Baja Florida (2 page)

A back door of the limo opened as we approached.

A woman stepped out. A stout black woman in a crisp white uniform. A dainty white nurse's cap on her head. The hat looked peculiar, like a tiny bird had made a nest in her hair and abandoned it for something better. She nodded me inside the limo.

I heard Mickey Ryser before I saw him: a gurgling sound, like a straw siphoning the last of a Big Gulp.

Came from a tube running into Mickey's nose, a tube attached to a green oxygen tank. More tubes running into his arms. Attached to plastic IV bags filled with clear liquids and dangling from the rail of a stretcher.

One of the limo's seats had been removed to make room for the stretcher. Mickey Ryser lay atop it, the head of the stretcher cranked up so that we were eye to eye when I squeezed inside and sat down on the remaining seat.

My face gave me away again.

“Aw, c'mon, Zack. I don't look that bad, do I?”

But yeah, he did. Shrunken and gray, eyes big in their sockets. Way too much hollow in his cheeks.

He wore what he always wore—a vintage and gloriously tacky tropical shirt over khaki shorts. This particular shirt was a hideous red with grinning purple monkeys drinking out of big yellow coconuts. A valiant effort at jauntiness on Mickey Ryser's part, but not enough to hide the fact that he was little more than a cadaver in clothes.

“Good to see you, man,” I said.

He stuck out a hand and I gripped it and we held on to each other until it got awkward and then we let go.

Mickey coughed. And then he coughed some more.

The short, stout black woman got back into the limo and knelt by the stretcher. She poured Mickey a cup of water, held it while he drank, and toweled off what dribbled down his chin.

“Zack, meet Octavia,” Mickey said. “She calls herself a nurse. Mostly she just sits on her wide black Jamaican ass and watches TV.”

Octavia took a playful swat at him.

“Bettah hold dat tongue, mon. Else you be finding someone else to look after your awful white self.”

“Me and Octavia, we have a rapport,” Mickey said.

“Hunh,” Octavia said. “What you and me have is daily combat.”

She fluffed his pillow, straightened his shirt, made a fuss over him. Then she sat down beside me.

Mickey said, “Spent the last week in Gainesville, at Shands Hospital. Heading down to Miami now. Got a plane chartered to take me to my place in Exuma.”

“Didn't know you had a place in Exuma.”

“Bought it a year or so ago, right after…” He looked himself over. “Right after all this started.”

“Whereabouts in Exuma?”

“About twelve miles north of George Town. Little speck of a place called Lady Cut Cay.”

“You bought a whole island?”

“Not like it's all that big. But it's got a grass landing strip. Protected harbor with a new dock. Little bit of elevation with a house up top looking out on everything. Used to belong to some actor bought it for him and his wife to go on their honeymoon. Then they split up. It's beat-all beautiful, Zack. And the sunsets, they're something else. Saw the flash of green three times last month.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is nice, Zack. That's why I bought it,” Mickey said. “Man needs a nice place to die.”

I didn't say anything.

“Don't mean to get all heavy on you. But there's no other way to tell it.”

“How long?”

“Days, weeks. Who the hell knows?”

I looked at Octavia. She looked out the door. We were quiet for a while.

Finally, Mickey said, “What you thinking?”

“I'm thinking you should have gotten in touch before now.”

“Why? So we could have a pity party on the telephone? You know me better than that, Zack. I don't go for that moping-around crap. Been too busy planning my wake. Gonna have it in Miami. At Vizcaya Mansion. A real blowout. Loud band. Lots of booze. Fireworks. The whole bit.”

“I'll be there.”

“Damn right you will. I've got you down for the eulogy. Make me look good, you hear?”

“That'll take considerable lying.”

“Why I picked you,” he said.

We laughed. Then we stopped. And we sat there for a while saying nothing. My throat got tight. Octavia shuffled in her seat.

“Need to get me some air,” she said. She stepped outside and joined the driver, who was leaning against the front of the limo.

Mickey looked at me.

“Hell of a thing, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

“I'm good with it though. I've made my peace, settled up all my accounts. Except for one thing.”

I looked at him, waiting.

“Need a favor, Zack. A big favor.”

“All you gotta do is ask, Mickey. You know that.”

He grinned.

“In that case,” he said, “make it two big favors.”

“So,” Barbara said. “It's his dying wish.”

“Two wishes.”

“To take his boat out for a last ride.”

“And to be with his daughter,” I said.

“The boat's in Nassau?”

“Yeah, but it's more yacht than boat. A sixty-eight-foot Trumpy. One of the last Trumpys ever built. Mickey bought it a few years back and dropped a bundle restoring it. It was getting some engine work done up in Nassau, only it took longer than he planned. Mickey had a crew lined up to deliver it to his place in Exuma, but they bailed on him.”

“What about the daughter?”

“It's complicated,” I said.

We were in the kitchen. Barbara sipped chardonnay and played with Shula while I finished making dinner. Sautéed snapper with sweet plantains on top. Grilled romaine with blue cheese, lots of it. Cuban bread, homemade from the James Beard recipe. You roll the dough into a loaf, cut three slashes across the top, brush it with ice water, then put it in a cold oven with a pan of hot water underneath it. Bake at 350 degrees for forty minutes. Comes out nice and crusty. Then you slather an ungodly amount of butter on it. And everything is right with the world.

The last bit of daylight was seeping from the sky. Redfish Lagoon basked in the afterglow, its waters gone purplish now. We had the windows open and the no-see-ums were coming in through the screens. They didn't seem to be bothering Barbara or Shula. But I was slapping my ankles and scratching at my head and cussing all of insectdom.

Barbara poured a bit more chardonnay, her two-glass limit. I opened another beer. Shula slurped juice from her brand-new sippy cup. The family happy hour. Life was good. Except for the damn no-see-ums. And the news about Mickey Ryser.

Barbara said, “He seems so young.”

“Seven years older than me.”

“Tell me again how the two of you met.”

“It was right after my parents died.”

“What were you, six?”

“Yeah, almost,” I said. “A couple of weeks after the funeral, Mickey showed up here at the house and asked if I wanted to learn how to surf.”

“Just out of the blue?”

“That's the way it seemed then, but looking back on it now it was probably my grandfather's idea. Most likely, Mickey saw the chance to make a little money and he grabbed it. He was a hustler, even back then. Had to be.”

“Why's that?”

“His family. It was all screwed up. Mickey's dad was long gone. His mom came and went. Mickey and his sisters lived with an aunt. Trailer park, down by Edgewater. They didn't have much. Anything Mickey ever got, he got for himself.”

“So your grandfather paid him to look after you?”

“Yeah, only I didn't figure that out until years later. It wasn't like he was a babysitter. More like…”

“A friend?”

“A brother,” I said. “The big brother I never had.”

“So he taught you how to surf?”

“He taught me everything,” I said.

Not to take anything away from my grandfather, who did his best to raise me after my folks were gone, but my life would surely have assumed a different trajectory had it not been for Mickey Ryser.

By the time I met him, Mickey had already won the first of several Eastern Surfing Association championships. The classic Florida beach kid—long sun-bleached hair, seldom seen wearing much other than a pair of board shorts. In and out of trouble, but nothing all that bad. Cherry bombs in the grumpy neighbor's mailbox. Driving a car without a permit. Stealing beer from the 7-Eleven on a dare from some older kids.

Mickey Ryser was fearless, the coolest guy in Minorca Beach. And I wanted to be just like him.

He taught me how to surf. He taught me how to throw a baseball. He taught me how to tackle with my shoulders instead of my arms. He also taught me a bunch of other things essential to a young man's adolescent development—how to cuss, how to blow smoke rings, how to act around girls.

Yes, Mickey Ryser was always there for me.

Even in high school, when he had a car, along with social opportunities that were not enhanced by hanging out with a punk like me, he found the time. After graduating, he went to work at the local surf shop. He claimed he couldn't afford college. But although he never said as much, I later came to understand that one reason he didn't want to leave town was me. He wanted to make sure I was going to be alright.

“So how did he make all his money?” Barbara asked.

I pulled the bread out of the oven. It needed to rest a couple of minutes.

“Let's just say he parlayed an unexpected windfall to his advantage,” I said.

I never heard the story straight from Mickey's mouth, but substantial rumor had it that he'd gone surfing early one morning at Coronado Inlet and chanced upon a half-dozen bales of pot that had been tossed overboard by some luckless smuggler. Square grouper. The catch of the day along the Florida coast back then.

Mickey wasn't a doper, at least no more than anyone else in those days, but he wasn't one to turn his back on opportunity either. He sold the pot, bought the surf shop. Then he just kept buying and buying. Mickey was smart about real estate. Smart about business, too.

By the time I was playing ball at Florida, Mickey was flush enough to pony up the sizable donation it took to be a Bull Gator. Private parking privileges, seats on the fifty-yard line. He brought my grandfather to all the games.

After I signed with the Dolphins, Mickey decided he might as well buy a place in Miami, too. He was into all sorts of things by then. Apartment buildings in Atlanta. A car dealership in Fort Myers. A horse farm south of Gainesville. Over the years we saw less and less of each other. Still, we were forever connected.

“So tell me about the daughter,” Barbara said.

“Her name's Jen,” I said. “Mickey hasn't seen her in a long time. Since she was a kid. More than twenty years ago.”

We both looked at Shula. Still slurping from her sippy cup. Still adorable.

“Can't imagine,” Barbara said.

“Me neither.”

I put dinner on the table. Another masterful presentation from Chef Chasteen. Barbara was digging in before I sat down. An enthusiastic eater, Barbara. High on the list of the many things I loved about her.

“Mickey's first wife—her name was Molly—she won sole custody of Jen when the two of them split up. She didn't make it easy for Mickey to see their daughter. She moved them around a lot, never told Mickey where they were.”

“He didn't have to pay child support?”

“I don't know all the details, but Molly had plenty of money of her own—her family was well off, owned timberland and pulp mills—and apparently she was fed up, wanted a clean break, nothing more to do with him. Can't say that I really blamed her.”

“Why's that?”

“Mickey was a wild man back then. He had more money than he knew what to do with and he was barely thirty. He had no business getting married, no business having kids. We all have times in our lives when we wish we could claim do-overs. That's one of his.”

“Still, Zack, there are ways, legal ways, for a father to occasionally visit his children. If he really wants to. I mean, how could he go that long without seeing his daughter? It's unthinkable.”

“You're absolutely right. I know Mickey regrets the way he's handled things. Especially now.”

“This Jen, she's his only child?”

“As far as I know.”

“So she stands to inherit something when he dies?”

“Mickey and I didn't talk about that. But Mickey being Mickey, yes, I'm certain he plans to take care of her.”

“What about the mother?”

“Molly died six months ago. Car accident. Mickey heard about it and that's when he found Jen and reached out to her.”

“Did she reach back?”

“The two of them have been talking, yes.”

“Does she know he's dying?”

“Can't tell you that. All I know is that the last time Mickey heard from her—about a month ago—she said she was planning to visit him and would be there within a couple of weeks. She had been living in Charleston, going to college, and had just bought a sailboat. She and some friends planned to head south, do some island-hopping, their big post-graduation adventure before finding jobs and making their ways in the real world.”

“Putting off the inevitable.”

“Which, ultimately and in the very broadest sense, is the lifework of us all.”

“Whoa,” Barbara said. “You getting philosophical on me, Chasteen?”

“Fatherhood has brought out the profundity in me.”

We worked on our food. It was easy work. I thought about another beer. I thought maybe I'd forgo the beer in favor of an after-dinner rum. Another example of me, the deep thinker.

“Here's what I don't get,” Barbara said. “Why would he ask you to track down his daughter? I mean, there are people who do that sort of thing for a living. Professionals.”

“I told him that. He did everything he could to find her. But he didn't really have a lot to go on. The only phone number he had for her was a landline and it has been disconnected. Didn't know the names of Jen's friends, the ones who were going with her. Didn't even know the name of her boat or where she was keeping it in Charleston. He tried to go through Bahamian authorities, just to see if she had passed through customs and immigration. Got nowhere on that front. Just before he went into the hospital, he hired a private detective in Miami. Sent him a ten-thousand-dollar retainer. Hasn't heard a word since.”

“And time is running out for him.”

“Yeah, I'm afraid it is.”

“So, Chasteen to the rescue.”

“Appears that way.”

“You find the girl, get the yacht, and grant Mickey Ryser his dying wish.”

“Simple as that,” I said.