“You’re saying the rest of the money is real. You’re saying we don’t have to worry…”
“No, honey. I’m saying it don’t matter if they’re real or fake or whatever. We cash them where there are no machines, and we’re home free.”
He looks at her.
He is nodding now.
And now he is smiling.
“Let’s go celebrate tonight,” he says.
The features editor of the Cape October Tribune is a man named Lionel Maxwell, who has been in the newspaper business for forty years now, and who doesn’t need a twerp like Dustin Garcia telling him about placement. Garcia is saying he wants his weekly column to run on the first page of tomorrow’s Sunday section.
“That is patently absurd,” Maxwell says.
This is a small newspaper, circulation only 75,000 in a town of 143,000, which tells you something, doesn’t it? In addition to being a star reporter in his own mind, Garcia writes this column he calls “Dustin’s Dustbin,” and it usually runs on page five of the Sunday section. But now Garcia is insisting it should run on the first page instead.
“Give me one good reason,” Maxwell says.
He knows the good reason. Garcia wants greater exposure. His picture runs at the top of the column — “Dustin’s Dustbin,” for Christ’s sake! — but that isn’t good enough for him. He wants his picture and his precious words to run on the section’s first page, where anyone too lazy to turn to page five will see it at once.
“I think it’s an exceptionally good column this week,” Garcia says.
He can’t tell Maxwell that running it on the first page of the section is Detective Wilbur Sloate’s idea. Detective Sloate is looking for higher visibility. He wants to make sure that the people who have those kids will see the piece without having to go digging through the paper for it. But Garcia can’t explain that to his boss.
Nor can he tell him that the story he’s written is a complete fabrication. He’s afraid that Maxwell won’t run it at all if he knows not a word of it is true. Well, the kids being picked up at school is true, but the rest is all a crock. Garcia feels he’s performing a public service here, helping to get those kids back. He doesn’t want to run into bureaucratic red tape from an old-timer like Maxwell who doesn’t know what new-wave journalism is all about. He doesn’t want to hear him sounding off about libel suits, the way he did that time Garcia wrote a column about municipal garbage pickups regularly and routinely being ignored in the predominately Cuban Twin Oaks area, which actually did happen one Friday, the garbage not being picked up, and which even Garcia had to admit was not exactly an epidemic of neglect, but the city hadn’t sued anyway, so what was all the fuss?
“Also,” Maxwell says, “I’m not sure I like all these Shakespearean references.”
“That’s what makes the column special,” Garcia says.
“Half the rednecks down here never even heard of Shakespeare.”
“Come on, Lionel, everybody knows Shakespeare.”
“Wanna bet?”
But he is softening.
Garcia is thinking if his column helps crack a kidnapping case, he’ll get the Pulitzer.
“Please, Lionel?” he says. “Give me a break, okay? Front page of the section, upper right hand corner. Please?”
“I must be out of my mind,” Maxwell says.
They pick up I-75 ten miles east of the Cape, and then drive the Taurus north toward Sarasota. He tells Christine he’s afraid they might be spotted if they try any of the local restaurants, most of which aren’t any good, anyway. In Sarasota, there’s a wider selection.
They both must realize that Alice is sitting by the phone, waiting for a call from them, but they aren’t talking about her, or the kids locked in the forward stateroom of the boat. As long as they catch the last ferry back at ten-thirty, the kids will be okay. Instead, they talk about where they should go now that they have all this money.
The Unicorn is a restaurant all the way out on Siesta Key, secluded and quiet in the off-season. A month ago, it would have been thronged with Midwesterners. Tonight, they are virtually alone in the place. He orders a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. They toast to their success, and then order from the truly magnificent menu.
He sips at his champagne, gives the glass an admiring glance, eyebrows raised. He is dressed casually, tan slacks and a brown cotton sweater that perfectly complement the long blond hair. Christine is wearing an off-the-shoulder yellow dress, strappy yellow sandals, dangling yellow earrings. In Florida, especially during the off-season, no one dresses up for dining out.
She wants to talk about where they should go, now that they have all this money. She wants to talk about leaving Cape October forever, now that everything’s worked out the way they hoped it would, now that they’re finally rid of his wife.
“She’s not a bad person,” he says.
“I thought—”
“It’s not her fault that we happened to meet.”
“You and her, you mean?”
“No, you and me. It’s not her fault that I met you and fell in love with you.”
“Nice save,” Christine says, and hesitates a moment, and then asks, “Are you glad you met me?”
“Of course,” he says.
“And fell in love with me?”
“I am very glad I fell in love with you.”
She remembers the way they met.
Thinking back on it now, it seems to her they fell in love that very first instant. This will always be a source of amazement to her. That they met at all. People tend to forget that Florida is the South. In fact, it is the Deep South. And he is white and she is black. But they met. And fell in love.
He looked almost like a teenager. Three years ago, he was wearing his blond hair in a crew cut well suited to the summers on Cape October. Down here — and she was only just learning this because she’d recently moved down from Asheville — the summer months were horrendous. In Asheville, she’d worked serving burgers at a Mickey D’s. Down here (big improvement!) she was scooping ice cream at a place called The Dairy Boat. That’s where they met. At the Boat.
“Which are the no-fat flavors?” he asked.
Crew-cut blond hair. T-shirt and shorts, Reeboks. This was a Saturday, he’d probably been out running, high sheen of sweat on his face and his bare arms.
“Up there on the chart,” she said.
“I can’t read,” he said, and grinned.
That grin. Jesus!
“Chocolate-vanilla swirl,” she said. “Strawberry. Coffee crunch.”
“What’s the coffee crunch?” he asked.
“It’s got like these little chunks of chocolate in it.”
“Is it good?”
“I like it.”
“What else do you like?”
Little bit of double intender there?
She looked at him.
“Lots of things,” she said.
“You like walking hatless in spring rain?”
She looked at him again.
“You flirting with me?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said.
“You too young to be flirting with a grown woman,” she said.
“Thirty-three last month,” he said.
“You look younger.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Nice age difference,” he said.
“You think?”
“Don’t you?”
“How about that other little difference?” she asked.
“The Great Racial Divide, you mean?”