B0092XNA2Q EBOK (12 page)

“You mean you have an actual house with walls and a floor?”

A shrug. “Depends on how you define ‘house.’ ”

A slightly raised eyebrow mixed with an even slighter tilt of the head.

“Several years ago, I was fishing on a full moon. Snook everywhere. Heard a plane sputtering above me. Saw it go down. Trailing flames. The next morning, I found it several miles away on an island deep in the Glades. Both wings broken off. Nose stuck in the ground. No pilot. Just a lot of white powder in clear plastic bags. I didn’t care much about the plane or the drugs but the island was another matter. Just two or three acres in size, it was nothing but a huge piece of limestone sticking up through the muck of the wiregrass. Surrounded by trees, hidden both from the sides and the air. I found several old Indian mounds, old pottery shards, a few broken arrowheads. I found a clear spring bubbling up in a little pool and some high ground. So, I began hauling in wood and other things as they drifted up onshore around the
Gone Fiction
or as I bought them in town. Over the years, it’s become my winter getaway.”

“Why winter?”

“ ’Cause,” I laughed, “I have a limited supply of blood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mosquitoes.”

A few hours later, the water grew shallow. I raised the jack plate, lifting the engine completely out of the water, stepped out, grabbed the bowline, picked my way through the tree branches, and pulled
Jody
up a small creek that only flowed during high tide. I walked maybe an eighth of a mile as the limbs closed behind us.

She said, “So, is there a story to how you found this?”

“I stumbled upon it while looking for a place to stash the airboat.”

“You have another boat?”

I pointed at the airboat sitting to her right.

My airboat is ten feet long and six and a half feet wide powered by a two-hundred-and-forty-horsepower Lycoming four-cylinder
airplane engine with a seventy-inch propeller. I call it
Evinrude
after that character in the Disney movie
The Rescuers.
It’ll do sixty miles per hour but it gets pretty squirrelly after that, as you lose the ability to steer at high speed. Maybe life is the same way. An airboat is little more than a fancy johnboat with a four-foot lip angling up off the front that hovers over the grass. The bottom, or hull, is covered in a half-inch sheet of stainless steel, which is tough, glides over most anything—including asphalt—and comes in handy in the dry season.

I stowed
Jody
, and sparked
Evinrude
to life. Minutes later, we emerged out of the trees and began skimming across the tips of the grass at forty and fifty miles an hour. Airboats don’t turn as much as they slide. Or glide. She sat in front of me. Her hands were white-knuckled around the base of her seat. I slowed, tapped her fingers, and mouthed the words, “Let go.” She did, although uncomfortably. As the miles passed and her comfort grew, her arms relaxed. Eventually, she sat up straight, and let the wind pull at her hair. For a second, she closed her eyes. Deep in the mangroves, she spoke over her shoulder. I slowed, cut the engine. Her eyes were wide. “The roots—they tangle with each other. It’s as if they make their own floor. Each holding each.” She looked around. “They need each other.”

From the Ten Thousand Islands we moved into the wiregrass of the Glades. At the sight of the first alligator she pulled her feet up beneath her, tucking her heels beneath her bottom, but after the hundredth, she let them back down. Seeing her enjoy the ride, I took the long way. Winding in and out, around. I sat behind her, watching layers disappear, peeled off by the wind. I would not describe her as happy, but it was the furthest I’d seen her from unhappy since we’d met.

Toward sunset, I slowed. Cut the engine. A crimson sun setting on the treetops. Seagulls filling the air and the background with
noise. A few sandhill cranes perched in treetops. A single osprey floating high in the distance. I whispered, “Steady says riding in this boat is like walking on water.”

The sun dropped. She nodded, whispered to herself, “He would know.”

We reached the Hammock late in the afternoon. I tied off the airboat and she stepped onto the dock. Her eyes followed the walkway. Cabin. Screened porch. Wood-burning stove. Half a plane. Red hand pump indicating a freshwater well. Her eyes scanned the trees around her. “Where’d all the fruit trees come from?”

Around us stood a dozen or more orange, grapefruit, tangerine, and kumquat trees. I shrugged. “Indians, I think.”

She peeled a tangerine. Juice dripped off her chin. “Sweet.”

I grabbed a bar of soap and an unused razor. “Come on.” I led her through the woods. She followed closely yet didn’t cling.

Beneath a sprawling live oak, she tapped my shoulder and pointed at a single orchid hanging at eye level. Her own private discovery. I asked, “You like?”

She nodded.

I pointed up.

Scattered high up in the tree were fifty or sixty orchids.

She inhaled, smiling. Eyes wide. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I planted them.”

It was one of the first things I’d said that got her attention. “Really?”

“They like this environment, so whenever I’m in Miami, I stop at one of those roadside vendors, buy a couple and then plant them up there. Most of them make it. Some don’t but I think that has more to do with the vendor.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“No. If you climb up there, you’ll see the tags are still tied around the base to remind me what kind they are.”

Moments later, we were twenty feet up in the tree reading the tags. One lay flat across her hand. “You weren’t kidding.”

I shrugged.

“You get more interesting the more time I spend with you.”

I pushed away a branch, peeling back the canopy. “This is one of my favorite views.” We could see for thirty or forty miles. All the way to the gulf.

She didn’t say a word. Which said a lot. I pointed across her field of view. “Your boat blew up out that way.”

She half smiled. “You mean you blew it up out that way.”

“Yes, I did that.”

After a few moments, she whispered, “How far from here to the nearest road?”

“Dirt or asphalt?”

“Whatever.”

I pointed. “There’s a dirt road about twenty miles that way.”

“Talk about being in the middle of nowhere.”

“I suppose we show up on some military satellite but they’d have to be looking.” I smiled. She smirked and appreciated the image. “And if you want to find a dead person, you look in a cemetery.”

We climbed down and I led her to the spring, where I stepped into the God-carved limestone bathtub big enough for ten people. A few leaves floated on top of the water. It was clear, about four feet deep, and a shelf rose on one side serving as a seat. She stepped in and we soaked in the lukewarm water for over an hour as I told her about the island, how I’d built the cabin and how I dumped all the cocaine in the water.

She tried not to smile. “Tell the truth—you didn’t sample just a little for yourself? Maybe stash some for a rainy day? It was probably the best of the best, straight from Colombia.”

“No. Never did.”

She waved her hand through the water. “Ever done any drugs?”

“No, although I still enjoy a good gin and tonic.”

“Hmmm…” She smiled knowingly. “Liquid courage.”

Once my fingers and toes were pruney, I stood, left the soap and razor and pointed toward the cabin. “I’m going to fix some dinner.
Take your time. Nobody’s watching.” I turned, then turned back, waving my hand across the backdrop of trees. “Biologists estimate there are over a hundred and fifty thousand Burmese pythons in the Glades, slithering this way and that. Most are the offspring of escapees from aquariums after hurricanes flooded the pet shops. Some were released when they grew too big for the family aquarium. Just, FYI.”

“What do I do if I see one?”

“Run real fast.”

When I left, she had backed away from the edge and was slowly scanning the rim of the spring.

She returned a while later, smelling of Irish Spring, her legs shiny. Proud that she didn’t get eaten by a snake. She set the soap down on the side of the sink, then nudged it closer. Watching me out of the corner of her eye.

I looked up from the pasta sauce I was turning. “That bad, huh?”

She nodded. “ ‘Ripe’ would be a better word.”

“Sorry.”

After dinner, I returned from bathing and found her standing alongside the twin bed she was to sleep in, rubbing the sheet along the side of her face. I poked my head in. “Everything okay?”

She held the sheet in both hands and nodded.

Her face did not convince me. “You sure?”

She said nothing.

“I have other sheets if you like.” I started digging through the closet. Some were mildewed. A few had been nibbled on by moths. Mice droppings covered those on top. “Maybe a different color.”

“No, really, these are fine.”

“Then why are you looking at them like they have cooties?”

She almost smiled. “When I traveled, on location, shooting a movie… my contract stipulated that I would not sleep in a bed with
less than seven-hundred-count Egyptian cotton. That the mattress was a king-size Tempur-Pedic Rhapsody complete with seven pillows, each of a certain make and size, and that my room temperature would be held constant at sixty-eight degrees. Not sixty-seven. Not sixty-nine. Bottled water from Italy. Champagne from France. Bagels from New York. Salmon flown in fresh. Lobster. Caviar.” She shook her head. “Do you know how heavy that mattress is? I once had it flown into the deserts of North Africa and then the top of the Alps just so I could get some sleep.”

“Did you?”

A quick shake. “No.”

“I realize this is getting toward personal, but how much did you make for your last movie?”

“Twenty-five million.”

I’m no expert on actors but somewhere I read that screen actors must relearn how to make facial movements because the camera picks up every little thing. The good ones learn how to say volumes with barely a twitch. In contrast, stage actors must make dramatic movements—almost overacting—so as to be seen by folks in the cheap seats. Katie gave away only what she wanted. Every movement, every breath, every thought, was thought out before it was acted upon or carried out. Acting was in her DNA. She’d have made a good poker player. “Lot of money.”

“It’s out of order.”

“How so?”

“I have a—” She tilted her head to one side. “I
had
a townhouse in New York. Upper West Side. Central Park out the window. I used to stand on the back balcony and watch the street below. Waiting on the guys picking up the trash. They could empty every can on the street in less than eight minutes. Lot of trash, too. I used to wonder what would happen if they didn’t come around. Then one day, they didn’t. Went on strike. Piles spilled out into the street. Flies. Maggots. The smell. I, or rather somebody that worked for me, checked
into what they made. Their salary.” She paused. “Thirty-six thousand. Thirty-six thousand lousy dollars a year to pick up filth unknown.” She stared out her cabin window. “I made that in less than one minute on my last film. Just for standing there and looking pretty. But if he doesn’t pick up the trash, stuff stacks up. Stinks. Disease. Not a pretty picture. If I don’t come to your movie theater, what’s lost? Nothing. Seems out of whack. Out of order.”