Ahoy!
Page 11
The tan on her face was punctuated by a palette of dark makeup that made her look older than the close to forty years at which I pegged her. Her bejeweled fingers were adorned with colorful nails, probably fake. They were not all the same color, and the ones I could see were bedazzled with rhinestones.
The outfit. Now, the outfit was another thing altogether. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a woman in a white spandex mini-dress at our marina, until this gal came along. Based on the snug fit, I’d bet good money that a carb hadn’t passed her lips in the past five years. Maybe ten. Her handbag bore a logo that meant nothing to me, but she looked like the type who probably had the pricey wallet to match. It was all mesmerizing and I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say.
“I’m Bunny. Billy sent me in for some coffee. He said he’d like his with cream and sugar, and let’s see…” Her voice trailed off as she looked around the store.
In her survey of the room, she caught me gawking at her and I turned my eyes back to the paper I was pretending to read. A few seconds later, I casually looked back to see she had resumed her bobble, and I continued my study of her.
She waggled her head as though she were following a fly in the room. It finally occurred to me that she must be searching for, and in vain, the menu board she’d never find. She’d find no chalkboard with polysyllabic beverages written in a fancy font in Aggie’s place. You took your coffee black and picked up sugar and/or cream on your way out, and if you were lucky the old fishermen hadn’t already snapped up all the Sweet’N Low.
“I’ll have a non-fat macchiato with organic cinnamon, if you have it,” the woman finally decided. I was captivated by the mixture of cluelessness and confidence.
“We don’t have it.” Aggie was curt and glanced over at me watching the show I wished I’d brought popcorn to. I raised my eyebrows and clenched the straw in my teeth when I gave her a toothy grin full of sympathy and stifled amusement.
“You don’t have it?” Bunny asked, and her voice went up impossibly high at the last syllable to a note close to the one that only dogs can hear. Pepper’s ears twitched, but like me, he was frozen with intrigue.
“We don’t have any of that. No cinnamon, no no-fat, no macchiato.”
“Well, what do you have?” Bunny looked around again.
“We have coffee,” Aggie replied.
“Oh, then I’ll have a chamomile tea,” the stranger huffed through a sigh.
When Aggie looked over at me again, my eyes were rolling so hard I was putting myself at risk for an aneurysm.
“Miss—" Aggie began.
“Bunny,” came the phony, lilting voice of the woman in front of her.
“Bunny…” Aggie paused, I’m assuming to digest the ridiculous name. However, when your own name is Augusta Wind Bellows, you really ought not to point fingers. “What part of coffee don’t you understand?”
I choked on my sip of iced tea and drew the attention of both women, and I could feel my cheeks go red.
“Alright then.” Bunny shook her head in agitation. “Just one coffee for Billy.”
“Would you like a biscotti with that?” Aggie asked in a tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Sure.” The other woman was enthusiastic, and her voice lit up like it was Christmas.
Ags snapped her fingers. “Dang! We’re fresh out.”
I would have looked to see Bunny’s expression, but I was cringing on her behalf already.
“That’ll be a buck fifty,” Ags told her.
“Oh, can you just put it on Billy’s account?”
“Why not, Billy’s a good egg,” Ags tossed back half-heartedly. She poured a coffee in a to-go cup, fixed it with cream and sugar, and with that Bunny hippity-hopped her way out of the store. That is, she left. As soon as she did, Aggie shook her head. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Who comes to a marina looking like that?” I asked, wondering about the woman and, moreover, her association with ‘Billy’?
“People who have no business being here,” Aggie said and poured out the last of the stale coffee she’d just served for Bunny.
“Who is she?”
“Some woman to see Bugsy. I think it’s the girlfriend from whence he came.”
I flitted my eyes, wondering what even Bugsy could see in someone whose IQ seemed to match her dress size. Then again, she may have been the next Mother Teresa. But I doubted it. As Pepper and I tidied the newspaper and prepared to make our leave, something on Aggie’s counter caught my eye.
“Hey, where’d you get that?” I asked, pointing to the pie plate on the counter. It was identical to the one in which Nat served me Tuesday pies.
“Oh, Jack Junior. He dropped it off for the tourtiere I’m making for the potluck. He was here yesterday when my other plate bit the dust on the floor,” she said. “It’s cute, isn’t it?”
Fact is, it was a cute dish, and I wished I had one. Nat had one just like it, and I was suddenly, irrationally jealous that Ags had one and I didn’t.
✽✽✽
Later that night, relaxing on the stern of my boat, I was getting lost in pie plates and Pinterest boards when I spotted Bugsy and the mini-skirted, stilettoed alien walking up the dock near my boat.
“Evening,” Bugsy said, nodding at me congenially.
“Oh, hi,” I replied, and tossed him a pained expression, more than anything my condolences for the loss of his ability to make rational decisions and choose suitable companions. He and Bunny stood so closely together that it looked like they’d need the jaws of life to pry them apart.
“Alex Michaels, this is Bunny Hopper,” he said and gestured with his hand to introduce us.
Normally, I’d have waved in greeting. However, this time, to my great misfortune and personal shame, I must inform you that I proceeded to spew onto the deck the sip of water I’d just taken.
Bunny Hopper? For real? I tried to recover with some sense of class, but that ship had sailed. My lack of manners and restraint had become terminal, and I was growing more cognizant of it by the day and wondered if perhaps I had early onset of some social awkwardness disease.
“What!” I blurted out. “You can’t be serious. Are you a stripper or something?“
“Uh, Michaels, you said that out loud,” Bugsy pointed out, and the woman quite rightly sneered at me.
“Yeah, I know. I couldn’t help myself.” It was the truth.
“Bunny is from the Hopper family out of Nevada,” Bugsy added, as if that mitigated the ridiculousness of her name, and I burst out laughing again at the very notion that I should give a hang as to the location of Bunny’s hutch.
“Would you pinch me, please?” I asked and offered up my arm in their direction.
“What?” Bugsy screwed up his face to ask.
“I think I’m dreaming,” I said. “There is no way your name is Bunny Hopper. Let me see your license.”
“Show her, show her your license,” Beedle encouraged the woman standing, or rather leaning, beside him. He’d become a crutch for her. Her dogs weren’t just barking, they were howling.
“I don’t carry it with me.” Bunny was curt and seemed annoyed, though I couldn’t think why.
“Hey, Bugsy, do you have the key to Nat’s boat for me?” I asked, changing the subject to something that genuinely interested me.
“Yes, I do,” he said, and in the direction of Bunny, “Excuse me.” He unclenched his hand from hers and reached into his right pants pocket, returning from it a shiny, new brass key with a red plastic fob. “Here you go,” he said as he handed it down to me from the dock. “Have a nice evening, Alex,” he offered as his companion tugged on his arm.
“Wait. Don’t go. I’m sorry, I will behave. Please. Join me. Would you care for a drink?” It’s not that I was sorry so much as I was interested in what Bugsy found so damn appealing about the nymphet. Call it research, call it an anthropological study, call it what you will, but the intrigue was there.
Bugsy looked at his c
ompanion and, in a silent conversation amounting to an exchange of facial expressions, they agreed to join me, or at the very least she conceded. She probably just wanted to get off those stilts she was wearing. Next I felt myself arch an eyebrow as I watched him play the role of the spotter in a gymnastics move that got the tight-dress-wearing, carbphobic one from the dock to the deck of my boat. With each ping of her stilettos, the deck of the Alex M. became Bunny's personal pin cushion, and I hoped I wouldn’t be sued should she wipe out.
“What’ll it be?” I asked the happy couple.
“Do you have champagne?” Bunny asked and pulled up a chair after dusting the cushion preciously. Bugsy shot me a regretful expression, and I was instantly reminded of the woman’s high falootin’ taste in beverages. After the little episode at Aggie’s, I should have known better than to invite the princess of pretension for a bevy.
“No, I do not have champagne, but I have Canada Dry. It’s the champagne of ginger ales, after all,” I said, quoting their tag line. The words tripped lyrically off my tongue.
“Ha,” Bugsy blurted out as if in a spasm.
“Is it diet?” Bunny asked with all seriousness.
“Nope.”
“I’ll have a glass of water then,” came the request from Bunny I was sure I could accommodate. Heck, I’d even give her a clean glass just to make up for my earlier stripper comment.
“Master Beedle esquire, what’s your pleasure?” I asked, smiling at the man whose position as the least likeable person at the marina had suddenly been usurped.
“I’ll take a rye and ginger ale, please.”
I knew I could accommodate that order. Rye and Ginger was Sefton’s standing drink order at our travelling poker games I hosted every fifth week. After a quick nod, I put down my tablet and slipped into the salon of my boat where I hastily gathered onto a tray the drinks, a couple of plates of what I could scrounge out of the mini-fridge –– strawberries and grapes on one plate and some crackers and soft cheese on the other. I added an mp3 player and a portable speaker for the lull in conversation I was expecting.
As I set the tray on the table on the stern of the boat, Bugsy once again showed off his keen powers of observation. “Your plates don’t match.”
“Match what?” I asked, itching for a fight. Why not.
“He means they don’t match each other,” Bunny clarified humourlessly.
“Well, for someone who broke all his plates, I really don’t think he ought to point fingers. You know what I mean?” I gave Bugsy a wry smile that told him I didn’t care for his gal pal pointing out the obvious to me.
I knew my plates didn’t match. That was the whole point. When Nat and I would head out of town on an adventure, we usually ended up at a flea market, thrift store, or antique shop where I’d snag some lovely little vintage printed cocktail plate, typically from England or Austria. Anybody could buy a matched set of plates; it took time and talent to acquire the cute little collection I was working on. I tucked away my smarmy tone. One drink with the happy couple wouldn’t kill me, and I’d consider it my good deed for the day.
After two drinks, Bugsy asked to use the head. “In and to the left. As if you didn’t know,” I grumbled, looking over my shoulder at him and catching his eye, recalling how he’d availed himself of the interior of my boat to snatch the key I’d taken from him. The nerve of some people.
“So how do you know Billy?” Bunny asked after her man disappeared inside the boat.
“Oh, is that what we’re calling him these days?” I smiled toward her and, receiving a vacant look, I sighed and continued. “Well, his father owns the marina. I know him because he harasses me about dockage issues every so often and I reserve the right to complain to him about the dock boards or lighting or usual landlord/tenant-type entanglements,” I said.
I looked back toward the interior of the boat and wondered where the hell Bugsy was and what was taking so long. Then I looked at Bunny and wondered what marketable skills, aside from the obvious, the woman had crammed into that dress. “So… Bunny… are you in town for business or pleasure?”
She looked at me as though she thought my question intrusive and paused to formulate her reply. “A little of both,” she said vaguely, and I wondered if she did it intentionally like those people who like everyone to believe they’re enigmatic but are in truth anything but.
“I see,” I replied, lying.
“And what is it you do for business?” I inquired, trusting I could eliminate librarian and brain surgeon from the list of possible careers.
“I’m a… consultant,” she said, finally arriving at the word she wanted. A vague one at that.
“Oh.” I nodded, demonstrating my understanding, though she’d left me guessing more than anything about just why she felt the need to economize with words as though she were paying for them.
“Billy told me about your friend Mr. Grant.”
I nodded. Good ole dependable Billy and his big fat mouth. “Yes, it’s perplexing, to say the least.”
“Well, don’t the police think that he’s dead? That’s what Billy said.”
The words caught me by surprise and cut me like a knife. It was the first time I’d heard them strung together like that. Even if they might be true, to have them come from the collagen-stuffed lips of the stranger across the table from me dishonored the memory of my friend. I stowed my ire away and simply nodded again in stiff upper lip fashion.
“Well, how are you two females doing out here? Need any jars opened?” Bugsy chuckled as he rejoined us after what seemed like an interminable absence. I made a mental note to check for any missing belongings after they’d left.
“Oh, Billy, you’re so funny,” Bunny gushed, and I tried like hell to hang onto my dinner.
As the night wore down, and so did my will to be polite, I did my level best to give my drop-ins hints that I was ready to retire with a good book or whatever old movie came up first in my video library.
Their visit hadn’t been a total waste, mind you; over the course of the preceding two hours, I learned, thanks to “Billy”, that the two were high school sweethearts who rekindled things in a “love the second time around” scenario, that Bunny’s ringtone on her phone was one of those tragic teen anthems Bugsy seemed to like so much, and that — of all things – the woman was allergic to red and blue food coloring. It made her seem so unamerican.
I yawned and stretched in a choreographed demonstration. “Well, you two crazy kids, I’m afraid I have to call it a night. I have an early morning,” I said, lying through my teeth. I could have slept until noon the next day and it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone but Pepper and his bladder.
“Oh. Ok,” Bugsy said, getting to his feet without delay.
“Good night, Alex,” Bunny said, extending a bony, cold, orange hand in my direction. It reminded me of a chicken foot I’d seen in a butcher’s window in Chinatown once.
“Night, thanks for the drinks,” Bugsy said, catching my eyes with his.
“No problem. Thank you again for the ride today,” I said, making small talk as I walked the two to the railing of the boat where they once again performed acrobatic feats to get the spandex mini-dress-wearing fool off my boat.
“Ride— What ride? Where?” I heard Bunny quizzing her fella as they walked away, Bugsy in his practical work outfit and Bunny in hers. As she strutted down the dock, I watched just long enough to see her get her heel stuck in the crack between a couple of boards. I tossed them a regal wave when they looked back in my direction.
I didn’t like her, and I know I hadn’t hidden it well. That night, as I tried to sleep, two new things made me restless. I still hadn’t figured out what Bugsy saw in the woman and, what’s more, I was thinking about why it bothered me so much.
CHAPTER 8
Bugsy was getting laid on a regular basis. That much was certain. He practically floated from task to task around the marina since Bunny’d hopped into town two days earlier. The perma-smile on h
is face was unnerving, and I wondered time and time again what he saw in that artificially-colored, impractically-attired science experiment who packed herself into clothes tighter than white on rice.
Aggie and I were painting the last exterior wall of the store and, as though she’d been a party to the diatribe on the subject taking place in my cranium, and apropos of nothing we had been discussing, I blurted out, “What’s he see in her, Ags?”
“Who?” she asked, cocking her head in my direction.
“Him, that’s who… Bunny, I mean.” I pointed my paintbrush in the direction of Bugsy who was in the distance floating on one of his clouds of carnal bliss and sizing up a stretch of dock in woeful need of repair.
“Hmph. She left first thing this morning,” Aggie said as she got up from her crouch and cracked her back.
“She did? I wonder why.”
“Who knows. Anyway, when I saw him this morning, he looked tired,” Ags added wryly.
“Tired? How tired?” I asked, going over the list of possible reasons why he’d look tired, and I didn’t care for any of them. Most of the reasons involved Bunny.
“Why do you care anyway?” she asked and slapped some more paint on the siding.
“I don’t care, I’m just trying to understand human behavior,” I said, and I stopped, gulped down some water, and dragged my forearm across my mouth. I cared. Of course, I cared. Bugsy was better than that, at least in my mind. While I’ll admit he got on my nerves on a regular basis and we’d established somewhat of a history of banter and one-upping, since Bunny bounced into the marina, Bugsy had become annoyingly sublime.
“Mm-hmm. Sure.”
“What do you mean, sure? That man is infuriating, irrational, impertinent—"
“If you say so.” Aggie smiled. “But… he’s not completely unfortunate,” she said, wagging the paintbrush at me to emphasize her words. “Speaking of not completely unfortunate,” she purred as we both turned to see a police cruiser pulling up in front of the store.