Finally, mercy. “I’m starting to get tired,” she said, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand. “It’s all right if we stop? I need to get some sleep. But I don’t want to disappoint you. That’ll disappoint you, won’t it? I can tell. Okay, one more thing….” She trotted out of the room again and came back wearing one of the trick-or-treat costumes from her overnight bag.
Serge sat up. “Which one are you supposed to be?”
“Buttercup.”
Molly ran toward the bed for her superhero pounce. She pulled up at the last second. “Baby?…”
He was snoring.
Serge usually had an immense aquifer of energy, but it wasn’t bottomless. Now he had to recharge. And there was no more restful place than Little Palm Island. Isolated, exclusive, utterly tranquil. It stayed that way because of the limited access. Only three ways to get there: private yacht, the seaplanes that occasionally splashed down in the harbor with a belly full of executives, and the ferryboat that docked at the landing on Little Torch Key. The landing had a small parking lot where you could leave the car overnight. It currently held eight vehicles. The last car was backed into its slot, hiding the license plate against the bushes. A brown Plymouth Duster.
SHAFTS OF BLINDING afternoon light streamed through bungalow windows on Little Palm Island.
Serge’s eyelids fluttered open.
Molly was in the wooden Jacuzzi, luxuriating in exotic bath gels. She heard him stir. “Where are you, my love?”
Serge banged into a doorframe.
“Honey?”
“Right here,” said Serge.
Molly cupped her hands together and squirted water into the air. “I’m in the hot tub. Why don’t you join me?”
“Not right now.” He stepped onto the veranda.
Molly hummed and squirted water. “Come on. We’ll play.”
“I have to go down to the shore for a minute.”
“What for?”
“To die.”
“I’ll keep the water warm… hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” Squirt.
Serge was operating on fumes. He needed to find some place away from that woman and gather strength. He stumbled down to the beach toward one of the big burlap hammocks that were hanging everywhere between the palms. Being a Floridian, he looked up to make sure no coconuts were hanging over the end where his head would be. He clawed his way into the mesh and was snoring again in under a minute.
Molly walked out on the veranda. “Serge?”
The hammock sagged deep in the middle where Serge curled up like a baby. He’d never slept harder. After an hour, the wind changed and the hammock began taking an eastern breeze off the harbor. It was down by the dock on the southern indentation of the island, visible from the upland bluff where two hands in leather gloves parted the fronds of a saw palmetto. The hands opened a small steel case lined with foam padding. A disassembled Marlin thirty-ought-six. The hands screwed on the barrel and snapped the stock in place. The barrel poked through the branches and rested in the yoke. An eye went to the scope, a leather finger eased through the trigger guard. A hammock appeared in the crosshairs. The finger squeezed.
The first bullet grazed Serge’s shoulder, an otherwise excellent shot. The elevation was dead-on, but a tiny miscalculation in windage. Serge woke up grabbing his arm. The second shot was hurried and missed altogether, smashing the support ring fastening one end of the hammock to the tree. Serge crashed to the ground just before the third shot flew through the spot where his head had just been. Serge instinctively tucked and rolled toward the cover of brush. Leather hands jerked the rifle out of the branches and deftly broke it down into the case. Serge was on his feet, running in a tight crouch against the vegetation, then into the thick of the trees, taking a long, looping fox trail around the island.
Serge finally made it back to the cottage, clearing the front steps in two giant leaps and diving through the door. Molly heard the noise and came in the room drying her hair with a hundred-watt blower.
Serge ran for the sink, blood trickling through the fingers holding his injured shoulder.
A scream. The dryer crashed to the floor.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” said Serge. “The bullet didn’t even enter.”
“Bullet!”
Serge grabbed the bungalow’s first-aid kit from a cabinet and patched himself up with antibiotic cream and large bandage. “There, like it never happened.”
“You got shot?”
“A little bit.”
“Who did this!”
“Who knows? It’s a crazy world.”
“I want you to tell me right now about this consulting work you do.”
“What’s to tell?”
“Have you ever been in jail?”
“Where’d that come from?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Jail?” Serge repeated. “Words are such relative things….”
“I knew it!” Molly jumped up and headed for the bedroom.
Serge ran after her. She started packing.
“Baby, wait. I can explain….”
“Let go of my arm!” She stuffed clothes in a bag and muttered to herself. “What was I thinking getting married so fast? Right, people do it in Vegas all the time. I’m so stupid! I don’t know anything about him!…”
“Why did you marry me so fast?”
“Because you were the first man who ever…” She finished the sentence by cramming a bathing suit in the bag.
Serge grabbed her by the hand and got down on a knee.
“I married you because I just knew. When you’re positive you’ve found your soul mate, why continue shopping?”
She pulled her hand away and kept packing.
“You’re the only woman for me. Whatever I was before was before. Everything is all new now. I meant every word of my vows.”
Her packing rate slowed. “There’s just so much I don’t know about you.”
“Okay, I’ll come clean. You’re my wife and you deserve the complete, unfiltered truth. Marriage is sacred. It must be based on total trust….” He paused and looked deep into her eyes. “Okay, here goes…. I’m… a social worker.”
“Social worker?”
Serge nodded. “I find people with really screwed-up lives and gradually ease them back into the herd.”
“Coleman?…”
“My toughest case. Been working on him for years.”
“Oh, Serge. I’m so proud of you! That’s a wonderful line of work!”
“Most of the time,” said Serge. “But some of these people are pretty bizarre. That’s why you’ll have to understand if I’m suddenly required to go someplace in the middle of the night.”
“But why didn’t you just tell me in the first place?”
“Afraid it might scare you away. Some of my clients are totally unpredictable, which is why you can’t tell anyone about me or where I live.”
Molly released a big sigh. “I feel so much better now.”
“Hey! Let’s open our wedding gifts!”
“Okay.”
They unwrapped Coleman’s present. A porn tape. Chitty Chitty Gang Bang.
“Thanks, Coleman.” Serge grabbed the next gift.
Molly reached for the cast-aside video. “Let’s watch it.”
So went the next thirty-six hours. The honeymoon finally ended but not the endurance test. Serge moved into Molly’s apartment, and life turned into a Pink Panther movie. Serge would stroll out of the kitchen with a sandwich and — wham! — Molly diving from a closet, pinning him to the ground.
The staff at the Big Pine library didn’t recognize Molly when she returned to work. Hair down, clothes fitting. She looked them in the eye and even talked! Good heavens, they thought, I need sex like that. The transformation was so stunning that her female colleagues involuntarily pictured Serge’s manhood in scale next to a Polaris missile, an old-growth redwood and the Statue of Liberty.