“Right,” Mike said. “And the dry-cleaning bills.”
He surveyed the makeshift bar he’d set up, then looked at my glass and at his own. “I didn’t bring enough liquor, did I? I underestimated our thirsts.”
“There’s plenty,” I said.
“Yeah, for now.”
He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket. He peeled the plastic wrapper off and let it fall away onto the sand.
“I’m going to do something for you guys once I get some money saved up,” I said. “I appreciate you letting me crash. I’m going to get you guys a weekend vacation somewhere.”
Mike got his cigarette lit, shielding it from the breeze. He took a steadying drag. “I like having you around. It’s a lot of house for two people. You could stay forever if it was up to me.”
“If it was up to you? What, did Melanie say something?”
“No, she didn’t say anything. When she wants you to go, you’ll know it. She doesn’t play any games, you have to give her that. When she wants you gone, she’ll walk right up and tell you.”
“She doesn’t really go in for the passive-aggressive tactics, huh? The dirty looks and weird comments and whatnot.”
“She’s pretty special in a lot of ways.” Mike was measuring his words now, like he didn’t want to be misunderstood. “She can be pretty demanding about the big picture, but when it comes to the details, the day-to-day, she’s surprisingly… lenient.”
“Can I have one of those?” I said.
Mike held out his cigarettes and then handed over the lighter. He didn’t make any comment about my wanting to smoke.
“Even though it’s obvious she needs to lighten up — like, that’s the first thing you notice about her — you can tell she’s nowhere near the end of her rope,” he said. “She’ll never snap. She’ll just stretch and stretch.”
I took our glasses and poured a fresh round. The thermos was one of these super-expensive models for people who went trekking in the desert, and the ice cubes were still in good shape. We weren’t getting a lot of traffic thus far. Maybe fifteen cars had driven by, among them a few compacts that were prime candidates for getting stuck, but they’d all motored in and out of sight without any trouble.
“This is like fishing,” Mike said. “You hope nothing gets on your hook because then you’d have to put your drink down.”
“Nobody’s out tonight,” I said. “It’s eerie.”
After a minute we heard the approaching racket of motorcycles up on the street, that crackling growl. There was a whole company of them, their helmets flashing as they passed under the streetlights.
Mike flicked his cigarette butt into the darkness. “They’re probably all lawyers,” he said. “They’re accountants for an insurance company that insures insurance companies.”
We were close to drunk, and soon Mike started outlining all the sordid events that had occurred in the area in recent years — the driver’s education teacher who’d been fired for taking the school’s car during his planning period and picking up hookers, the girls’ high school soccer coach who’d taped himself getting a handjob from one of his players. Eventually I saw that he was building a case for not having children, for the unsuitability of the world.
Around midnight a bunch of people started coming by on foot, strolling in the meek surf. Several couples. A gaggle of teenagers. None of them acknowledged us, as if we were part of the scenery. A mother and daughter ambled by. A lone old man. A woman in fancy party attire, clutching her skirt up out of the water.
“I know what you’re really waiting for out here,” Mike said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You want to be here when the next shark attack happens. You want to pull somebody out of the water and be a hero.”
“Yup, that’s my plan,” I said. “I’m always out for the glory.”
Mike put his hand on the back of my neck, rough but brotherly. The moon was still absent, but a scatter of bright low stars had fixed themselves where they belonged. Mike took his hand back and stood up from the tailgate and started walking toward the water, drink and cigarette in hand. He went out into the gentle slosh, his white undershirt seeming to glow. He went right in with his suit pants on, without looking back at me, up to his knees and then all the way up to his waist. Then he stopped and stood there, facing the whole unlit cove. I set my gin glass down. My throat was burning from the couple cigarettes I’d smoked. I started cleaning up our mess, capping the bottles and chucking the limes. I felt angry, I didn’t know at what. I heard a strange noise on the breeze, and I could tell it was coming from the direction of the water. Then I heard it clearly. Mike was laughing. He was out there howling at full voice.
***
Cammie stopped by the restaurant. I was happy she caught me working. My head was all corners from the previous night’s drinking, but I was used to ignoring that. I looked up from some molding I’d decided to replace and saw her legs first, which put me in mind of tennis in a bygone era. She approved of everything I’d done, thought the place looked great. I showed her the big framed black and whites of Bryson’s Canal she’d ordered. I’d picked them up the day before, and I didn’t know where she wanted them hung. Bryson’s Canal was a local landmark. A hundred years ago, probably more, some guy got it in his head to cut a canal all the way across Florida. He made it a few miles inland before the government stopped him, but the part he’d dug was still there, straight as an arrow, lined with alligators.
Cammie hadn’t come around sooner, she said, because she wanted to be stunned by the changes, like in a before-and-after photo. She’d been dropping my pay off at Mike and Melanie’s, a stack of paper-clipped twenties with a ten on top, same every time.
“What’s with the ashtray out front? You smoke now?”
“Trial basis,” I said.
I asked about her girlfriend, just being polite, and Cammie sighed and said she was threatening to move to Las Vegas. Mini-mansions for a song out there. Real casinos to guard. Casinos that didn’t have a bow and a stern. Cammie’s girlfriend enjoyed hiking, apparently, which wasn’t a thing to do in Florida.
“You think she’s serious?” I said.
“Hard to say. Last summer she told me she was thinking about shaving her head, and I thought she was kidding because it was so hot out. I came home the next day and there she was, bald as anything.”
“She’s bald?”
“Not anymore. She’s got the cheekbones and the eyes, so it doesn’t really matter. But no, she let it grow back out.”
I wiped my hands off on the front of my pants, mopped the sweat off my face with my T-shirt. I guess I’d been waiting for a shoe to drop, whether I’d known it or not. Eager for it, in a way. “What would happen then, if she really wants to move?”
“Well, I guess she’ll get a Nevada driver’s license. Go see Hoover Dam. Wait for her furniture to arrive in the big truck.”
“I meant what would happen with the restaurant. I guess I know the answer.”
Cammie’s eyes registered the question. “How do you know I’d go with her?” she asked.
I was straightening things on the steel countertop now, my hand tools and such. I normally just left them in a jumbled heap. “Because all towns are the same if you peel away a layer or two, so why not move? They all have frozen yogurt and a Target, right? But they don’t all have a girl you love.”
Cammie reached over and squeezed a drill bit with two fingers. “Yeah, I probably would,” she said. “I’d probably go to Nova Scotia if she wanted me to. She’s really good for me.”
“It doesn’t have to be Las Vegas. This is about the point where all my projects fall through. I can feel it. This is right about the time.”