The Edge of the Gulf (21 page)

Chapter 29

Charlie’s first stop had been the farmers’ market in Destin

He spent quite some time foraging among the vegetables and fruit, gently testing the whorls of the endive, examining the edges of mushrooms and the bending points of asparagus spears, searching for the barely discernible scent that distinguishes the better blueberry, adjusting his menu slightly depending on his finds.

At one point the owner, a tall black man with stooped shoulders and a soft but very deep voice, walked over and said conspiratorially, “Can’t give those strawberries much, but look at these.” In each plump hand he held a small basket of raspberries, brilliant and perfectly globed. “Sweetest we’ve had this year.” The man’s face was gentle but solemn and he scrutinized Charlie’s face as Charlie took a couple and ate them.

“You’re right, Frank.” He grinned. “I’d better have some.”

Frank allowed himself a brief, small smile. “Always a treat, good raspberries. Just for you or you havin’ folks in? I haven’t put these out yet, they’re in back.”

“A celebration. Six people. Just family really, for my young cousin from Atlanta and his new bride.”

“You don’t mean. Well, now that is a special supper. You get you some o’ that endive?”

“I sure did.” He paused. “How do you fix it?”

Frank managed another smile. “Covered skillet, but not too long. Like it tender but firm. A shot of bourbon and a touch of bacon grease.”

“Bourbon?”

“Now, that’s the
secret
part.”

“Of course. Have you tried that clove and lemon zest pork loin?”

“Third time last Sunday.”

Frank was called away for a phone call, and Charlie finished gathering what he needed. They met again at the checkout counter, and Charlie asked, “When are you and Grace going to get out to the restaurant again?”

“Our daughter’s coming down from the University next month for her brother’s birthday.”

“Just let me know.
University
? That can’t be. Just yesterday she wasn’t as tall as that stack of tomatoes.”

“Twenty-one.”

Charlie shook his head and said, “I better get out of here before I get any older,” which made Frank actually let out a little laugh.

“You fix those young folks up right, tonight, Charlie. I know you will. A happy time for all of you.”

***

He picked up extra bottles of merlot and sauvignon blanc at Ollie’s, seafood for the bisque at the fresh market on Highway 98, and bread from Cesaria. She was an ancient Portuguese woman who, with her daughter, had for years supplied markets in Fort Walton and Destin, and the 26-A, but was now retired. Her widowed daughter had remarried and moved away and Cesaria lived on modest but sufficient investments her husband had made during his years in the Air Force. She resided in a scrupulously and lovingly tended little house set in a scrupulously and lovingly tended little yard in an oak and cypress grove beside Redfish Lake. She spent hours sitting on her deeply shaded porch reading books of poetry from the county library, and in the evenings she listened to an odd assortment of music—Tony Bennett, the Police, zydeco, the odd Broadway anthology—rejects that her daughter had left her along with an old CD player. Cesaria had learned where the bargain bins were in the local stores and enjoyed passing long minutes flipping through the CDs, comparing deals from store to store, narrowing her choices, and finally, once every month, treating herself to something new.

She now baked only to teach her young nieces and nephews and for events at her church. She had once confided sadly, “
These
Catholics are not bakers. Italians. Irish. If it’s not pasta or that flat hard soda bread, they do not know.”

And, on occasion, she baked for Charlie.

Today, when Charlie drove up, Cesaria was reading Octavio Paz and listening to
Cats
.

He always wanted to kiss the fine olive skin of her lovely high cheekbone, but it was not Cesaria’s way. She was capable of wonderful, sly humor, but she was very formal and, Charlie guessed, considered a friendly kiss, even with true affection, somehow a trivialization of the vigilant passion she kept for her husband, who had died in a freakish deep-sea fishing accident at fifty.

He held both her hands in his for a moment. “You’ll never guess what I have for you.”

He reached in the pocket of his baggy khaki pants and drew forth a CD.

She looked at the cover and her delicate brows lifted. “
Cesaria
?”

“Cesaria Evora. I’ve just discovered her and, naturally, thought of you. She’s Cape Verdan.”

“This is
your
CD?”

“No, mine’s out there in the car. I’ve just been listening to it. This one’s yours.”

Chapter 30

Chaz watched from the window of the upstairs suite as a small truck appeared through the trees, approaching the house along the long winding drive. It pulled to one side of the turnaround that circled a small stand of sweetbay magnolias. In a moment, the housekeeper, Marianne, emerged from below carrying two grocery bags and awkwardly balancing a rectangular box. Her husband got out to help her arrange them in the back and they drove away.

“She’s gone.” Just out of the shower, he stood naked, drying his hair with a towel. “Loaded down as usual.”

Sydney crossed the room, pulling on a long white robe. “Oh, yes. I got an earful this morning when she was doing the library about how fine and generous, etc. etc. etc…. Charlie is definitely in a giving mood. That Libby woman mentioned the other day how ‘good’ he’s been to some abused children’s shelter. On whose board she sits. Of course. They’re all so
appropriate
.”

She put her arms around him from behind and they looked out into the scattered pools of sunlight and the shadows stretching toward them from the west. “If we decide to use Atlanta as our primary residence, I intend to rotate through every important non-profit board in town. It shouldn’t cost that much. And I’ll know how to help them give money a lot more usefully than some of these people who’ve always had their own.”

“Charlie didn’t always have his own. He earned it.”

She cupped his cheek in her hand and turned his face toward her. She kissed him.

“He didn’t earn it without using enlightened self-interest. And he didn’t earn the right to revoke your birthright and set himself up as your own personal judge.” She paused. “Terry’s due at noon?”

“Yeah. I told him Charlie said he’d be back around two. If he gets back early or if anybody else shows up, Terry has stopped by to bring my wallet which I ‘accidentally left wrapped in a towel’ at the Bar last night.”

“So we have safely at least an hour to go through it again and for him to look things over.” Sydney sounded confident, even nonchalant, for Chaz’s sake, but she was eager for the reassurance of a complete run-through.

“He says he knows the house fairly well, but hasn’t been in it for nearly two years. He has to be sure about the keys and alarm. And where he’ll need to be.”

“And we’re sure Charlie doesn’t have a gun? It’s not something he might advertise.”

“I worked the question into a conversation about being isolated out here with such a great house. He said crime really isn’t a problem on this stretch of the coast and that if anybody wants to rob him badly enough he doesn’t intend to stop them just for a few pieces of art.”

“But he’s the sort who would register a gun.”

“Terry says not even good law-abiding folks always bother in west Florida.”

“So no one would particularly question him having one that no one knew about?”

“Apparently not. Hey, if Terry’s comfortable with this aspect of things, I have to be. He’s the one who’s gonna shoot that moron.”

A shaft of sunlight found its way among the trees and flooded through the window. The cushion on the window seat suddenly glowed a rich chartreuse, the pale drapes took on a slight cast of silver blue, and the kilim rug beneath their feet bloomed with extravagant hues of lime, rose, and ochre. The light rippled across the house in three distinct waves and as they watched, below and off to one side, it caught some tubs of geraniums which pulsed a thrilling blood red.

Sydney’s face lit up, too, like a child’s. “We’ll have brilliant gardens everywhere we live. One season to the next. And serious gardeners. ‘Out there, John, along the end of the vineyard, put in a line of lombardy poplars.’ She turned back to look into his eyes and moved one of her hands down along his side. “You can just putter and do some fine detail work. Just enough to break a light sweat. And smell of the earth.”

“How the hell does he get geraniums to look like that in this humidity?” Chaz asked rhetorically.

She slowly glided down along his body, her robe open, her breasts brushing his stomach, his thighs. She knelt, and began, with her mouth and hands, almost idly at first and then with slowly mounting purpose, to knead his tensed buttocks and the exceptionally handsome penis that she had always counted among his chief assets.

“I like this house,” he said, looking into the full length mirror across the room.

She paused and looked at him in the mirror, her hands still engaged. “I know—it is good.
Remember?
He’s
gay
. But we’ll have other houses, far superior.”

“Mysterious murders don’t usually do a lot for market value.”

“Men with close to a hundred million dollars don’t worry about losing a couple of hundred thousand on one little property.”

She didn’t talk for several minutes and Chaz continued to stand, slightly arching his back now and then, keeping his eyes on the mirror. He locked his arms behind his head.

***

Chaz glanced again at the clock behind Charlie. Four o’clock. Sydney would be back soon. When Charlie had refused her repeated offers of help in the kitchen, she had decided to drive in to Seaside for a couple of magazines she wanted.

He gave Charlie his most ingenuous smile, and answered carefully as if uncertain of the correct or preferred answer. “I think so.”

Charlie was finishing up his early prep work at the block table in the center of the large kitchen, and had suddenly asked, almost abruptly, if Chaz thought he had “found his niche” with his work.

Chaz turned from examining the wall that led into the long hall to the dining room. It was crowded with years of framed photographs, apparently of Charlie’s friends. “Of course, it’s hard to get any business to stand out from the pack. The Atlanta market’s huge.”

“No,” said Charlie, “I mean for you. Does it—
feel
right?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s fine.”

Charlie wiped his hands. “That’ll do for now. How about some iced tea? Lemonade, beer?”

“Tea sounds good,” said Chaz.

Charlie poured tall glasses from the pitcher in the refrigerator and the two of them went out into the shady glassed verandah that ran along the east side of the house, under a canopy of tall oaks and pines that bordered the lagoon.

The air conditioning formed condensation here and there along the slightly tinted floor-to-ceiling window. The light that filtered in through the trees was cool, green, unthreatening. It gently teased the color from the flowering plants and the palms and ficuses that seemed to anchor the room’s serenity. The two men sat in silence for some time.

“Of course, there’s a lot I’d like to do with the business. Ways of expanding. I’m a pretty small fish.”

“Well, there’s not a thing wrong with that. As long as you like it well enough and actually have some fun with it.”

“Right.” Chaz finished his tea, rattled the ice, and stood up. “Think I’ll have another. How ’bout you?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’m fine.” When Chaz returned a few moments later, he smiled and said, “I don’t mean to pry. I seem to be developing that unattractive old folks’ desperation to see everyone and everything
settled.
”

“No problem,” Chaz laughed. “Dad was the same way.”

“Do you know how proud he was of you?”

“I think so.”

“So am I. And I want you to be happy.”

“I am. Very.”

“Sydney, your health, good work, some money. You really have everything, Chaz.”

Chaz looked over at Charlie with a tight smile of something that might have been modesty. Then he shifted his gaze out through the trees, stirring now in a light breeze, toward the dunes and the sea beyond.

“We
may
be able to have drinks out on the upper porch if this breeze keeps up and the temperature drops just a few degrees,” said Charlie, putting his hand on Chaz’s shoulder. “I’ve told everybody seven-thirty. But will you and Sydney join me at seven? I want us to have a few minutes before they come.”

Chapter 31

Sydney had decided that a touch of glamour was in order for the party. After all, it was her wedding party and it would be expected. In fact, she wondered if she had been overdoing just a bit the image of the self-effacing good wife. This was the perfect opportunity to let the gentlewoman restaurateur and the wacky
grande dame
see, without inducing any competitive ire, that, on the appropriate occasion, the girl from Coweta County could clean up with the best of them. She wore her hair up in a classic French twist, and was virginally draped in a gauzy ivory sheath with a go-to-hell emerald green sari lightly brocaded in gold. A long single strand of pearls.

“My, my, look at you!” Charlie kissed her on the cheek when she reached the bottom of the stairs, Chaz close behind. He guided them to one of the sofas in the living room and asked whether they’d prefer champagne or a cocktail. When he returned with flutes of Veuve Cliquot for them and a gin-and-tonic for himself, he didn’t sit in the chair nearest them but stood near the mantle. He raised his glass, “To your love and happiness.”

“Thank you.”

“I want to tell you about one of your wedding gifts,” he said. Sydney thought his anticipation made him look ten years younger, a perspective that did much to reinforce her resolve. She smiled at him as she sipped her wine.

“I think you both know how happy Chaz’s father was that you two had found one another. We all wish he were here with us tonight and, in a very real sense, of course, he is.” He paused. “In some ways, you know, I almost feel as though I’m standing in for him.”

“He told me, Chaz, just before his death, about how he’d set up your inheritance trust. I want to add something to that. I’m going to put $300,000 in trust for the two of you. You’ll be able to access the principal in ten years. In the meantime, you can decide whether or not to draw down the interest; it’ll be just a bit shy of $4,000 per quarter. If you let it reinvest, then…” He grinned. “When we celebrate your tenth anniversary it’ll be up to about half a million.”

Sydney had reached out and taken Chaz’s hand. She now squeezed it. They both said, wonderingly and at once, “
Charlie
.”

“How
kind!
”
she exclaimed as, together, they stood.

“That’s very generous, Charlie. Thank you,” said Chaz.

In a tight circle, they hugged one another. With the detached perspective that always played in her mind like a split screen, Sydney could see the stage picture they made, murmuring the sort of happy endearments that families do when the tokens of love are given and received.

“Ya’ll go up and see whether the porch is bearable,” said Charlie. “I’ll be in the kitchen for a few minutes.”

As they climbed the stairs, Sydney giggled in a whisper to Chaz, “I wonder if we’re having small potatoes for dinner.”

***

“It just came to me,” mused Libby, standing with Hudson at the far end of the porch. They had been watching the luminescent aftermath of the sunset spill toward them, up the long curve of beach, and now looked back at the others. “The evening at your house, sitting at dinner with Chaz.”

Hudson knew the shrewdly meditative look in her eyes. “What?”

“I had the feeling that something about him was reminding me of someone I knew but I couldn’t quite
get it —
and now—I do. It’s
me
he reminds me of….”

“How?”

“Well, not now, but once. Years ago—long time—you don’t even know this—Brad and I went through a bad patch with our marriage and I, very stupidly, started drinking too much. We fixed ourselves up, but by the time we did I found I’d really fallen into a habit. I got some help.”

“You think Chaz is drinking too much. Or doing drugs again?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just remember that part of getting myself straightened out included a period at the start—well, I didn’t know it at the time but I could look back and see it later—when I was
trying
too hard. I mean, being more concerned with proving to everybody else that I had kicked it than I was with proving it to myself.

“That’s what I see.” She paused, looking at Hudson. “Maybe that’s just a natural part of any process like that.”

“Maybe.”

***

Hudson had rarely been in a house so evocative of its resident, and this evening he felt especially close to Charlie. He had come in before the others, carrying down an empty hors d’oeuvres tray, and now relished several minutes of walking alone from room to room as the long twilight finally seeped away and the lamps and picture lights came on, the rooms glowing in a whole new incarnation of form and color. A typically eclectic mix of music floated harmoniously in the air. Fats Waller, Andrea Marcovicci, Finzi, Glenn Miller, Gershwin, James Taylor.

Like Charlie, there wasn’t a single false note in the character of the entire house, and, like his personality, it was large and rich, even somewhat grand, without being pretentious. It was a house of comfortable, lived-in integrity. The burnished floors and panelling, the handsome art and rugs and fabrics, the impeccable but unobtrusive elegance in every decision, the loving sense of place that bound it all together and to its owner’s heart. It was a fine enough home to hold its own anywhere, but here—overlooking the lagoon to the east, the pines and oaks and sassafras and sweet gums to the north and west and, just beyond the high dunes, the long wide sweep of whitest sand beach angling west against the Gulf—Hudson realized, more than ever before, it was the living essence of Charlie Brompton and of old west Florida.

***

From time to time, throughout Charlie’s supper, Libby’s comment crept back through Hudson’s thoughts like a shadow, an interference. Charlie had put Sydney and Chaz at the heads of the table. The tone of the evening was celebratory, with toasts to the couple punctuating the succession of courses and the table talk that was, though not trivial, light and carefree.

Why should he, of all people, question the need of someone who had come through a dark night of the soul to “try too hard” simply to be
okay
around other people, to try perhaps even to ingratiate himself with them? With life? Reality? For more than two years, he had grown used to the frequent sensation that he was separated from any group, any conversation, in which he found himself. That unless he forced himself to concentrate very hard and to participate through a sort of automatic response technique he would completely lose even the fragile thread of connection he felt to the rest of the world.

But he realized that that particular invisible wall was not there tonight. He knew that he was as content as he probably had any right to be. He was among friends, Charlie looked very happy, Camilla sat directly across from him, and the food and wine and flowers were superb.

It was Libby’s observation, and the conversation a few nights before with Camilla, that, now and again, for moments at a time, pulled him outside the frame. The conversation among the six of them was mostly general, but occasionally it broke into smaller groupings or pairs. Of course, from long practice, he was fairly adroit at putting himself back in what, after all, was a very attractive and congenial picture. Once, however, he snapped back just as Camilla looked up at him.

She asked something about his work, but they were both immediately aware that it was something they had already discussed earlier in the evening. Her lovely, calmly watchful eyes said something else. He couldn’t tell if it was a sort of understanding about his lapse that she was passing or a scarcely perceptible signal of her own tenuous engagement with the celebration. Or both.

***

A little after ten, they moved into the living room, where the gifts were bestowed along with dessert and a round of champagne followed by coffee.

There was a heavy cut crystal vase from Camilla and a Chippendale silver coffee pot from Libby. Hudson had found a WPA-era survey map of Laurel Beach and environs. He’d had no idea whether their interest in antiques extended to cartography but he knew he’d have been happy with it.

And, in a plain white envelope, there was a check from Charlie. He brought it to them where they sat, side by side, on the sofa. Sydney opened it and looked at a loss for words. Chaz took it and then put his arm around her. They looked at it together. Sydney looked at Charlie, her eyes glistening. She bit her lip quickly and then said, in a hoarse, just audible whisper, “But—this afternoon….”

Charlie grinned. “That was this afternoon. This is now.” He paused, adding almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and there’s one other thing.”

He stood on the polished flagstone hearth, his back to the large fireplace. “I’m not planning on going anywhere soon. But when I do….”

Hudson watched as Charlie gestured gently beyond their circle to the beautiful, capacious, warm, much loved house that held them.

“I want you to have this home. You, and your children.”