Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [28]
“Why did he tell you about it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I guess he thought that I might be useful in the negotiations when the time came.”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You guys,” I said. “You’re not exactly the Partridge Family, are you?”
“You wouldn’t have lasted so long with the Partridge Family,” she told me. “Anyway, it’s not like Nick and Williams were ever an item, you know. It was just something casual at a party that people do when they’re drunk. Williams just didn’t want the Colonel to find out. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“You honestly think your father doesn’t know about Williams?” I asked. “After all these years? Come on. He doesn’t care. It probably works out better that way, at least as far as your father is concerned. No family, no wife and kids, on call 24/7—what would he care about Williams being gay or not? And I know he knows about Nick. The kid’s been out of the closet since he was twelve. Your father doesn’t care because he doesn’t care about Nick—or about you either. As for me, who gives a shit? It’s South Beach, baby. Williams is just paranoid, that’s all, and believe me when I tell you that the steroids aren’t helping his mood much.”
I pulled into a small lot just south of Sunset Beach and found a space behind a row of scrub pines that couldn’t be seen from the street. I cut the headlights while the car was still rolling. I wanted to get going as quickly as possible, and I was out of the car and unlashing the kayak as soon as I put the car in park. It was just the kind of secluded place where a policeman might be inclined to take a cigarette break while filling out a report or two, and I didn’t want to have to explain why I was there at that hour with a one-man kayak and a pretty girl for a send-off party.
I got the kayak off the roof of the Thunderbird and onto my shoulder again and began walking toward the ocean across the fine white sand, Vivian walking in uncharacteristic silence beside me. As we crossed the dunes, the sand got soft and I nearly tripped, and Vivian grabbed my arm to steady me. At the shore, just above the breakers, I set the kayak down on the sand and did a little stretching to ease the cramp in my shoulder. Then I slipped on the life jacket and handed Vivian the paddle.
“I figure it will take me four hours, maybe more, maybe less,” I said. “Somewhere around then, I’ll call you and tell you where I’m at. The current runs north. Depending on where I dump the boat, I’ll make landfall near Fort Lauderdale. I’ll call you when I get close. That way you won’t have long to wait. Just make sure you keep your cell phone handy, all right?”
Vivian was watching with an expression of confused wonderment, as though resigned to some unforeseen and unwelcome conclusion. She seemed very far off. I put my hand on her arm and gently shook it.
“Did you hear me?” I asked. I was eager to go. Already the muscles in my back and shoulders were sending me over the water, through the creases of light. I could feel the kayak, a Burns Hell Chaser, gliding across the sea like a strange and quiet amphibian made of fiberglass. Vivian put her hand on my cheek. A single tear broke loose and fled down hers.
“Why is it that when I’m with you, it feels like I always have been, that I should always be with you?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
“But do you know what I mean? Don’t you feel something like that, too? Or is it just me sounding crazy?”
I looked over her head, across the sand, to where the scrub pines, lonely in the night air, were waving at the stars. I knew exactly what she meant. I thought of all the times before when I had studied her face, trying to recall where I’d seen it before, as though some clue, hidden in her dark eyes, might be discovered there. At any rate, I’d never found it, whatever it might have been.
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “It used to bug the hell out of me.”
“And it doesn’t anymore?”
“No, not anymore,” I said. “You better get back to the car now.”
“I’m going with