I opened a narrow door and found the closet. It was the size of my broom closet at home, and the single wooden rod held a few cotton dress shirts and some khaki slacks. I checked the shirt labels, feeling guilty again. Polo by Ralph Lauren. What was this beach-bum type doing with dress shirts that retailed for seventy bucks apiece? I wondered. I ran my hand across the rest of the clothes and was surprised to see a navy wool blazer hanging at the end of the clothes rod. The wool was dove soft, good quality, so I felt no compunction at all about checking the label. Hmm. The satin label was from J. Parker’s, the nicest men’s store in Savannah.
The top shelf of the closet held a single suitcase. Good. I lifted the suitcase down and set it on the bed. I took my time folding the clothes neatly and stacking them in the suitcase. I hesitated as I turned to face the dresser, and caught a glimpse of myself in the wavy glass of the mirror. Who was this person? What was she doing here?
Shirts, trousers, and jackets were one thing. But that dresser probably held everything Harry Sorrentino owned. Personal things. It was one thing to pack up the closet. But it was another thing altogether to delve into a stranger’s dresser drawers. I thought about how I’d felt that awful morning I’d peered through the windows of the West Jones Street house and seen the bare floors where my carpets had once lain, the naked walls and windows where my paintings and drapes had once hung. I thought about how I’d felt when I’d discovered that everything, absolutely everything I owned that was not on my back or in my car had been packed up and hauled off by strangers.
I shivered again as I thought about strange men running their hands through my lingerie, dumping my shirts and dresses and sweaters and shoes into cardboard cartons. I could hear them talking about me, about my things, feel their sweaty hands on the flesh of my neck. I sank down onto the bed and sighed. This I could not do to Harry Sorrentino.
Yes, Harry would have to move out. There was no other way. But I wouldn’t take from Harry Sorrentino what Reddy Millbanks—or whatever his name was—had taken from me. I unpacked the suitcase, hung the clothes where I’d found them, and went out to the kitchen to eat my soup and wait for Harry to come home.
I gingerly folded back one corner of the cast net and ate my supper with the television on, nibbling slowly at the cheese and crackers, keeping one ear cocked for the sound of a car in the parking lot. I felt like Goldilocks, waiting for the three bears to return home.
It was cold in the little cabin. I looked around vainly for a thermostat and finally, glumly, conceded that my new home’s only heat was that potbellied stove in the main room. Damn. The West Jones Street house had four fireplaces, but I’d long ago had them all retrofitted with gas logs. The closest I ever came to fire building these days was to push the remote-control button that ignited them.
I sighed and got up to fetch wood, but shrank back when I opened the front door and a gust of wind blew it back in my face. I went into the bedroom, opened the closet doors, and helped myself to a heavy wool-plaid shirt I’d seen there. It was Pendleton. Whoever had bought it the first time around had paid a lot for this shirt. The sleeves hung down to my knees, but I rolled them to my wrists, turned up the collar, and went out to face the elements again in my borrowed finery. At least there was wood. I’d seen it on the porch of the cabin earlier, a tall stack of it, the edge peeking out from a blue tarp. I fetched an armload of logs, topped it with a handful of kindling from an old iron kettle near the door, and went back inside to try and remember my Girl Scout training. Crouching in front of the iron stove, I arranged the wood as our scout leader, Miss Betsy, had instructed all those years ago, in a sort of tepee affair, with the kindling at the bottom, and then crumpled and twisted a sheet of newspaper to act as a torch, holding my breath as I watched the little orange flames lick at the edges of the kindling.
“Come on, baby,” I whispered, unable to take my eyes from my creation. “Burn, baby, burn.”
When the sticks of kindling flared up, I clapped my hands in delight. “Merit badge!” To celebrate my new survival prowess, I opened the bottle of chardonnay, and sat cross-legged on the floor, sipping wine and watching my fire catch and burn. I found the television’s remote control wedged into the arm of the recliner, but there was nothing on except reality shows and bad sitcoms. Annoyed, I shut the television off and went roaming around the room looking for something to read to kill the time.
Harry’s taste in reading was definitely different. I found what looked to be a complete set of first-edition P. G. Wodehouse, as well as what was probably the definitive body of John D. MacDonald’s life’s work, not to mention at least two dozen books about the history of Cuba, one whole shelf of law-school textbooks, and a new-looking autographed copy of The Perfect Storm. Odd. I picked up one of the law books, a torts case study, and found it dog-eared and heavily underlined with green highlighter.
I picked out a Travis McGee paperback with a particularly garish illustration of a raven-haired woman staring down the barrel of a snub-nosed pistol, sat down in the recliner, and slowly immersed myself in the world of the Bahia Mar marina, a place where the gin was cold, the women hot, the steaks rare, and valor even rarer. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that my father had a collection of ratty paperback books like these, which he kept behind closed doors in his den. Boy books. I’d never read a single one, but maybe tonight was the night to give old John D. a try.
The language was so archaic, so politically incorrect, I had to laugh. Travis McGee’s various women were described as cookies, bunnies, beach kittens, hotsies, or broads. He’d never get away with that crap today. Still, there was something to the storytelling, to the honest, unapologetic, yet incredibly evocative way McGee captured pre-Disney Florida, that reminded me of Savannah, way back when. I found myself turning pages eagerly, immersing myself in the world of the Busted Flush. I could taste the humidity of a cypress swamp, hear the buzz of gnats, see the golden sunlight filtering through a curtain of Spanish moss.
Finally, between the heat from the fire and the chardonnay, I started to feel warmth seeping into my body. I leaned the recliner back a little and closed my eyes, suddenly, unavoidably drowsy. At some point, I heard the book fall to the floor. I should pick it up, I thought. Wash out my dinner dishes. Brush my teeth. Floss. Moisturize. Ah, the hell with it. That was my last conscious thought.
Now I was in dreamland, a bikini-clad beach kitten, snuggled up in the stateroom of the Busted Flush, admiring the bronzed brute that was Travis McGee, who’d just saved me from a vicious pack of greedy real estate developers. I tossed my long mane of platinum hair and demurely began to unfasten my bikini top, letting my sun-ripened breasts spill—
“Hey!”
The voice was loud, obnoxious, right in my ear. “What the hell? What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
“Trav?”
“What the hell?”
It was Harry Sorrentino, not Travis McGee, standing there, eyes blazing with righteous indignation, glaring daggers at me. I sat upright, confused, disoriented. Where was I? Who was I?
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, trying to make sense of things. Ah yes, now it came to me. I was BeBe Loudermilk. Failed deb, failed divorcée, penniless, homeless. And about to disenfranchise the wild-eyed maniac standing before me.
“So you’re back,” I said, struggling for my dignity.
“Obviously,” he said. “I live here, remember?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m aware of that.”
“So. What the hell are you doing here, at midnight, wearing my shirt, asleep in my chair? And more to the point, what the hell did you do with my beer?”
“Beer?” I said, blinking rapidly, trying to think back. “I didn’t drink any beer.”
He held up the half bottle of chardonnay. “No. You were drinking this. But you took all my beer out of my refrigerator.”
“Yes,” I said, again. “I did.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving a crop of brown spikes sta
nding on end. “Let me ask you again. What the hell are you doing here?”
I pushed the recliner upright. “I came to tell you something. But you weren’t here. I waited a long time, but it got late, and I was tired, so I fell asleep.”
“What gives you the right to just walk right in here?” he demanded. “What gives you the right to rifle through my belongings, help yourself to my clothes, and by God, what gives you the right to let all my beer get warm?”
I stood up and looked him right in the eye. “Not all of it,” I said. “There are still two bottles in the refrigerator. On the bottom shelf. Behind the soy milk.”
He turned abruptly and stalked into the kitchen. I heard things being shoved aside, and then the sound of clinking bottles, and then the pop and soft fizz of a bottle being opened.
And then he was right back in my face. He had a finger laced around the neck of one bottle. It was half empty. And he had the other bottle in his other hand.
“Let’s try this again,” he said, taking a long pull from the bottle. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
I was trying hard to remember the salient points of the speech I’d composed on the drive out to Tybee. But it was late, and I was woozy.
“I own this place,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I’m aware of that fact,” he said. He glanced at the half-empty wine bottle. “Are you drunk?” He frowned. “Oh. I get it. You’re one of those downtown designer-drug types, right? Is that it? Well, I suggest you don’t try to drive back to town, because the Thunderbolt cops will stop you, sure as hell, and throw your cute little ass in the clink. They just love catching drugged-out debs like you.”
“No!” I said, shrilly. “I don’t do drugs. I had two glasses of wine. Hours ago. I’m just tired, that’s all. I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.”
“Boo-hoo,” he said. “Now, could you please go home? It’s been a long night. I’m tired myself, and I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
“I am home,” I said. “That’s why I came out here. To tell you the situation. And explain my plan.”
“Plan?” He raised one eyebrow. The dog—Jeeves? The same furry white terrier type I’d seen the other day came trotting into the room. He barked one short, indignant bark, baring his teeth at me momentarily, before jumping into the recliner I’d just vacated. The dog turned once, twice, then snuggled itself down into the faded green upholstery, tucking its muzzle down into its paws with a sigh.
“Plan?” Harry leaned over and scratched the dog between its ears. “Why do I need to hear your plan, at midnight, in my living room?”
It was my turn to sigh. Clearly, he wasn’t going to make this any easier for me.
“Look,” I started. “This is not how I wanted to do this. I came out here this afternoon, to tell you. Explain, really, why things have to change.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “And why do they have to change?”
“Because this is about business,” I said, my face flushing, feeling myself going on the defensive. “The Breeze Inn is a business. It may not be a going concern right now. It may, in fact, be a piece-of-crap investment. But, nevertheless, this motel is sitting on a very valuable piece of oceanfront real estate.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said testily.
“Then you must also be aware of the situation I’m in. Through no fault of mine, some real estate developer has bought an option to develop this property. As I told you before, I had nothing to do with that. My lawyer is working to rectify the situation.”
“Your lawyer,” he said, smirking. “Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”
“The point is, until we straighten out that situation, I need to make the Breeze Inn into a profitable business.”
“And?”
I straightened my shoulders, suddenly aware that they were clad in his shirt. “I feel I need to live on-site. And supervise the renovations. Hands on. As it were.”
“Here?” He gestured around the room. “You think you’re going to live here?”
“Well,” I hesitated. “Yes. That’s why I came out here today. To tell you that I’ll be moving in. And you’ll be, um, moving out.”
He ran his fingers through his hair again, flattening out what he’d previously uprooted. He chewed the side of his jaw while he thought about things.
“The hell you say.”
“Yes.”
“Just like that.”
“Well, yes. I’m sorry. But there it is. I was thinking, you could move into another unit. Maybe number seven, the one I looked at yesterday. It’s a little primitive, I’ll admit. But you did say you had the toilets ordered, and the roof is done.”
“Are you nuts? I can’t get that unit ready in less than a week. Anyway, what’s your hurry? I told you, I’ve got things under control. Some plumbing, some roofing, paint. Ten days, it’ll be ready to rent. Okay? Ten days. I swear.” He managed a lopsided grin.
“Hmmpph.” We both turned to stare at the recliner. Jeeves was sound asleep, sighing in his sleep. The sleep of the innocent, I thought.
“The thing is,” I said. “I’m moving in here. Right away.”
He stared at me, still not comprehending. “Here?”
“Right here,” I said. “Right now.”
19
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t do that. You can’t just stroll in here, unannounced, and toss me out. In the middle of the night.”
“It wasn’t the middle of the night when I got here. It was still daylight. And you weren’t around. I had no idea where you were.”
“It’s none of your business where I was,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t have to answer to you.”
The dog sat up suddenly, sniffing the air. Maybe he smelled blood.
“Look,” I said. “This is getting us nowhere. It’s late. I’m tired, you’re tired. Why don’t you just go bunk with a friend tonight, and then tomorrow, you can start getting unit seven ready to move into.”
“No way,” he said, turning on his heel and heading for the kitchen. I watched him, speechless. Was he going to get another beer? A knife maybe?
“You can’t bully me, you know,” I called after him. “Better men than you have tried, and failed. So just face it. I’m here, and I’m staying.”
He clomped back across the room toward me, his arms loaded with folded sheets, a pillow, and a blanket, which he thrust, unceremoniously, into my arms.
“You wanna stay, fine,” he said. “The bedroom’s taken. I see you figured out how to work the woodstove. If I were you, I’d stoke it up a little more before turning in. It’s supposed to get down to forty tonight, and there’s no insulation in these walls. See you in the morning.”
Before I could say anything, he was gone, slamming the bedroom door behind him. Moments later I heard the rasp of a bolt sliding into place.
“Hey!” I called after him. “We’re not done here.”
“I am.”
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hammering on the bedroom door, demanding that he vacate it. For tonight, and tonight only, I would sleep out here. I turned toward the recliner.
Jeeves sat straight up and bared his teeth, a low growl emanating from the back of his throat. “Okay,” I said, backing away. “I get the message. I’ll try the sofa.”
After shoving as many logs into the stove as I could, I spread the sheets and blankets out on the sofa and tried to make myself comfortable, which was a laugh. The sofa looked like something Weezie would have put in a beach house, one of those three-seater rattan numbers, with a narrow seat and three pitifully thin foam-rubber cushions. I turned this way and that, wedged myself against the back, and, finally, exhausted, fell asleep.
Minutes later, it seemed, I heard water running. I opened one eye, then closed it again. It was still pitch-black outside. I’d taken off my watch, but surely it couldn’t be much more than two in the morning. Cold. It was cold as a tomb in the room. I pulled the thin woolen bl
anket over my head and tried to burrow down into the sheets for warmth. I prayed that Harry Sorrentino would come out and stoke up the fire again. Or offer me another blanket. Or better yet, the bedroom. I’d seen a small kerosene heater in there the night before. That bedroom would be toasty warm by now.
I sat up and pulled the blanket around my shoulders. The bedroom door was ajar, and the bathroom door was closed. Puffs of steam escaped under the door. Pale purple light struggled through the glass panes of the French doors. Could it be sunrise, already? I got up, wrapped the blanket around myself, papoose style, then padded over to the doors to look outside.
A stand of beach myrtles, palmettos, and wind-sculpted pines stood out in sharp contrast to the white of the dunes beyond. Off in the distance, I could see the silver of the Atlantic, through a fringe of waving sea oats, illuminated by the slowly rising sun.
I stared out at the peaceful scene. Could this be Tybee? Standing here, staring out at that small, barren stretch of seascape, I could have been on my own private island.
As I watched, a small, stooped figure came marching rapidly down the beach. His bare, bony brown chest gleamed in the gathering sunlight, as did his completely bald head. Long, bony arms pumped at his sides. He wore a skimpy blue Speedo bathing suit, and nothing else except for a set of headphones. I shivered involuntarily. As the old man jogged, his head swung from side to side, and now, an ancient black Labrador retriever came bounding along behind him, crashing joyfully through the surf.
The bathroom door opened then, and Harry Sorrentino emerged in a cloud of steam. His hair was damp, he wore weathered blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. His face was red and I could see a place on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving.
“So you’re up,” he said, nodding in my direction. He strode over to the front door, held it ajar, and gave a sharp whistle. “Jeeves!” he called.
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