“Everything okay?” I said.
She nodded. “Never better,” she said, and I had to hope that she would be more convincing when the cameras began to roll.
I sat down in my chair and took a sip of my mojito. Perhaps the rum loosened my tongue, but as my drink shrank, the silence grew, and I finally just blurted it out.
“Are you happy?” I said.
“Me?” Jackie said, looking at me as if I had suggested something improper. She shook her head and looked out over the water of Biscayne Bay, and then picked up her mojito and gulped down the rest of it, and, still looking out at the Bay, she said, “Of course I’m happy. I have everything that anybody could ever want.” She looked down at her empty glass. “Except more mojitos. Call down for a pitcher, okay?” She put her glass on the table and stood up. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said, and in a faint swirl of perfume she was gone.
I sniffed at her vapor trail and settled back into my chair, feeling like a total ninny. Why was I thinking such things, asking such stupid questions? I tried to remember the warning signs of the apocalypse; I was pretty sure they didn’t include talking philosophy with a TV star, but maybe the Council of Nicea had cut that one from the list.
I called room service for more mojitos. They arrived just as Jackie returned, and the waiter nearly fell over the railing as he tried to hold the tray and pull out the chair for Jackie at the same time. Jackie settled into her chair and gave him a tired smile, and he bounced back out the door, beaming as if he had just been elected fifth-grade class president.
I put the chain on the door behind him and came back out onto the balcony. Jackie was slumped down in her chair, looking out over the water with the rim of her glass resting on her lower lip. I sat down, wondering what had turned her mood so sour. I supposed it was just the strain of being stalked. But what if it was me? What if something I had said or done-or not said or done-was making her upset? That would be disastrous; it would totally demolish my new fantasy life as Captain Entourage. I tried to think of how I might have offended, and came up empty. My behavior had been exemplary.
Yet something was clearly bothering her. Perhaps it was her blood sugar-she didn’t eat enough to keep a hamster alive, and the unerring bioclock inside Dexter was saying it was definitely time for dinner.
But before I could frame a polite suggestion that food might be just the thing to restore her physical and mental health, my cell phone began to chirp. I took it out and looked at the screen; it was Rita. “Oh,” I said to Jackie. “Excuse me.” She just nodded without looking up, and I answered the phone.
“Hi,” I said, with as much good cheer as I could manufacture.
“You said you would call,” Rita said. “And that was Monday-and Deborah says it’s something risky? But I can’t really tell what she means, and- Do you have clean socks?”
“Yes, I have socks,” I said, glancing at Jackie and hoping she was too busy musing to hear me.
“You always lose your socks,” Rita said. “And you hate when they’re dirty-remember that time in Key West? And they cost twice as much down there.”
“Well, I’m not in Key West,” I said. “And I have some clean socks.”
The corner of Jackie’s mouth began to twitch, and although I hoped she was only remembering a really good knock-knock joke, I had the distinct and unpleasant feeling that she was trying very hard not to laugh at me.
“Do you have any idea how long?” Rita said. “And there are some heavy boxes here, stuff from the garage; I can’t carry them. But they have to go to- Oh. The power is on now? And the insurance company said the new house has a market value much higher than- Astor, I’m talking on the phone. Astor, please! Are you still there, Dexter?”
“I’m here,” I said. “How are the kids?”
“Lily Anne has a tooth coming in,” she said. “She’s very cranky, and I can’t even- What? No, you have to do your homework first. No. Because you have to,” she said. To Astor again? Or was it Cody this time? There was really no way to know, and I discovered that I didn’t care. I was beginning to find the whole conversation annoying, and the way Jackie was so clearly fighting off an attack of derisive laughter didn’t help at all. I turned away from her and lowered my voice.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” I said, trying to inject a note of finality into my voice. “But I’ll try to call again tomorrow, okay?”
“Tomorrow is the conference with Cody’s teacher,” she said. “At three o’clock, and you said- Damn it, Astor, just let me talk for a minute!”
I was fairly sure I’d said nothing of the kind, but I did remember saying I would be at Cody’s parent-teacher conference. “I’ll try to be there,” I said. “But I am pretty busy.”
“Well, you did promise,” Rita said. “And it’s important to him, so- Oh lord, the baby. I have to go.”
“All right,” I said. “Good-bye.”
I put my phone down and turned back toward Jackie. She was watching me with a very strange expression on her face, part amusement and part-what? Something else I couldn’t quite define. “What?” I asked her, but she just shook her head and took another sip of her drink.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just … nothing.” She looked at me over the rim of her glass, her eyes filled with liquid amusement, among other things. “Your wife seems like a very nice person.”
“Yes, she is,” I said.
“And a good cook, too …”
I just nodded.
She cocked her head to one side and stared at me very seriously. “So it’s worth it. The whole”-she waved a hand to indicate almost everything-“this marriage thing? It works for you?” she said.
It seemed like a strange question, which made it just right for the way this evening was going. “I guess so,” I said.
“You guess so,” she said, still staring, and I shrugged and nodded. “That’s not really an overwhelming endorsement.”
“Well, I mean,” I said, trying to think of an appropriate response, “it has its ups and downs.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “What are the ups?”
“Oh, the, um … We’re moving into a new house,” I said. “It, ah … There’s a pool?” It sounded pretty lame, even to me, and Jackie let it hang there for a few seconds, the silence making it sound even lamer.
“Uh-huh,” she said at last. “The pool that needs a new cage.”
“That’s right-and it has a much bigger kitchen,” I just blurted out; I don’t know why, except I felt I had to say something.
“Right,” Jackie said. “So Rita can cook even more.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. I grabbed for my mojito, mostly because I was floundering through very boggy ground and really needed the security of having something to do with my hands.
“Uh-huh,” she said. She sipped her drink and studied me with one eyebrow raised. “So does marriage make you happy?”
“It’s … it’s, um,” I said with my usual eloquence. “I mean, you know.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Never had it.” She tilted her head and shrugged. “But it doesn’t sound like it’s exactly thrilling you.” And although I have to admit that I was starting to think so, too, it didn’t seem like something I should say out loud.
“You still haven’t said what Rita looks like,” Jackie said with a frown.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, um-I mean, she was very good-looking, when-”
“Was good-looking?” Jackie interrupted. She took a big slug from her glass. I watched her throat muscles glide as she swallowed. “Jesus, I’d cut your heart out if you said that about me.”
“Oh, but that’s …” I said, wondering how this had all gotten so far out of hand. “I mean, I would never say that about you.…”
She eyed me for a moment. “You’d better not,” she said.
She drained the last two inches of mojito from her glass and set it on the table with a loud takk. “What about dinner?”