Having reminded myself of my deep respect for but aversion to deep water, I went back inside and got my backpack and car keys. It was time to make my afternoon rounds.
Later, I would look back on that afternoon and marvel at how innocent I’d been. While I dithered about scary deep-sea creatures I would never meet, scarier beings were on land and headed my way.
5
Summer on the key is so hot that going outside between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon is somewhat like crawling inside a pizza oven. By August, the only people who don’t illustrate the meaning of “redneck” are shut-ins or nighttime workers who sleep during the day. The only thing that keeps the key from spontaneously combusting in August are the occasional rain showers which, along with sending people running from tongues of lightning, soak the vegetation and cause steam to rise from the ground. August in Florida is God’s way of reminding us who’s in charge.
Maybe we’re just perverse, but the locals love the heat. We use it to keep visitors away. When out-of-state relatives phone to say they’re thinking of coming to see us, we say, “Oh, gosh, you don’t want to come now! Oooowee, you can’t imagine the heat! It’s just absolutely miserable, not to mention the sand fleas and mosquitoes. Wait until October or November when it’s cooler.”
If we’re convincing enough, they’ll stay away. We already have red necks from the sun and white eyes from fear of hurricanes. Add company to entertain, and it’s just too much.
The sky was clear that afternoon, and heat was rising from the ground in visible shimmering waves. Even cats who never left their air-conditioned homes moved more slowly, as if they felt the need to conserve energy. None of my charges had peed on a houseplant or shredded paper into confetti for me to pick up. When I left them, every pet’s tail was raised in approval. To a pet sitter, a raised tail means “Brava! Encore!” I try to be modest about those raised tails, but I’m secretly proud.
On the way to Big Bubba’s house, I saw Hetty and Ben on the sidewalk chatting with a man and his Beagle. I tapped my horn and waved, and Hetty gave me a big grin. Ben looked hard at me as if he were memorizing my car. Service dogs are so smart, he might have been.
At Big Bubba’s house, sounds of gunshots, sirens, and screaming women blared from his TV, and he was pecking the heck out of a silver bell hanging in his cage. I turned off the TV and looked anxiously at him, hoping he wasn’t freaking out from being left alone for so many hours. African Greys react to living behind bars the same way humans do. Leave them in solitary confinement too long and they become self-destructive.
Cocking his head to give me that weird one-eyed stare that birds do, he said, “Did you miss me?”
“Desperately. Did you miss me?”
“Al-waaaaays! Al-waaaaays!”
I swear sometimes Big Bubba truly seems to be carrying on a conversation, not just repeating sounds he’s heard.
I said, “Your mom probably misses you too. She’s in France, you know, eating at four-star restaurants.”
He didn’t answer, but tilted his head to one side as if he was considering how much a woman would miss him while cruising down a river in the south of France and eating at four-star restaurants.
I took him out of his cage and put him on the floor. He waddled around peering behind the furniture like a suspicious hotel detective looking for unregistered guests. To replace the sunflower seed I’d sent off with Deputy Morgan, I filled a clean jar with seed from a big bag in Reba’s pantry. Then I scraped poop off Big Bubba’s perches, disposed of all the seed hulls and knobs of dried fruit on his cage floor, put down fresh newspaper carpet, washed his food and water dishes, and gave him fresh seeds and fruit. I knew he would immediately set to work throwing nuts and apple slices into his water dish to make it yucky, but I gave him clean water anyway because that’s how I like it.
Until he was free of the allergy to red tide, I didn’t want him to do any strenuous exercise, but I made him do about three minutes of wing flapping. That entailed having him sit on my arm while I moved it rapidly up and down, which meant that I did three minutes of wing flapping too. Then I chased him around the house until I was winded and he was squawking in parrot hilarity.
A pet sitter’s life is just one exciting moment after another.
Pet birds need at least twelve hours of dark silent sleep every night, so the last thing I did was tell him good night and drape his cage with a lightweight dark cover. With him tucked in, I went back down the front steps to the Bronco. I looked, but I didn’t see any ghostly faces peering at me through the dark trees. Maybe Jaz had left town. Maybe she wouldn’t show up at Hetty’s the next day. Maybe those scary boys had left town too.
That’s what I told myself. If I’d been able to, I would have thrown a light cover over myself like Big Bubba’s so I wouldn’t have to see reality.
When I got home, the sun was a golden balloon lightly bouncing on the distant horizon, sending a glittering path across the tops of waves to the shore. Michael and Paco stood on the sand watching it, Michael with his arm slung loosely over Paco’s shoulder. I scurried over and stood on his other side so he could hug me too, and we all waited in awed silence while the sun did its daily flirtation with the sea. Like a coy virgin, it hovered just out of reach, seeming at times to pull upward a bit and then dip slightly toward the lusting sea. Behind it, translucent bands of cerise and violet danced with streaks of turquoise and sparkling yellow. Just when it seemed the sun would hold itself aloof forever, it abruptly changed its mind and fell into the sea’s open arms. Within seconds, it was lost in a watery embrace, and all that was left were rainbow sighs of contentment.
Michael gave me and Paco a little squeeze and we all turned and trooped toward the wooden deck. Michael’s prized steel cooker was smoking and all the extra little gizmos for baking and boiling things were occupied with good-smelling somethings.
Next to Paco and me, Michael loves that grill beyond anything else in the world. He can get rhapsodic pointing out its little side extensions on which you can cook something in a pan—boil potatoes, maybe—while the stuff on the rack grills. And the warming oven below the grill seems miraculous to him. He just loves to warm dinner rolls down there and never fails to mention when he does. Men and outdoor cookers are like men and cars, a mysterious love affair women will never understand.
Michael said, “Ten minutes, tops.”
I said, “Gotcha,” and raced up my stairs two at a time, punching the remote to raise the shutters as I went.
If there’s ever a reality TV show that gives prizes for the fastest shower takers, I’ll enter that sucker and win. The trick is to peel off clothes on the way so you’re already naked when you turn on the water. A squirt of liquid soap on a sponge, a slick up one side and down the other, turn around to rinse all areas, and that’s it. Two minutes tops. Then a quick foot dry to keep from sliding on tile, a fast comb through wet hair and a slick of lip gloss—another two minutes—before a gallop to the closet for fresh clothes while towel-patting exposed damp skin. In nanoseconds I was stepping into clean underwear and pulling on cool white baggy pants and a loose top. No shoes, but I took a second to slide a stretchy coral bracelet on my wrist.
I left the shutters up and clattered down the stairs to the deck where the table was already set for three, with a shallow bowl of gazpacho on each plate. Paco was pouring chilled white wine into two glasses and iced tea into a third. The glass of tea meant Paco would be leaving later on some undercover assignment. I didn’t comment on it. He’s safer if we know nothing about his work, but it’s impossible not to know some things.