"You sound like a prissy old jerk."
"Yeah, well… this place is too small for two people. On a full-time basis, I mean. Besides, I like my routine. My work keeps me busy enough. It may be contrary to all acceptable social behavior, but I like living alone."
She still wore the bemused smile. "So let me summarize: No woman wants you, no woman will have you. You're lonely as hell, horny as a goat, and as full of shit as ever."
I grabbed her and wrestled her around until we stood face-to-face. "If you're asking to borrow my boat, the answer's no."
Dewey held me with her eyes, still amused, but then the intensity and focus seemed to change. Suddenly she hugged me hard, then pushed me toward the door. "You men," she said, nudging me along, "you bastards. It's always the same: First you steal our hearts, then you destroy our dreams."
2
A workout with Dewey is not a social occasion. When she runs she runs much too fast for conversation. For a guy of my size and of my construction, anyway. The lungs and capillaries of a 220-pound adult male can only distribute so much oxygen. Same when she lifts weights. God help the person who interrupts her concentration with idle chatter. Prior to her flying off to New York to live with Bets, Dewey had been my regular training partner. I dreaded those workouts because of her drill sergeant mentality, but also loved them because we pushed each other to the very edge each and every day… and that is the only way to return to the lighter-than-gravity, animal-quick, skin-ribs-and-muscle creature that lies within each and every one of us at the outer boundaries of personal fitness.
Dewey had stripped down to orange Spandex running shorts and matching Spandex running bra. With her blue visor cap turned backwards, blond hair swinging, she might have been modeling high-tech running gear. As we jogged along the shell lane that leads from Dinkin's Bay Marina to Sanibel's main road, I said, "I'll try to keep track of how many cars honk at us. What's the old record-seven?"
"Those bastards, I hate it when cars honk. Geeze-oh-Katy, it makes me jump every time."
Geeze-oh-Katy-a new expression she was using. Sounded girlish and homey. I said, "So try wearing a baggy T-shirt and shorts."
"It'll be a snowy day in hell before I start dressing to please assholes in passing cars." She glanced over at me. "You don't like the way I dress? What's wrong with the way I dress?"
I said, "You look great. You always look great, Dewey."
She was nodding, not buying it. "Flattery. What you'd better do is save your breath. You'll need it."
The hour or more of hell I was about to endure required some psychological preparation. I tried my best… Felt the ache of old wounds and the familiar grating pain of damaged knees… and reminded myself that the pain would soon fade into numbness. Felt the thoracic burn that forewarns oxygen debt… and comforted myself with the knowledge that the human body can abide a hell of a lot more discomfort than the brain's little warning mechanisms would have us believe. Also reminded myself that this was Friday. Every Friday, all the marina regulars get together after work for a traditional weekend party. By the time Dewey and I finished our workout, Mack would have food out on platters beneath the sea grape tree and Igloo coolers packed tight with crushed ice and bottles of beer. It was a nice thing to imagine, a tough workout then all that ice and beer.
When we reached the bike path that traces the interior of Sanibel, Dewey turned toward Captiva Island and lengthened her stride, running what, for her, was a comfortable six-minute-thirty-second-mile pace. She had a floating kind of stride. I huffed and puffed and thudded along beside. The wind had freshened-a chilled and gusting high-pressure wind-and we ran right into the teeth of it. It was like trying to run through cotton. Chilly or not, I was sweating before we finished the first mile.
"How you feeling?"
Her question surprised me. I had allowed consciousness to blur; was concentrating solely on putting one foot in front of the other. "Good," I gasped. "Pretty good."
"Bullshit. I own golf balls with better color."
"Nope. Feel fine."
"You always say that. And you're always lying."
After that, we ran in silence. Ran Captiva Road way past the elementary school, then cut inland through Ding Darling Sanctuary: a shell road that tunneled through mangroves and wove its way between brackish lakes. The mangroves were hunched up on their prop-root toes, showing the wind. Water in the lakes was the color of strong sassafras tea. White wading birds flushed before us. A bull gator lay wide-bodied on the mud, mouth open, soaking in the last of the fading heat. Biologists once believed that gators and crocs used their open mouths as a sort of thermostat, perhaps to facilitate digestion. Now they're not so sure. Where the shell road curved beneath the wind there were dense pockets of musk… iodine, ozone, and sulfur- the smell of primal life; the smell of backcountry Florida. When I crossed to the lee side of Dewey, hers was a more delicate odor but similarly primaclass="underline" shampoo, miracle fabric, the acidic smell of woman-sweat.
"You get tired, want to stop, just tell me."
It wasn't easy for me to find oxygen enough to form words. "In all the times… we've run together… you've never asked how I felt… or told me it was okay to stop."
She glanced over her shoulder at me. "So? I'm a year older. Maybe I'm a year nicer."
I was shaking my head. "Um-huh. There's something on your mind. You want to talk, let's talk."
"You always think you know so much. A guy your age, I'm just trying to be careful, that's all. Save the paramedics a trip. They've got better things to do."
"I don't need any favors. I feel fine." I did, too. Well… I felt fair. I'd spent the last couple of months getting into pretty good shape. Running, swimming, a hundred pull-ups a day. No food after 8 P.M., beer only on the weekend.
"It's just that I don't want you to blow a rod. Or have a stroke."
Chuckling, I grabbed her elbow and pulled her to a stop. She looked at me; looked away. I touched my finger to her chin and turned her face, forcing eye contact. Her cheeks were flushed the color of strawberries. Ringlets of blond hair, saturated with sweat, were now a tumid brown. "What's the problem, Dewey?"
"Problem? I don't know what you're talking about. There's no problem."
"You sure?"
"Look, I just told you… Hey, buddy, I just traveled thirteen hundred miles to give you one of the all-time great Christmas surprises, and you're already badgering me." There was a warning tone to her voice-she was kidding, but I'd better watch my step.
Protocol said I should let it go. But there was something in her demeanor… a curiously intense reserve that made me want to push it. She reminded me of some troubled adolescent who, driven by self-consciousness, was fronting stratagems to deflect entrance into her private, unhappy world.
I tapped her chin to emphasize my concern. "Let's have it. You come in here full of bluster, determined to make me believe that you're happy as hell, not a care in the world. But you've got raccoon eyes, and you don't get jet lag flying from New York to Florida. Plus your voice is a little shaky and your attention keeps wandering, and you're trying way, way too hard to imitate the Old Dewey. There's something troubling you and you want to talk about it, but maybe you figure the time's not right… or maybe we're not the buddies we both pretend to be… or maybe you just don't have the courage."