Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [67]
Christine laughed softly. Albury’s fingers moved to the second button, then the third. “These islands have their own sky and their own moon,” he said.
A soft gust rustled the royal palm trees and brought goose bumps to Christine’s shoulders. She glanced down and noticed that her dress was below her waist, and that somehow a pair of coarse fisherman’s hands had managed to solve the riddle of her bra clasp.
“Breeze?”
He had dropped to one knee, cursing the skintight jeans. “Was your ex-husband in the ballet?”
“No, he was just … what are you up to?”
Albury found her nipples and moved his tongue from one to the other. Then he kissed her belly and played along the tan line. “These nylons have got to go.”
“Come up here,” Christine said, pulling at his shoulders until he rose to his feet. She stood on her toes and kissed him tenderly, her hands around his neck. “Let’s go back to the apartment.”
“I like it out here.”
“But I’m chilly.”
“I’ll cover you with something warm.” His hands dropped to her buttocks and she drew against him tightly.
“Jesus, Breeze.” She kissed at him feverishly, lips, neck, cheeks. “Where can we lie down?”
“We don’t have to lie down,” Albury said. “Can’t see the water if you’re lying down. Take off the stockings before you drive me crazy.”
Later, with their clothes in a pale heap on the roof, he lifted her easily, kissing her the whole time, lowering her onto himself until her legs tightened on his hips. Under a milky half-moon they made love standing, harder and harder, until they were both drenched in sweat. He stopped moving only when Christine cried out twice. He held her around him until her breathing softened.
“I thought we were going to fall off this thing,” she whispered.
Albury moved a hand absently along her bare back, the skin like cool velvet under his calloused fingers. It struck her that he had been silent, as they had made love, not in the shy or preoccupied way of some men, but in a manner totally dispossessed—all muscle and mouth and movement, without the smallest sigh or groan. And she was quite sure that his eyes had been open, fastened hard on the deep blue light of the sea’s horizon. Still, there had been a tenderness to it, a melancholy need every bit as urgent as the frantic passions of other lovers.
Christine nuzzled at his ear and smiled when she felt his light kiss. She rocked back, holding him by the shoulders, as he supported her full weight with a single hand under her buttocks.
“Let me down now,” she said. “I’ve got one more question. Now, don’t shake your head like that; just one more and then I’ll quit for the night.”
“OK, counselor.”
“Why do they call this a widow’s walk?”
“That’s easy,” Albury replied. “Because the sea is a widow-maker.” His eyes were fixed beyond the reef, and in the moon’s light, Christine was startled to see that they were not weary or cold, but almost exultant.
“It’s not the sea itself,” he went on, “but the chances that it makes a man take. Full of promise one moment, fury the next. It won’t often surprise a keen and reasonable man, but even after years it will make him take extraordinary risks. Not all the widows who watched from these roofs lost stupid fools out on that reef. Some of their men were fine, courageous. They just took a chance and lost. The sea itself behaved as it always has, and it didn’t really kill those men as much as it made them believe … made them believe they could do something that they could not.”
Christine spoke in a small voice that seemed to drop off the edge of the old house. “Is that what happened to you?”
“More than once,” Breeze Albury said, “but never again.”
Chapter 19
QUARRELING BLUE JAYS woke Albury. He felt stiff, and stale. Scrabbling for a cigarette, he encountered the note: “You sure beat hell out of a sleeping pill, but you’ll have to make your own breakfast, anyway.” Signed with a bold “C.”
Breakfast would have to wait. Albury reached for the bedside phone.
“Hey, champ, how they hangin’?”
“Hey, dad.” Ricky’s voice sounded faraway, as though through