“You see what I mean? Why something like that would hurt so bad? So I’m not ready to talk about it. Not tonight. Not this week. Probably not for a long while.”
I said, “Oh Jesus… I am so, so sorry…”
She touched her fingers to my cheek again. “I know you are, you big idiot.” Then: “Go on home, pal. I’ll get in touch with you when I’m ready. We’ll talk. Just give me some space.”
I covered her hand with mine. “But, Dew, I want to know. Get the test kit. Go to the bathroom now and find out. You really think you might be pregnant? It’s… that’s kind of exciting. ”
Did I mean that? Maybe. Maybe I did.
But she shook her head.
No.
“Please.”
“Uh-uh, no, I can’t. Because I don’t want to know. Not now. I need to get my emotions under control first. After that, we have to have a serious talk. When it’s time.
“I don’t want the fact that I am or am not pregnant to have any influence. That way, when I find out, we’ll both know how things stand between us. The decision will already have been made about us being together. Do you see why I have to do it this way?”
Yeah, I did. A smart lady.
She let me hug her close to my chest and hold her for a moment before she went inside and locked the door.
SEVEN
Seen from the I-95 overpass, downtown Miami is an island of ascending spires, silicon on steel, beneath a sky that is incandescent with Gulf Stream colors-lime, corals, blues.
We were on the Interstate now, Tomlinson, Pilar, and I. We were clover-leafing our way down into the city, jockeying among six fast lanes blurred with cars operated by Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominicans, and other tropical immigrants whose donkey-cart driving skills were superb at five miles an hour, but lethal at eighty.
Thrown into the mix were Winnebago Buckeyes, German tourists, and Friendly Sam New Yorkers, plus Cuban Americans who actually knew their away around the badly marked highways, and so used horn and accelerator as weapons of intimidation.
Driving in Miami, even midmorning on a Wednesday, is not for the faint of heart.
Because my old truck doesn’t have air-conditioning, and because Tomlinson’s Volkswagen Thing is only slightly safer and faster than four slabs of drywall bolted around a toy engine, Pilar asked us to drive her rental Ford.
Lucky me.
I’m at home in a boat under the worst of circumstances. The same is not true of cars. Waves, squalls, and sea bottom are relatively predictable. Miami drivers are not. Which makes me edgy. So I drove with hands at ten-and-two, concentrating mightily on the idiotic maneuverings and macho posturing of other lanes, while Tomlinson maintained a running dialogue with Pilar, the two of them already fast friends.
“Miami, my sister. Behold the great Concrete Mango-South America’s northernmost nation. Miami and I, we’ve got a kinda love-who-cares relationship going. I love her, but I just don’t draw enough water for Miami to care about me. Not many dudes do.
“See that building, the tallest building, the one that looks like it’s a geode crystal with a broken point? The way it’s sheared off at the top? That’s the Wachovia Center. A cop banged my head into a wall there a couple times during an antiwar protest way, way back. That thing’s built solid, believe me.
“Then see the Miami Deco-looking high-rise, the one that looks like it’s a chunk of chrome off an old Cadillac? That’s the Bank of America Tower. I dated one of the top execs there for a while. She was something, man. We’d go across to the Hyatt, Japengos, for appetizers and margaritas. Or eat on the eleventh-floor terrace, the whole city spreading out, then head back to her office. Spend the afternoon with the intercom turned off, making bunny-love magic-which is all I’m going to say about that. ”
I interrupted. “Thanks for sparing us the details. What might be nice for a change is to hear some silence. Or maybe we could just listen to the radio.”
Still talking to Pilar, he said, “Mister Grumpy. It’s because of the driving stress. You can drop this guy into any jungle or island on earth, and he’s right at home. Put him on a freeway, though, and his knuckles turn white.”
“I’m trying to concentrate,” I said. “Something wrong with that? All these lunatic drivers… my God-did you see the stunt the idiot in that Explorer just pulled? And besides, you’re supposed to be helping me look for, what is it, the Second Street exit?”
“Northeast Second Avenue. That’s our exit. But first we jump on the I-Three-ninety-five. So we’ve got a little time.”
Pilar said to me, “I enjoy listening to Tomlinson. He’s very sweet, and he’s made me laugh for the first time since it happened. I don’t see why you should object to the two of us talking.”
I thought: Perfect. Now she’s bonding with my best friend.
I concentrated on driving, yet couldn’t help but listen as Tomlinson launched into his monologue about the evils of gas-guzzling SUVs such as the crazed Explorer, muscle cars, pickup trucks-a shot at me, there-and the petroleum industry’s scheme to control the world economy.
I find it amazing that someone of his intelligence and insight is a predictable dupe for every left-wing conspiracy theory that comes along. But an individual’s politics, like religion, I have learned, is not a reliable or fair gauge of intellect or humanitarian intent. I know intelligent people who embrace equally ridiculous right-wing absurdities. So I try to judge people individually, which is what reasonable people do.
Not that he didn’t have a good point about squandering the Earth’s fossil fuels. It is a commodity of finite measure, and a consistent agent of hypocrisy: Many Americans abhor the prospect of drilling for oil in our own boundary lands and oceans, yet we all live eager, modern, petroleum-based lives. I can certainly be counted among the hypocrites.
But at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, we’d become so tired of hearing Tomlinson’s anti-SUV lecturing, his save-the-Earth posturing, that Mack, Jeth, Felix, and a couple of the other fishing guides came up with an idea. A way to play a joke on Tomlinson.
Tomlinson’s Volkswagen is several decades old and looks like a German staff car. It’s a rusted antique with an 8-gallon fuel tank and a tiny engine that gets thirty-plus miles per gallon-a fact that he’s also hammered us over the head with.
So a couple months back, the guides began to slip into the parking lot at night and funnel gas into his car’s tank, topping it off each and every time Tomlinson used the vehicle.
Every day he got in to use the Volkswagen, he found that the tank was full.
He drove twenty-five miles to Terry Park in Fort Myers to play Roy Hobbs baseball. He drove a hundred miles to Siesta Key Beach to lead the Sunday night drum circle. He drove across the state to visit his boat bum pals at Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale. He drove to Stan’s Chickee Bar in Goodland and did the Buzzard Lope. He drove to Placida and took the ferry across to Palm Island to teach meditation and lead seminars on Tomlinsonism-his own brand of Buddhism that has so grown in popularity that the man now bundles his hair under a fedora and wears Hollywood sunglasses when he leaves the marina.
I hadn’t exaggerated when I told Pilar that, thanks to the Internet, his followers seek him out from around the world.
Our reluctant prophet put hundreds of miles on the Volkswagen, and his gas tank remained full.
At first, he bragged piously about his car. While we drove around in our oil suckers, destroying a fragile planet, he was meeting all transportation needs while leaving only the tiniest of environmental footprints.
“Real men don’t have to drive a big car,” he told us. “It’s like the bumper stickers you see. Ask yourselves this: What kinda car would Jesus have driven?”
While Mack wondered aloud, “Hummm… something amphibious?” Jeth, the stuttering fishing guide, replied,
“There’s a NASCAR driver named Hay-zus. If that’s the one you mean, he runs a 340 big block Dodge V-8, 750 horsepower. But if you’re talkin’ about gas mileage, I wouldn’t think ol’ Jesus’ car would be a smart choice.”