The combined effect of marijuana and methaqualone on Dr Charles Gabler's judgment was not salutary. Never was it more evident than late on the night of September 1, at a roadside motel off Interstate 10 near Bonifay, Florida. Overtaken with desire, the professor slipped out of the twin bed he shared with the sleeping Neria Torres, and slipped into the twin bed occupied by the wakeful young graduate student, Celeste. As he ardently attached himself to one of Celeste's creamy breasts, Dr Gabler was becalmed by a warm, harmonious confluence of physical and metaphysical currents. His timing couldn't have been worse.
Neria Torres had been reevaluating the parameters of her relationship with the professor ever since they'd pulled off a highway outside Jackson, Mississippi, so he could take a leak. Sitting in the driver's seat, watching Dr Gabler try to tinkle in some azaleas, Neria had thought: I don't find this cute anymore.
As the professor had tottered back toward the van, the beams of the headlights dramatically illuminated the ruby-colored crystals dangling from the lanyard around his neck.
"Oh wow," young Celeste had exclaimed, suffused with mystic awe and Humboldt County's finest.
That was the moment when Neria Torres had looked into her future and decided that the professor should share no large part of it; specifically, the insurance settlement from the hurricane. Neria envisioned a scenario in which Dr Gabler might endeavor to sweet-talk her out of a portion of the money-he would probably call it a friendly loan-and then flee in the dead of night with his nubile protegee. After all, that's pretty much what he'd done to his previous lover, a vendor of fine macrames, when Neria Torres entered his life.
Even if the professor harbored no selfish designs on the hurricane booty, Neria had a pragmatic reason to dump him: His appearance in Miami would complicate the duel with her estranged husband over the insurance settlement. Considering the tainted circumstance of her departure from the household, Neria doubted that Tony would be in a mood to forgive and forget. Her inability to make contact in the days following the storm was foreboding-the vindictive bastard obviously intended to pocket her half of the windfall. If the battle went to court, Dr Gabler's bleary presence during the proceedings would not, Neria Torres knew, work in her favor.
These were the thoughts she carried into sleep at the motel in Bonifay. Had it been a deeper sleep, or had the room's Eisenhower-vintage cooling unit been a few decibels louder, Neria Torres might not have been awakened by the muffled suckling and amorous hmmm-hmmms from the nearby bed. But awakened she was.
Except for cracking her eyelids, Neria didn't move a muscle at first. Instead she lay listening in disgusted fascination, struggling to arrange her emotions. On the one hand, she was vastly relieved to have found a solid excuse for jettisoning the professor. On the other hand, she was furious that the sneaky little shit would be so crude and thoughtless. Over the years, Tony Torres undoubtedly had cheated on her now and again-but never while she was sleeping in the same room!
Eventually, it was the immodest giggling of young Celeste that galvanized Neria Torres. She sprang from the bed, turned on all the lights, snatched up the velvet satchel containing Dr Gabler's special healing crystals and began whaling deliriously on the writhing mound of bedsheets. The satchel was heavy and the stones were sharp, taking a toll on the professor's unfirm flesh. With an effeminate cry, he scuttled to the bathroom and chained the door. Meanwhile the graduate student cowered nude and tearful on the mattress. The stubble on Dr Gabler's chin had left a telltale path of abraded, roseate blotches from her neck to her quivering belly. Neria Torres noticed, with fierce satisfaction, a faint comma of a scar beneath each of young Celeste's perfect breasts; an Earth Mother with implants!
Repeatedly she gasped, "I'm sorry, Neria, please don't kill me! Please don't..."
Neria threw the satchel of crystals to the floor. "Celeste, you know what I hope for you? I hope that asshole hiding in the John is the highlight of your entire goddamn life. Now where's the keys to the van?"
Hours later, at a busy truck stop in Gainesville, Neria tried another call to Mr. Varga, her former neighbor in Miami. This time his phone was working; Varga answered on the third ring. He insisted he knew nothing about Neria's husband and a young blond hussy loading up a rental truck.
"Fact, I haven't seen Tony since maybe two days after the hurricane."
"Are there still strangers at the house?" Neria asked.
"All the time, people come and go. But no blondes."
"Who are they, Leon?"
"I don't know. Friends and cousins of Tony, I heard. They got two dogs bark half the night. I figured Tony's letting 'em watch the place."
Varga shared his theory: Neria's husband was lying low, due to adverse publicity about the mobile-home industry. "Every damn one blew to smithereens in the storm," Varga related. "The papers and TV are making a big stink. Supposedly there's going to be an investigation. The FBI is what they say."
"Oh, come off it."
"That's the rumor," Varga said. "Your Tony, he's no fool. I think he's making himself invisible till all this cools down, these people come to their senses. I mean, it's not his fault those trailers fell apart. God's will is what it was. He's testing us, same as He did with Noah."
"Except Noah wasn't insured," said Neria Torres.
Mr. Varga was right about one thing: Tony wouldn't stick around if there was heat. His style was to take a nice hotel room and ride things out. In the meantime, he'd have some of his deadbeat relatives or white-trash salesmen pals stay with their bimbos in the house on Calusa. Tony wouldn't be far away; never would he skip town without getting his paws on the Midwest Casualty money.
Neria was buoyed. The story about the young blonde and Brooklyn obviously was bullshit, a ruse cooked up by her husband. Wishful thinking, too, Neria mused. Talking to Mr. Varga validated her decision to return to Miami.
"Are you really heading home?" he asked. "You and the mister give it one more try?"
"Stranger things have happened," said Neria Torres. She made Mr. Varga swear on a stack of Holy Bibles not to breathe a word. She said it would ruin everything if Tony found out she was coming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE