“Delores,” Debbie Lyn said, “not here. I’ll meet you at the Starbucks in five minutes. Okay?”
“The Starbucks where I seen you with that rascal of a man, where he kiss your arms and your fingers?” she said. “He make me want to be sick. Make me want to shower myself.”
The Starbucks was nice, big, and open-air, a wide kiosk right by the Neiman Marcus, a marble staircase winding up to the second floor. A gaggle of teenage girls took selfies on the landing, wearing short-shorts and cropped tops, looking for a million views on wherever they posted pictures these days. Their clothes, their manners, all of it so silly and foreign. She would never, not in a million years.
“Okay,” Delores said, “don’t you tell me. I tell you.”
“About him?”
“Yes, about him. It’s all about him. It’s only ever about him. About him and the movies. All those big stars. Him and his big boats. His big cars. His cigars and money. Driving fast in the slow lane. All of it. He tell you about what he did with that man on television? That man from Australia with that knife? He say to me that he and that man were best friends. He say he come up with that line, about the knife. That no knife. This a knife. He say he the man who told that man and how that man go on to the Oscars. I should’ve known. I should’ve known.” The woman hit her own head with her hand. “Delores, what’d you do?”
“Then who is he?”
Delores shrugged and blew at her coffee, although it was mainly froth, nonfat, extra-foamy, vanilla cappuccino. That of course Debbie Lyn paid for, back two days and already an hour’s wage gone. But she was curious, so curious, with him lying on her couch when she left, forearm over his eyes from the seven-martini hangover. Ketel One, super dirty with extra olives. He called it a meal unto itself as if buying him seven goddamn martinis at Bar Louie would soften not having to buy dinner. Which she did anyway, drunk and stupid herself, opening up her safety Discover card for a Hawaiian hamburger and fries. He didn’t even offer her part of the burger, the man making friends with half the bar, most them calling him mister and sir, clapping him on the back and wishing him luck with the big treasure hunt. They were all pulling for him.
“I would like to know,” Delores said. “How about you?”
“What about me?”
“What he wants?”
“I have nothing.”
“Of course you do,” Delores said. “Or else he wouldn’t waste his time. Sniffing your behind. Who are you, Miss Debbie Lyn? What do you have that I don’t?”
“The house is being painted,” he said. “Tons of fumes, it will make you sick. I nearly passed out just leaving the place this morning.”
“Where’s your car?” Debbie Lyn asked.
“In the shop.”
“And what kind of car is it?”
“We’ve been through this,” he said, picking at his breakfast sandwich at Pass-a-Grille Beach, egg and cheese on a croissant with black coffee for $4.99. “I don’t want to brag. I’m driving the Aston Martin this week.”
“I thought it was a Rolls.” Debbie folded her arms over her chest, turning to watch a woman helping a small boy with a kite. It was February and warm, lots of blustery wind coming off the gulf.
He put down his breakfast sandwich on the Styrofoam plate and looked up. “I know what’s really going on here.”
Debbie Lyn turned back to face him, trying to gauge his expression, but his oversized Porsche sunglasses making it tough. He had on a Hawaiian shirt, sweatpants, and those goddamn Crocs.
“Delores found you.”
Debbie Lyn didn’t answer, turning back to the woman and the kid with the kite, the kid running like hell just as a blast of wind zipped that kite a hundred feet up in the air, the spool unwinding so fast, it burned his little hands. The woman picking it up as it skittered across the sand. This morning, she had seen on TV, Detroit got two feet of snow.
“I know you two have been communicating,” he said. “I saw it on your phone when I came over this morning.”
“That’s my own personal business.”
“It was on the counter. The message flashed on the screen. I can’t believe you’d listen to such trash.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be at your house?” she said. “Picking out window treatments?”
“The fumes are awful. Just terrible. I have the worst headache right now.”
“Sure,” Debbie Lyn. “Exactly. Perfect. Swell.”
He stood up and stretched, reaching down to touch his toes and then rotate back and forth with his lower back. She could hear his bones and cartilage pop, his smooth silver hair looking more white this morning, kicking up off his head like a rooster’s comb. “Did Delores tell you that she’s been institutionalized? Three times. Sad, really. The last time she believed she was José Martí, wanting to emancipate Cuba or some kind of nonsense. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry you’ve so quickly become tangled in my affairs. I wanted to help her. I really did. But she grew paranoid. Dangerous even. Cuban women are the worst.”
He began to unbutton his shirt, folding it neatly and placing it on the outdoor table near the beach café. A shapely young woman in her twenties wandered past them and began to shower the sand from her body. He watched her as she turned and lifted her feet, toweling off her little rump and heading off with a tote bag and straw hat in hand.
“Excuse me,” Debbie Lyn said.
“I’m sorry. She looks just like my first wife.”
“She could be your granddaughter.”
He smiled at her, making her feel like she was jealous, like she’d been out of line just asking him a few honest questions and then expecting him to listen instead of gawking at a twenty-year-old wearing dental floss.
“The thing I like about shelling,” he said, “is the exploration. The adventure. The discovery. You never know what you’ll find if you keep your eyes peeled. Some shells wash up completely intact. Others are nearly perfect but broken off at the edges.”
“That’s what you want to do?”
“Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Delores,” Debbie Lyn said. “She said you’re a fraud. That you’re broke.”
He reached out and offered his hand, the old gold coin swinging back and forth like a pendulum from his saggy neck. Debbie Lyn hadn’t moved from the seat, staring up at him and then the beach, the kid now in control of the kite, the woman pulling it in some, showing him how to walk backward to keep everything nice and balanced. Two steps. Two steps. Reel it in slow.
“How’s the shipwreck?” she said. Again, thinking of her mother. Nice girls don’t pry. They let men talk and they listen. Men like good listeners. They like to feel important.
“Just amazing,” he said. “Let’s walk and seek and I’ll tell you all about it. The story starts off at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The ship was heavy with gold, treasures from the New World, when it sailed from Havana. Dark skies on the horizon...”
Damn, she loved to hear him talk.
“According to him, it’s you who’s crazy,” Debbie Lyn said, not knowing who or what to believe now. After the beach, he’d taken her to another home he said he owned, this one in St. Pete along Sunset Drive. It had a long wrought-iron fence, lots of palm trees, and a lovely view of the water. He called it one of his properties. But like the one on Bayshore, this one seemed to be under construction too. Only letting her visit the kitchen, where he kept a small table, a few mismatched chairs. He reheated half of a Papa John’s pepperoni pizza with black olives and served her some white Zinfandel from a box.