“No, I mean the gold band I spy on your left hand.”
“Oh,” he said. “That.”
“Yeah, that.”
“Yep,” he said.
“So whut’s a married man like you doing flirting with a nice colored girl like me?”
“Gee, I really don’t know,” he said. “What time do you get out of here?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Want to come for a ride with me?”
“A ride where?”
“To the moon,” he said.
That was the start of it.
“You still love me?” she asks now.
“Adore you,” he says.
“Even after what we had to do?”
“Well,” he says, “desperate people do desperate things.”
“Desperate, huh?”
“Is what we were,” he says. “We had to do what we did. There was no other way.”
“Here’s to all that money,” she says, and raises her glass in a toast. They clink glasses. Her eyes flash with sudden awareness.
“Why’s that waiter staring at you?” she whispers.
He turns to look.
“The bald guy over near the serving station.”
“He’s not staring at me.”
“He was a minute ago.”
They drink.
“Good,” he says.
“Yummy,” she says. But she is still looking toward the serving station.
“I wonder why they gave us fake money,” he says.
“If it’s all fake. We don’t really know.”
Still looking across the room.
“It must be, don’t you think?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Good as gold either way.”
He pours more champagne for both of them. They sip silently for several moments.
“So where do you think we should go?” she asks. “After we turn the kids loose?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Bali.”
“Okay.”
“You serious?”
“Sure. Why not Bali?”
“Oh, wow, I’d love that.”
“Fake money, fake passports, why not?”
“Can we get them? The passports?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Do you know somebody?”
“Same guy who made the other stuff.”
“Then let’s do it.”
“We will.”
“Let’s get out of Florida tonight,” she says, really excited now. “Let’s give her a call…”
“Well, not yet.”
“…tell her the kids are all right…”
“Well…”
“…drop them off someplace, and get the hell out of here.”
“Well,” he says, and takes another sip of champagne. “The kids may be—”
“Excuse me, sir,” a voice says.
He turns.
The man standing at his elbow is the waiter who Christine says was staring at him a few minutes ago. Fifty years old or thereabouts, tall and lean, with a balding pate and clear blue eyes, an apologetic smile on his face now.
“I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” the man says. “Just wanted to say it’s nice seeing you here again.”
“I… uh… I’m sorry, but this is the first time I’ve been here.”
“Ah? From some other restaurant then? I used to work at Serafina’s out on Longboat…”
“Never been there.”
“Or The Flying Dutchman downtown?”
“Don’t know either of them. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry to’ve bothered you. I thought sure… well, excuse me, I’m sorry.”
He nods, smiles, backs away from the table.
“Do you know him?” Christine whispers.
“Never saw him in my life,” Eddie says.
Faking his death was the easy part.
It had to look like a sudden whim.
Take the sloop out for a moonlight sail when it’s too late to get a sitter on such short notice. Gee, Alice, I’d like to take the Jamash out tonight, would you mind? Sudden inspiration, you know? But in preparation for this seemingly impetuous idea, he’s been watching the daily forecasts, waiting for a night when the seas will be high and the wind will be blowing out of the east.
They keep the boat at a ramshackle landing pier called Marina Jackson. It doesn’t have any hoists or storage racks, which they don’t need anyway because they never take her out of the water except to have the bottom scraped periodically, and they have that done at a true marina out on Willard. The guy running Marina Jackson is named Matt Jackson, and he’s surprised to see Eddie driving in at eight o’clock that night, fixing to take the boat out when the Coast Guard has issued small craft warnings. Eddie tells him he’ll be staying on the Intercoastal, which isn’t his plan at all, but Jackson frowns at him, anyway, and tells him to be careful out there tonight.
The sloop is a thirty-foot seaworthy Pearson that can sleep four, perfect for the Glendenning family, with a V-berth that can accommodate two up forward, and a port settee in the main salon that converts to a double berth. Eddie does indeed start out under motor on the Intercoastal, but the minute he rounds the tip of the key, he hoists sail and grabs the first wind that takes him westward, into the pass and out into the Gulf.
Man, it is not fun out here.
Expert sailor though he is, he knows this is goddamn dangerous, knows he can really drown out here tonight, if he doesn’t get off this boat fast, before it gets too far from shore. He inflates the rubber dinghy, carries it back to the stern platform and lowers it into the water. Clinging to the line that holds it to the Jamash, he climbs down into the dinghy, and starts its fifteen-horsepower Yamaha engine. He lets the line fall free of the sloop’s cleat. Still under sail, the Jamash seems to fly away westward into the night, disappearing from sight almost at once.
He is still fearful that he might really drown.
Waves crash in over the sides of the rubber dinghy, drenching him, threatening to capsize the small boat. He keeps its furiously bobbing nose pointed consistently eastward, constantly checking a handheld compass, squinting into the squall, his heart beating wildly in his chest.
At last he sees the light marking the entrance to the pass and the Intercoastal. He shifts course slightly, adjusting for the wind that threatens to blow him and the dinghy farther out into the Gulf. When he comes to within a hundred yards or so from the white sand beach that marks the tip of Willard Key, he removes a bait-cutting knife from its sheath and rips two gaping slashes in the dinghy’s orange rubber hide. He is over the side and swimming for shore as the deflating dinghy, weighed down by the engine, sinks out of sight.
He lies on his back on the sand, breathing harshly.
The night rages everywhere around him.
But Eddie Glendenning is dead.
Isn’t he?
Christine is silent all the way back to the ferry landing. She is still wondering about that waiter in The Unicorn. They park the car, lock it, and board the ferry at ten-thirty. Ten minutes later, they are approaching the marina.
Years ago, when Ashley first saw the place, she began applauding. Jamie, who was then four, began clapping his hands, too, in imitation, and not knowing what he was cheering. Both children kept clapping as Eddie brought the Jamash in. The only approach to Marina Blue was by water. You either came on your own boat, or you took the rickety ferry over from the end of Lewiston Point Road.
Then, as now, the docks were painted the palest tint of azure, streaking the wood like a thin wash of watercolor. Before the site was turned into an eccentric boating hideaway, the grounds had served as an artists’ retreat called The Cloister. Here, in the dim distant past, as many as a dozen writers, painters, and composers at a time could be housed and fed for periods as long as two months, while they worked on projects proposed to and accepted by The Cloister’s board of directors.