At the restaurant, she told the waiter she wanted a half-dozen oysters, but the waiter didn’t hear.
“A dozen, miss?” he asked.
Amelia was looking at me when she replied, “No, a half dozen. I just want sex. I mean… six. ” Laughing at herself as the waiter walked away, her eyes averted now, blushing, too-maybe the first time I’d ever seen an attorney blush-as she dabbed at her face with a napkin and said to me, “My God, talk about Freudian. I’ve got to start getting more exercise, go for a long run. Something. ”
It set up a fun, unspoken sexual tension. When she’d finished her wine, we walked out onto the Bradenton Pier. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when she slipped her arm through mine and then, later, when I placed my hand on her waist as we walked. I could feel the pivot of her hips, the sharp blade of her pelvic bone. There were men fishing, lovers tangled together in the shadows.
Near the end of the pier, we stopped, me looking down into the water, fish moving through the circles of light, her with her head pillowed against my arm. It surprised me when she said, “I don’t want to be obvious here, but there’s something we’ve never talked about.”
I said, “Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s your social status. There used to be little symbols. Wedding bands, bracelets… tattoos.” She chuckled. “Who belongs to who. But now you have to ask. So I’m asking: Do you belong to anyone, Dr. Ford?”
“Nope. Never been married, never been engaged. I have a long list of female friends who are just that-friends. Nothing serious going on right now.”
“Does that include JoAnn and Rhonda from Dinkin’s Bay? I got the impression there was something special between you and… well, frankly, both of them.”
An insightful, perceptive lady. But I said, “No, we’re all three buddies, that’s all.”
“Ah, the independent type, the male rogue.”
I turned to look at her, smiling. “I used to tell myself that, and for a time I believed it. Like you, the thing you said about lying to yourself? I don’t have much patience for my own lies anymore, either. I’ve come to the conclusion that I live alone because I am, at the core, an essentially selfish person. It’s taken a while for me to admit it. My lab, the work I’m doing, it always comes first. All loving, devoted relationships require compromise in terms of how time is shared, and I’m too self-interested to compromise. No woman’s going to put up with that for long, and I don’t blame ’em.”
“My God, and you’re honest, too.”
I thought about the lie I told her, explaining why I happened to be in the Sarasota area-research at Bell Fish Company-and replied, “Just because I’ve lost patience for my own lies doesn’t mean I don’t tell them to others. Nope, I’m not particularly honest, either.”
That seemed to touch her on some deeper level. “I can relate to that, my new friend. One thing I’ve learned is, you can’t pray a lie, which maybe, in a way, makes sinners of us all. So, from one sinner to another, how about I walk you back to your cottage?”
In the darkness of banyan shadow near the motel, Amelia stopped, and I turned her toward me, looking down into her face. Then I kissed her softly, feeling her lips move against mine, feeling her rib cage pressing washboard-like against my stomach. As her hands moved up my sides, her mouth opened, tongue searching, my hands began to move, too.
Open-palmed, exploring with fingertips, I felt body heat radiating through the sheer material of her dress, felt the stricture of latissimus cordage beneath her arms, swimmer’s muscles. Then felt her mouth open very wide, heard her moan softly as my fingers found eraser-hard nipples, her breasts flat over bony sternum. Felt her pull away long enough to whisper, “I hope you don’t like the busty type. If you do, you’re in for a disappointment.”
I found the self-deprecation touching, almost sad. If we men were required to wear sized penis stockings outside our pants, our discussions of women’s breasts would be markedly less frequent and our preferences more vaguely defined.
I wrapped my arms around her hips and lifted her chest high as I whispered my reply: “The way your body feels, I like just fine. There’s less distance between my lips and your heart.” Then I kissed her neck, and each nipple, feeling her swell and arch beneath the black dress, breathing heavier now, making soft sounds.
“Doc… we have a perfectly nice cottage right there. If you keep doing what you’re doing, I’m going to rip those shorts off you. Indecent exposure-the cops’ll arrest us both. Me, an officer of the court.”
Which is when it finally dawned on me that I couldn’t allow this to go any further. I do so many stupid things so often, it should no longer surprise me. Sometime that night, way after midnight, I had to go a’calling on Dex Money’s shrimp boat, the Nan-Shan. If Amelia went upstairs to my bed, there was a good chance she’d stay over. How would I explain a lengthy disappearance?
I lowered her to the ground, held her away from me. “You are one spectacular woman,” I said.
Her voice had an unmistakable huskiness. “I can barely hear you, my heart’s pounding so loud.”
She took my hand and pulled me out of the shadows, into a circle of streetlight, toward the cottage. I hated the way her expression changed when I stopped, refusing to follow her, and I said, “Amelia, let’s… let’s not do this. Not tonight, anyway. Let’s give it some time, date for a while, see what happens. Why risk the friendship?”
She said very slowly, “Give it… some time? You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”
I badly wanted to tell her just that, but couldn’t. “I’m trying to look down the road, anticipate what’s best for the both of us.” Then added lamely, “We really don’t know each other that well, when you think about it,” and I hated myself for sounding so prudish and insipid.
“Uhh-h-h, excuse me.” She laughed, an attempt to mask embarrassment. “I’m looking at you, not believing what I’m hearing, but you do mean it. You really don’t want me to come up to your room. Sorry, Amelia, request for service denied, Amelia. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“No, no, absolutely, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that I don’t want to rush you into something you might regret.”
Her face had gone from flushed, swollen, and sleepy to a pained look of surprise. “What you really mean is, you don’t want to risk doing something you’ll regret. Well, Doc, just for the record… let me put it this way: I want to set you straight about something, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about me. Before I get in my car and drive away, which is what I’m about to do.
“When it comes to men, I’ve never rushed into anything in my life. I don’t go around hopping from bed to bed. This is as close as I’ve ever come in my life to throwing myself at someone, and, believe me, sir, it’s something I’ll never risk again. It’s been nearly a year for me, and it may be another year before I find a man I like enough and trust enough to join in bed. But that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, Dr. Ford, it won’t be you.”
The woman had a temper. I tried to call her back as she walked away. She never turned, never looked, never replied.
18
There’s an alarm on my watch, which I set, and I set the alarm in the cottage’s bedroom, too-both for 2:45 A.M.
But I didn’t need either one of them because I couldn’t sleep. I laid awake in the darkness with a Gulf wind blowing through the screen, berating myself for my insensitivity, my stupidity. Why hadn’t I the foresight to come up with a more plausible, less insulting lie?
Twice I dialed Amelia’s home number, got the machine each time.
Clearly, she didn’t want to talk to me. The woman had taken enough cheap shots over the last few months, and now I’d added to her pain and humiliation.
At 2:30, I dressed and checked the duffel I’d packed for the boat. Inside were military BDU pants with tiger-stripe camo, my old black watch sweater, Navy blue stocking cap, leather gloves, mask and snorkel, Rocket fins, and a small waterproof flashlight. Back in Dinkin’s Bay, I’d decided against packing my 9mm SIG Sauer semiautomatic handgun. That was before I’d seen Dexter Money and his pit bulls. I regretted that decision now.