1 Margarita Nights (13 page)

“Sweet. Your kindness is only exceeded by your thoughtfulness.” I headed for the door. “And I just want you to know I’ve been kicked out of better joints.”

The smell of lilies was strong. The reminders of death weren’t doing anything but depressing me and I promised myself that I’d take them to a local nursing home first thing in the morning. But perhaps the aged were the last people who wanted to see flowers of condolences. Another of life’s little conundrums, but the flowers had to go.

Mr. McGoo was sitting on the bar. His left ear and one eye were missing, sacrificed in a war with my cousin Emily. I picked him up and hugged him to me. The light on the answering machine was still dancing.

“It’s nice to be popular, but hell to be the rage,” I told Mr. McGoo as I hit the rewind button. I went to the fridge while the messages began replaying. I poked through the limited possibilities for food and a cold drink. “What will it be, McGoo, water, orange juice or water?”

The first message was from Ruth Ann. “Oh god.” I hadn’t thought to call her back. I really am the world’s worst daughter. Ruth Ann’s wandering message was from before the world crashed. She told me she’d been given lots of oranges so she was making marmalade; she told me the news from Sarah and Julie, my sisters in North Carolina . . . the normal sort of thing, while country music played in the background.

Ruth Ann’s life was the epitome of the country and western songs that twanged from her radio from the moment she woke until long after she was asleep. In that occasional brief space when there was no man in her life to be disturbed by the noise, her radio played all night, probably to cover the fact there wasn’t anyone snoring on the pillow beside her.

Country music was the background to every conversation we’d ever had, every meal and every argument. I only had to hear certain songs to have those times and emotions come rushing back. Mostly these memories didn’t make me happy. They just made me remember the men in my mom’s life, men with names like Buck or Junior or some double-barreled name like Ray-John.

Next came a message from a lovely-sounding lady at MasterCard, asking me to call. Last November, ten of us had gone off to the Bahamas on a four-day junket. I had no idea how much I’d enjoyed myself until the bills came in. On top of that was the shopping I ’d done getting ready for the trip; then there was my cold, which made me miss about four shifts in December; and then Christmas and a new battery . . . yes, I am sure MasterCard would like to speak to me. I needed speaking to.

The next call was from Jimmy.

His voice could always seduce me. Even as my brain was cursing, “You son of a bitch! You can’t even die straight,” my body was reacting in the same old way to that smooth drawl.

“Hi, Babe. Go out and look under the dead fern on the deck. There’s a videotape out there. Bring it in before you water the fern. I know you’ll water it, dead or not. Put the tape somewhere safe for me and forget about it. Why don’t you just give me a key so I won’t have to climb the balcony next time? Better yet, why don’t I just move in? Love ya!”

I stood there staring at the answering machine on my kitchen counter, diamond shards of broken glass around my bare feet. The next message played. Ruth Ann again, telling me she’d heard about Jimmy. “Are you all right, honey?” “Yes, Mom, I’m friggin’ wonderful.”

The messages droned on, several from friends and one from an insurance man, but still I stood there, hugging McGoo and rubbing his remaining ear back and forth between my fingers. When the tape ran out, I reached over and pushed the rewind, hunting for Jimmy’s message and played it through again. Then I took a giant step over the broken glass and went to retrieve the video.

The black plastic tape had a label on it saying “Holy Grail” in Jimmy’s bold handwriting. I remembered watching
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
with Jimmy and Andy. The three of us had watched hundreds of old movies. Long nights spent drinking beer with Jimmy and me making out in the flickering light as Andy went on and on about what made the movie we were watching so wonderful. Sometimes we would watch two or three in a night. Later on it was just Andy and me watching them as Jimmy chased his dream.

Andy had been a film major in New York when the schizophrenia finally swamped him. That September he’d left Florida looking forward to living in New York but by Christmas his parents had flown up to drive him back.

Hallucinations had taken over his life.

Looking back, we all knew something was wrong long before his disease was full-blown. We made excuses, like he had things on his mind or he was artistic. We even worried about substance abuse, but we never once thought it was all in his head. At one point I was totally convinced that he had fallen into some giant conspiracy and no one was listening to Andy. Jimmy had been the most clear-eyed and the first to realize that Andy needed more help than we could give him.

I switched on the television and slipped the tape into the VCR. There wasn’t much on it. I watched about twenty minutes of guys hitting golf balls at what looked to be the driving range out at Windimere. Jimmy taped the swings of people he gave lessons to so he could replay them and show them what they were doing wrong. He was a natural teacher; never losing his temper or thinking someone was stupid if they couldn’t do what was so easy for him. He just went over and over and over it as if it was the first time he’d ever talked to someone about swing plane or weight shift. That’s why I’d become such a good golfer. It wouldn’t have worked if he’d been too critical; I don’t take too well to criticism.

All of a sudden the tape went wacky and then there was a shot of parked cars before it went crazy again. After a few minutes of up and down stuff—what looked like a metal ceiling and parts of golf carts—there was a clear shot of cars, of a guy putting a package into another guy’s golf bag and then a closeup of the two guys. One was sideways to the camera so you couldn’t see him very well but the other, a white, middle-aged guy, looked directly at the camera. I didn’t know him. Then there was a close-up of an SUV and the license and then the camera went funny again. After this there was a good shot of the two guys shaking hands.

Then Jimmy came on mugging for the camera. I played the part with Jimmy about a dozen times before the night caught up to me.

Next morning I went for a jog, hoping it would clear my head. When I got back to the Tropicana, there was a white business card stuck in the door from an insurance guy by the name of Huff. Insurance being just one of the many things that I had no use for, I flicked it onto a pile of unopened bills before I dragged the cushion out to the lounge.

With a cup of coffee in my hand, and the hollow sound of the bamboo stand to the left of my balcony serenading me, I stared down at the red pickup. The parking lot had been full the night before so Big Red sat next to this old motorhome that had been there so long that the tires had gone flat and a chartreuse green mold had spread all over its roof and sides.

I was a little surprised to see Jimmy’s truck still there, figuring either a finance company would reclaim it or Jimmy would come back for it before morning.

What was Jimmy up to? The tape was important, must have been for Jimmy to climb onto my balcony and stash it there, but why was it important? The mess that he was in, the trouble that had made him disappear must have something to do with Windimere and golf. And had the message been left on my machine before or after the
Suncoaster
blew?

I needed help. I called Evan at the paper and told him about the tape. “I want you to see it and tell me what’s happening. You’ll know what it means.”

“I’m jammed up until late tonight. There’s another special meeting about the King Ranch starting at three. It’ll be after supper by the time all the yelling and screaming is done. Then I have to write it up.”

Most of the news was pre-packaged from the mother ship so Evan only had to worry about the local section. With the land boom going on, most of the local news was about developers and the people who opposed them. In Florida, land speculation is as popular as the lottery and a lot more profitable. “Why didn’t you bring it over last night?” he asked. My brain said, “Because I need to decide how deeply you’re involved in this.” My mouth said, “As if. Noble was there and there are some things I’m still too young to know about.”

“Oh, yeah.” His voice sounded funny.

“Are you and Noble having problems?”

“You mean new problems or just the same old problems?” Why do I ask? That led to about twenty minutes of him telling me what it would take to make him truly happy. After five years you’d think he would have figured it out, Noble was never going to come out of the closet. It just wasn’t going to happen but every day we talked about it so now I just let him run on while I tried to decide what came next. As Jimmy’s wife, even one that didn’t live with him, I had this sneaky feeling there were things I should be doing. Even dead Jimmy was turning out to be a pain in the ass.

When I grew tired of wandering the same old path, I ended Evan’s whine with, “I hear you went out to Windimere looking for Jimmy.”

Silence roared down the line.

“Evan?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“But why did you go there?”

“To talk to him . . . make him see sense. He needed to leave you alone. Needed to leave all of us alone.”

“Us? What us?”

“Well, you. I wanted him to leave you alone.” Clang! His huge whopper hit the floor. Evan wasn’t a person to confront anyone, especially not Jimmy. Not for me anyway.

“Detective Styles came to see me,” Evan told me.

“Lucky you.”

“He wanted to know if we are having an affair.”

“And you said . . .”

“Yes.”

I thought about this as I showered, weighing and judging our conversation. There was something Evan wasn’t telling me. Or maybe it was just the effect Styles had on him.

I called Ruth Ann, tucking the phone between my shoulder and chin, while I did my eyes and let her talk at me.

“Come over. I’ll make something nice.” Like Marley, Ruth Ann is convinced food solves problems.

“I have to go to work.”

“So soon? Is it wise?”

Ruth Ann didn’t know the state of my finances. “Yes.” Not going into work would be truly unwise. “There’ll be a funeral,” she told me.

“Why?” She was confirming this worm of anxiety eating into me. There must be something I should be doing but a funeral sounded ridiculous given the circumstances. “There’s no body.”

“Well, a memorial then. There has to be something, some formal thing, for what they call closure. Don’t worry, I’ll go with you.”

Now there was something to really worry about. I remember the first time my folks met Jimmy’s parents. Back from hauling citrus to New York, Dad had moved in with Ruth Ann again after a dozen final break-ups. Mr. and Mrs. Travis had invited us over for dinner. Not supper . . . dinner.

Ruth Ann, all friendly like, started telling Mrs. Travis about all the folks they knew in common. But the thing was, Mrs. Travis played golf with them and Ruth Ann cleaned for them.

I thought Mrs. Travis would stroke out right then and Dr. Travis wasn’t looking too healthy either. Jimmy and my dad just went on talking about what fish were running and where they might have the best luck. I think it was grouper season . . . or maybe pompano, or snook; they were always out there in the gulf killing something and it always seemed that Jimmy had more in common with my dad than he did with his own. Anyway, the tension in the air went right over their heads and when I tried to talk to Jimmy about it later he couldn’t understand what I was going on about. The social status thing never mattered to Jimmy. He liked who he liked and disliked the rest. But really there were few people Jimmy didn’t like.

Now I told Ruth Ann, “When someone tells me there’s a memorial service for Jimmy, I’ll worry about it.”