09-Twelve Mile Limit (13 page)

Ransom came up beside me, as I said, “Yeah. His nose is a few inches off center, he took some bad shots, but he won.”

“You realize that actor’s handlers are never going to look at him the same again. In fact, man—poof, like prestochango— his career may be over once word gets around. Him and his small, teenager soul. See? Good sometimes does triumph, Marion. Not always, but sometimes. You should find that reassuring.”

I took his arm. “We need to get you up and back to the No Mas.”

He shook his head. “No. I want to lay here and feel the earth. I’m hurting, my friend. Deep, deep in my Bodhi-mind, my Dharma-kaya, the pain, my God, the pain. All my life, I’ve wondered how I stand it. But no matter how many times my heart breaks, it still refuses to turn to stone.” He burped, burped again, then made a groaning sound before he added, “So I’ve just got to lay here and suck it up until the fat lady finally sings.” From the sound of his voice, the look of his face, I could see that he’d been crying.

I said, “What? You’re so drunk you’re making even less sense than usual.”

“Hah! ’Cause you don’t understand, Marion. It’s Janet. Our Janet. She was still out there when the Coasties called off the search. I know it. I could feel it, man, Janet’s strong vibes. That’s why I stayed at sea for a couple more days. I could communicate with her spirit, but I couldn’t find her physical body. Maddening!”

I said slowly, “You mean her dead body. Her corpse.”

“No! She was still alive!”

I don’t believe in fortune-tellers or parapsychology, but I’ve been around Tomlinson long enough to know that his intuition and perceptions are sometimes eerily accurate. How he does it, comes up with some of the things he knows, I don’t pretend to understand.

I said, “What about now? Do you think she’s alive now? It’s been three weeks exactly.”

He groaned again as he got up onto one elbow. “I don’t know. I can’t find her anymore. Her spirit, I mean. The first week after the boat sank, she’d come to me at night, in dreams, if I’d really smoked a lot of my good Colombian and chanted the Surangama sutra. Janet and the two others. I could see what happened, what they were doing, how they felt. I could even hear what they were saying. Phrases. Snatches of emotion. That’s why I overmedicated myself tonight. I was trying to break through again. I’m still trying to break through, trying to find her, but no luck.”

I told him, “I can’t leave you here. You get sick when you’re passed out, you could choke and die.”

Tomlinson used his hand to wave me away, then settled himself back in the sand, eyes closed, curled in a fetal position. “Demon rum,” he said. “Not a bad way to go. Only thing I’ll miss is going into town and playing ball come Sunday.”

We both played Roy Hobbs baseball, a fairly serious brand of ball.

Beside me, Ransom said, “I’ll stay with him.” She sat herself in the sand, using Queenie the totem pole as a backrest, and combed her fingers gently through Tomlinson’s long hair. “Poor old bony hippie man. This boy drive me crazy, but he in my heart and ain’t nothin’ I can do about it.” She looked at him for a moment, shaking her head. “He got a toothache in his soul, my brother, and there ain’t nothin’ I can do about that, either.”

I said, “Yes, he does. I think he probably always will.”

I left the two of them to sleep in the sand, because that’s what they wanted, and headed back to Dinkin’s Bay, determined to get Amelia alone long enough to ask her about the boat. Maybe it was possible. Maybe Tomlinson and Amelia were both right—there was a chance Janet had been picked up and was still alive.

Now, sitting by the fire, Amelia said to me, “I’m going to stay at your sister’s house—if we ever get to bed. She says you’re a runner. How about we go for a run tomorrow, and I’ll tell you all about it. A couple miles along the beach, maybe?”

I told her that would be just fine. She was probably right. Certain subjects are appropriate for drunk talk, other subjects are not. The fate of three missing people deserved elevated status. So I asked her about something she probably would feel comfortable talking about—how the fight started back at’Tween Waters.

“I’ve almost gotten used to it,” she told me. “I was sitting at one of the big tables with Jeth, Ransom, and the two women who live here—JoAnn and Rhonda?—and Claudia, too. Claudia was asking me more questions about Janet. What did we talk about when we were hanging on to the anchor line? She asked a lot of little details about what went on after we were set adrift. That sort of thing.

“I don’t know how they found out who I was, but a couple of guys from the bar came over and introduced themselves. Part of the SAM crowd, one was from Jacksonville, the other from Palm Beach. The moment the first one opened his mouth, I knew how it was going to go, that’s how many times I’ve been through it in the past few weeks. The ones who don’t believe my story, they always start out very polite—like, hey, congratulations, what an honor to meet you. They’ve read all about it, know all the details. Which fooled me the first couple of times, but not anymore.

“It’s something in the tone of their voice. That’s how I can tell. Way too friendly and impressed, trying to make me feel important, but what they’re really trying to do is set me up, trap me, like amateur interrogators. Tonight, the guy from Palm Beach—and he was pretty drunk, too—goes on for ten minutes or so, making backhanded accusations by telling the story to his friend, until finally he stops, looks at me, and says, ‘Lady, how stupid do you think people really are? You’re telling us that three adults in inflated vests just vanished off the face of the earth? Bullshit. Okay, so pretend like we’re not all idiots here and tell the truth. What happened was, you cooked up some drug deal with some badasses from Miami or maybe South America, and they wasted your three pals to make it nice and clean. Somehow you had an in with them. Maybe one of the drug bosses had a taste for redheads, so they let you live.

‘Or maybe what happened was, you and your pals decided to sink the boat for insurance money, and something went real wrong. They weren’t wearing their vests, like you said. Something else I heard was about you and the others maybe being involved with some kind of porno ring… .’”

Amelia let the sentence trail off, and I noticed that her hands had gradually clenched into fists. After a moment, she said, “That’s when I stopped him. I’d had enough. It’s true that I once had to defend this porno slimeball, and the case got a lot of press, so that’s where that nasty little rumor got started. But no way was I going to let him associate the other three with that.

“You know how they say redheads have a temper? I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll only let someone push me so far. So I stood up and let the guy have it with both barrels. I know all the words, and how to use them. I realize I’m no great beauty, but I’ve had to back off enough of the casting-couch macho types to know exactly where to aim, and the guy didn’t like where my words hit him. So that’s when Jeth stood up and got involved. Then, out of nowhere, the actor was there, right in his face. Gunnar Camphill to the rescue, take two. It was a damn ugly thing to watch, wasn’t it, Doc? Makes me feel sick inside to think about the sound their fists made when they were hitting each other. The flesh-on-bone sound.”

I’d known her for, what? less than eight hours, but I’d already accepted her as what Tomlinson once defined as a PBR—a person who is reality based. One night, over beer, we’d kicked around the definition and more or less refined it. A PBR wasn’t just a brand of blue-collar beer, it was also someone who was not dominated by neurosis, ambition, or ego. It was a person who was relatively honest, rational, and reasonable most of the time; a man or woman who had a general sense of his or her own worth and limitations, who acknowledged the worth of others, who demonstrated a sense of humor, and didn’t take him-or herself too seriously.

With a definition so broad, you’d expect to meet lots and lots of PBRs.

Instead, I seem to be meeting fewer and fewer.

In my opinion, Amelia Gardner qualified, and I would trust her until, if, and when she did something to make me think otherwise. Now I reached over, put my hand on her arm, and squeezed gently. “That remark you made about ‘great beauty,’ I hope you’re not suggesting you aren’t attractive. Because you are. But you’re tired, I can see it in your face. Know what might be a good thing for you to do right now? It doesn’t look like Ransom’s going to be back any time soon, so let me walk you over to my house, change the sheets, and put you to bed. I’ve got a big hammock strung on the porch. A starry night like this, no bugs, I’d rather sleep out there anyway.”

Laughter can communicate a variety of emotions. The amused sound she made was shy, a little weary, but pleased. “I was always the lanky, gawky tomboy girl. All elbows and legs, with no chest at all. I kept waiting for my body to change, but it never did, so now I’m the lanky, gawky attorney lady, all elbows and legs and still no chest at all. But thanks anyway. It was a nice way to tell me I look tired.” She stood, stretched, and yawned, still smiling. “Let me say my good nights, and I’ll take you up on the offer.”

I waited while Amelia fetched an overnight bag from her car, then I walked her to the house. Gave her a quick look at my lab—no octopi or crabs missing—and then took her through the screen door into the cottage and showed her how things worked. Little propane stove for tea. Small ship’s refrigerator if she wanted a snack. If she couldn’t sleep, there were books on the shelves and a shortwave radio near the Celestron telescope that was angled toward the north window. I laid out fresh sheets and towels, then returned along the mangrove path, back to the marina, to give her some time and privacy to use the outdoor shower and change into the XX T-shirt I’d loaned her to use as a nightgown.

I expected the party would have ended. It was well after three by now, but Mack and Jeth, most of the liveaboards and guides, were still there, still sitting around the blazing fire, laughing softly, talking in early-morning voices. Still riding that emotional, adrenaline high, replaying the events at’Tween Waters. We’d won the battles and won the war, and each and every member wanted to cement his or her role in the way things had transpired, secure their place in the marina’s oral history here and now, at the edge of the fire, before memories were tarnished by the edge of the first morning light.

For how many hundreds of centuries had this ceremony been repeated, on every continent, by men and women sitting around burning wood at the water’s edge?

The scene touched some atavistic chord in me, created the illusion of ancient memory, but, illusion or not, it was a moving and pleasing scene to behold.

There were people milling around on the deepwater docks, too, I noticed. Four, maybe six. I couldn’t tell. I walked past the sumping-aerator hiss of bait tanks, beneath the sodium security lights, and out toward the darker fringes of A dock, sailboats with halyards a-tapping off to my left. I heard a splash, then another splash. Then heard JoAnn’s alto whisper. “Doc? Hey Doc’s here!”

With the security light behind me, in the blue light of a waning half moon, I could now see JoAnn and Rhonda standing on the dock, naked but for bikini panties. JoAnn, short and Rubenesque; Rhonda, tall and stork-like with skinny hips and hair clipped short. They had their arms wrapped around themselves, for the night had turned cool. But as I neared, JoAnn dropped her arms to her side, heavy breasts right there for me to see, and said, laughing, her voice fluid with alcohol, “We decided it was a night to break marina rules. We’re all gonna go skinny dippin’! No exceptions, pal!”

I stopped and placed hands on my hips, smiling. Down the mangrove shoreline, at my house, I could see the solitary figure of Amelia Gardner lifting her arms, head back, washing herself beneath my outdoor shower, her body long, lean, and milky-white when touched by the moon. Because of the direction my cottage faces—all water and mangroves—anyone using the shower gets the impression of total privacy.

Not always.

To JoAnn, I said, “Looks like I’ve got some time on my hands,” as I unclipped my belt and stepped out of my sandals.

In the mangrove heat of an autumn afternoon, Amelia and I ran along the marina’s shell road that tunnels through prop-roots, tidal swamp, out into the light and traffic of Tarpon Bay Road, then straight to the beach. We were on the late November cusp of tourist season, so there were a lot of rental cars, metallic bubbles in crimson, bronze, white; a noticeable increase in the number of license plates from Ohio, Michigan, New York, Canada.

The first ten minutes or so, we talked about how crappy we felt, how shaky.

“I’m not going to drink any alcohol for a month,” she said. Her tone told me that she was angry at herself, disappointed, too, and communicated to me on a deeper level so that I could be certain it was uncharacteristic behavior.

In a similar tone, I said, “Couldn’t agree more. What an idiotic waste of time. It ruined my whole damn morning. I slept for a couple hours, woke up at seven, went straight to the lab, but didn’t get any work done at all.”

Later, watching the sunset from the patio outside the Mucky Duck, me holding a draft beer, her with a glass of wine, we’d both laugh at our own weakness and hypocrisy. Now, though, we were determined to get ourselves clean again, to take control, and physical penance seemed like an appropriate start.

If you run or swim much, you can tell very quickly if an unfamiliar workout partner takes either discipline seriously. Amelia clearly did—she ran with a long, pure stride; she seemed to glide as I pounded along, big and muscle-dense, at her side. When I asked her, “Okay with you if we pick up the pace a little?” she answered, “Seriously? I’d love to,” with an edge that made me think, Uh-oh.

So we punished ourselves. Got the sweat going, hearts pounding, the lungs burning. Got the tiny little voice of reason that lives on the outskirts of the modern brain whispering couch-potato lies: Slow down. Why push yourself? Listen to the pain. Listen to your body, not your instincts! Stop fighting against the inevitable!