The bases were not letting anyone on post without proof they were active duty. The troops stationed around town vanished. A fire broke out in Old Town and consumed hotels and bars and tourist shops. No one knew how it started, but almost a hundred people died.
One of Suzanne’s neighbors, an attorney named David Greenburg with a thriving practice in Miami, arrived by boat and banged on the door late in the afternoon.
Bart let him inside, and David collapsed on the couch, shaking, dehydrated, and hungry.
“Miami’s gone insane,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot and twitching. “They’re animals.”
“Have some fish, David,” Suzanne said. “Calm down. You’re safe.”
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” he whispered. “They broke into my house. They took Jill and made her open the safe. She said no and they shot her. Just like that they shot my wife.”
“I’m sorry,” Suzanne said.
“Who? Who did that?” Bart asked.
“I don’t know. People. Guys with guns and crowbars. I didn’t know them.”
“How did you get here?”
“They let me go after I gave them my car, my money, my wife’s—” he choked. “Her engagement ring. Her jewelry. They laughed about it. They were in my house for less than half an hour and they took everything. They shot her in the back of the head like it was a joke. I walked to the marina in Coconut Grove where I keep the boat. Some of the other boats were smashed, some sunk. For no reason. I don’t understand. Anything. I don’t understand all of it.” He was shaking.
“Is your husband here?” David asked, looking up with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“No. They say he’s been killed,” Suzanne replied. It was the second time she’d had to say that. She’d told Bart, although not her daughter. She could say it without breaking into small pieces because she was certain it was not true.
“Suzanne, I’m sorry for your loss,” David said. “It is too much to bear.”
“Thank you, David. I’ll believe it when I see his dog tags. That man is too damn stubborn to die.”
She knew the Greenburgs better than she knew most of her neighbors. David and Jill came down south at least once every month, more in the wintertime. They’d shared dinners and bottles of wine together, and David and Henry actually got along pretty well. She knew David was a veteran, and that undoubtedly helped to overcome Henry’s innate resentment of wealthy people.
Bart came back into the room with some bottled water and grouper fresh from the grill. David ate with his hands and chugged the water.
“Have you heard any news?” Bart asked.
“Probably nothing you haven’t heard. We’ve been without power since this thing started. You know about DC and San Fran, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s true, I guess. Honestly, I was hoping you’d know what was going on, ’cause I sure don’t.”
“We’re all in the dark,” Suzanne said.
“Looks like at least you’ve got a generator,” David said. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me—”
“The answer is yes,” Suzanne said.
Bart cut his eyes at her, but she ignored him. David was out of shape and over the hill, and he would be drinking their water and eating their food. Still, he was smart, and he was a good man. In her mind, that was enough. If they could stick together, they could make one another stronger. The more people to stand watch, the better.
Bart had set up rain traps all over the property, and he was almost finished constructing an elaborate desalinization system, which would allow them to use seawater by evaporating the salt. That would help, though it would not be enough. Water would be a problem in the coming months, the dry season.
Already, a black market had sprung up in town, and Suzanne knew people were hoarding water.
David Greenburg wept into his hands. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have nothing. No money, no guns. I can’t really do much.” He laughed, a bitter sound. “If you want me to sue someone or write a contract for you, you’ll have free legal services for life.”
“My friend,” Suzanne said with a smile, “you have a deal.”
That night the whole group dined together and Suzanne felt hope as she ate and drank with her friends. Even Mary seemed to be in better spirits, and Suzanne saw her old friend had lost a considerable amount of weight in only a few weeks, seemed less lethargic and more engaged. Bobby was clear eyed and his hands no longer shook, and he’d shed at least ten years, still wiry and ornery as ever, and proud of himself for the mangrove snapper and grunt he’d caught and put on the table. Ginnie was a flurry of activity, cooking and cleaning and seldom standing still. She, more than any of the others, seemed wounded down deep, and Suzanne understood. Taylor flitted from person to person and lit up the room by being herself.
Bart laughed and joked and he was relaxed for the first time in a long time. He flirted with his wife more than he did with Ginnie or Suzanne, which was a marked change. Suzanne had felt uncomfortable more than once with the way Bart employed lascivious innuendo followed by innocent looks. Sometimes the phrase was directed at Ginnie, and sometimes it came at Suzanne. Ginnie did not seem to mind, though she might have been oblivious; Suzanne did not like it. It felt like a betrayal.
“You put the rod into the hole,” he’d said the previous day while explaining how to use the rod holders on the stern of his boat to Ginnie. “Just be careful with the rod. It’s fragile, especially the tip.”
“Ugh,” Suzanne had said from the bow.
“Hey, she’s probably never held a rod this big before. This ain’t one of those flimsy ones. This is the real deal.”
Suzanne, who had been pulling in the anchor, gave Bart a scathing stare. He grinned back at her with that guiltless expression. The what did I do? Look. And yet beneath it, Suzanne saw the thing, the underlying defiant truth which was as much an accusation as an admission.
They were friends, and that’s all they would ever be. But that’s not quite all they’d ever been.
So now, on this night, she was glad to feel an easing of tension, happy to see Bart flirting with his own wife.
Suzanne was on watch in the dark hours of the night, alone with a shotgun while most of the house slept. Bart and Mary were not sleeping, though, and Mary’s cries were piercing and urgent one room away, defiant perhaps.
Suzanne had many regrets. Bart topped the list. She’d been young and reckless and bulletproof. That was the story she told herself. There had been rum runners involved.
“Ya know,” Bart said years ago. Mary and Henry were crashed out in the hotel room, in the suite Henry had sprung for in Islamorada. Suzanne hadn’t had enough reggae music or rum or stupidity to fill her soul, so she’d decided to keep on partying. “After you two, you know, call it quits, the two of us have to hook up. At least once. ’Cause it would be epic.”
“Oh really? Is that what you think?”
“Yeah. Except I don’t think. I know for a fact. And so do you.”
“I thought he was your best friend?”
“Of course he is. He’d do the same to me, though. I’m saying, after.”
“After what?”
“After he breaks your heart. Or you break his. That part’s an even bet. Somebody’s gonna get their heart broke, though. You ain’t his first rodeo, let’s put it like that.”
“So you’re saying, what?” Maybe she’d slurred her words. She didn’t remember it that way, but she probably had. She was cool and unfettered. “It’s not his first rodeo but it’s mine?”
“I know it’s not your first go-round, Suzy-Q. You’re more woman than that country boy can handle.”