“You’re making a mistake, you know,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Yes, Warren. I’m still clean.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
“Well, I really don’t know where you’re getting your information, but I can promise you...”
“I found some empty crack vials in your bathroom trash basket,” he said.
“Why’d you go to my apartment in the first place?”
“I guess I know the signs of cocaine addiction, Toots.”
“You had no right.”
“I’m your friend.”
“Sure, chained to the wall.”
“Would you stay on this boat otherwise?”
“Warren, you have to let me go. Really.”
“No.”
“Warren, I don’t need anyone to look after me, really. I’m a big girl now.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought, too, Toots.”
“I’m not doing drugs again,” she said. “Do you think I’m crazy? Those were perfume samples. The vials look...”
“Sure.”
“...just like crack vials.”
“How about the ones I found in your handbag?”
“I don’t know what you found in my handbag. You had no right going through my handbag. You have no right doing any of this. What’d you find in my handbag that gives you the right to...?”
“Crack vials, Toots.”
“I told you. Perfume samples...”
“With rocks in them.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No, Toots, I’m not mistaken. I know what crack rocks look like.”
“Someone must’ve...”
“How about the pipe?”
“Was there a pipe, too? Someone must’ve dropped all that stuff in my bag. People do all sorts of...”
“Sure.”
“...crazy things. To make a person look bad. Or just cheap. Anyway, you had no right. When did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Go through my bag.”
“Last night. Right after I got you on the boat.”
“You have no right doing any of this. Whose boat is it, anyway?”
“Friend of mine’s.”
“Keeping me prisoner this way. No right at all. He’ll be in trouble, too, you know.”
“Nobody’s in trouble but you, Toots. That’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t need you here, Warren. All I need you to...”
“No.”
“I’m not doing dope. I don’t need a guardian. I don’t need a warden. I don’t need you to look after me, Warren. All I need you to do is take off these fucking cuffs!”
“No.”
“Warren, I have to be left alone to do what I want to do.”
“I won’t let you do crack, Toots.”
“I will do exactly what I...”
“No.”
“Then I’m going to scream.”
“Go ahead, scream.”
“The Coast Guard will come.”
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, boss,” he said.
She began screaming.
The boat was a seventy-five-foot Burger worth about four million dollars, large enough to accommodate, without crowding, the two dozen guests who stood talking and sipping cocktails on the aft deck as the sun began its slow descent into the Gulf of Mexico.
The boat was named Sea Sybil, after one of its owners, Sybil Rosenberg, whose husband was the attorney David Rosenberg, who was senior partner in the firm of Rosenberg, Katlowitz and Frank, all of whom made a lot more money than I did. In Calusa, Florida, everybody knew how much money everybody else made. There were a lot of moneyed people down here in this Paradise by the Sea, this Athens of Southwest Florida. Most of the money came from Canada or the Middle West; that was because if you drew a zigzagging line south from Toronto, it would pass through Cleveland and Pittsburgh and then hit Calusa before heading for Havana.
Coincidence, or perhaps fate, had thrown Lainie and me together on the same boat for the same sunset bash. Being out on bail could turn into a pleasant pastime in a small town, even if you’d been charged with slaying your mama, your papa, and your pet parakeet. As Calusa’s latest Accused Murderess celebrity, I supposed she would be much in demand in the weeks and months to come, and I knew I couldn’t confine her to her home or be with her at every function she attended, monitoring every word she muttered. Clearly the center of attention in a circle of sunset watchers on the starboard side of the boat, all of whom seemed eager to know what it felt like to be accused of murdering someone, for God’s sake, she successfully fended off any attempt to learn what had happened or not happened on Brett Toland’s yawl.
As for me, everyone kept asking how I was feeling.
Everyone kept asking what it had felt like.
This evening, I was lying.
It was a way of creating my own fun. I used to do that even before I’d got shot one dark and stormless night. I hated cocktail parties, especially sunset cocktail parties, especially sunset cocktail parties on boats. I sometimes felt that the moneyed people who moved down here from unspeakable climes like those in Minneapolis or Milwaukee or South Bend did so only because they liked to look at sunsets.
“I found myself staring into the face of God,” I said.
“What did she look like?” Aggie Pratt asked.
A long time ago, I had enjoyed — if that was the appropriate word — an extramarital love affair with Aggie. In fact, Aggie was the reason Susan and I had ended our marriage. I don’t think I liked myself very much back then, but that was all in the past, merely yet another sun dropping into yet another vast body of water.
Aggie had eventually divorced her then husband Gerald, and was now married to a man named Louis Pratt who published the Calusa Herald-Tribune; I still had difficulty remembering that she was now Mrs. Pratt. She looked very good to me tonight, causing me to wonder what was happening to me. Gray eyes glowing in the fading light of the sinking sun, faint smile on her generous mouth as she made her little God-Is-a-Woman joke, long black hair (Aggie’s, not God’s) combed straight and sleek as Cleopatra’s, short black, scoop-necked cocktail dress exposing treasures I recalled fondly but only vaguely.
Patricia Demming stood beside me in the ring of people wanting to know what God had looked like, for God’s sake! I couldn’t tell from the expression on her face whether or not she knew I was putting them on. Maybe she thought a vision of the Almighty actually had appeared to me one night while I was adrift in limbo. Her red dress — her favorite color, by the way — was also extravagantly low cut, considering the fact that she was supposed to be a staid and serious assistant state attorney, albeit beautiful and buxom and not in any courtroom at the moment, its daring bodice revealing yet more treasures I could scarcely remember, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
“Actually he was a man,” I said, “and he looked like Joe DiMaggio,” winging it.
My former wife Susan was also here aboard the Sea Sybil — large boat, small town. As the sun plunked into the Gulf, she and all the assembled guests ooohed and ahhhed the obligatory squeals of delight. She was wearing tonight an extremely short, moss-green cocktail dress that showcased spectacular legs I remembered quite well, thank you, though I wouldn’t have wished her to notice me noticing them. The sky suddenly turned a sexy velvety violet — what the hell was happening to me?
“What did you and God talk about?” Aggie asked.
“Sex,” I said, and my eyes met Patricia’s, who was the only one who didn’t laugh at the remark.