“Hello?”
“Who’s this?” he asks.
“It’s your nickel, mister,” the woman says. “Who’s this?”
“This is Rafe Matthews, and I live there, ma’am! Now who the hell…?”
“Oh, golly, Mr. Matthews,” the woman says, “I’m sorry, this is Hattie Randolph. I’m sittin your kids while your missus is gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Down to Florida. To see her sister.”
“Cape October?”
“I reckon, sir. She gave me the number there, if you’d like it.”
“I have the number. When did she leave?”
“Early this afternoon. Said she should be there by tomorrow morning sometime.”
“Okay,” Rafe says.
He is already thinking.
“Did you want me to tell her anything? If she calls?”
“No, I’ll get in touch with her myself, Hattie, thanks. How are the kids?”
“Fine. I just put them to bed.”
“Well, give them a kiss for me in the morning, okay?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
“Good night, Hattie.”
“Good night, Mr. Matthews,” she says.
He turns off the phone, and sits alone in the cab, in the dark, thinking. He doesn’t like the idea that Carol just picked up and left for Florida without first consulting him about it. On the other hand, the fact that she’s on the road and doesn’t expect to get down here in Florida till tomorrow morning means that she’ll be stopping at a motel to sleep over, which further means he’s free as a bird till morning, when he’ll give her a call to bawl her out.
Rafe doesn’t realize this about himself, but his usual way of dealing with disappointment or frustration is to look for female companionship. His rejection by first his former jailhouse cronies and next the big-titted little blonde waitress might have remained just mere annoyance if Carol had been home where she was supposed to be. Instead, he calls and gets some black woman he never heard of, while his wife is driving alone in the dark and sleeping Christ knows where on the road, and this pisses him off further, this truly pisses him off mightily.
Suddenly—
Or at least he thinks it’s suddenly.
He remembers the blonde who ran over Alice’s foot.
He activates the phone again. Dials Information. Presses the
SEND button.
“Cape October, Florida,” he says.
“Yes, sir?”
“Jennifer Reddy,” he says. “That’s R-E-D-D-Y. I don’t have an address.”
He waits.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator says. “I don’t have a listing with that spelling.”
“What do you have?” he asks, about to get angry all over again.
“I have a Ready-Quik Car Wash, and a Ready-Serv Rental…”
“No, this is a residential listing. And it’s not Ready, it’s Reddy. R-E-D-D-Y.”
“Could it be Redding, sir? R-E-D-D-I-N-G? I have a J. Redding on Mangrove Lane. Could that be it?”
“It might,” he says.
Redding, he thinks. Jennifer Redding.
“I’ll try it for you, sir.”
He hears the operator dialing. Hears the phone ringing on the other end.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice. A Jennifer Redding voice. Crisp and young and sensual.
“Miss Redding?” he says.
“Yes.”
“This is Rafe Matthews?”
“Who?”
“I was at Alice Glendenning’s house when you stopped by yesterday.”
“Alice…? Oh. Yes.”
There is a silence on the line.
“So… uh… what is it?” Jennifer asks.
“I happened to notice you. Through the drapes.”
Another silence.
“I wouldn’t intrude this way,” he says, “but I know you’re a friend of Alice’s…”
“Well, actually, I ran her over,” Jennifer says.
“Yes, so I understand.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“No, no. Not at all.”
“Then why…?”
“Point is, I’m still in the neighborhood, more or less, and I was thinking you might like to meet me for a cup of coffee. Or something.”
“What do you mean by ‘more or less’?”
“Actually, I’m in Fort Myers. Near the airport here. Or we could meet for a drink. If you’d prefer a drink.”
“Why should we meet at all?” Jennifer asks. “For anything?”
“Well, like I said, I happened to notice you through the drapes…”
“And so?”
And so I’d like to fuck your brains out, he thinks, but does not say.
“If you’re busy,” he says, “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“I’m not busy,” she says. “And you’re not bothering me. It’s just… I don’t know you at all.”
“Well, that’s the idea,” he says.
This is getting too difficult, he thinks. Fuck it. I’ll go back inside and hit on the waitress again.
“Get to know each other a little better,” he says.
“Well, now, why would I want to do that?”
It suddenly occurs to him that she may be flirting.
“Friend of Alice’s and all,” he says.
“I told you,” she says. “All I did was run over her foot.”
“Glad it wasn’t my foot,” he says.
She laughs.
“I’ll bet,” she says.
“So what do you think?” he asks. “Coffee? A drink? Or get lost?”
She laughs again.
“Can you be at the Hyatt by ten?” she asks.
“I’m not dressed for the Hyatt,” he says.
“What are you wearing?”
“I’m driving a rig. I’ve got on jeans and a denim shirt.”
“Casual, huh?”
“And loafers,” he says.
“Okay, drive out to the end of Willard Key. There’s a place out there on the water, it’s called Ronnie’s Lounge, which sounds gay but it isn’t. You’re not, are you?”
“No, ma’am, I am not.”
“Who shall I look for?”
“Big handsome guy in jeans and a denim shirt.”
“Modest, too,” she says.
But she laughs again.
“Ten o’clock,” he says.
“See you,” she says, and hangs up.
Hot damn! he thinks.
Actually, Rafe has done this sort of thing many times before. The trick is to make it look as if he’s never done it before. In the past, he’s never blatantly flashed his wedding band — nor is he doing that tonight — but if the subject happened to come up, he never denied he was married, either. The way the conversation is going here in Ronnie’s Lounge, it looks as if the subject might come up any minute now.
Jennifer Redding is wearing a little black fuck-me dress that’s cut high on the thigh and low over what Rafe considers an exuberant set of lungs. She is wearing strappy black sandals with a stiletto heel, and her legs are crossed, and she is jiggling one foot, which always makes him think a woman is about to come. She looks overdressed for the kind of place this is — especially after he told her on the phone he was in denim and jeans — but she doesn’t seem uncomfortable here. In fact, some of the other women draped here and there around what is essentially a wooden shack hung with fishing nets and buoys are also dressed to the nines whereas the guys look like they just got off either a boat or a horse.
Jennifer is drinking a Cosmopolitan, which he never heard of before tonight, and which she earlier explained is a cocktail composed of four parts vodka, two parts Cointreau, one part lime juice, two parts cranberry juice, a dash of orange bitters, and an orange twist.
“You’re supposed to set fire to the oil from the orange peel before you drop it in the glass, but I never saw any bartender down here do that,” she told him.