The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

“Not many.” Joe swallowed a yawn. “What did Charmaine want?”

“The restaurant bathrooms. Smells like death, apparently.”

Joe leaned back and groaned. “Jesus,” he said. “Again? I’ll bet you anything it’s the ladies room. Don’t they tell them not to flush tampons?”

“Sure. There are special trashcans and everything.”

“Then why don’t they fucking
use
them?”

“I have no idea.”

A fly buzzed lazily round and round above the kitchen sink. They both stared at it for a while, Gabe thinking of Gloria’s place and how lately it had started to look more than just a little neglected. And she had been so house-proud once; scrubbing the linoleum on her hands and knees, lining the bottoms of drawers with scented paper.

“Did they get that new maid?” asked Joe.

“Huh? Who? For Gloria?”

“No. At the hotel.”

“Oh, right,” said Gabe. “Yeah. Started today, I think.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So is she hot?”

Gabe had only caught a glimpse of the girl, walking across the grass, cleaning supplies in hand. Slender, dark skinned, her hair tied up in a big frizzy ponytail at her nape. “I don’t know,” he said, half his mind still on Gloria. “She’s young, I guess.”

“That’s a start. Considering the rest of the housekeeping staff consists of two grandmas and a lesbian.”

This was assuming the new maid was on fire to get with a lanky, sunburned Minnesota plumber who spent his days obsessing about damp and yanking rotten tampons out of U-bends in the ladies’ bathrooms. Gabe almost hoped not. For her sake.

Joe’s thigh was warm against his, but the fly above the sink kept on buzzing in the same old infuriating circle, reminding Gabe that there was a problem still unsolved here. “Can you sit with Gloria tomorrow night?” he said.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think I’m gonna go up to Tavernier. Talk to Eli about the situation.”

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Why? What do you think he’s going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“Nothing would be more likely.”

“I know that,” said Gabe. “But you know me. I’m an optimist deep down.”

Joe patted his knee. “Yeah. You should get that looked at.”

*

Blue slept - or tried to – in the attic of the hotel.

The notion of live-in staff had lost its old world refinement almost immediately. The AC unit was cranky and the waitress next door had not only a genius for smuggling boys upstairs but a loud repertoire of screamy sex noises probably borrowed from porn. Blue suspected that the management had also been similarly disappointed when they added beds and baths in the hope of drawing a better class of staff. Already she had noticed that there was something about the Keys, some strange quality that attracted rare birds like Gloria.

In New Orleans Blue had always been aware of the odd suction effect that the Gulf Coast winds sometimes had, blowing into town the exotic, the dangerous and the just plain weird. She had imagined the Keys populated with the kind of well-read, well-heeled tourists in search of whiskey sours and the ghost of Hemingway, but instead she had found the same effect was in action here. It was like all the world’s flotsam and jetsam got caught in the teeth of the coral reefs, and it actually wasn’t so bad, being just another thing that floated on down. In fact, once you’d been adrift the way Blue always had, it was something like a welcome respite. You might find yourself snagged in fishing nets, itchy with sand and smelling like a week old mackerel, but at least you got to come to a
stop
.

She lay listening to the steady shh of the ocean and the faint, fleshy sound of palm fronds rattling in the breeze. Paradise. Her mother had painted it over and over and again, childish paintings, each one so similar that they blurred into one. Sometimes a boat, sometimes a leaping dolphin, but always with a palm tree, a crescent of white sand beach and a tropical sea. One time Regina had painted the whole living room wall, in a burst of activity so fierce and ecstatic that Blue dreaded the inevitable crash more than any that had come before. When it came the mural was nearly finished; Blue found her mother kneeling in front of a half painted conch shell, brush drooping between her fingers and her eyes staring straight through the wall into the inevitable abyss.

You kept busy. You tried not to dwell. That was the knack of it.

Footsteps on the stairs. A chorus of drunk giggly shushing. Blue heard the door slam.

She turned on the light and sighed. In a few moments the sex noises would start again. The AC unit rumbled and creaked, finishing the job that the sauna of a night had started. There would be no sleep for a while, especially not now that the waitress had once again entered the bone zone.

The box was in the nightstand. Blue would never admit it to herself (could you really be creeped out by the body of the person whose body had been your entrance to the world?) but it was losing her sleep. Ever since she had come to Islamorada she had found herself checking out each palm-fringed beach for its potential, its resemblance to Regina’s drawings. But there were always people on the beaches, and it was then that Blue realized that there had never been a person in the paintings. And now she would never be able to ask why; if it was because her mother couldn’t do people or whether the pictures, with their prayer-like repetition, were some kind of invocation to solitude.

It was as good a time as any. She took out the cardboard box and slipped her key into the pocket of her robe. Next door the waitress moaned, a low, nerve-jangling note that made anger flash up Blue’s spine, settling in the vertebrae of her neck. Not for the first time she imagined yelling, pounding on the wall. Selfishness – that was all it was. An inability to think about anything beyond her own itchy crotch. Some people had bigger problems; money, jobs, hurricanes, mothers in cardboard boxes.

Blue tiptoed down the creaky attic stairs, down onto the balcony above the laundry and down those steps to the ground. The sea was louder now, a steady, low roar behind the softer sound of the tamer waves on the shore. The beach was still so new to her that just that afternoon she had wished she had a child or two, so as to have an excuse to build sandcastles.

She opened the lid of the box where it was still light enough to see. The plastic bag inside was white, opaque, and when she lifted it she was shocked by its lightness. This was all, in the end. They gave it grand words – ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the Lord is my shepherd – but here, in her daughter’s hands, what was left of Regina Beaufort felt as prosaic as a package of cornstarch.

Determined not to cry, Blue walked down the lawn towards the water. The grass was soft under her feet but beneath it she could still feel the heat of earth that had yet to cool down completely from the day. Cicadas chirred in the deep, rustling darkness. There was a light on at the end of the jetty. A boat bobbed just beyond, its white side (port or starboard – she didn’t know) gleaming like a beacon against the black of the waves. She ducked her head and kept walking, unable to go back now. The prospect of goodbye was almost obscenely desirable; how many times had she braced herself for this over the years? Now that it was nearly upon her she knew there was no way she was taking that package back upstairs, where it would sit in the nightstand and make her dreams uneasy with the worry of duties undischarged. It was time. Long past time to go.

She dipped her feet into the ocean. The waves caught the hem of her robe and tugged it here and there, but she was beyond worrying; as she tried to tear the plastic the cardboard box slipped from her hands and bobbed off on the waves. Litterbug. God, what was she going to do with the plastic afterwards? Normally she would have crumpled it up and taken it to the non-recyclable trash bin, but how did that work when you had the residue of a human being still clinging to the inside? You couldn’t dump your own mother in the garbage, even if it was less than a gram of her ash.

Her anxiety got the better of her and she put her thumb through the plastic, so that the ash trickled out without ceremony or prayer. She pictured it sticking to the wet hem of her robe and let out a small yelp of horror or hurt; she wasn’t even sure which. She just wanted to shake it all out, get it over with.

The bag was empty. She held it firm and bent to dip it in the water. It bulged up white and swollen, like a jellyfish, and she pushed it down frantically, trying to rinse out the last of the ashes. She realized she was breathing hard. When she straightened up, wet plastic screwed tight in her hand, the stars and the sea whirled around her head. She thought she was going to throw up, but then a chill breeze brought her up sharp, and it was so welcome that she poked the tip of her tongue out as if she could taste the brief, blessed coolness. Whisper of cold salt – wasn’t that what the old lady had said?

Done. She was done. The End. Finally Reggie’s complicated relationship with her own demise had ended, too, as all things must. The stars took another waltzy twirl, but this time Blue’s feet stayed firmly rooted on the sea floor. She dug her toes into the wet sand, anchoring herself against an unseemly exhilaration as sudden and bright as lightning.

In the midst of life we are in death. Or in the midst of death we are in life. Which way around was it supposed to go?

As she walked back along the beach she saw a dark figure moving around in the boat. Gabriel, she guessed. She thought it would be impossible for him to see her, but then he stopped what he was doing out there and straightened up - stock still, like a gundog sniffing the wind.

His eyes must have been something, because the next thing she knew his hand was in the air, waving at her.

She could have run to him right then, letting her robe flap open and peel off into the wind. But she didn’t. She tugged the white cotton tighter around herself, conscious of the speed of her heart, appalled at how suddenly the hunger for wild, raw life had leapt up inside her; she still had the crumpled plastic bag in her pocket.

Gabriel walked up the jetty with the same jaunty gait she had seen when he was escaping Charmaine that morning. He didn’t look especially tall, but he had that solid swagger that went with good muscle tone. His feet were bare.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

The word came out in a gasp and no sooner was it out of her mouth that she realized she had no idea what to say to him. She’d only seen enough of him to sketch the briefest impression – a bare shoulder flexed to pull in a rope, the wind ruffling his black hair. Up close he was even more of a stranger.

Quickly, fumbling to keep the ball in the air, she nodded towards the boat. “Are you taking it out in the morning?”

He flashed a grin. His eyes were black and his teeth – a little jagged – were white. “Yeah. Just cleaning up. Washing the blood off the deck. Doesn’t matter how many garbage bags you use; body parts always leak.”

She stared at him for a second and he laughed. “Kidding,” he said. “I’m not really a serial killer, I promise.”

“You see,” she said, feeling dizzy all over again. “That’s exactly the kind of thing a serial killer would say.”

He gave her a long, assessing look. “You must be Blue,” he said, holding out a hand. “Gabe Arnot. What are you doing out here at two o’clock in the morning?”

His hand was thin and rough in hers. She hesitated, trying to think of some explanation that didn’t make her sound bugnuts or burdened with so much baggage that any sensible man would run screaming.
You’ll laugh, but I
was
actually getting rid of a body.

She never got to try out the line, because right then a loud, horny shriek floated downwind towards them. Gabe raised a thick black eyebrow as the scream died away, giving way to the usual chorus of ‘I’m coming’ and ‘yes, yes, yes’.

“I’m right next door,” said Blue.

He laughed. “Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“Well,
someone’s
been watching too much porn.”

Her own laughter surprised her. She felt weightless, impossibly young. “I’ll have to get some earplugs, I guess,” she said. “Although I can’t do a damn thing about the heat.”

“Yeah. I’d say you get used to it, but...”

“...you don’t?”

He laughed. “Nope. The heat’s one thing, but the humidity is the real killer.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’m bringing the afro back here.”

Gabe’s almond shaped eyes glinted in the dark. Even in this low light she could see he had one of those clever, mobile faces which meant the wearer would never be any good at poker; his curiosity was immediately obvious. “Hee-yah,” he said, mimicking her. “Now there’s an accent. Let me guess. Texas?”

“Nope. I was only in Houston for a year; I don’t think that’s long enough to pick it up.”

He cocked his head to one side as he listened to the sound of her voice. “Oh wait,” he said. “New Orleans?”

“Born and bred.”

“Interesting,” he said. “So what brings you to the Keys?”

Blue crumpled the plastic in her pocket. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she said, deflecting.

“Because,” he said. “You’re fresh meat. Our little tourist trap can be pretty goddamn boring once you’ve worn out swimming with dolphins and drinking things with umbrellas in them. You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened since The Saga of Greg’s Leg. Sure, it’s a funny story, but I promise you’ll be sick to death of hearing it by the end of next week.”

She pulled the robe tighter around her body. “Funny?” she said, conscious of her own guilt in the matter. “You think a man having his leg amputated is funny?”

“No,” said Gabe. “Of course not. That part’s as sad as hell, but you have to admit that’s kind of a picture. Some big old stray dog padding through the town with a foot stuck in his mouth, like he was looking for someone to play frisbee with it.”

Blue pressed her lips together, trying not to giggle. “Okay, you got me. I
did
nearly laugh at that part. With Renee standing like six feet away.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah. I guess some things are just so sad and disgusting that your mind searches for the funny side. Just to keep you sane.”