“No children?” I asked, verifying the documents.
“No, ma’am,” she answered softly.
“And no property?”
“No, ma’am.” Her thin fingers pleated the soft floral pattern of her skirt.
I signed the papers. “Divorce granted.”
She continued to stand there and gazed at me uncertainly. “Is that all there is?”
I know how she felt. Even if you run away with a man you’ve known less than seventy-two hours and get married on a whim by a magistrate you’ve never seen before, there are still vows to repeat, rings to exchange, a ritual. This child probably had the white veil and satin gown and six bridesmaids in pink tulle, with her mother and his lighting the candles from which they took flames and merged into one flame forever; and now, less than two years later, it came down to some legal papers filed and signed and a judge saying “Divorce granted.”
“That’s it?” she repeated.
“That’s all,” I said gently. “You’re now legally divorced.”
She walked out of the courtroom, still dazed.
• • •
At the lunch break, I didn’t want to run into Lev at one of the waterfront restaurants and I was getting a little tired of fish twice a day anyhow, so I sneaked out to a salad bar at one of the fast-food places. To my surprise, Linville Pope was tucked into a corner booth alone.
She looked up with a pleased smile, moved aside some of the papers scattered across the table and invited me to join her.
When I observed that one wouldn’t expect to find her at a Shoney’s, she grimaced and said, “I hope you are right. Some nut has found my usual lunch spot and keeps making scenes. It seems easier to eat here till he gets over it.
“Zeke Myers?” I asked, spreading alfalfa sprouts across the top of my salad.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you know him?”
“No, but I was in the Ritchie House Monday and heard him shouting. Something about a boat?”
“Oh yes. It was indeed about a boat.” Her small fingers tore a hot roll into neat pieces and she buttered one very precisely. “But I do not want to bore you.”
When I assured her she wouldn’t, she told me about the large cabin cruiser she and her husband had bought down in Florida.
“Midge wanted to run day trips out to the Cape or take small private parties out to the Gulf Stream for a day of fishing, but it did not work out—my husband was never well enough to outfit it—and the boat is much too big for me to run alone, so I sold it to Zeke Myers, who thought he could make a go of it. He bought it as is and he got a very fine bargain, whatever he may think at the moment.”
She swallowed the morsel of roll and began to butter another, as I lifted a lettuce leaf in search of a third black olive.
“So why’s he so mad?”
“Because when he went to get a commercial license for the boat, he discovered that it had been built in Taiwan.” I still didn’t see the problem.
“It seems there are federal cabotage laws in this country which prevent a foreign-built boat from being used for commercial purposes in domestic waters. Something to do with protection of jobs in our own boatyards perhaps?”
She said it without much interest. I thought of how much money Zeke Myers must have paid even for a “very fine bargain.”
Setting down my glass of iced tea, I said, “No wonder he’s angry.”
She shrugged. “There are solutions if he would explore the possibilities, but he is having too much fun feeling that I screwed him over.”
“Didn’t you?”
Her lips curved in a cat-in-the-cream-pitcher smile. “Maybe I did,” she said candidly. “But not fatally. Instead of following me around town and harassing me, if he would spend half that energy on the phone to his congressman, he could ask him to originate a private bill in the House and get an exception from the cabotage restrictions. They do it all the time, I am told. It may take him a little time and aggravation, but in the end, he could have the license he needs. That is what my husband would have done once we found out about the law.”
“Do you by any chance play chess?” I asked.
“No, I never had time for board games,” she said. “I would rather play for real.”
“You mean for money.”
“Why not? Having money is another way to keep score and a lot more fun than not having it. Power is even better, of course.” A shadow crossed her placid face as she pushed her plate aside and centered her tea on the table before her. A memory from earlier years of subordination?
“Be honest,” she said. “Why else did you become a judge?”
“I thought I could make a difference,” I answered primly. “For the greater good.”
“So do we all, Deborah. So do we all.” She leaned her head back against the booth and her fine ash-blonde hair fell away from her face to accentuate the delicate skull just beneath her fair skin. “That is ninety-nine percent of the problem down here: everybody thinks they know what is best for everyone else. It would be amusing if it were not so sad.”
“And if it weren’t messing with people’s livelihoods,” I added tartly.
“It is not messing with livelihoods,” she corrected me gently. “No, no. It is messing with power. Every one of those people who are so vocal could find other ways to earn a living. They just do not want to. They are like the spotted owl loggers. They want to go on doing what they are used to doing. What their fathers were used to doing. Without one single change, even though the changes I am working toward will profit everyone in the long run and maybe even raise their quality of life. Look at your friend Barbara Jean. If she would sell to me tomorrow, I would give her half again what Neville Fishery is actually worth and she could walk away from all this controversy a very well-to-do lady. But she will not. And why?”
“Power?” I asked, playing the part she’d cast me in.
Linville leaned forward, her fingers laced around her tea.
“Well, what would she be if she did not have the fishery? What would she be in charge of? Money cannot begin to replace the psychic satisfaction she must get out of signing paychecks for twenty-three black men and a half-dozen whites. They give her respect. Their families give her respect. People pay attention when she speaks out at a hearing. She will never give that up of her own free will. Not for mere money.”
I sat back from my plate. “So you’ll coerce her? She told me you’ve threatened to build a boat storage facility on Harkers Island, right next door to her daughter.”
“I do not threaten, Deborah. I merely state. Besides, it will be a very nice facility. Landscaped. Screened with flowering bushes. It will not be an eyesore. Honest.” Again that quiet complacent smile. “Assuming, that is, that she chooses to let me go ahead with it. If her husband cannot talk her out of it.”
“What about Andy Bynum?” I asked suddenly.
She made a dismissive motion with her slender hands. “Another who enjoyed power. He could stand in the door of his fish house and take or reject whatever a waterman offered him. He liked running that Independent Fishers Alliance because it gave him a forum to impose his will on the rest of us. Or to try.”
Her pager went off. She frowned at the number displayed, glanced at her delicate gold watch, and said, “Too bad. I wanted to hear about you and Levi Schuster, but it seems I have to go now.”
“Nothing to hear.” I gave a dismissive motion of my own. “We used to be together a zillion years ago.”
“Last night meant nothing?”
“We might’ve stirred some old ashes,” I admitted.
“And found a few hot coals?”
I shook my head.
(“Liar!” whispered the preacher.)
“Then you will not mind if I—?”
“Would it matter?”
She laughed. “Probably not. Still...”
“Be my guest.”
(“You’re gonna be sorry you said that,” warned the pragmatist.)