“Yeah,” he answered after a second, closing his eyes and telling himself that he was in Islamorada and at Rumrunners. Not back in the bunker. “Sorry, sort of a headache thing,” he continued, taking off his sunglasses to dangle on their lanyard. “One, nonsmoking.”
“We’re pretty busy this afternoon,” the girl said nervously. “It will be about an hour.”
“I’ll wait in the bar,” Mike replied, taking the flashy buzzy pager thing and dropping it in his pocket.
The bar was even more crowded than the front, all the tables taken and no room to even move up to the bar and get a beer. Finally he spotted an open seat next to a curvy brunette and pushed his way through the crowd to it.
“This seat taken?” he asked, groaning to himself. He’d be more than happy to hit on the brunette, who was wearing a light sundress and looked even better from the front than the back, but mostly he was just trying to get to the bar.
“Yes, as a matter of fact it is,” the girl said coldly. “My friend will be back in a minute.”
“Not hitting on you,” Mike said, trying to get the barmaid’s attention. “I was just trying to find a seat.”
The girl turned away and he shrugged. Finally, the barmaid got free and came over to him.
“I’ll take a Fosters,” Mike said. “And please give the young lady and her ‘friend’ a refill so she won’t think I’m a jerk.”
The barmaid glanced at the brunette, who shrugged and nodded.
“I’m sorry I snapped,” the girl said, not turning her head.
“It’s okay,” Mike replied. “You probably do get hit on all the time. I think it would be different for a guy, but for young ladies it probably gets to being a pain in the butt.”
“It is,” she said as a short, well-set-up blonde with short hair and lovely green eyes walked up and looked at Mike. He realized he was enough in the space that she couldn’t sit down.
“Sorry,” Mike said, backing away. “Just trying to get a drink.”
“And buying us one,” the brunette said, with a slight grin. “I’m Pam Shover.”
“Mike Jenkins,” Mike said, holding out his hand over the blonde’s back. “Boat bum.”
“What’s a boat bum?” the blonde asked, interested despite herself.
“Somebody who lives full time on a boat and has no visible means of income,” Mike replied, taking out a card and handing it to “Pam.” “If you ever want to go fishing or cruising or whatever, give me a call. Again, not a hit. I just like to show off my boat.”
“Probably not,” Pam said, tucking the card away. “We’re only down here for a week.”
“Summer break?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” Pam said. “And even with all the other girls in town, I feel like the main character in the song ‘Fins.’ ”
“’Got fins to the left,’ ” Mike sang, chuckling. “Gotcha.” He glanced at his watch and shrugged. “I’ve got about fifty minutes until my table’s ready. So can we talk or should I just crawl under a rock?”
“We can talk,” Pam said, grinning again and looking over the blonde’s shoulder. “So, what does a professional boat bum do?”
“Mostly fish,” Mike admitted.
“I’d wondered what the smell was,” the blonde said, then flinched. “Jesus, I’m sorry, that came out as a real cut and it wasn’t intended.”
“I was catching dolphin this morning and spent a couple of hours filleting them all out,” Mike said. “I showered and scrubbed before I landed. But getting all the smell off is tough.”
“You were catching dolphin?” the blonde said angrily, looking up at him with flashing green eyes.
“Uh, dolphin fish,” Mike said. “You’d probably call it mahi-mahi.”
“People call it dolphin?” the blonde asked, confused.
“Yeah,” Mike replied. “Don’t worry about it, though, everybody gets it confused. But if somebody is talking about fishing for a run of dolphin, they’re talking about mahi-mahi, not Flipper.”
“Okay,” the blonde said, chuckling. “Sorry about that.”
“Like I said, common,” Mike replied. “Anyway, that’s pretty much what I do.”
“And that pays the bills?” Pam said, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, no,” Mike replied. “Well, not all of them. I’m sort of retired.”
“You’re young to retire,” Pam said, leaning back and looking at him with real interest for the first time.
“Short story or long?” Mike asked, trotting out his standard cover. “I used to run a very small company that sold communications widgets to the military. Classified, very low use, very niche market. Decent income but not rich or anything. Then, well, then 9/11 happened and my particular widget got really popular. The third buyout offer from a major defense contractor was too good to pass up. Now I’m semi-retired. The fishing pays for gas and food and sometimes docking charges. The company paid for the boat,” he finished, grinning.
“Nice,” the blonde said, glancing at him. “What’d you walk away with?”
“Uhmmm…” Mike said, shrugging. “That’s… not classified because it’s business, the term is proprietary. The IRS was really happy, though,” he added sourly.
“So now you just… fish?” the blonde asked.
“Pretty much,” Mike said, shrugging again. “Sometimes I do a little consulting.”
“Classified?” Pam asked.
“Yep,” Mike replied with a grin. “In general it falls into military communications and operational analysis. From my boat I tell guys who are out on the sharp end what they did wrong.”
“The sharp end?” the blonde asked.
“Guys who do fighting,” Pam said. “Like special forces and stuff.”
“And do you know much about that?” the blonde asked, disbelievingly.
“I used commo gadgets before I sold them,” Mike said with a shrug. “Now, I am just a retired widget maker.”
“That’s our table,” Pam said, as their pager started to buzz. “Nice talking to you… Mike?”
“Jenkins,” Mike said, nodding as the two got up. “And, hey, I get a seat!”
“Still warm,” the blonde said, smiling.
“I’ve hot bunked with smelly guys,” Mike replied. “This is much better. Don’t forget your drinks.”
He sipped his Fosters until his pager went off and then had dinner. He wondered why he hadn’t made more of a play for the girls. He could have played the hero card, that’s for damned sure. Lift up his shirt just a bit and the blonde’s disbelief would have gone away like a light. And there was still a certain amount of newly modified patriotic fervor after Aleppo. Young ladies who hadn’t previously were suddenly finding military guys interesting. But… he’d just been willing to pass for some reason. And there was zero chance that they’d want to go fishing; they weren’t the type.
Three days later he was upside down under his starboard engine and cursing the idiot Swede who had thought putting an oil pump in the bottom of an engine was a good idea. To reach the oil pump required a trained gymnast and he was just glad he’d been doing some limbering exercises along with the working out. To get to the pump, he had to lie down on top of the engine and then slide down the side and underneath. Getting back out was on the near order of impossible, but he’d rigged a line that he could pull, over his back, to give him some leverage.
But he’d managed it, finally, and was just cranking down the last of the bolts when he heard a female voice hailing from the pier.