Wreckers' Key

by Christine Kling

B.J. and I left Molly’s house in his El Camino around four in the afternoon, and as we pulled out onto Davie Boulevard, I was digging into my shoulder bag looking for the slip of paper Jeannie had given me. I looked up as we passed Andrews Avenue and noticed a bright green truck pull onto Davie behind us.

  “Do you think we could make a little side trip?”

  “Sure, where do you want to go?”

  “Just a sec.” I rummaged through the old gas station receipts and crumpled gum wrappers at the bottom of my bag, and finally found the folded sheet of notebook paper. “Here it is.” I looked around for the green truck— gone. So much weird stuff was happening, I was getting paranoid. I unfolded the paper and read the address aloud to him. “Molly’s right. Let’s just see what kind of condition this guy’s in.”

  Melvin Burke lived in a small two-story apartment building off Las Olas on a street called Isle of Venice, one of many isles between downtown and the beach. It had been a street of small apartment complexes built in the late 1940s and early 1950s for the snowbirds who came down and vacationed from the Northeast. The canals behind the buildings were lined with slips filled mostly with live-aboard sailboats. Many of the older buildings had a distinctly art deco style, but today they were dwarfed by the newly built Mediterranean-style five-story condo complexes, with unit prices starting at one million. The way property values were rising all over South Florida, the owner of the Sea Nymph Apartments must have been holding out for the highest price before selling the land for a teardown. And judging from the condition of the place, he wasn’t doing many repairs while he was waiting.

  As B.J. drove slowly past, I said, “Doesn’t look like any place to raise a kid.” Trash littered the courtyard, and the railings on the upper landing streaked rust down the outside walls. Several windows were missing their awnings.

  “When these buildings are just waiting for demolition like this, the rents get pretty low even though they’re on the water. It’s usually waiters and bartenders, guys who do boat work. Not a bad crowd.”

  We parked a ways up the street from Burke’s building; B.J. backed the truck into a spot and shut the engine off, but left the CD player playing a soft reggae tune. There were six parking places across the way in front of the two-story building. The name Sea Nymph, written in a curly neon aqua-colored script, was partially covered by an overgrown palm tree. All the parking spaces were occupied.

  “So what are we doing here?” B.J. asked.

  I pulled the camera out of my bag. “According to Jeannie, we’re here to document that the gentleman suing me is not incapacitated by his post-traumatic stress.”

  B.J. looked at me with one eyebrow arched way up. “You are going to sit here and wait until the gentleman in question does something you can photograph.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You?”

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “This is going to be interesting. You usually can’t stand waiting for a bagel to toast.”

  “Well, you’ve got to admit, they take forever.”

  He lifted his hands in a gesture that I took to mean he agreed with me. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

  There are some things I don’t do very well, and one of them is waiting. But another thing I don’t do well is admit such things to my friends. I knew that B.J. wasn’t asleep. He was sitting there waiting for me to get tired of waiting, and he was thinking that he wasn’t going to have to wait very long. I really wanted to prove him wrong.

  I checked my watch. It was four twenty-five. I reckoned we’d been sitting there for about ten minutes. It felt like an hour.

  A few minutes later, I heard the ragged growl of an older truck engine. When I looked toward Las Olas Boulevard, I saw a rusted-out white pickup headed our way. It was easy to recognize the bald head through the dusty windshield.

  “Heads up, sleepy. Here comes our guy.”

  B.J. opened one eye and watched as Burke pulled the truck up behind several of the cars that were parked nose-in to the building. He jumped out and disappeared into the courtyard.

  “Surely he won’t be gone long. He’s blocking those other cars. When he comes back out, we’ll follow him, right?”

  “Let’s see what happens.”

  Burke soon appeared again, this time holding on to the end of a couch. His daughter was holding the other end, and she kept having to stop for breaks. Her arms, less than half the diameter of his, weren’t strong enough for the weight. At that distance, we couldn’t really make out the words, but it was obvious from his gestures that he was getting more and more angry with her.

  I snapped a couple of pictures of him loading the couch into the back of the truck before the two of them disappeared into the courtyard again.

  The next person to emerge from the Sea Nymph Apartments wasn’t Melvin Burke. This guy wore jeans, boat shoes, and large Polaroid glasses. He wasn’t a big fellow, but his white Guy Harvey T-shirt did little to conceal the enormous beer gut that hung over his belt. I didn’t need to be Nancy Drew to peg him as a fisherman. When he came around the corner and saw the truck that was blocking his Ford Explorer, he started cussing, and I had no trouble at all hearing him.

  Melvin seemed destined to have bad timing. He came out of the courtyard walking backward, his meaty hands grasping one side of a Formica dining table.

  “Are you the fucking asshole blocking me in?”

  “Who the fuck you calling an asshole?”

  Burke dropped his end of the table and assumed a stance with his legs spread shoulder width apart, his hands balled into fists.

  Within seconds they were almost belly-to-belly and their verbal exchange had been reduced to the word fuck used as noun, verb, adjective, and a few other parts of speech I couldn’t remember from high school. When they’d yell at each other, they’d rise up on their tiptoes, tilting their heads from side to side.

  The fisherman was the first to take a swing, and then they were down in the dust and gravel, fists flailing, for the most part ineffectually.

  I paused for a moment from snapping photos to glance at B.J. “You going to go break it up?”

  “Not unless the little girl gets involved.”

  I shook my head. “Not likely. I think she’s enjoying it as much as we are.”

  XXII

  Morning light works best for painters. After another night of fitful sleep, I rose in the dark, collected my supplies, and carried my easel out into the Larsens’ yard just as the sky was starting to go gray. I’d been working for a while on a painting of my cottage. I had a photo of a great blue heron I had seen one morning on the seawall, but I wanted to paint it the way it looked in the first hour after sunrise. Painting helps me clear my mind. It blows out the fog and allows me to see what’s there without looking directly at it. I felt as though some answer to all my questions was right there in front of me, like that elusive spot in your eyes that comes from staring into a bright light. The more you try to look right at the spot, the less likely you are to see it.

  By eight o’clock, I decided to take a break and I went inside to make some coffee. The real stuff, not the powdered kind I usually resort to. I felt good for a change, and I was even beginning to think about eating some breakfast. I was on my way back out the door when I heard Abaco bark once. By the time I got outside, she was bounding over to greet Ben Baker as he rounded the side of the big house.

  “This is a surprise,” I said. Ben was wearing a royal blue jogging suit, and his hair was still damp and slicked back. His face flushed from exercise, he looked like he was ready to model for an ad for men’s cologne.

  “I decided to drop by on my way home from the gym.”

  “How did you find me?” I tried to make my voice even and natural.

  “It wasn’t hard. Seems half the folks in this town know where you live. I asked in the Downtowner last night and three guys gave me three different sets of directions.” He walked up behind me and examined the painting over my shoul
der. “Nice.”

  I, too, was staring at the painting. It was nearly finished, but something wasn’t right yet. There was something I wasn’t seeing. “I thought you’d left yesterday.”

  “Change of plans. Something came up.” He jingled the keys in his jacket pocket. “I remember watching your mother paint. Before she—” He stopped, apparently unsure how to phrase it.

  “It’s okay to talk about it,” I said, turning away from the painting and facing him. “You were going to say before she died. Before she killed herself. It’s okay. It was a long, long time ago.”

  He smiled that big toothy smile and I swear, if I hadn’t had a job in the next couple of hours I might have asked him to pose for me. He looked great.

  “I am leaving this morning, though, and thought I’d stop by and make one last stab at getting you to join me for a meal. You look like you could use it. I don’t suppose I can get you to join me for breakfast at Lester’s Diner?”

  I laughed. “Like old times? Just me and Glub?” In high school, Molly was the first one of us with a car, and she used to take us out to Lester’s sometimes before school in the morning.

  “Yeah, like the old days. When we were buddies.”

  I liked that. I figured it was his way of telling me that even if I was with B.J. right now, he and I could still be friends. I wasn’t ready to close this door just yet. “I’m afraid not, Ben. I’ve got to work this morning. Gotta be at Bahia Mar at ten to pick up a tow.”

  “Too bad. You keep turning me down and I’m going to get a complex. I was even going to pop for mimosas.”

  “Yeah right, at Lester’s.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to eat all alone before my long lonesome drive.”

  “Nice try. At least you’re driving.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My Jeep. It’s been acting up.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s wrong?”

  “Coughing, sputtering, stalling. I don’t know if the problem is with fuel or air. I haven’t had time to deal with it. And I don’t know when I will have time. By the time I finish this job today, it’ll be too late to take it anywhere. I have to be someplace for dinner tonight at five.” He opened his mouth as though he was going to say something, then looked at his watch. “If I didn’t have a charter this afternoon, I’d offer to take a look at it myself. Not that I’m much of a mechanic.”

  “That’s okay.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Why don’t you take it out to Gramps. Seriously. He’d love to help you out, and there isn’t a better mechanic in South Florida—especially when it comes to older engines like yours. Not only that, he’s open twenty-four hours.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll be doing him a favor. He gets lonely out there. I’ll call him on my cell on my way out of town. He’ll be expecting you. No matter what time you get there.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I turned back to face my canvas. “So I guess this is good-bye again.” He stepped behind me to look at the painting one last time and placed his hands on my shoulders. When he spoke he was so close I felt his breath on my ear. “I think you’re a better painter now than your mother was.”

  I wasn’t seeing the painting or the river anymore. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing because I wanted to say something and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. “Thanks, Ben.” My voice was low and breathy. I cleared my throat. “I wish I’d known her better. I remember her as this tall, beautiful woman who seemed to shine with inner light.”

  “Yeah,” he said over my shoulder in a whisper. “You’re very much like her, only better.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. Then I realized I’d been holding my breath and when I exhaled a faint moan escaped from deep inside. This wasn’t right, I knew it, but there was a connection between us that was growing harder to ignore.

  “You know,” he said. “We have something else in common now, too.”

  “What?”

  “Our mothers. We’ve both lost our mothers.”

  “That’s right. You told me that in Key West. I’m sorry, Ben.”

  “My mother was a suicide, too.” I felt his fingers tighten on my shoulders as he said the words.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. That it didn’t surprise me? That she was probably better off? You can’t always say the things you’re thinking.

  “Your mother didn’t have an easy life, Ben.”

  He turned me around to face him and stared at me through narrowed eyes. “It wasn’t what you thought. What you saw that night. I knew you were there. I saw you. But it wasn’t what you thought.” He paused and held his breath as though he were on the verge of doing something explosive. Then he turned around and stalked off toward the Larsens’ gate.

  To his back, I said, “I didn’t think anything, Ben. We were just kids.”

  He paused at the gate then half turned. When he spoke, his head was lifted as though he was examining the side of the Larsens’ house. “Everyone always blamed him. But women—” He paused as though searching for the words. “They get away with stuff.” Then he was gone.

  I thought back to that night and played the memory through, trying to see it from an adult point of view. We’d both been fourteen years old, that age of rapid growth and raging hormones. As a girl, I had matured faster and I’d already reached my adult height of five foot ten. Ben was about five inches shorter and his voice was still high and soft. I had been sleeping that night when I heard tapping at my bedroom window.

  “Seychelle! ”

  It’s Ben and he’s crying.

  The screen is permanently off my window, as Molly and Ben and I frequently use this method of entering and exiting to stay under our parents’ radar. I slide up the window, and Ben props his bike against the wall and climbs through.

  He tells a story that’s grown familiar to me. His parents are fighting again, he says, and he doesn’t want to go home. He says he wants to protect his mother, but his father is too big, too strong. As he says this, he wipes the snot from his nose on the back of his hand and he tells me he knows that his father will kill both him and his mother someday. He asks me to help him run away. There’s something about this night that makes it different from all the others. There’s an urgency in Ben that frightens me. He makes me promise that I won’t let his father kill him and I promise, knowing full well that Mr. Baker scares me to death.

  Ben is acting crazy. He’s pacing the floor of my room talking to himself. I consider asking him to spend the night on the floor of my room when the window slides up and out of the darkness Junior Baker’s voice speaks a single word.

  “Come.”

  I’ve never seen such terror in a kid’s eyes. Those eyes are begging me to do something but I can’t breathe, much less speak or move. As Ben crosses the terrazzo floor, I see and smell the trickle of urine that follows his footsteps. I want to grab his shirt and pull him back because I’m afraid I’ll never see my friend again. Then Ben’s father reaches through the window and grabs one of his son’s pant legs and mumbles, “Fuck,” as he pulls the wet denim out the window.

  When I can feel my limbs again, I cross to the window, but they are gone. I run down the hall and awaken my father, telling him that I am afraid for Ben, afraid that his father is going to beat him, maybe kill him. My father tells me to go to bed. He says that I am exaggerating, and we cannot intervene. He tells me again to go back to bed, that Ben will be fine, and I know that this time my father is wrong. When I return to my room and see that trail of pee, I pull on clothes over my pajamas and climb out the window.

  The street is quiet, the houses all dark. Bugs circle in the cone of light under a street lamp. I move slowly down the walkway that leads to the backyard gate and to his window. I don’t hear any shouting or any crying, and this surprises me.

  His room is dark, the window still open. A shaft of light from the streetlight shows the big lump in his bed.

  “Ben,” I whisper.

&nb
sp; The lump shifts. Two heads pop up. I duck back behind the wall, my heart pounding loud, but not so loud I can’t hear Ben’s mother say, “Ben, who was that?”

  I run all the way home.

  I hadn’t thought it then, and I wouldn’t have been thinking it now if he hadn’t brought it up. Was it possible? What had I thought back then? That his mother was comforting him after his father had beat the crap out of him. Could it have been something else? I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I motored down the river. I’d always thought I’d had it tough with my mother, with her bad days and over-the-top manic hysterics. But if what I now suspected was true, what was happening inside Ben’s house explained a great deal about his not ever wanting to go home.

  I got to Bahia Mar and tied up Gorda in an empty slip close to Wild Matilda, a Ron Holland 43. The owner had been using my family to look after his boat since Red used to run the business. The owner was an engineer who lived in DC and used the sailboat as his Florida vacation home. He didn’t like to have to come down and waste his precious free time seeing to haul-outs and maintenance, so he hired me to get the boat up to the yard and to keep an eye on it over the next three weeks while the guys at River Bend Boatyard got all her systems back in top working order. Most years, I would just show up and motor the sailboat to the yard under her own steam, but this year the engine had been overheating at the dock when I’d just been doing routine maintenance, so rather than risk losing power on the river, I was going to tow her up.

  At quarter after ten, I was beginning to get upset with Quentin. I wanted to get up the river while the tide was still running out so it would be easier to maneuver the two boats when we had to wait in the tight spaces between the bridges. I had already rigged the towline on the bow of the sailboat and readied the dock lines and fenders to make it easier to cast off. I’d also run the engine a few minutes to make sure it would start in case we needed it. I was just waiting on my crew.

  By ten thirty, I had shifted from mad to worried. Where the hell was he? Had he gotten lost? Bahia Mar was a huge place; maybe he’d forgotten the slip number and the name of the boat. He’d always seemed to have no trouble getting around without a car, but if he was relying on the bus, there was no telling what time he might show up. If he didn’t come soon, though, I’d have to risk running upriver with the tide behind me or cancel the trip until tomorrow or the next time I could schedule a haul at River Bend.