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.
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