On a Lee Shore 11 - Interment

    “…we now commit this body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body…”  The minister spoke these words like an incantation, beneath a green awning, where the guests huddled and Katie’s flower-piled coffin lay poised, suspended above the open grave, ready to be lowered.  Then it was over and they left, plodding, black-clad, through the neatly manicured grass of the cemetery to their cars under the raining skies.


    A mostly spent Atlantic storm stalled over the Keys bringing rain for the next week.  Each day, Cara made the drenching trip from the bungalow to work and back again, like the raven from the Ark going to and fro, finding no place to rest and no dry land.  At the Parrot, conversations, regardless of  how innocently started, ended up in the same place, with something Katie said while sitting on this barstool or that, the time Katie got stuck in the ladies room or something that Katie drank, after drinking something else, that made her sick.  But talk of this sort was dropped as soon it came up for the way Katie died made such happy memorializing unthinkable.  Those who were so inclined ended up in tears and those who weren’t either stared ahead blankly, pretending to be drunk or made clumsy conversation for cover.


    The bungalow was worse.  Her father spent most of the time drinking in front of his laptop, producing nothing.  Paula came by a few times and attempted to get him out but he wouldn’t go.  They ended up sitting around making stumbling small talk and after a while she stopped coming by.  Being with Miles was easier.  She could talk to him without worrying about him mentioning Katie.  He avoided the conversation even more carefully than she did.  In fact, he didn’t seem to want to talk about her even in the rare moments when she did.  In the evenings, Miles and Shannon sat together in the Parrot while, from behind the bar, Cara served them drinks until their grief was bearable.


    And so it went until one night, after yet another session of directionless, anesthetized conversation, Miles spoke up.


    “It sucks that it happened, but I guess if you think about it, it might have been inevitable.  Katie was just the kind of trusting person who would walk through a dark alley in a bad area of town, see someone, then instead of running in the other direction, go over and talk to them…”


    Cara and Shannon sat quiet for a moment until the shock passed.


    “I certainly hope that’s the beer talking, but let me get this straight. You’re basically saying that Katie had it coming.”  Shannon said, turning sharply toward him.  “Please tell me that’s not what you’re saying…”


    Miles’ face flushed.  “No… I mean, you have to admit, she always went into things so unquestioningly… like a little kid…”


    “Sometimes people do things when they’ve had a little too much to drink, that’s true.  Things that they might not do when they're sober, but Katie walked down that alley a hundred times at all hours of the day or night, and nothing ever happened!  Nothing!  Not a damn thing!  And that area of town isn’t exactly the 'hood either.  It’s no worse than where I’ve lived for a year now.  And no one’s even so much as looked at me cross-eyed.”


    “I didn’t mean anything by it…”


    “Well why say it if you didn’t mean anything by it?  If you don’t having anything to say, don’t say anything…  Don’t say anything, just keep your mouth shut!”


    “Okay, drop it then.  Let’s just sit here...”


    “That’s what we wanted," continued Shannon.  "But you brought it up and now it’s out there, so let’s talk about it!  What makes you feel so qualified to say such shit?  Your rich-ass upbringing?  She was the sweetest person I ever knew.  So sweet it made me sick sometimes.  And now she’s gone.  Someone crushed her skull, left her dead... and she’s gone.”


    “I guess we’ll have to be more careful when we’re up there.”  he said, trying to pacify her.


    “Yeah, be more careful.  I suppose next time you’ll be walking us to our cars?”


    “Yeah, I suppose I will be.”


    “Well, why didn’t you?  None of this would've happened if you'd done that the other night.”  she said contemptuously.


    “I guess I was too drunk.  Like everyone else.”


    Cara standing silently by, held her breath as memories of that night poured back into her.  The image of Miles sitting at the other end of the bar, watching, eased its way back into her conscious mind for the first time since that night.  “He wasn’t even drinking that night.”  She thought to herself.


    “You know, it would go better for you and everyone else if you gave up pretending to be a human being and go back to being the pretty house-plant that Cara wants.”


    Miles’ expression darkened, his eyes deadened, his teeth clenched and with an predatory leer, he looked at Shannon and hissed, “So that's the way you want it, huh?” You have no idea what you're doing, you fucking bitch!”  In a instant, Shannon’s anger collapsed into tears and gathering her things, she looked at Cara with wet eyes and hurried out.


    Miles walked her home that night.  She knew he was doing it as a concession to the things Shannon said, but to her it seemed that they walked along, more wary of each other than of any threat.  He droned on, making benign conversation, attempting to restore the status quo.  Like a pilot burbling on over the intercom while trying to regain control his aircraft as the passengers wretched into airsickness bags.  She didn’t know how to account for it; he was walking her home to keep her safe, but somehow she felt that she wouldn’t feel anymore threatened if she were walking alone on the exact spot where Katie was killed.  She’d never put too much thought into Miles or what he might be thinking or doing.  In general, she’d always kept the advantage in life by concentrating on her next move, not anyone else’s.  Was he the houseplant or was she?  At hand when the mood struck him or, at the very least, on the periphery.  The tension increased within her with each step.


    By the next morning, the rain moved out and a blanket of heat returned.  After some much needed rest, Cara was able to shove these thoughts to the back of her mind.  She hung around the bungalow, cleaning up and lounging in front of the TV.   Her father sat, brooding, in his usual spot on the jetty.  Her phone rang.  She didn’t recognize the number.


    “Hello?”


    “Hi.  I'm Special Agent Mark Hall of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  I’m looking into the death of Kathleen Corcoran.  I understand you two were close friends and I wonder if you could come up to Layton Police Headquarters to spend some time talking about her with me.  I’m sorry if this upsets you, but it’s really important.  Could you come in today?”


    “I’ve got work today.  I’ll have to see… but I’m sure I can.”


    “Good.  Can you make it up here by noon?”


    “Yeah, I think I can.”


    “Good.  Thanks.  I’ll see you then.”


    She hung up and stood still for a while to take it all in.  She made some calls and got someone to take her shift, then sat around fidgeting for the hour or so before it was time to leave.  At around 11:30, she told her father she was leaving, went outside, hopped into her jeep and headed toward Route One for the trip north to Layton.


    Arriving at the precinct, she walked in, gave her name and who she was there to see.   The officer on duty called for an escort and she was taken back through an office space abuzz with police officers yelling to other police officers, rushing in and out with nervous citizens, standing in groups, holding animated discussions or sitting in cubicles clicking away at reports.  From there she was led into a hall lined with interrogation rooms.  Above each room, an illuminated sign indicated whether the room was occupied or not.  A broad-shouldered Clark Kent of a man, looking to be in his mid-thirties, wearing a crisp white shirt, tie and shoulder holster, came out of one of the rooms at the end of the hall and walked toward her, smiling.


    “I’m Mark Hall,”  he said.  “You must be Cara.  Thanks for coming up on such short notice.  I would have been more accommodating to your schedule, but I’ve got to be back up in Tallahassee for the rest of the week, so I was glad we could meet today.  If you don’t mind, could you come with me?”


    He led her down the hallway and into the room he had just exited.  Just beyond this room, across an aisle, there was small area of empty cubicles.  The interrogation room had absolutely nothing in it other than three chairs and a table.  They went in.


    “Sorry about the interview room.  It tends to make people uncomfortable… but that’s sorta the point.  Do you feel like you’re on American Justice?" he smiled.  "All that‘s missing is a light bulb dangling from the ceiling.” 


    “Actually, I do. “  she said, laughing back nervously, by reflex.  “What’s this about?  I talked to the police after Katie’s death… a few times by phone.  But that was it.”


    “Do you remember me?”  he asked, leaving her question unanswered.  “You talked to me at John Stevens the night Katie died.  If you don’t, I’ll understand.  I never seem to leave much of an impression,” he laughed.


    “There’s a lot I don’t remember about that night.  It’s one of the few times, I’ve been completely drunk.” she replied, beginning to contemplate what it meant that an FBI agent had been there that night, even before Katie had been killed.  “Although, bits and pieces of that night have been coming back to me over that last few days.”


    “Yeah, that happens and, to tell you the truth, I’m glad to hear it.  The police down here haven’t been able come up with much.  So I’ve been helping out a little.  To start out with… Katie’s - that’s what she went by, right? - well, her death, her killing,”  choosing his words carefully, “just doesn’t make much sense, in its most obvious context.  I mean, there's not much evidence of a motive.  Her watch and rings were missing, we know that, and her bag was spilled, but her wallet had over $400 and it wasn't touched.  There was no sign of sexual assault, nothing.  If I see something like this, I usually think it’s an execution and a clumsy attempt to cover it up by taking a few items of value.”


    “Who the hell would want to execute Katie?” she stammered, confused.


    “I don’t know.  I wanted to ask you that.  Do you know if she had any enemies, anyone harassing… bothering her.  Any debts?  Anything at all that raised a red flag in your mind.”


    “No.  Katie was friends with everyone.  And she’s got money,  from the settlement of her father’s estate, seven, eight years ago, money’s never been a problem.  Frankly, she’s loaded.”


    His phone, sitting on the table in front of him, rang.  He picked it up, looked at the incoming number and said, “I really do apologize, but I have to take this.  Excuse me for just a minute.”  He got up and walked out of the room, leaving the door open.


    She sat and stared blankly ahead at the white walls as her mind whirled about trying to get its bearings.  Outside the room, he had stepped into a cubicle on the other side of the aisle and as he talked, he paced in and out of the cubicle.  When he was outside of the cubicle she could hear parts of his conversation.


    “I’ve got her here now… No…  Yes, the Colombian officer’s name is Pinzon… I talked to him this morning…  the village is Guasimalito… Yes, identical to the reports out of Thailand and Ghana… they took five there… only two were recovered… the same wounds…  harvested…  Yes, he’s another one… the guy in Amsterdam… sick as a freakin' dog last month… on the list… nothing else would save him… sounds like his wife… funeral… turns up fine… yeah, rich as shit…  we saw his house… “


    She heard nothing more as he walked several yards down the hallway.  Then she heard his footsteps as he returned and resumed pacing.”


    “Mariposa… and the son… No, no evidence that he’s involved in shipments down here and I have no idea how they are managing the refrigeration…  I gotta go… I’ll get back to you.”


    He stepped back into the room and as he did, he looked at her for just a instant and his eyes told her something.  She had a peculiar suspicion that he had intended for her to overhear his conversation.  She looked back at him inquiringly, but he re-assumed the professional bearing he had before he left the room.  He continued questioning her, very blandly, asking her questions that he didn’t seem to particularly want answered.  Then suddenly he was finished.


    “Thanks for coming up here today, Cara.  Can I call you that?"


    "Sure," she replied.


    "Good.  Do you mind if I contact you again if I have any more questions?"


    "That's fine."


     "Good.  If you don’t mind, I’ll walk you out to your car.”


    Together they walked out of the front door and across the ludicrously hot parking lot to her jeep.  She got in, put the keys in the ignition then looked up.  He stood at a distance, looking uneasy as if contemplating his next move, then walked to driver’s window and looked intently at her.”


    “How much do you know about Miguel Mariposa?  You're seeing his son, Miles, aren't you?


    She nodded indecisively, unable to manage an audible response.


    "... and you know that your father is an associate, or former associate, of Mr. Mariposa, right?” 


    He stopped suddenly, carefully, as if calculating a risk.  “I’m sorry, don’t answer that.  You have my number.  Be extremely careful.”  Another pause.  “And call me… anytime…  if you need anything… anything at all…”

Over There - or - Somewhere South of Victory

On a Lee Shore 10 - The Doomed Village

  Jose Vasquez Mirobal lived in the small village of Guasimalito hidden in the northern Andean foothills, 150 kilometers south of Medellin.  He was 84 years old.  His family had been here as long as any of them knew and life had not changed as long as any of them could remember.  They owned a small swatch of land, carved out of the rugged, wooded slopes, where they grew coffee, by hand, hiking the five kilometers up from the village each day during the growing season to tend the plants and carrying the yield down on their backs at harvest.  With his craggy, brown skin and stooped posture, Jose looked like he had been whittled from the stock of one of the plants he tended. On Sundays, he went to mass at the village church, Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, lit candles to the Virgin and prayed to be blessed with favorable weather.


    At his age, Jose couldn’t help much on the farm - and nobody expected him to.  Still, each day, while the coffee was maturing, he would hike up to the fields and walk among the plants and inspect their progress, picking a bean here and bean there, rolling them in his hands and pressing them to his face to inhale the aroma.  Whatever opinion he formed of the development or quality of the crops in the course of his inspection, he never passed it along to anyone.  In fact, he never spoke at all.


    On this particular day Jose, taking his cue from the sun low in the sky, began his journey back down to the village.  Through the woods at the south end of the fields, he picked his way between the rocks and trees and fallen moldering branches and leaves splashed by the late day sunlight, the steamy aroma of rain and flowers strong in his nostrils, vines like snakes reticulated in the green-draped canopy overhead.  At the clearing, he could see down the hill to the village set against more lush hills and far in the distance the mountain peaks, snow-covered even at this time of year.  He removed his cap and mopped the sweat from his forehead.  Smoke from a hundred cooking fires spiraled up and hovered low over the houses of the village and in the tall trees nearby.  He hobbled on, down a path worn in the wildflower-laden grass, to the stream.  The stream was the last obstacle before the village road and he crossed it each day with care.  The year before he had fallen at the ford and split his head open on a rock, forfeiting the next day’s trip up to the groves.


    While it may be tempting to find his life appealing in its simplicity, Jose and his fellow villagers live hard, almost unbearable, lives.  Beyond the threat of disease and injury common in their environment, many endure dull pain from toothache, parasitic infections and bones and muscles ground down by the constant work required to survive.  Then, of course, there were the troubles that seem to punctuate the entire history of their country.  When Jose was a young man he had lived through the series of civil wars known as La Violencia, that took his father and an uncle, and later the reign of the cocaine cartels, first Medellin and then Cali, each taking the lives of relatives, the former his only son.  Like rural peoples in similar areas of the world, the villagers of Guasimalito don’t look to science or sociology to explain their problems, they find more satisfactory explanations in religion and the secret wisdom of their cultures.  And so it would be with the new trouble about to start.


    Jose shuffled his way down the main street of his village and stopped outside the public house where the men of the village gathered at the end of the day.  All the chairs on the patio outside were taken so he took a seat on a wooden crate on the dusty outskirts of the gathered group of men deep in conversation smoking and sipping beer and aguardiente.


    “Good evening, Jose,” someone said.  Jose looked up and smiled but did not reply.


    “It was as if whatever did it wanted those parts in particular.  I hear they were removed as if by someone who was very skilled with a knife.” 


    “I’m telling you… those are the most beneficial parts to eat.  The liver and the heart.  It’s sure to mean that whatever did this, did it for sustenance.” 


    “So we’re supposed to believe they were eaten?”


    “How else is it to be explained?”


    “You are the most extraordinary ghoul!  Only a madman could speak this way.  Eating the remains of the dead!  One should be more delicate when discussing such matters.  Remember that the family are old friends of my family.”


    “But there are evil spirits in the forest.”


    “Certainly.”


    It was the same topic as the night before and the night before that.  Jose settled into his seat, reached into his pocket and retrieved a wad of paper folded around several leaves of his beloved Nievo tobacco.  He rolled a cigarette from a portion sparingly chosen, placed it in his mouth and lit it.  


    “To me, it’s clear that this was done as a warning or a punishment, by the cartels or the revolutionaries.”


    “Nothing has been heard from them in this area for years.  But I have heard that one of the victim’s mother was a fortune-teller.  Perhaps a witch and a whore.  Although I don‘t know what man would want a whore that looks like her.”


    “I would want a whore that looks like Maria Estelle…”


    Some of the men laughed.   Most remained disdainfully quiet, causing the young man who made the comment to blush deep red.


    “Didn’t I hear that she could be hired to make incantations on people as revenge?”


    “It is sad. Young people always suffer when their parents become involved in such things.”


     “Foo!  The buñuelos here do not taste as good as they used to.”


    “And besides that village did not contribute as it should have to the fiesta of St. Fermin.  In general, their young people do not attend mass and several of their groves were hit by the blight last year.“


    The young daughter of the man who owned the public house brought a glass of beer to Jose.  He gave her a coin.


    “But what about San Esmeralda?  They had a victim there and they have the most beautiful church in 100 kilometers and their priest lives like a rich man.”


    “A priest should not live as a rich man.  That’s a sin in itself.”


    Jose took a deep draught of the beer and a deep drag of the Nievo.


    “A priest should devote himself to doing good, organizing the fiestas and visiting the sick.  So that men like us can concern ourselves with making money.”


    “I‘m suspicious of ordinary men who ‘do good‘.  Look at the missionaries who came to the village this morning.  Spending their own money to give the children injections of medicine and taking blood from so many people.  Just to study them?  To prevent sickness?   There is nothing free.  What is the real reason they do this?”


    “There’s not much money in what we do anymore.  The big coffee plantations hog too much of the market and the politicians line their pockets with the profit.”


    “You say that every night.  Stop talking about it and light a candle to St. Fermin at the church.  That will keep your crops healthy.  Is that not true, Jose?”


    He’d heard enough.  Jose got up, smiled, put his glass down, wiped the corners of this mouth with the back of his hand, placed his cap back on his head and started toward home.


    “Good Night, Jose.”


    In the morgue at police headquarters in the city of Medellin, Detective Lieutenant Lino Pinzon, stood next to the city coroner over a slab holding the cold body of a young man.  The young man’s body had been opened neatly from crotch to throat.  He’d seen violent death before but he knew this was different.  This was the ninth victim he’d seen in this condition.  How many more were there that hadn’t been found?  People were always disappearing in this country and  lately, the blame had been reflexively placed on the revolutionaries using terror tactics to keep potential sources of intelligence to the police quiet.    


    He stood lost in thought.  There were two central facts in the case that he hadn’t put together yet - mostly because there were few people who would talk to him and the ones that did gave him the same distraught tales of forest demons and unlit candles.   The two central facts were:  a group of missionaries would visit a village providing medical care and testing to the villagers and then young people would disappear and turn up in the same condition as the young man lying before him. 


    By the time he put the two facts together, it would be too late for Jose’s village.


  

On a Lee Shore 9 - A Death

 Her jeep screeched to a halt in the parking lot outside John Steven’s and they both hopped out.


   “I’m not sure why you have to drive like that.”


   “Because I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten anything all day.”


    As they started walking, another car pulled in and the driver got out.


    “Hey, there’s someone I want you to meet.  Of course, you should know her already since she owns the place three doors down.  But, seeing how you never get out…  Hey Paula!”


    They met in the middle of the parking lot and exchanged greetings.  Cara introduced Paula to her father and mentioned, apropos of nothing, that he was a writer.  It was just this sort of awkwardness that never failed to elicit an eye roll from him, but she persisted in making a big show of it, ticking off a few of his well-known titles and awards for good measure.  He knew his daughter well.  Well enough, in fact, to realize that she was doing this on purpose just to see him squirm.  Paula, seeming to know exactly what was going on, graciously diffused the tension by a show of polite interest and the three continued toward the restaurant together. 




   Cara noticed her father’s mood brightening as they chatted on their way through the lot covered with pine needles and overhung by Spanish Moss, which spilled from writhing live oaks overhead.  Entering the whitewashed shanty-style building, their voices blended with the clatter of dishes and silverware, music and the droning banter of customers.  Paula said she'd try to catch up with them later before starting for a table where a man sat waiting.  Cara and her father put in for a table for two before dodging their way through the tables in the dining room toward the bar in the back.


    At the bar, she ordered a dirty martini and her father a double Maker‘s Mark.  They sat and drank quietly together and, as the alcohol did its work making them serene and complacent, she noticed him stealing glances toward Paula’s table.  She could understand.  Certainly Paula was attractive from whatever distance one chose to look at her, but upon drawing closer, one could experience the full affect of her beauty:  her alluring blue eyes swept by iridescent shoulder-length blonde hair, nearly perfect skin and the peculiarly seductive shape of her mouth.  Cara could just hear the purple prose that her father was conjuring as he contemplated Paula furtively from his seat at the bar.  What made it worse for him was her obvious intelligence, and it had been clear that every word she had spoken in her lilting soprano during the short trip from the parking lot had stuck like a blade in his heart.


    Another round of drinks and their table was ready.  They barely spoke as they set upon their food quenching the queasy effect of lowered blood sugar left by hunger and alcohol.  They had a few more drinks and, when the food was gone, stared placidly ahead like over-grazed cattle.


    “Holy hell!  It’s Cara and her dad!  Who the hell let them in here?!  This is my place and I say who gets in here.”


  


    They both turned but they need‘nt have, they both instantly recognized Katie’s giggly voice coming from the bar.  Somehow she had gotten in past them, unnoticed.  Shannon and two guys from Saints and Sinners, Jeremy and Chris, were in there with her.


    “Come here, you guys, give me some sugar.  You too, Dad,” Katie cooed.


    “Yeah, sugar…” added Shannon.  “Sugar is what we need over here.”


    The two got up from their table and headed back toward the bar carrying their drinks.  Katie darted out and threw herself into her father’s best friend’s arms.  He hugged her tight and kissed her lightly on the forehead.  She looked up at him and he brushed her blonde hair away from her face.  “Kathleen, my dear, adoptive daughter… it’s been way too long…” Cara went up and put her arm around Shannon.


    “God! I can't escape you people anywhere,” she said.


    “Why don’t you come to the beach anymore, Dad?” asked Katie.


    “Why would anyone want to escape us,” said Shannon.  “Isn’t the whole attraction of living here the opportunity to hang with us?”


    “I don’t know.  I’m working all the time these days.  Although, I know if I spent more time at the beach observing your antics, I’d probably have much more material for writing realistic-sounding dialog.  I’ll try to get out there later this week.”


    “What’s everyone drinking?” said Chris.  “I don’t want any interruptions in the flow of alcohol.  Not after spending all afternoon etching koi fish and tribal armbands into tourists' milky white flesh.”


    “Amstel Lite.”


    “Another martini.”


    “Old Granddad 114.”


    “ How appropriate.”


    “Anchor Steam.”


    “Gray Goose.”


    “That’s all a buncha crap, fucking foo-foo drinks.  A round of Cuervo Gold shots.  It’s my call because I’m buying.  If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.  And if you don’t drink it, well then the hell with you!”


    “What the fuck?  Will you just shut up?!  You think it’s funny to say that sorta stuff, but it’s not,” Cara shot back.  “But go ahead and buy.  No one's gonna stop you.”


    The shots came and down they went.  Another round and down it went.  Lots of cheerful talk.  Another round and down it went.  And so it went, until…


    “Oh God.  It’s Miles.  He’s really not here, is he?  mutha fffuh...  He’s gonna know I had the day off and I’m gonna have to listen to his shit.  What the hell do I do?  Dammit, I do what I wanna do…” Cara mumbled to herself as Miles started toward her.  “Why is he here?  I picked this place specifically so he wouldn’t be here.”


    “Hey sweetie…  I didn't expect to see you,” he said.


    “How was Key West?” she asked.  “Did you take care of your dad’s real-estate deal?”


  


    “Uh.. Oh, it went okay.  It took all day to convince them to except the original terms of the deal.  They didn’t like the flooring.  It’s bamboo and they wanted red oak.”


    Cara looked at him quizzically.  "Huh.  He’s gonna stick with it," she thought to herself.  "What’s up with the elaborate lie?  What's he hiding?"  She knew from talking to Katie that he hadn’t been in Key West at all but up in Layton at Swan’s Wharf.


    “I figured you’d be at the Parrot tonight,” said Miles.


    “I took the day off.  I didn’t feel well when I got up this morning."  She took a step back from her own lies and was amazed at them.  “God, I’m no better than him.  What a couple we make.” So she set it all aside for the moment and they lost themselves in the effervescent, meandering type of conversation that lovers allow themselves.  He really could be a sweet guy.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Sure.”


    They talked on.


    There comes a time in the course of drunken reverie when space and time become muddled.  Colors are visible but seem unattached to discrete objects.  Voices pull loose from their owners and move here and there of their own accord.  The continuity of events breaks down and the before becomes the after and the after before.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Katie is talking to Chris.  ‘Please, if they want koi fish, give ‘em koi fish and stop yer bitching'.  'No, it’s not so bad the first few you do, but do you know how many koi fish I’ve done?  I looked it up - seventy-five and I‘m only twenty-six.  People celebrate marriages, births; memorialize their dead loved ones with that shit.  Think about it!’  Some fat guy offering to buy Katie a drink…  I’ve never seen him before.  Rejected.  Jeremy is talking to Shannon and she has her hand on his leg.  Hmmm… now that’s something new.  ‘That’s why I only work part-time, working with ignorant people sucks.  I’d rather be poor.’ Shannon said that.”


    “Do you need another one?”


    “Miles…  Where’s Miles?  Where’s Daddy.  He was here just a minute ago.  She scanned the room for him.  Over there… talking to Paula.  Yes!  How did that happen?  Her brother?  Oh, the guy she was eating with was her brother… not a date.  Nice.  Perfect.  Well, of course, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein were lesbians… and yeah the expatriates were refreshing after the late Victorians.  E.M. Forester is for girls… and everything Ernest Hemingway ever wrote was homoerotic.  Big man… bullfight aficionado.  If there‘s anything gayer than a bullfight I don‘t know what it is.   I think Ezra Pound and John Dos Passos are complete crap.  Me too.  Ulysses - the best novel of the 20th century?  He thinks so too.  God, this is perfect!  They’re talking books.  I’ve never seen him talk to a woman about books and look interested.  He’s smoking a cigar and she’s smiling, looking up at him with those big blue eyes.  Holy shit… she just took a big puff off his cigar… off the spitty butt end of his cigar.  And he’s laughing…  she’s laughing.  Their knees are touching.  Who am I talking to?  Apparently, no one…”


    “Look at me!  I’m Marilyn Monroe and Cara’s dad is John F. Kennedy!”  Katie blurted out from somewhere in the room.


    “Miles?”


    “You gotta stop calling me that,” he laughed.  “I told you my name is Mark.”


    “Oh yeah, sorry…”


    “Hey, if you’ve gotta bite someone, come take a bite out of me!”  Shannon’s voice said from the opposite end of the room from where Shannon was sitting.


    “Do you need another one?”


    “My sweet sister.  I love you, Cara.  I hope we‘re together for the rest of my life.”  Katie flung arms around her neck.  “Are you okay honey?”


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    “What is it like to be the only sober person in room full of drunken people?  Drunks are normal to other drunks.  But not to a sober person.  Like someone watching a circus.  Clowns and elephants and performers swinging from the rafters, falling into nets.  Sick demented clowns.  The sober person in the room.  The watcher in the woods.  The catcher in the rye.  The silent observer.  The voyeur.“


Her mood darkened and some incomprehensible terror crept into her and settled in around her shoulders.  Are you okay honey?  “Shannon?”  She was sure it was Shannon but Shannon was across the room talking to Jeremy.  “Is there a sober person in the room?”  She stopped and willed her mind clear.  The fog dispersed for a moment.  “Yes, there is.  He is.”  Miles.  “Miles.”  She hadn’t seen Miles accept another drink all night, since the one he'd sipped slowly during their conversion.  He was sitting at the other end of the bar, watching, his eyes were locked on Katie and he seemed to be trying to listen to what she was saying.  Breaking his stare, his eyes darted to the fat man, sitting a few barstools down, and the fat man met his gaze.  There was only a slight nod of the head and a look as if to say,  “Her.”  And the fog enveloped her again.


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    “I'm buying.”


    “Does anyone need another one?”


    Cara felt guilty.  Everyone else had been buying all night.  “I’m buying… What does everyone want?” she asked.  No response.  She felt sandy pavement and pine needles against her knees and heard her father’s voice.  The parking lot wheeled around her.


    “Come on, honey, let me help you into the car.  From now on I think you should leave the heavy drinking to us drunks.”  She heard the seat belt click around her and then Katie’s voice.


    “Don’t worry about it.  I’m over off of 24th.  I can make it.  Leave me alone,” she laughed. “You guys be careful on the road.”


    The tropical night, a wake for the tropical day past.  The deceased is embalmed, wrapped in misty winding sheets, laid out on a bier and prepared for the crypt.  Overhead a watchful eye, red with mourning, looks on over a world seething with life and death. “Keep silent.  Show respect for the dead.  Hang crape on the doorframes. Burn incense in the mangroves. Wind and waves, give us a dirge.”


Katie shuffled along the side streets between buildings, past darkened doorways and into the alley that led over to 24th street.  Her eyes struggled to adjust to the dark.  A noise.  The outline of a large man blocked the dim light at the end of the alley.  “God, you scared me, what  the…” A crushing blow from behind.  She sank to the ground, dead.


  

On a Lee Shore 8 - Miles Lies

As long as she could remember she had collected photographs.  She didn’t quite understand why.  Perhaps to bring continuity to a life where it was sometimes lacking.  When she was a kid she could spend hours leafing through photo albums - then actual books that she could hold in her hands - now, of course, just files on her computer.  She never particularly liked taking pictures because that meant fumbling with a camera or her phone and interrupting the fun she was having or the spell she had fallen under admiring some new and wonderful thing.  It also meant coercing her companions to gather around, composing a shot and other socially unnatural acts that she loathed.  So she mostly got them from other people who took the trouble to do those things.


“Another problem with taking your own pictures is that you’re never in any of them,” she always said.


 She had accumulated quite a few back in the city, but now when she browsed through them she was startled by her own face peering back at her from laptop screen through a thick mask of paint crowned by hair highlighted in a half-dozen shades of blonde.


“I look like a raccoon”, she thought.


By now she had reverted back to who she had been.  Her skin had reacquired the patina that the sun bestows upon all its worshippers and, after a few weeks of cringing at the widening dark stripe around her part, she’d finally dyed her hair back to her natural brown.  In New York, if she broke a sweat on the subway coming home from work, she’d strip down, hit the shower and freshen up first thing upon entering her apartment.  Now she was accustomed to the coating of natural oils and salts that softened and seasoned her skin.  She rarely wore makeup and she rarely fixed her hair.  The assimilation was complete.


Most days she got up around ten, hit the beach, read a little, hung out with whoever happened to be there, maybe took a nap and was over at the Boiled Parrot by one.  Today after working a double-shift, she had the day off, but the ritual of going to the beach would still be observed.  The beach was only a short walk from the bungalow - three-quarters of a mile down an unpaved road guarded by Buttonwood and Coco Plum, across the causeway and up and over the wooden steps that bridged the dunes.


In the early afternoon, the beach is usually too hot for the ocean breeze to give relief by itself.  So as soon as she arrived, she pulled off her shorts and shirt and headed toward the water in the suit that was always beneath her clothes.  Quickening her step as she hit the surf, she dove into the breakers, re-emerged on the surface, tilted her head toward the sun and pushed her hair back from her face.  The sun was hot and the water was as warm as blood.  She relaxed in the blue water up to her shoulders and floated up and down with the waves as they rolled in.   Three pelicans in a line passed by in a low glide over the water less than fifty yards out.


Down the beach a bit, she could see Katie and Shannon. 


Katie Corcoran had been Cara's closest friend as long as she could remember, more like a sister.  When they were young, Katie lived with her father, Dylan, in a house on Tavernier key that Cara and her father quite often visited during Cara's summers with her father.   Dylan was an old army buddy of Cara's father, fellow sailor and fellow writer.  The two men broke into their profession at the same time and both experienced success, although Dylan's career never reached the stratospheric levels that Cara's father's had.  Dylan Corcoran had authored several well-received works on military history while Cara's father mastered fiction.  Cara and Katie were inseparable then and had remained close friends into adulthood.   Katie father had been murdered under still unresolved circumstances a few years back, leaving Katie his estate worth several million dollars.


 Rich as she was, Katie didn't concern herself with a career or even a job.  She spent her time with her friends and her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Johnny Quinn.  But from time to time she would get a job at a bar or restaurant just to make new friends, even working a few months at the Boiled Parrot a year or so ago.  Katie was the type of person who, although intelligent, never questioned or explored the people around her or their motives beyond certain limits.  She was a bit like a stuffed animal, Cara would admit to herself when she allowed herself to think objectively.  Cara loved her just the same, Katie was always there and provided her security without any probing questions.  Blonde and bouncy, Katie had the kind of innocent good looks that made people say that she would always look the same - even when she was eighty years old.


If there was one word that described Shannon Wirth it was cynic, but an insightful and loyal cynic, not at all self-absorbed like most cynics are.  Katie may have been Cara's sister, but Shannon had become was her mentor and second self.  Shannon assessed life and its vagaries with a brutal honesty that Cara often needed.  The daughter of a wealthy, Jewish family from Long Island, Shannon never aspired to a conventional life and left home at the first opportunity.  Working her way down the east coast, living in practically every beach town from Atlantic City to Miami, she had come to light in the Keys, on  Marathon where Cara and her father lived, but Shannon lived in town while Cara and her father lived on remoter Boot Key.  Shannon’s place was on 26th street above a tattoo and piercing shop called Saints & Sinners, where she worked part-time, and an adult bookstore called The Talk of the Town; her balcony overlooked a place between the buildings where junkies shot up and drunks slept it off.  She didn’t have to live there, she just did.


Cara waded ashore, retrieved her shirt, shorts and towel and headed up the beach toward the two girls.  Katie greeted her.


“That’s quite a show you’re puttin’ on there, girl.  I could see your goods from here when you were still in the water.”


“Yeah, this is supposed to be a respectable beach where people can bring their children,” added Shannon.


They were referring to her white bikini.  Cara groaned, spread her towel out and flopped on her belly onto it.


“I got it from Victoria’s Secret.  The description on the website neglected to mention that it was see-through.  I was gonna return it, but I never got around to it.  Miles likes it though.”


“I’ll guess he does,” Shannon said.  “… And speaking of Miles, where is he and what are you doing here so late?”


“I’ve got the day off and… I didn’t tell him about it.  Anyway, he said he was going to be down in Key West working on a real-estate deal for his father today.”


“Key West???” exclaimed Katie.


“Yeah, why?”


“Because, I saw him this morning up in Layton at Swan’s Wharf - the real nice marina next to the one where John keeps his boat.   Johnny and I spent the night on his boat last night and this morning when we’re walking back up to his car, there’s Miles.”


“That’s what I like to see - honesty in a relationship.  You lie to him about having a day off, he lies to you about where he’s going to be,” said Shannon.


“Well, I didn’t actually lie… I just didn’t tell him I had the day off.  If I tell him he wants to monopolize the whole day.”


The three of them lay still for a while in the sun before Katie broke the silence.  “Here’s the weird thing, though.  So Miles is over at Swan’s Wharf, but he was on this huge, I mean freakin’ enormous, private yacht - I mean his Dad’s is big, but this….  Anyway he’s helping a few other guys unload containers off it.  And, one of the guys I remember meeting a few years back and I'm pretty sure he's a cop.


“So I yelled over to Miles.  And you shoulda seen the look he shot back at me.  He looked surprised, scared and pissed all at the same time.  So I just waved and walked away.  I was shocked - good ‘ol chill Miles, I’d never seen that side of him.”


“I’ve seen it,” Cara said sympathetically.  “…and I hate it when he’s like that.  I would’ve been shocked just see him working.  That’s something I’ve never seen before.”


When Katie spoke, Cara had already been half asleep.  Now she closed her eyes again and drifted off.