Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) (29 page)

They trudged on.
    

She could not free her mind of April van Osdale, though, despite the excitement this new world was supplying her with. What an outrageous thing to do to her. Invite her for dinner and simply not show up! And then, of course, there was the matter of Max Lirpa. He could not be allowed simply to ignore the tests. Someday April would find out, and then there would be more state troopers.

“Ok, here we are!”

Her reverie was shattered by the appearance of the stream, which hardly looked like a mere stream.

It may not have been the Mississippi River, being perhaps no more than fifteen feet wide.

But it was a pretty significant current of water at that, foaming and frothing, bits of branches and leaves spinning in tight, miniature whirlpools that sucked them under into the gray/green mud water, then spewed them up again a few yards farther along––

…yes, it was a pretty good little water stream at that.

And in a minute or so she was going to be on it.

Like one of those tiny branches.

Sucked under, spewed up.

Well, so be it!

“Ok, we’ll enter the stream here. Crouch down, and let the kayak slide off your shoulder.”

She did as she was told.

In a second, they were sitting together, their breaths coming faster, whether because of what they’d done or were about to do Nina did not know.

“Now, here we go…”

Meg was forced to shout, to be heard over the noise of the wind, the rain, and the fast flowing water.
  

“Put your left foot into the cockpit first, then be sure you’re balanced and slide over into it. I’ll give you a shove.”

“What do I do then?”

“The stream will take you. So go ahead, slide on in.”

All right
, Nina told herself.

Left foot over, and in.

Now, slide on, slide on over…

…and in!

Knees cramped in front, leather seat behind, get straight get straight.

“Got your paddle?”

“Got it!”

“You’re off!”

A great push from behind and the stream had her, hissing along, sky now a slight band of open gray as the canopy of trees opened up.

She was aware of several things simultaneously: the undergrowth on either side of her blurring slightly as her speed increased; droplets of spray kicking up from her paddle as she dipped it—almost pointlessly since the stream was carrying her so fast anyway—first to the right and then to the left of the kayak; and two black crows flying directly above her, stationary now, their speed matched precisely by hers.

There was a sound behind her: Meg shouting something.

She could not make it out, her ears already too jammed with rushing water, roaring wind, paddle––banging on vinyl kayak side, and bird yammering from the wall of forest sliding past.

Certain landmarks did stand out: a gnarled tree that had fallen into the stream and was now reaching out with dead and rain-soaked limbs to grab her as she shot by; a huge rock, moss-covered and sodden, looking on dour and sullen, a fish that jumped, flat and shining-silver at a spot just five feet to her left as she took the paddle from the water and attempted to change sides.

“RRRgggg!”

The shout again.

Could she turn around?

She laid the paddle across the cockpit in front of her and did so.

The world reversed itself, with the creek now thundering away behind her and a bright yellow collaboration of human and vinyl that was now Meg Brennan motioning thumbs up.

She did the same, then turned back.

God this was fun!

She did become aware, at least momentarily, that she had no idea what to do in case she flipped over. She had read something about it, she knew that.

There was one thing you did have to do, and it was relatively simple. There was another thing you absolutely were not supposed to do, and it was simple too, and if you did it you would drown.

But she could not for the life of her remember what these things were.

And on and on they went, she and the little craft beneath her and the benignly hissing water and the twin crows that were her pilots, all navigating a straight course for the Great Gulf of Mexico.

Occasionally, there were rocks, the slime-green upper curves of them breaking the current, which shot past them uncaring, as it would have gone by statues of dead sea turtles; but Nina realized quickly that she could turn the boat with some dexterity, a few degrees right, a few left; so that, given time to see the obstacles approaching, she could contrive to miss them.

Unseen obstacles…

…well that was for another time.

If she hit something unseen she would tip over into the water and either drown or be rescued by the woman following behind her.

The rest be damned.

This lusciousness went on for an indeterminate amount of time, since time, in the middle of a fast flowing stream, alters its own flow, becoming something to match the perceptions of birds tree frogs snakes rocks crows ripples leaping fish and swirling eddies—and not the perceptions of human beings.

But after whatever the amount of minutes or seconds or hours or years it actually was, something did finally change.

The current, she could tell, began to slow.

The banks were farther from her now.

The entire stream turned itself to the right, and then continued to curve on, moving now at a forty five degree angle to the straight northerly flow of the clouds.

And in front of her, opening like a window, was a kind of lake, its water slow-moving and placid, its surface dotted with what seemed like jagged cypress knees rising amid rugs of green moss and lichen.

The boat slowed, slowed, slowed; the trees lost their blur and regained edges to their leaves; frogs, twin humps above their eyes giving away their position, squatted in an inch or so of water just at the shore line—

And Meg, pulling hard on her paddle, came abreast, shouting:

“How was it?”

“Great!”

“Exciting?”

“Incredible!”

“We have to paddle over to the right, now. We’ll beach the kayaks and rest for a while.”

They did beach, and within a minute they were sitting on the shore of a lake perhaps a hundred feet across, getting their breath, the boats sitting like psychedelic hunting dogs beside them.

As she bent forward and wrapped her arms around her knees a chorus of bullfrogs began to go off, the guttural groans mixing with all the other noises of this forgotten little jungle, unexplored for god knows how long.

Sometime later, their sense of intimacy having grown enormously out of basketball bonding, Nina surprised herself by asking:

“How was it for you two, at the first? When you first got to know each other and became…partners?”

Meg shook her head slowly, the bottom of her chin just touching each wing of her tightly closed life jacket.

“Not too bad. When you consider people’s attitudes back in those days. There were problems; but we had a lot going for us as a couple. We got through them.”

“Did you always know that you were gay?”

“Oh God, no! Girl Scout normal, both of us. Jenny growing up in Vermont, me in northern Mississippi. We both thought we had the perfect marriage. Then…it just went crazy. Hers and mine. Crazy.”

“What happened?”

“Everything started being miserable. Even the little things, the trips to the grocery store. Just hateful. Yelling at our husbands, our husbands yelling at us. And then we were divorced—I don’t even want to go into that—and then each of us was just floating around like something out on that lake. Somehow we each wound up getting jobs at a bank in a suburb of Vicksburg. Don’t even ask how we got to there. But we were working right beside each other, and, of course, we commiserated, and that led to lunches together, still no idea—well, you know. And then one day it happened. God I was shocked. I’m still not sure about Jenny. I think she may have seen it coming more than I did.”

“Was it tough for you, being a couple?”

“Not so much. We both knew what the world was like. So we were discreet. For a while we had separate apartments. It’s not like we went parading around naked in the park yelling, ‘We’re glad we’re gay!’ like some people do now. We were especially careful in the bank, and so both of us kept getting promoted. We were making pretty good money. And we discovered Bay St. Lucy on a vacation trip. Jenny had always dreamed of running a boutique. I had always been a jock, and had a degree in physical education. So I got the coaching job here, and Jenny bought her place. It’s been good ever since. Despite April van Whatshername.”

“Don’t worry about her, Meg. We’ll find a way around her. She’s not going to torment Bay St. Lucy forever. The town won’t stand for it. By the way, where in New Mexico did you get married?”

“The county courthouse in Roswell. We wrote our own vows. I suppose we’ve been writing them for a long time, living them really. But it means a lot to do this. It means an awful lot.”

There was, of course, no silence, for the cacophony of the rising winds and the caws squawks and rattles of the wilderness prevented that; but there was a lull in the tumult that was Wilderness Mississippi, and in the middle of it, Meg said, smiling:

“It’s funny. When we had the wonderful shower at Margot’s place…”

“Yes?”

“We laughed because she almost missed it. She was off chasing ghosts.”

“Yes. I remember that.”

“It’s just that, for so many years that seemed exactly what Jenn and I were doing.”

Then the sounds of the forests resumed, and the two women simply sat and listened.

CHAPTER 18: PROPOSALS

The afternoon cleared gradually, so that by six o’clock, when Meg’s van pulled onto Breakers Boulevard and then onto the small lane leading down to Nina’s shack, Bay St. Lucy had turned golden and shimmered like a painting done in luminescent colors. The sun, almost ready to dip its solar toe into the ocean down shore and to her right as she made her way up the staircase, looked as big as a basketball. She’d have been surprised that it reminded her of a basketball, except that now everything in the world—ball point pens, cattle, love poems, dishwashing detergent—reminded her of some aspect of basketball, so she simply made herself ignore the phenomenon.

The stairs rocked and groaned with her weight as she made her way up them.

Her calves were already sore from the afternoon’s kayaking.

Sunlight shone on the window panes, and made it look as if her living room had burst into flame.

She was high enough now to see out over Bay St. Lucy. The tops of waving palm trees looked as though some careless celestial chef had over-plopped an egg on each one, the yokes breaking and spilling out over the town, which had thus been transformed from seaside hamlet to seaside omelet and was ready to be eaten, along with the green salad that was its treescape.

“Oh, come on. Not again.”

A sheet of paper had been stuck between the screen door and its facing.

“Why can’t I just come and go inside? Why is everybody always writing me letters and sticking them in my door?”

The door did not answer.

The letter though, after she opened it, did:

“Nina,

Thanks so much for the lovely pot roast dinner. Goldmann and I are driving back up to The Candles tomorrow, but we wanted to see you one more time before we left.

We have a proposal to make to you. We think it’s a very interesting notion, and we’d like to discuss it with you.

We’re going to walk along the beach for a while and then go out on the pier. It’s five thirty now; we should be somewhere on the pier, or near it, for the next hour or so. If you don’t find us there, come on over to Elementals.

Hope to see you soon!”

Margot.

Well. Good news.

She put the sheet of paper in her pocket and walked back down the stairway, cursing at the pain in her calves, and wondering if a similar affliction was starting to affect her shoulders.

Damned exercise.

But, she remembered, the feeling of flying down the river!

Maybe it was worth it.

She straddled the Vespa, started it, and puttered off toward the setting sun, which had now turned blood red and appeared as romantic and beautiful as a nuclear device exploding.

Within a mile, she could see the pier, and shortly thereafter she was walking toward it.

The ocean pier was a new feature to Bay St. Lucy, constructed with funds the town had recovered from the Robinson estate. For decades there had been no access to the ocean except for the flat and frothy beachfront, and the stone jetty that was constantly wave-splashed and crabclaw spattered. But now, here, stretching before her and a quarter of a mile into the Gulf of Mexico, was this twenty foot high elongated platform, with solid belt high stair bannisters that led not upward but outward, along which the infirm could steady themselves, and on top of which children could terrify their parents by preparing to fall into the ocean.

The air was fresh and cool; two stars could be seen in the twilight sky, and the waves frothed and billowed, churning around the long pier posts and scudding a miniature storm surge that could just be seen through cracks in the pier’s flooring.

Few people were out here: a fisherman, lone and desolate, his baseball cap pulled low over beetling eyebrows, a cigar stub sticking cold and forgotten from his lips, which also seemed cold and forgotten, having nothing to do with the fishing process.

A young couple.

A father with two children.

The wave surge was changing now, more majestic, deeper, roaring as it crested and spread and shallowed and rebuilt itself, the grand sweep of the thing stunning in both its simplicity and inscrutability.

“Hey! Nina!”

There they were. All the way at the end.

“Margot! Goldmann!”

“Come on out! It’s marvelous out here!”

“I’m coming!”

Within a minute, she’d reached the end of the pier, beyond which lay the string of yellow lights that was the offshore drilling rig, beyond which lay The Great Gulf of Mexico, beyond which lay the Great Atlantic Ocean, beyond which lay if one were to believe all one reads some other continents and other people but if one really thought about it and used common sense nothing at all except The Great Eternal Universe and The Never Changing Mind of God.

“Good to see you guys!”

“Yeah! We couldn’t go,” said Margot, now embracing Nina, “without saying good bye!”

“I should hope not.”

The two of them, Margot and Goldmann, were dressed almost identically in London Fog trench coats and floppy Rex Harrison My Fair Lady hounds tooth hats.

Goldmann Bristow spread his arms and shouted:

“Look at all this! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Nina, who’d always thought that, nodded.

“It is.”

Nothing more to say.

Bristow took a step toward her and said:

“We heard about you!”

Oh God.

“Yeah.”

“Nina,” said Margot, leaning down just a bit so that she was closer to the two five feet four people she had to address:

“Nina, is it true?”

“It’s true.”

“How could you get thrown out of the game?”

“It’s easier than you might think.”

“It’s just so…not you!”

“It was me. All me.”

“What did you say to the referee to make him do that?”

Nina thought for a time and answered:

“I told him I felt his decision making, while evincing perspicacity and aplomb, and certainly demonstrating an impressive knowledge of detail, might have been lacking in balance, sensitivity, and—well, the kind of ‘panache’ and ebullience that would have lifted his performance even beyond those standards that the community had come to expect from him.”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh, he said ‘Get the…….out of the game.”

Goldmann Bristow roared.

“Marvelous!”

“Everyone,” Nina said, quietly, “seems to like that part.”

The waves laughed.

So did the klatch of seagulls screeching low overhead, and so did a giant manta ray, which, like a brown dishcloth, was floating some fifty yards out in the ocean.

All of this laughter continued until Creation sobered itself up, and, between deep breaths and sighs and smiles and whatever, Margot said:

“Nina, Goldmann and I have had an idea.”

Aha.

So this was the proposal.

“What idea, Margot?”

“How would you like to work full time at Elementals?”

This was a bit of a shock.

“I don’t understand.”

Margot leaned forward:

“Nina, do you really want to keep being principal…I mean, after this year?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

Because that was true.

She would fight the battles that she now perceived were raging around her.

But more? Another year? Another five years?

No.

“Probably not.”

“Well…Goldmann and I are going to be at Candles a good bit of the time. But Elementals is such a joyous place. And I have such lovely memories of our cups of coffee or tea or brandy or whatever there, while people shopped and puttered and perhaps bought a seascape or a bit of earthenware…”

“I have those memories too, Margot.”

“Then let’s not give them up entirely. We can easily find someone to run the shop until May, perhaps cutting back on hours open—say from ten until two, a little more on weekends. But starting in June, you could manage it full time. You have marvelous taste, and we would, of course, trust you to find things to be sold on consignment. Either I, or Goldmann and I together, could drive back down to Bay St. Lucy every weekend or so, and we could all hang out together in the shop. You wouldn’t have to worry about living on commission, or such things. We could pay you quite a decent salary.”

“Wow.”

The sun, not wishing to deal with such problems, disappeared below the horizon.

A pelican swooped low and defecated on the pier.

“You don’t have to answer now, of course.”

“That’s very interesting, you guys. It really is.”

“We know you’re caught up in a great many matters at the school now. But––well, if you would just think about it.”

“I will. I truly will. And as for school now––I can’t tell you how much I wish I could just quit tomorrow. Not the basketball, of course; but everything else.”

“I’m sure,” said Goldmann Bristow, “it must all be terribly difficult.”

Nina nodded:

“It would all be ok. I could do it. But this woman. This van Osdale.”

Silence for a time.

A speedboat cut across the water, roared its way west, and finally disappeared, falling into the hole left by the setting sun.

“Goldmann…”

It seemed strange calling him that.

But she would get used to it.

“Yes?”

“I just wanted––well, now that we’re out here––”

“Go on, Nina.”

“The other night, when you met her. You said those things about her.”

“I shouldn’t say a great deal. After all, I was around the woman for no more than five minutes.”

“But you formed an opinion.”

He paused, then nodded:

“Yes. I formed an opinion.”

“Could you tell it to me again?”

He shook his head:

“Like I say; perhaps it would be wrong of me.”

“Please. I have to deal with this woman. Bay St. Lucy has to deal with her.”

Silence.

Margot spoke quietly to her fiancé:

“Go ahead, dear.”

To which Goldmann Bristow shrugged: