walked back along F dock to shore.
After looking into the Hard Rock and a couple of other places on the waterfront, he found her in the upstairs bar of McAvity's Islander with Wanda's husband, Donnie. There was a large, rough-looking yellow dog that might have been part Irish wolfhound sitting next to her barstool, snacking on plantain chips. McAvity's loud reggae band was on break, which Joe counted as a blessing.
Abby's hair was different, cut short for cruising, bleached blond in streaks during long salty reaches. She wore a blue silk camp shirt and matching trousers, white woven sandals. Her thick eyebrows and stuck-out pixie ears he would have known anywhere.
He walked over to them. The dog turned its head, looking up at him with a bouncer's eye for potential trouble.
Joe said, "You still owe me ten dollars."
Abby's lips parted. There was a firecracker flash of recognition followed by darkness, the deliberate cloaking of her emotions. He thought she'd probably been expecting something like this, running scenarios in her mind. She continued to look straight ahead, at his reflection in one of the pier glass bar mirrors mounted on a liquor lazy Susan the size of a wagon wheel.
Donnie did look at Joe. He was a husky linebacker-type with white-blond hair fizzling on his freckled crown and a peeling Roman nose that had met a few stray elbows during his athletic career.
Abby said drawlingly to Donnie, "Man comes up to me in a bar. Says I owe him ten dollars. What do you think I should tell him, Donnie?"
"Why don't you let me tell him?" Donnie suggested.
"Hi, Donnie. I'm Joe. You can go now."
"Man says his name is Joe," Abby said, still staring straight into the mirrors. The bad bar lighting didn't flatter any of them. Joe's pewter-gray hair had a purplish tinge; her mouth was deeply bracketed and looked sullen. "That's one thing we know about him for sure. Or do we?"
"I could probably get the two of us a booth," Joe said, glancing around the crowded bar. "I know the owner real well."
Abby turned to Donnie. "Do you have ten dollars?"
"Sure." Donnie looked perplexed, but he dug into a pocket of his plaid Bermudas and passed the sawbuck to Abby. She turned the other way then, and looked Joe in the eye as she gave him the money. He could tell she'd had a couple of drinks, maybe three, and still couldn't hold her liquor.
"I don't ever want it said that I don't pay my debts. How about you, Joe—Joe—?"
"Maczerek," he said patiently.
"That sounds like it might be an actual real name."
"So my mother told me. It's all she left me with, a long time ago. My name, and a five-dollar bill."
"I wonder if you've ever gotten over that."
"It's a topic for discussion. How well people get over things."
"What language are you two talking?" Donnie said with a bewildered smile.
Abby drew a slow breath. She said with a glum smile of apology to Donnie, "I guess I need to talk to him alone. It's okay. I used to know him. I'll be along in a little while with Chloe."
Joe caught McAvity's eye and arranged for the trysting booth in a palm-fringed corner that usually merited a fifty-dollar bribe. But there was a favor involved, a negotiation Joe had handled and that concerned the pubescent daughter of two irate Atlantans intent on closing McAvity down. The kid had had a thing for Rastafarian musicians.
McAvity fussed over them for a few moments when they sat down, then took a second look at Abby's face and, departed swiftly. The large yellow dog named Chloe sat obediently at Abby's right hand and munched on plantain chips.
"She'll eat anything," Joe said approvingly.
Abby's taut expression softened slightly. "Walter Lee found her during the hurricane. She was all but starved to death, a pathetic bag of bones. Chloe and I sort of—recovered together. Now where I go, she goes. And Chloe doesn't take any shit from man or beast."
"How is Walter Lee?"
"He's making it okay. The twins were his salvation, after Frosty—I honestly don't know what I'd do without him. Or Lizzie, either, although she can be a royal pain sometimes. Sixteen is a rotten age, as I remember."
"Charlene?"
Abby rubbed her forehead, uneasy.
"Nothing. I mean—there's never been a trace. For a long time I thought—maybe she was with you, down here somewhere, both of you having a good laugh."
The memory of the pain this absutd conclusion had cost her returned; she scanned the surface of the table as if it were a poison-pen letter she'd written to herself.
"I left her at the beach house," Joe said. "Because there was nothing else I could do. She had a gun on me and was living out a fantasy about flying saucers."
"Oh, my God," Abby murmured, not doubting him.
"Are you still on the home place?"
"Yes. We moved the coffins out of the garden and back into the cemetery. Junked the Wayfarer. Rebuilt the house."
"You're taller than I remember."
"You're a son of a bitch."
A waitress brought Joe a Corsair beer and Abby a vodka tonic. The waitress, a fetching chocolate redhead, smiled fondly at Joe, as if reminiscing. Abby didn't miss the nuance.
"Right at home down here, aren't you, Joe?"
"Shouldn't I be? It's been three and a half years. I do a day's work for my pay. I make out fine. Almost all of my intentions are honorable these days. How did you know I was in St. Thomas?"
Abby drank with a stony face, swallowing hard. "Research. I'm good at it. I've accumulated quite a file on you. Enough to get me started on my next novel: about a thief, a cheat, and a con man."
"Historical fiction, of course."
"Of course. That's what you are to me. History."
"Cheers," Joe said amiably, clinking his beer bottle against her glass. Abby looked startled.
"Go fuck yourself."
"If one of us could develop a sense of humor, the rest of the evening might go a lot smoother."
"Sense of—? You came to the Barony with one thing in mind—my money."
"Uh-huh."
"You were on the job."
"Yes."
"I looked like easy pickings to you."
"The easiest I ever saw."
"God damn you."
Joe sat back inthe padded booth and had a sip of beer. She had delivered herself of her accumulated outrage, which he had deflected as if it were trivial, and now there was nothing much for Abby to do but get up and stalk out of the bar. She initiated this move by putting a hand on Chloe's choke collar.
Joe said, "Why did you name that nifty schooner the Dragonfly?"
"What the hell difference—? Because it seemed to—because I did have some good luck once, and maybe it was the dragonfly, or maybe it was just some bullshit I was eager to believe because I hated my life and I thought— Your name really isn't Mazcerek, you still can't tell the simple truth about anything—"
"It was my mother's maiden name. Check your research."
"I went to Buffalo myself I talked with your aunts, the ones you told me about. I know that part of you is authentic, but—"
"I took her name because I didn't like the sound of Joe Petru
ska, and I figured it was close enough to my roots. Anyway, I never knew my old man."
"They were lovely to me," Abby said. "By the way, they fixed up the house. With some of your ill-gotten gains."
Joe smiled and offered Chloe a macadamia nut. Abby scowled at him.
"Better not. They're probably constipating. They constipate me. I'm walking okay, but some of me is still a little screwed up, like my bowels—oh, damn, damn it, Joe, why couldn't you have stayed with me? I was months coming out of it. I was in all kinds of therapy which did absolutely no good until I decided just to chuck everything and sail away—where the hell did you go?"
"Arizona. I spent some time with my adoptive parents. I retraced just about every step I'd taken after my mother dumped me in Gila Bend almost thirty-five years ago. Retraced and erased."
She bowed her head slightly and said, as if she were jealous, "If I could only do the same."
Joe sighed. "You've already started. You're here."
"No. This was foolish. I know I shouldn't have—"
"You buried Luke, but there's no way you'll lose him. You'd better accept it."
"I still can't—say his name without getting lockjaw. If I could just get through a week without nightmares about needles—and waking up knowing I'm paralyzed all over again. I guess it's asking too much. When you've been betrayed like I have, you can never trust anyone again."
It sounded cynical, and rehearsed, a novelist's theme that might well turn into a treasured golden oldie as she aged and steadily, ritually extinguished her humanness. Pamela Abelard, born again at thirty-two, still trying to find out who she was. He was wary of the part she had defined for him in her quest for justification. He had finished his own quest.
"Hey, Abelard."
His tone startled her. His smile mocked her despair. She frowned.
"Trust your instincts. Start that new book. Put all of us in it. Dr. Luke, and the con man who came to call and was charmed into falling for his victim. Write it; then close the covers on that book and put it on a high shelf, and finally it'll be over with."
"No, it won't," she said tearfully. "Luke's dead and you're alive but I don't know who you are! And I can't write the ending until I know—if I ever will— What do you mean, you fell for me?"