by Elaine Viets
“It looks like the African Queen,” Helen said, as she climbed into the boat. She admired the open boat’s beautifully polished wood. On the short ride to the restaurant, Cal pointed out the old black lighthouse that gave the point its name. He ignored the tip jar. Maybe he was supposed to. Helen didn’t know the tipping custom for boats that took you to a restaurant.
All too soon, the boat docked, and they walked up the path to the long gray restaurant. Helen saw the waterline on the building’s side from a long-ago flood. A rotund yellow cat greeted them at the entrance.
“I wonder if Kitty got that fat on Cap’s food?” Cal said. Helen thought it was nice that he stopped to pet the cat.
Helen liked everything about Cap’s: its timeworn wood, the bare yellow light bulbs in white porcelain sockets, even the sound her sandals made on the uneven floors. She examined the photos of Floridians from around 1900, young men fishing in heavy wool suits. “How could they stand those clothes down here?” she asked Cal.
She’d never had salad with fresh hearts of palm before. She liked its odd nutty taste. She had the pecan-crusted mahi-mahi. Cal had the blackened grouper. They both ordered Key lime pie.
When the check came, Cal presented it to her with a flourish. “You pick up this one,” he said. “The next dinner is on me. I’ll take you to another Florida favorite, Catfish Dewey’s. I have to be in Tampa all week. Could you go next Saturday?”
Helen was so surprised, she agreed. Good thing she’d brought that hundred bucks. The dinner cost seventy-two dollars. She couldn’t afford it, but she was tired of worrying about money. It had been a wonderful evening.
“Maybe I’m the tightwad,” she told herself. But another part answered, “Cal was supposed to buy the dinner. He invited you. Remember what Margery said about never going to dinner with him?”
Cap’s boat brought them back by moonrise. The black waterway was sliced by the blinding white, rotating, lighthouse beam. The wedding cake yachts were lighted now. The interiors were molten gold against the dark velvet sky, but Helen saw no people inside.
Helen shivered in the chill night air. Cal put his arm around her, but she still felt cold.
On Monday morning, Helen didn’t have to ask how the evening went. Christina’s face said it all. She looked tired and old. Her hair was limp and unwashed. She had an ugly zit on her chin. She had no ring on her finger.
Christina slammed down the phone on a good customer. She broke a nail. She yelled at the florist that the flowers weren’t fresh enough. And she rejected one would-be customer after another, like a Roman empress sending slaves to their deaths. Their fatal fashion errors ranged from cheap shoes to bad pants. Helen prayed for the day to be over. She was afraid no one would get into Juliana’s today.
But Brittney wafted through the green door at eleven, looking gorgeous in a red floral Diane vonFurstenberg dress and incredibly high Sergio Rossi heels. She put her dainty foot right in her pretty pink mouth.
“So, what was the surprise from Key West?” Brittney said in that caressing whisper. “Did Joe give you a ring? A tennis bracelet?”
“A goddamn cat,” Christina snarled. “All that for a fucking cat.”
Helen had never heard Christina use those words before.
“But you like cats,” Brittney said. “You’ve been saying you wanted one for months.”
“And Joe’s been saying he’s going to get me a ring for months. Instead I got a counterfeit cat.”
“It’s not a real cat?” Brittney looked confused. Helen did, too.
“Of course it’s real. But the dumb shit thought he was buying me a real Hemingway cat. You know about them?”
Helen and Brittney both shook their heads no.
“Ernest Hemingway had a bunch of six-toed cats at his house in Key West. The house is a museum now, and their descendants are still at the Hemingway Home. Those cats live like kings. They’re a tourist attraction.
“Joe paid fifty bucks to a guy in a Key West bar who supposedly sold him a real Hemingway cat. But the Hemingway cats aren’t for sale. The Hemingway Home doesn’t adopt out the kittens, either. I knew that. Everyone knew that except Joe, who was so stupid he bought a cat in a bar. I told him he was an idiot. I was so pissed, I grabbed the cat and left. Now I’m stuck with this counterfeit six-toed cat.”
“It could still be a real Hemingway cat,” Brittney said. “Maybe it’s one who climbed over the fence to meet her boyfriend.”
“Then she got screwed and abandoned, too,” Christina said. Tears glittered in her eyes.
“There, there, baby, don’t cry,” Brittney cooed. “You’ll get wrinkles. No man is worth that. I know you like cats. You’ve probably fallen in love with this one already. I bet you even have some pictures to show us.”
“Well, a few Polaroids,” Christina said, sniffling.
She pulled two out of her purse. At first Helen thought Christina was showing her a picture of a plush toy. The cat had a cuddly body that made her want to pick him up and hug him. His golden-green eyes were wise. His gray striped tail was majestic. The cat’s dignified manner contrasted with his comical fur coat. His gray tabby stripes were interrupted by big white patches, like blank spaces.
Then Helen saw the paws. That cat had the biggest front feet Helen had ever seen on any cat anywhere. On the front paws, the sixth toe stuck out like the thumb on a mitten.
“Those are the famous six toes,” Christina said. “I’m calling him Thumbs.”
“Big Foot would be more like it,” Helen said, then regretted it.
“He’s adorable,” Brittney squealed. “I love him. I wish I had him.”
“You do?” Christina said, surprised.
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks for Thumbs,” Brittney said.
“He’s not for sale,” Christina said.
“Two hundred,” Brittney said, briskly upping the bidding.
“Nope,” Christina said.
“I’ll give you five hundred,” Brittney said. “Cash.”
“I’ll get your five hundred some other way,” Christina said, rather nastily. “I’m keeping this cat.”
Helen wondered if Brittney had staged the cat auction to make Christina feel better. Or did this absolutely perfect female fall in love at first sight with the oddly imperfect feline?
For whatever reason, Christina now wanted Thumbs. “He’s the only man I’m sleeping with now,” she joked, “and he’s always faithful.”
That relationship would outlast Christina’s romance with Joe. Christina couldn’t stop seething over her disappointing evening. The more she talked it over with Brittney, the more determined she was to end it.
“I’m dumping that man,” she told Brittney. “I can’t wait any longer. It’s time I found someone who wants to marry me. I’m telling him tonight.”
Maybe Christina secretly hoped Joe would apologize and promise to marry her. Or maybe she wanted to dump him first, before he dumped her. But Christina didn’t even get that pleasure. Joe broke off their relationship—by cell phone—before noon. He told her good-bye. Christina told him to take a flying leap. It was a sad and sorry end to her hopes of yesterday.
Now all Christina wanted was revenge.
“I still have Joe’s Neiman Marcus charge card,” Christina said. “I’m going to call and charge a diamond tennis bracelet. I’ll get it one way or the other.”
“ ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,’ ” Brittney whispered. Helen thought she sounded a lot like Lorelei Lee, the character who first said those words.
Christina didn’t score the tennis bracelet. The crafty Joe had canceled that card.
“I’ve got one Joe doesn’t know I have,” Christina said. “It’s an old MasterCard. He thinks it was maxed out. But I know it still has two thousand dollars left. I was saving it for a rainy day. Well, it’s pouring now.”
“You go, girl,” Brittney said.
As a test, Christina tried for a five-hundred-dollar cash advance at the ATM across th
e street. She came back waving the money triumphantly.
“The spree is on. I have fifteen hundred left,” she said. “Now we have to decide how to spend it fast.”
“That won’t get you a decent tennis bracelet. Or even any serious clothes,” Brittney said sadly.
“I’m spending this on something more lasting than clothes,” Christina said.
Good, thought Helen. Finally, a sensible decision. “You could get a computer for that,” she said.
“Waste of time,” Christina said.
“Staring at the screen gives you heinous wrinkles,” Brittney said.
“I know! I’ll spend Joe’s money on my biopolymer treatments. I’ll have Doctor Mariposa fill in all my wrinkles. Joe can buy me a new man.”
“Brilliant!” Brittney said.
Dumb, Helen thought.
She listened distractedly as Christina called the doctor and made an appointment.
Brittney applauded. Helen was appalled. She’d learned a little more about biopolymer injections since she’d first met Brittney. They’d been featured in a TV exposé. “You don’t want to do that,” Helen said. “That stuff is illegal. The doctor is injecting liquid silicone right into your face. If your body rejects it, you’ll have these lumps on your face. Haven’t you seen the stories about it on TV? It left those women horribly disfigured.”
“It worked for me,” Brittney said with a seductive hiss, like the snake in the Garden of Eden. Her flawless face was Christina’s temptation. She wanted to look as young and beautiful as Brittney.
“You are lucky, Brittney,” Helen said.
“So am I,” Christina said, defiantly. But Helen knew she was not.
Chapter 6
The rest of the afternoon, Christina and Brittney plotted revenge against Joe. The two women huddled on the black love seats like sorceresses casting spells, furious and beautiful and frightening. If Joe, or any other man, had walked into the store, they would have torn him apart with their teeth and nails.
At least they can’t turn Joe into a toad, Helen thought. He already is one.
Helen didn’t want to listen to their plots. But their soft, insinuating whispers were somehow louder than ordinary conversation. Helen caught about every third sentence, no matter how much she tried to block it out.
She heard them say, “Turn him into the IRS . . . reward . . . How about Immigration? No, not them. Bad idea. . . . Some guys in Miami would like to know what he’s up to, though, and they aren’t as nice as the IRS. . . . Brittney, what about your old boyfriend, Vinnie? . . . When I finish, Joe will wish he was never born.”
Helen wished a customer would come in, but no one did. She wished the phone would ring. That wish was granted. Even better, the caller was Sarah, the woman Christina had declared too fat to enter Juliana’s.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back with you sooner,” Sarah said. “I was on vacation at Atlantis in the Bahamas.”
“Very chic. Also, very expensive. Did your boyfriend take you?”
“What boyfriend?” Sarah said. “I took myself. I met a guy while I was there, though.”
“Anything serious?”
“No, thank God.”
Juliana’s world of desperate, dependent women fell away. Helen was talking with a working woman now. This was her world, and she knew the rules.
“If you can afford Atlantis, you must be doing well,” Helen said. “Where are you working?”
“It would take too long to explain. Why don’t you come to my place on the beach for dinner tonight?”
“I’d love to, but my car’s in the shop,” Helen lied. She was too proud to admit she didn’t have the money to fix it.
“Then I’ll pick you up after work,” Sarah said. “I’m doing research at the downtown library this afternoon. I can swing by Juliana’s on my way home. I’ll fix dinner. Nothing fancy. Do you like Florida lobsters?”
“Love them,” Helen said. “I think they’re tastier than Maine lobsters. What can I bring?”
“Just yourself.”
Helen walked over by the Federal Highway and spent her lunch money buying flowers from the young Cuban woman who sold roses and sunflowers on the street corner. She’d fill up on rice cakes.
At six that night, Sarah pulled in front of Juliana’s in her new green Range Rover and honked. Helen ran out with her flowers. She invited Sarah inside, but was relieved when her friend said no. Helen didn’t want to argue with the witchy Christina about the fat and unfashionable.
Sarah lived in Hollywood, a beach town between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Hollywood Beach was lost in the Fifties. The beach was lined with pastel two-story motels and tiny Deco beach houses. Sarah lived next to the Bel-Aire Beach Motel in a five-story condo right on the ocean.
The condo was pretty, but the ocean view was stunning. The turquoise-blue ocean melted into the deeper blue sky streaked cerise and gold by the sunset. The sunset turned the sand a golden pink.
The beach was nearly empty. But below Sarah’s deck was a wide strip of asphalt with a continual parade of people. “They are my entertainment,” Sarah said. “It’s better than TV.”
While Sarah and Helen ate chilled lobsters and salad on the deck, they saw a man ride by on a fat-tired bicycle, a big blue macaw sitting solemnly on his handle bars. He was followed by a woman in a motorized wheelchair, sailing majestically down the boardwalk. Her black-and-white Boston terrier stood in the front of the vehicle like a figurehead on a ship. A Cuban family giggled and ate drippy ice-cream cones. Roller bladers in black spandex skated around children on scooters.
“This is charming,” Helen said. “And there’s not a liposuction or a facelift in the bunch.”
“Not around here,” Sarah said, patting her generous tummy. A charm bracelet jingled cheerfully on her shapely wrist. “Want to go for a walk after dinner?”
They joined the throng, passing dozens of little restaurants: Angelo’s Corner, Ocean Alley, and Istanbul, a Turkish restaurant.
At a T-shirt shop, they read the shirt slogans. “We divorced for religious reasons. My husband thought he was God,” one said.
“That describes my ex,” Sarah said.
“Mine thought he was the devil in bed,” Helen said. “I came home from work early one afternoon and caught him with our next-door neighbor. Right in the act.”
“That must have been awful.”
“It was. I never realized Rob had such a hairy butt,” Helen said.
“I hope you screwed him back in the divorce,” Sarah said.
“I just wanted to get away from him,” Helen said, truthfully. “Listen, I need to apologize about what happened at Juliana’s last week. There was no excuse. It was rude.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I know the store doesn’t want a large woman like me in there,” Sarah said. “I’m bad for Juliana’s image.” Helen looked at her curly-haired friend in her cool white linen jacket and felt worse.
“That’s stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Sarah said. “It’s not important to me. I heard you were working there, and I wanted to stop by and say hello.”
“So what do you do these days?” Helen asked. They’d talked too much about her.
“As little as possible,” Sarah said, and grinned.
“No, seriously.”
“I live on the beach. I made some money in investments, and I don’t have to work fulltime. I take a few consulting jobs when I feel like it. But I’ll never have to wear pantyhose again. And you know what? I don’t miss the office one bit. I originally moved to Florida to take care of my mother. She had cancer. I nursed her for two years. She died in February of 2000.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said.
“I am, too. I miss Mom. When she passed away, she left me some property, including this condo. I wanted to live here, but her tenant’s lease wasn’t up until last month.”
“So that’s why you left the Coronado,” Helen said.
“Yeah, I liked it there, but I wan
ted my own place. I sold Mom’s other property and sank the money into Krispy Kreme stock.”
“Doughnuts?”
“I love those suckers. You can tell that by looking at me,” Sarah said. “When I bought it, all the financial advisors said that Krispy Kreme was expected to be a poor performer, but I thought anything that good was sure to succeed. I put all my inheritance into Krispy Kreme stock. Bought it at the IPO price of twenty-one dollars.”
“Did you just say IPO?” Helen said. “The women I hang around with now think that’s a French designer.”
“Nope, it was a tasty deal,” Sarah said. “Stock shot up like a rocket. I sold it when it hit sixty dollars a share. That was a good time to get out. It started tumbling soon after. I kept a few shares for sentimental reasons. Then I took most of that money and sank it into adult diaper stock.”
“From doughnuts to diapers? Why?” Helen said. “That’s a weird choice.”
“Not at all. When my mother was sick, I couldn’t get this one brand, because it was so popular. I had friends on the lookout for it all over the country. They would ship it to me. I figured anything so in demand was only going to go up. Besides, none of us boomers are getting any younger. Adult diapers are a growth industry. So I bought diaper stock and made more money. Then I sold it again.
“I only bought companies I liked—and sold what I didn’t. It was such a satisfying way to do business. When my old ink-jet printer died, I bought this highly recommended laser printer. It was a turkey. I was on the phone all day, arguing with customer service. I sold that stock the next day. Good thing, too. The company announced major lay-offs a month later, and that stock went down the tube.”
“They all went down the tube after September eleventh,” Helen said, with a sigh.
“I was mostly out of the market by then and into nice, safe T-bonds,” Sarah said. “I hope you weren’t caught in the crash.”
“I had airline stock,” Helen said. “And Enron.”
“Oh,” Sarah said. There was nothing else to say. Helen didn’t mention that the stock market crash made it hard for her to pay her lawyer. That’s where most of her money went—to the man who abandoned her in court.