Sex in a Sidecar (15 page)

It happened again. Driving slowly, telling myself there was nothing to see, I crept past the entrance to the beach rental. A hundred yards beyond I pulled into another driveway, turned around and went back.

This time, I didn't drive around the circle. This time I parked at the foot of the stairs facing the north side where the tree had fallen. The loss of the tree had left a gap in the tropical underbrush between the houses. I sat staring at it, willing myself to get out of the car. When pride conquered fear I got out of the Miata, had a good look around and went gingerly through the gap. I wanted to see what was next door.

A large black woman was shoving a canvas carrier bag in the back seat of a clapped-out old blue Ford parked near the plantings, well away from the mansion. She straightened. “Well I'll be damned, Bodillia Jones,” I said.

The woman, her hand on the door handle, looked over her shoulder at me. Beneath crazy bleached blond hair, her smooth black face lit up in delight.

“Sherri,” she screamed and then charged at me with her arms out.

Bodillia and my mother had worked together as maids out at a motel on Tamiami Trail and on those days when I was sick or when there wasn't school, I'd hung out at the motel. Hid out was more like it since the owner of the motel didn't allow staff to bring their kids to work. Bodillia had helped my mother conceal my presence and while they changed beds, I watched television in an empty unit or rode up and down the corridors on the laundry carts, listening to the laughter and chatter among the maids.

I loved Bodillia, a woman who lived to laugh and who brought joy to everyone around her. No matter how tired or ill or unhappy she should be, she laughed and she made you laugh right along with her. Nothing life threw at you seemed too bad when Bodillia was around and just seeing her brought a smile to my face Bodillia had a complicated life. Her first husband died in a freak accident. Stan was afraid of heights. When he and Bodillia moved into a broken-down old house and started doing it up, one of the things that needed fixing was the roof. Even though afraid of heights, Stan gamely took on the job of laying down new shingles while his brother rebuilt crumbling plumbing inside. Stan fell through the roof. All the time he'd been worrying about falling off he should have been worried about the rotten boards under him.

Two husbands later, Bodillia still remembered Stan as the love of her life, whispering to my mother that all men are not created equal, at least not when naked, that Stan equaled any two men. I was about ten when I heard that exchange and their fit of laughter that followed gave me something to mull over.

Now Bodillia pushed me away from her, still holding me by my shoulders and shaking me gently. “Where you been hiding, Honey?”

“Nowhere. You know me, I never stray far. I just started tending bar at the Butt and Titts. What are you doing here?” “I clean here one day a week for Mrs. Haverty.” I looked at the modern concrete bunker-type house rising three stories behind us. “Just one day a week in that monster?”

“She's too cheap to pay for more. I go like spit and barely hit the high points. There's five bedrooms and four full baths in that house.”

“Huge,” I agreed. “A lot different from next door.” I jerked my head towards the rental. “Someone will buy it and knock it down soon. Then they'll put up a monster like this.”

“There's no one over there since that lady died, you thinking of moving in?” Bodillia grinned, knowing it was way out of my price range.

I started to say, “Not a chance,” but what came out was, “Maybe.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“You got something against that house?” I asked. She jerked her head towards a dilapidated old garage hidden in the overgrown area between the two properties. “Well, the guy that lives over the garage, the gardener, handyman, whatever they call the fruitcake, he gives me the creeps, no way I'd live next to him.” She screwed up her face and shook her body in mock horror. “It would be like living next door to Charles Manson.” She jerked her head at the Haverty mansion. “And the Mr. and Mrs. aren't a whole lot better.” She threw her head back and barked with laughter. “Best you stay where you are, Honey. That's my advice.”

I went into Cypress Island Bank. The receptionist was new to Jacaranda. That was the trouble with all the changes, there were all kinds of people I didn't know and couldn't ask direct questions. With someone born in Jac I'd just ask them what I wanted to know and they'd pretty much tell me. Now she told me, “I'm sorry, Mr. Davis McDaniels isn't in.” No news to me. It wasn't him I wanted to talk to but her. “Can someone else help you?” she asked.

“Well,” I hesitated. “It's just that I need some investment advice. My friend Bunny, Bunny Lehre, said I should talk to Davis.” She showed no reaction to the name so I pressed on. “At least I think it was Davis. Could it have been his father?”

“Mr. McDaniels Junior looks after individual investment portfolios.”

“Did you know if he looked after Bunny's?” I asked.

“You'll have to ask Mr. McDaniels that question.”

“Bunny was so sweet, did you know her?”

She frowned. “I only knew her to see her when she came in.” And plainly she wasn't disappointed Bunny Lehre wouldn't be coming in anymore.

“Well, I should make an appointment with Davis.”

“I can do that now for you if you'd like.”

“I'd better do it with my calendar in front of me or I'll get it wrong.”

She smiled, her first human reaction.

“I'll call. Thank you for your help.” I put the strap of my purse over my shoulder. “Didn't I hear that the Cypress Bank was expanding to North Carolina?”

She looked taken aback. “I don't think so but Mr. McDaniels does have business interests there.”

Right, that was enough for me. I went up the street and opened a new account at the only other bank in town. A tweaker and possible murderer was not getting my money.

Clay called to say goodnight. After some sweet talk I said, “I've got a temporary job out at the B&T.” Silence roared down the line.

“Terry Wainwright was in a bind and since nothing is happening here, it'll be forever before things are back to normal at the Sunset and you know how I hate doing nothing, I said I'd give him a hand.”

“You could have come up here.” His voice was light, neutral.

“And watch you work every hour God sends? No thanks!” More silence. Then he gave a big tired sigh and said, “Well, you'll be happy now, you're back in a bar.”

“That's a…,” I started to tell him it was a stupid thing to say. Instead I said, “That's me, I like to be where the action is.”

“Yeah, well, have a good time. I'll talk to you in the morning.” And then he was gone.

After a night of no nightmares, not even a bad dream, I awoke to bright sunshine and clear skies, with a gentle breeze blowing in from the west. My mood had lightened and I felt that maybe I was getting back to my old self. I was supposed to start work at eleven o'clock. I kicked myself for signing on at the B&T on this perfect golf day. Nothing I was going to find out would make being inside with weather like this worthwhile.

What did it have to do with me after all? But some outrage left over from seeing Gina lying there on the wet pavement kept me committed. I put on the black skirt and white blouse that I needed to serve at the B&T and drove down the beach.

I drove slowly down the beach, window rolled down, enjoying the sunshine and just glad to be alive. Where the road left the beach and curved inland, flowering vines, with a few new blooms, waved in the green canopy above me. How the hell could anything so delicate have survived Myrna's vicious winds and already be blooming again? Already hibiscus flowers crowded up against the narrow road nearly brushing the sides of the Miata when we met other cars on tight corners.

Repair crews were still working on parts of Beach Road, dragging broken limbs out of the underbrush and running them through a shredder. If large numbers of downed branches are left to dry after a wind brings them down, they can become a fire hazard, forest fires being the third plague of Florida after hurricanes and tourists.

Just before the turn into the beach club I stopped for a huge turtle that had ambled out onto the road. Or maybe it was a tortoise. How can you tell? Whatever it was, it was taking its own sweet time which was fine with me. A white pickup coming in the other direction also stopped. We waited. One of Clay's classical music discs played softly, the sun filtered through the leaves overhead and dotted the road with light. The turtle inched forwards. I stretched and smiled and felt good. Maybe things were going to be all right after all.

The door of the Jacaranda Pool Maintenance truck opened and a slim guy, dressed all in white, hopped out. He ran over to the turtle, now just over the center-line, and picked it up by a shell that must have been at least eighteen inches across. The legs of the turtle started going like sixty. Carrying it awkwardly, holding it well away from his body, pool guy transported the turtle to the other side of the road and deposited it safely in the underbrush. He dusted off his hands, gave me a big smile and a wave and jumped back into his truck.

No more reason for me to hang about. If I'd known what was going to happen at the B&T, I would've turned around and driven like hell to safety.

Life should come with an instruction manual. But even if it did, I wouldn't bother reading it. There's just no hope for me.

The guard stepped out of the guardhouse, saw the new red card hanging from the mirror which said I belonged and gave me a friendly wave before he opened the barrier.

The car swung around the first curve and there, in the middle of the road, stood a man. He must have heard the Miata coming but still he hadn't stepped off the road. I stopped within inches of him and gulped deep to settle my heart rate. The guy wasn't rattled at all. He stared at the little red car with a malevolent glare, as if daring it to hit him. Every line of him said “Fuck you.”

His face was cratered with deep acne scars. He wore no sunglasses or hat to protect his deep-set eyes from the sun. His hair was straw-like in color and texture. Cut ragged and standing out from his head, it was not a look that would ever catch on. The rolled-up sleeves of his gray-blue work shirt exposed forearms sculpted with muscles.

He took stock of me and then he reached overhead with a long hook and pulled down a branch of a rubber tree and began sawing it off. Would it have killed him to step aside for one second so I could get by?

I backed up, afraid the branch would hit the car when it came down.

My temper boiled but I waited, keeping an eye in the rearview for anyone coming around the bend.

He didn't hurry about the job. He didn't care who was waiting for him to finish. He just set a slow and steady backward and forward motion with the saw until at last the offending branch of the rubber tree crashed to the ground and then he took his time pulling it to the side of the road. As I drove past him I raised my hand in acknowledgment but he ignored it.

The look he gave me as I swung out around him made me feel cold on a very hot day. The face of a kid I hadn't thought of since grade seven popped into my mind. Frankie was his name, Frankie De Witt. I'd caught him torturing a stray cat out behind a fallen-down maintenance shed in the trailer park where we both lived. He had the cat in an old bathtub full of water and each time the cat reached the edge of the tub and tried to climb out, Frankie used a bathroom plunger to push it under again. He was a couple of inches shorter than me and at least a year younger but I beat the daylights out of him anyway. I never did see what became of that cat, it was long gone by the time I finished with Frankie. A few weeks later Frankie was long gone too and I hadn't thought of him again until I saw that acne-scarred face staring maliciously into the Miata.

Terry was on the phone when I got to his office. He waved me in. “Yeah, that's right,” he said, motioning me to come in, “a grand on the Dolphins.”

“How are you doing, Terry?” I asked when he hung up. “Winning anything?”

He grimaced. “My luck's about to change.” “That's what Jimmy always swore. Then he'd say, ‘things can't stay this bad so the thing to do is double up so when you get a win it's a big one.'”

“Yeah,” Terry nodded his head in agreement. “He was right, bad luck can't last so you need to take advantage of it when it changes.”

Gamblers are all the same. “Who's the cretin cutting trees along the drive?” I asked. “Hair like straw, mad at the whole world.”

“Oh, that would be Lester. Lester Cathers, the man we all love to hate.”

“Why?”

“He just goes out of his way to make life difficult for everyone. Never responds when you speak to him so you either end up repeating yourself over and over or you start shouting, ‘Did you hear me, Lester?'” Terry took a ring of keys out of the top drawer and handed them to me. “One of the members had a real run in with him.” “Bunny Lehre?”

“Yeah, that was the woman.”

“What was it about?”

He shrugged. “Who knows, doesn't take much effort on Lester's part to get on your nerves.”

I started to close the door on my way out. “Don't close the door,” he said. “It gives me claustrophobia.”

I pushed the door open a foot and then turned into the arms of a god.

“Sherri,” Julian said from behind the hunk. “This is our new executive chef, Isaak Horowitz.”

Lust at first sight. Incredibly long lashes over Spaniel brown eyes: sensuous lips and a body builder's muscles.

“Isaak is from France, where he's been working, but his home is in Israel,” Julian was saying.

The idol held me in his arms. “Hello.” Isaak smiled down at me.

“Hello,” I breathed.

He released me and I melted back against the wall to examine the temporary love of my life.

“I'm happy to be working with you, Sherri.”

“You sound like you come from Brooklyn not Israel.” It made me smile.

“My folks were from New York. They moved to Israel in the late sixties to show solidarity, to be part of a grand experiment. They never got back to New York but they never lost the accent.”

“Are they still in Israel?” I would have asked about the price of butter to keep him there.

“No.” He frowned. “They were killed by a suicide bomber two years ago while they were waiting for a bus.” “Isaak.” Julian tugged on his arm.

“Come to the kitchen when you get a break,” Adonis whispered.