Jenna and I once took one of these ships on a Caribbean cruise, stopping at Barbados, Saint Lucia, Antigua, and Saint Kitts, to celebrate our tenth anniversary. The ports-of-call were nice, but Jenna got seasick in some heavy weather during the return voyage. I thought the ship rather tacky, like a floating Vegas casino with shuffleboard and programmed activities: “The mah-jongg tournament starts on the Lido Deck in fifteen minutes! Mah-jongg in fifteen!” We decided our vacations would be landlocked from then on.
At the end of the causeway I go left onto Ocean Drive, enjoying the retro angular pastel architecture of the Art Deco District in South Beach, heading north into Miami Beach proper. There, it’s less young, funky, and Latino than the SoBe neighborhood; I feel more at home, and can speak the language, having forgotten all of my high school Spanish.
The Loews Miami Beach was the site of an NATP (National Association of Tax Professionals) convention that I attended six years ago. Wives were invited, but Jenna had to stay home to play in a tennis tournament at our club.
Section 179 of the Internal Revenue Code allows a 50 percent deduction for convention-related expenses, a happy fact that accounted for the selection of ocean-view, instead of city-view, rooms at the Loews, and steak instead of chicken on the banquet menu, none of which was attractive enough to entice Jenna to skip her tournament.
I swing into the hotel’s circular drive and park in front of the entrance. A young valet, wearing a white tunic with brass buttons, opens the car door and greets me with a cheery, “Welcome to the Loews, sir!” If the bellman thinks it odd that my only luggage is black leather motorcycle saddlebags, he doesn’t show it as he lifts them out of the trunk. Even though it’s still high season, the hotel has a room for me, I find, because of a cancellation.
OF COURSE, I hadn’t packed a bathing suit for this trip. Who knew I’d be lounging by a pool in Miami Beach, an unintentional tourist? So I buy one in one of the lobby shops, flowered Hawaiian-style boxer trunks. Not my style, but all they have in my size, at the rip-off, captive-audience price of fifty-five dollars. I change in my room, and feel self-conscious as I parade through the ornate lobby on the way to the pool, wearing the trunks, along with a tee shirt, and rubber flipflops, which I also bought at the shop.
Poolside, there are older men and women who shouldn’t wear swimsuits; snowmobile suits would be more flattering, covering up their protruding potbellies, skinny, hairy legs, floppy boobs, big cabooses, and varicose veins, all held together with the chalky white skin of new arrivals from the north. Here and there are younger women with knockout bodies displayed in tiny bikinis not much wider than dental floss that would cause a scandal back home at the Edina Country Club pool, at least among the women members.
The pool area includes a village of canvas cabanas, an outdoor restaurant and tiki bar, and row upon row of reclining beach chairs around a pool big enough to be a small lake. The Atlantic, with a wide sandy beach, is right there beyond a low metal security fence with a locking gate that opens with your room card—no riffraff beachcombers need apply.
A pretty young woman with short blonde hair, in white shorts and a white form-fitting Loews tee shirt, which highlights her bronze suntan, appears, toting two thick white terry-cloth towels.
“Hi, I’m Julie,” she chirps. “Would you like a lounge chair, or poolside cabana, or maybe a cabana out on the beach?”
“Just a chair by the pool would be fine,” I tell her.
Bending over in those tight little uniform shorts—how could you not give her a big tip?—Julie places one of the towels over a chair and rolls the other into a pillow.
“I can get you a drink or a lunch menu,” she says. “And maybe you’d like a massage appointment?”
I follow her gaze over to a series of canvas tents across a lawn set up for croquet; the tents contain massage tables, two of them in use. No thanks, I tell her. I order an iced tea and lie back on the chair with my arms behind my head, taking in the scene. I’m feeling more like a tourist than an avenging angel.
After a swim and a poolside sandwich, I go back to my room, change, and retrieve my car, then cruise up and down Collins Avenue, seeing the sights: the resort hotels, condo buildings, marinas with fleets of motor yachts and sailboats, and the Bal Harbour Shops where Jenna liked to shop when we stayed at the Loews for three days after that cruise. Nothing here I want to see, really. Just killing time, avoidance behavior, now that I’m within striking distance of Key West, which I’ve come to think of as Hadleyville, the town where Gary Cooper faced down the bad guys in High Noon, one of my all-time favorite movies.
“COME HERE often?”
A woman seated one stool away is talking to me. She looks good for a woman her age, which is, what? In this time of plastic surgery, Botox, dental bleaching and bonding, power Pilates and Hatha yoga, personal trainers, vegan/good carb/ low fat/juice diets, spray tans and lip augmentation, who can tell anymore? She has short brown hair and is wearing sunglasses, a tight white V-neck tee shirt with gold-glitter lettering saying “Cannes Film Festival 2008,” gold lamé capri pants on her long legs, and red slingback pumps.
“No, I don’t,” I answer.
She smiles and slides over onto the stool beside me and we chat. Her name is Samantha, no last name given (yellow warning light: Hannah didn’t give her last name either). She is originally from Seattle, graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology, worked at “this job and that,” and now “travels.”
I tell her my background, up to a point. She asks why I’m in Miami Beach, and I say I’m here on business.
“Me too,” she says with a smile and a wink, and then shocks me by telling me that she advertises her “escort services” on adult websites, and is having a glass of pinot noir before keeping an appointment for a “sensual massage” for a fee of “two hundred roses an hour” with “a client” staying here at the hotel.
I’m tempted to ask her why an educated, beautiful woman is in her line of work, debating whether this would be, what? Sexist? Offensive? Who am I to judge anyone?
There’s a chiming sound in her purse. She takes out a cell phone, scans a text message, checks her watch, slides off the stool, gives me an air kiss and says, “Ciao, Jack. You’re nice.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Samantha doesn’t know it, but to me, “nice” at this point is not a compliment, it is a statement of my failure to evolve into someone like Hank Whitby, my take-no-prisoners neighbor. This good old nice Jack might as well just head back home.
She takes a business card from her purse and puts it on the bar. It’s made of creamy, thick stock, and has embossed black lettering, a fancy law-firm quality card. On it is just a phone number with a Miami area code. Classy, like Samantha herself.
“Now don’t write this number on a men’s room wall, Jack,” she says. “If you stay here awhile and want some company, call me.”
She departs. I pay my tab and decide to find a restaurant for dinner, leaving her card on the bar for a better prospect than me. I amuse myself by imagining that Samantha is an undercover vice cop, out to entrap johns and put their names in the newspaper. Actually, that happened to one of my law firm’s clients once, generating a few extra billable hours.
THE MOON is a gray silver above a calm dark sea as I stroll the beach after a dinner at Yucatan, a very good Cuban restaurant in South Beach, which the hotel concierge recommended. I enjoyed the meal, but it’s no fun dining alone at such a nice place. Jenna would have liked it.
I pause, looking up at the starry nighttime sky. I was a junior astronomer as a young boy, getting an expensive Galileo telescope for my ninth birthday. I memorized all the phases of the moon, waning and waxing, full, gibbous, and crescent, and the constellations visible in the northern hemisphere, Leo, Virgo, Gemini, Orion …
That’s a crescent moon up there. But those constellations? Not a clue, nothing that looks like a lion or a hunter or a maiden, or any other recognizable connect-the-dots sha
pe. Someone, I can’t recall who, told me your brain is like a computer hard drive. You have room for a finite amount of data storage, and when your memory bank is full, and you learn something new, some old fact gets deleted. The tax code must have wiped out my memory of astronomy.
I’m startled by a voice behind me.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? The nighttime sky over the water.”
I turn to see a woman standing there, my second chance meeting with a female today. She points heavenward. “There’s Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor, and Hydra.” She smiles. “I’m forgetting my manners.” She offers her hand, which I take. “Vickie Blatchford. Sorry for sneaking up on you like that.”
She speaks with the British upper-class accent called “Oxbridge.” Illuminated by the moonlight, she looks about my age. She is barefoot, and has shoulder-length auburn hair, green eyes, and a slender body under a blue-and-white striped boating shirt, and white shorts.
“Hi. Jack Tanner. Are you staying at the Loews?” We’re just outside the hotel’s beach gate.
“No, I’m staying on a boat, actually.”
I look out over the water. A very large motor yacht, lights ablaze, is anchored maybe a quarter-mile offshore.
“Oh, not that one,” Vickie laughs. “Mine is just a little sailboat, moored at a yacht club near Fisher Island. I caught a bite to eat at a nice Cuban bistro near here and decided to have a walk as a digestif.”
“It wasn’t Yucatan, was it?”
“Why yes, that’s the place.”
“I ate there tonight, too.”
Vickie invites me to see her boat. On an impulse, I accept her invitation. Going with the flow. We ride over to the Admiral Yacht Club on her rented Honda motor scooter, Vickie at the helm, me again a passenger on a two-wheeler.
WE’RE SEATED on a padded bench in the cockpit of her boat, sipping gin and tonic. Her “little sailboat” is a thirty-seven-foot Endeavour sloop, black-hulled with a red stripe, named Sea Sprite, which she intends to sail to the Turks and Caicos Islands, with whatever island ports of call seem appealing along the way, she told me when we arrived and boarded.
“My husband Nigel and I planned this voyage for three years,” she says. “He’s in politics. Always difficult for him to get away for an extended period. We decided to finally just do it.”
Does she know she just quoted a Nike advertising slogan? Nigel Blatchford. The name sounds familiar. Sir Nigel, the business tycoon turned cabinet minister?
Vickie sips her G&T and pushes her hair back behind her ears, a charming, unconscious gesture, intensely feminine.
“Was in politics, I should say. Nigel died five months ago, of a stroke. I can’t get used to the past tense.”
“I don’t think you ever do get used to it.”
“We chartered this boat and paid in advance,” she continues. “Under the circumstances, getting the money back would have been no problem. But, against the advice of friends and family, I decided to make the trip by myself. I suppose I thought it might make me feel close to him. I’ve sailed all my life, never as a captain, but I think I’ve picked up enough to handle the boat alone.”
The wind has picked up, and a British flag, which Vickie brought with her, is snapping on its stern staff.
“Let’s go below,” she says. “We wouldn’t want our drinks to blow away.”
The main cabin is all brass and mahogany, with a teak parquet deck. Vickie queues up Bach on the stereo system and refreshes our drinks in the galley. I recognize that the selection is the Glenn Gould recording of Bach’s The Goldberg Variations because Jenna, who loves classical music, gave me that CD one year for my birthday. She did that sometimes, giving me things that she wanted. One year I told her I was giving her a golf trip for two to Scotland, even though she doesn’t play golf, but I didn’t follow through, which is also one problem with my golf swing. I don’t show off for Vickie by naming the tune. If she asked me any other question about classical music, I’d have to abandon ship.
After several more drinks, the wind still howling outside, with the music and dim lights from copper lanterns, and the warmth of the gin in my bloodstream, I feel content.
Vickie slides closer on the bench seat, and touches my arm.
“Do you mind if I ask why you’re here, in Miami Beach, unaccompanied? I don’t mean to pry.”
She grins, wrinkling her nose.
“But I will ask anyway.”
And for the third time since leaving home, I blurt out my story. When I’m finished, Vickie says, “I’d very much like you to spend the night, Jack, if you want. I think we both could use some company before we go our separate ways. It’s possible neither one of us will survive our journeys.”
This said matter-of-factly, as if the stars will determine our fates and we are mere spectators. Which I now believe, too.
We spend the night together in the stateroom’s comfortable round bed, cozy under a goose down quilt with the air conditioner on, me in my boxers, Vickie in a tee shirt and panties, hugging for a moment, then her chaste kiss on my cheek, and finding our own positions in the bed like an old married couple, back to back, pretending, maybe, that the other person is our absent spouse.
IN THE morning, Vickie makes coffee in a cold press, strong and good, apparently assuming, correctly, that that’s what an American wants, and tea for herself, with some croissants and orange marmalade she has in a well-provisioned galley. Then we ride to the Loews on her scooter, and wave good-bye as she putts off down Collins Avenue.
I shower and check out of the hotel at ten A.M., get a map of the Keys from the concierge, and embark upon the last leg of my long journey. By now I’ve given up on the idea of formulating some sort of plan before I arrive, or of being someone else when I do. I recall the Woody Allen dictum that “showing up is 80 percent of life.” I’ll just have to show up and improvise the remaining 20 percent.
16
I’ve driven along some scenic roadways before, including the Great River Road in Minnesota running along the bank of the Mississippi, US Route 20 through Yellowstone in Wyoming, the Pacific Coast Highway in Northern California, and, with college friends during one spring break, a wild ride in a Ford panel van with a psychedelic paint job on Mexico’s Federal Highway 1 from Tijuana all the way to Cabo San Lucas. But none is prettier than US Route 1 connecting the Florida mainland with Key West, island hopping on one hundred miles of bridges and causeways, with the calm blue Gulf of Mexico to the west and frothy white-capped Atlantic Ocean to the east.
After a day in Miami Beach, it’s time to begin the endgame of my quixotic expedition. I left Edina on a Harley Road King, hitched a ride on Harold’s Honda, bought a BMW touring bike, and now will roll into Key West in a rented Ford Taurus. Not exactly a triumphant arrival, but the best I can do under the circumstances.
I wonder if Vickie Blatchford has set sail, hoping to reconnect with the ghost of Sir Nigel somewhere out there in the deep blue Caribbean Sea. Is it possible she has planned a suicide voyage? Might she scuttle the boat and sink down beneath the waves, thinking that their spirits might reconnect for eternity? I hope not. She is such a beautiful, intelligent and charming woman. But I know how grief can change a person.
After two hours, I enter the Village of Islamorada, located at Mile Marker 82, which is how locations are designated along the Overseas Highway, as this stretch of US Route 1 is called. The Loews concierge told me about the mile markers, which measure the one hundred fifty-six mile distance between Miami and Key West.
Islamorada is a world-famous fishing village, I know, because a group of my Edina golfing buddies once organized a fishing trip here. It was during a week in April, income tax season for my clients, so I couldn’t join them. They came back with sunburns and photos showing tarpon, sailfish and tuna they’d caught and released. I regretted missing the trip. I’ve done a lot of lake fishing in Minnesota, catching walleye, northern pike, bass, and a few of the elusive muskies. But I’ve never gone after the really big b
oys you needed a fighting chair to boat. That would have been an interesting experience.
I stop for gas at a 7-Eleven, go inside, and ask the young girl behind the counter about a place to get a sandwich. She’s tanned, thin, and pretty, with short blonde hair and azure eyes, and is wearing a white halter top, black jogging shorts and flip-flops. She has a little blue-green dolphin tattooed just above her left hip.
“Good sandwich?” she says, crinkling her nose. “Well, mister, we’ve got hot dogs that’ve been turning on those rollers for a couple of days, and some sandwiches in that cooler, tuna, chicken salad, egg salad, hoagies … One of my jobs is to keep changing the sell-by dates on the sandwiches.”
She smiles.
“So I’d say, definitely not here. But just down the road, at Mile Marker 79.9, there’s a marina, the Blue Marlin, that’s got okay fried clam rolls and stuff.”
“Thanks for that,” I say, and stuff two dollars into the tip jar on the counter.
I PARK the Taurus in a sandy lot behind a rambling, two-story, white wooden building with peeling paint, slatted green hurricane shutters, and a rusted tin roof. The Blue Marlin Marina has obviously been around a long time and survived many a tropical storm.
I walk around to the front, where charter fishing boats are lined up along three long L-shaped docks jutting out into the waters of Florida Bay, waiting for their afternoon runs. There had been good fishing that morning, as evidenced by crewmen cleaning fish at stations along the docks, with pelicans and seagulls swooping down as the fish cleaners toss innards into the water.
A bald, portly, sunburned, middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt, canvas shorts, and boat shoes is having his picture taken standing beside a tall hoist which holds a very large fish suspended head down by its tail. A blue marlin, I think. Such a noble and beautiful animal. It should have been freed to return to the Gulf Stream, not strung up like this and then stuffed and mounted, to hang on some rec room wall in Iowa or Indiana or wherever. I have the urge to go over to the hoist, lower the fish to the dock, and give the man a lecture on the sanctity of life, including the life of this fish. I think again of horses killed on Civil War battlefields.
Ride Away Home Page 11
