“I was right?”
“Sure were, honey. Right as rain. It’s me who ought to be apologizing.”
“I was right? That doesn’t make sense. I was wrong.”
“Nope. You had the man, all right. Leon Stokes. I had no idea, you understand. I was just giving him a lift over to Auburndale, where he said he had some friends who were putting him up a while. If I’d have known, well …”
“No, no, you don’t understand,” Bob says. “I was wrong! It doesn’t matter that I was right about the guy; I was acting crazy. I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? I mean, Jesus, Marguerite, I could’ve shot the guy, and I didn’t even know it was the guy.”
“Yeah, and you would’ve done a lot of people a favor, probably, if you had shot him.”
“No, listen, you don’t understand. Listen, I really do need to talk with you. Can we get together, can we meet someplace? After you get off from work?”
There is a long silence, and finally Marguerite says in a quiet, steady voice, “I don’t think we should meet, Bob.”
“What? Why?”
“Bob, it’s over now between us. Right?”
“Well, yeah, sure.”
“There’s no sense firing it all up again. It was nice and … and interesting for a while, and we’re friends now and all. But we shouldn’t see each other anymore. Besides, I got a man now, and he wouldn’t like it….”
“Aw, Christ!” Bob bawls. “Jesus H. Christ! You got a man now. I suppose a black man.”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.” Her voice has gone cold.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing at all. Look, I’m just … I’m disappointed, that’s all. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk with you, see, about stuff. Eddie and all, I guess, and oh, Jesus, what the hell does it matter? I’m really sorry for everything. You … you’re fine, you’re wonderful. Don’t worry, I won’t come around or call you anymore or anything. Don’t worry, I understand. Well, look,” he says, changing gears, “I got to go now, I gotta arrange Eddie’s funeral and all, and his wife is flying down from Connecticut….”
“I’m real sorry about your brother, Bob.”
“Yeah, well, I guess he was a lot worse off than anybody thought. Look, I got to go. It’s been good talking to you.”
“I’m real sorry, Bob.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Goodbye,” she says, and quickly hangs up. He holds the dead receiver in his hand for several minutes, then places it slowly back in its cradle. The blood on his hands has dried to a dark brown map.
He stands, studies the wreckage that surrounds him, and walks slowly through the living room to the front door, opens it and walks outside, leaving the door wide open behind him. It’s still raining, a dense, straight, windless rain from a low, overhanging sky. Bob wants to keep going, but he doesn’t know where to go. He wants to get into his car and back it slowly down the driveway to the road, turn and head out of here, light out of Florida altogether. But to where? He can’t go back to New Hampshire, and there are no new places anymore, none that he can imagine, and if he heads south again, back to Miami and the Keys, it’ll be as if he’s gone in a circle. He turns and returns to Eddie’s house and slowly, methodically, starts cleaning up the mess his brother has left behind.
9
Bob is seated aft in the Angel Blue in one of the fighting chairs, swiveling it idly from side to side. Ave emerges from the galley carrying two king-sized cans of Schlitz. “Here you go,” he says, handing one of the cans to Bob.
It’s dark, the boat is tied up in her slip in the marina next to the Belinda Blue, and there’s a three-quarter moon in the eastern sky, scraps of silver cloud drifting across its face. A pair of pelicans perched on a piling near the bow of the Belinda Blue seem to watch the two men. The boats rock gently in the still water, and along the pier here and there a man and a woman or sometimes several men and several women sit aboard their boats and talk and drink. Behind them, at the end of the pier, the jukebox in the Clam Shack is playing a Kenny Rogers song about a gambler.
“Sorry I couldn’t see you yesterday or sooner today,” Ave says as he eases into the other fighting chair. He’s barefoot, wearing shorts and a zippered nylon jacket. His long reddish hair fluffs out from his head like an aureole, and the pale hairs on his tanned legs and the backs of his hands shine in the moonlight like straw. He puts his feet out and rests them on the gunwale and lights a cigarette, offering the pack to Bob.
“No, thanks.” Bob is dressed, as usual, in chinos and white tee shirt, and tonight he’s got his captain’s hat on. He takes a sip of beer. “No, that’s okay. I had a lot to do anyhow the last couple of days, with the funeral and all. And then I had a party of six this morning to take out. This’s the first chance I’ve had to sit still for more’n ten minutes.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get back till real late last night. And then I had some business to take care of today, so, yeah, me too,” Ave says. He studies the pelicans a second, as if aiming a weapon at their long, drooping heads. “You know how I feel about Eddie, Bob. I’m real sorry. Whew! Incredible, isn’t it? Who’d have figured it? You know?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, who’d have figured ol’ Fast Eddie would take the fucking pipe?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s … ah, there’s no way it was accidental or something, is there? I mean, he was epileptic, I remember, and funny things happen sometimes.”
Bob snorts. “No way. I found the body, his body. He was having them, seizures, quite a lot lately, but no, this was his own doing, his decision.”
“Jesus. I just can’t believe it. You know? There’s no way it coulda been fixed up? You know, arranged. He was playing with some pretty heavy dudes up there, and maybe …”
“No. They did an autopsy.”
“Incredible, man. Just fucking incredible. Ol’ Fast Eddie, always running around yakking and laughing his head off, a million theories. Good hockey player, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Incredible, though. I just can’t figure it.”
“Well, Eddie wasn’t what he seemed, that’s all. And it took something like this, I guess, to let us know that.”
“Yeah.” Ave takes another slug from his Schlitz. “A lot of people aren’t what they seem. You know?”
“Yeah.”
The men are silent for a moment, and then Ave says, “Honduras told me you fucked her the other night.”
Bob says nothing, looks down at the top of the can of Schlitz as if lowering his head to pray. “Honduras told you that?”
“Yeah. True?”
Bob is silent, and then he says, “Well, Ave, what if I said no? What if I said I drove over here the other night looking for you, and you weren’t here, so she gave me some grass and some coke and then came on to me, only I turned her down? What if I said that?”
“You saying that’s what happened?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Ave. If I did fuck her, why would she turn around and tell you? It only makes sense for her to claim I fucked her if instead what I did was turn her down. She’d hafta be pretty pissed at me, wouldn’t she?”
Ave scratches his pointed chin. “She’s a strange girl, lots of weirdness there. But she doesn’t fuck my friends. Not while she’s fucking me, anyhow. She knows that. And my friends, they don’t fuck her, either. They’re supposed to know that. Did you fuck her, Bob?”