The nameplate pinned on her tee shirt says Bonnie—but it’s Hannah, the motorcycle thief.
Unfucking believable. Am I still dreaming?
She looks at me, and says, “Hey look, man, I’m sorry about what I did. Really sorry.” She smiles. “But maybe I can make it up to you.”
It is Hannah.
Now what should I do? These days, I never seem to know.
“Look, Jack, why don’t we go to my apartment. It’s nearby. I’ll make you a sandwich, and we can talk.”
“Where’s my motorcycle?”
“Uh … I’ve got it. Come to my place and I’ll give you the keys.”
“Did you get it serviced?”
She looks confused, of course. Dumb question.
“Never mind. Okay, let’s go.”
Maybe I’m interested in hearing how a young girl went wrong. I couldn’t save Hope, maybe I can somehow save Hannah, or whatever her name is. Or maybe I’m in such a bad state now that I’ll do whatever anyone suggests.
HANNAH LIVES in a small, second-floor apartment above a tattoo parlor on Angela Street, around the corner and down two blocks from Crabby Dick’s. When we’re inside, she offers me a beer and then goes into the bedroom to change. I’m drinking it while looking out a window, which has a partial view of the water, when I hear her come out of the bedroom. I turn to find her smiling at me. She’s nude.
So this is how she means to make it up to me. I know that many men, probably most men, would take her up on her offer, and call it even.
In fact, I’m taking a while telling her I’m not interested when she walks over, puts her arms around my neck and gives me an open-mouthed kiss on the lips. I’m speechless—not only because Hannah’s tongue is in my mouth.
She ends the kiss and whispers into my ear. “Fuck me daddy … Fuck your little girl …”
Shocked, I push her away.
“What did you say?”
“Hey, take it easy. Older men always like that—the fuck-your-daughter thing. I could be your daughter’s age, if you have one.”
I grab her by the arm and shout, “Don’t you say that to me!”
Still smiling, she says, “You like it rough, huh? Cuz we can do that …”
Right at that moment, the apartment door rattles open and a man enters. The man looks to be in his thirties, short and thin, with the small, dark eyes of a rat, and acne scars on his face. He’s wearing a wife-beater tee shirt that reveals scrawny arms, dirty jeans, and cowboy boots. He holds a silver revolver in his right hand.
“Hey, dude,” the man says, his grin revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “You tryin’ to fuck my girl?”
“No, no,” I tell him. “I was just …”
The man holds up his left hand, palm outward, to silence me.
“So you just came to deliver a pizza and found her buck naked like this?”
Hannah goes into the bedroom and closes the door as he says, “Whatever you’re doin’ here, dude, it’s gonna cost you.”
Hannah comes out of the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a halter top. “Hey, Jimmy, I kind of like this guy,” she says. “Maybe we can work something out.”
“What we’re gonna work out, sweetie, is what we always work out,” Jimmy answers. “We take cell phone photos of you two in bed together, you suckin’ his cock, him fuckin’ your ass, whatever works. Then, if he’s been a good boy, he gets to leave, without his cash and credit cards.”
Finally, I’ve had it. I will not allow this girl to scam me a second time.
“Not going to happen,” I say, and walk out the door, without the keys to my Road King. Fortunately, Jimmy does not shoot me in the back.
IT REALLY is time to get the hell out of Key West before I kill someone, or someone kills me, or I go crazier than I apparently am. I gave it my best effort. Maybe that’ll be enough to hang onto as I face the future. I’ll get something to eat and then leave for home, even though I have no idea what I’ll do when I get there, just as I had no idea what I’d do when I got to Key West. Wing it again, I suppose. As for Hannah, I wish her well, I really do. I think she must have had a rough childhood and is doing the best with what she has. If taking advantage of middle-aged guys like me is the only way for her to survive, then so be it.
I walk back over to Duval and notice a bar called Sloppy Joe’s. No shortage of bars on this street. It’s a two-story white stucco building with red brick pillars and the name of the establishment painted in big lettering on the top story, front and side. As good a place as any for lunch.
Inside, the flags of many countries hang from the ceiling. The place is crowded with people having a drink and lunch at the bar and at tables. The walls are covered with memorabilia from the bar’s long history, most prominently a display of photos of the bar’s most prominent former patron, Ernest Hemingway, whose presence looms large all over Key West. Hanging near the Hemingway gallery is a mounted blue marlin, similar to the one suspended from the hoist at the marina named for the majestic fish on Islamorada.
I locate a seat at the bar, scan a menu the bartender gives me, and order the two house specialties, a sloppy joe sandwich and, why not, a Papa Doble—“Papa’s favorite!” the menu says, consisting of “Bacardí light rum, grapefruit juice, grenadine, splash of sweet & sour, club soda and fresh-squeezed lime, $6.75.”
As I’m sipping my drink and waiting for my sandwich, a man seated at the bar beside me, and a woman next to him, finish their lunches and leave. When they do, a man takes the next stool over. He’s wearing a tan, short-sleeved safari shirt and canvas shorts, with a length of rope for a belt, and white canvas deck shoes. Three long cigars are in one of his shirt pockets. He bears a striking resemblance to the photos of Ernest Hemingway on the walls.
“Like the Papa Doble?” the man asks, looking over at me.
THE BARTENDER, a portly man with red hair and beard, arrives to see if we need anything. I’m feeling relaxed and ask for another Papa Doble. My companion asks for another Daiquirí. As we sip our drinks, I introduce myself. The man, oddly, does not reciprocate, as if I’m supposed to know who he is.
19
His name is Edward Hollingsworth. We are aboard his boat, cruising the Gulf Stream off Key West at seven A.M. The boat is a white-hulled, twenty-eight-foot Hatteras named the Pilar. It is a lovely vessel, not at all like its namesake, Hemingway’s thirty-eight-foot wooden cabin cruiser with a black hull, which sailed in these same waters in the 1930s when its owner was a Key West resident, Edward explained.
We’ve been hanging out together since we met at Sloppy Joe’s. When I told Edward I was leaving on the day we met, he asked me to stay on in Key West a few more days. “Trust me, Jack, I think you’ll find it interesting,” he said. I told him I would, maybe because he seemed like an interesting person, maybe because I really had nothing to do back home. Maybe both.
That first night, we had dinner and lots of rum drinks at an oceanfront place Edward knows called Louie’s Backyard. Midway through the meal, Edward said, “So, Jack, what brings you to Key West?”
“It’s a very long story,” I answered.
“Tell me anyway,” he said. “I collect stories.”
So I once again broke my vow of silence and told him the recent, sad history of the Tanner family.
We were seated outside on the patio, the wind off the Atlantic rustling the fronds on the palm trees, eating shrimp and grits Caribbean-style, which he recommended. He listened to me without saying anything until I finished, concluding the story with my confrontation with Slater Babcock at the Drunken Dolphin. Then he sat back in his chair, took a cigar and a lighter from his shirt pocket, and fired up the cigar, and slowly shook his head, a look of profound sadness in his eyes.
“I’ve known pain and loss, too, Jack,” he said. “But that’s no consolation. All you can do is keep breathing, and try to keep the black dog at bay.”
I didn’t know it then but later, via Google on a computer in the Casa Marina’s business center, I learn
ed that Hemingway called his depression “the black dog.” He never overcame it. I don’t know if I will or not.
Edward has been stingy with the details of his own life. He is a “retired businessman” who has lived all over the world; he enjoys hunting and fishing; he has had four wives and has three sons; he has a house in Idaho; he has been living aboard Pilar for the past few years, cruising “wherever my fancy and the Gulf Stream take me.” Three cats live aboard Pilar, too; they are all named for French novelists—Zola, Rabelais, and Balzac—and came aboard of their own volition, one at a time, at various ports of call. I wonder if they have six toes, like Hemingway’s cats did. I don’t ask about this, but maybe will try to take a look sometime when I’m on the Pilar. Here, kitty, kitty …
I’m just familiar enough with Hemingway lore from reading a book about Key West before I began my trip to know that all of the details of Edward’s life, as he has reported them, are similar—or identical—to those of the famous writer’s. And, of course, he has made himself look like Hemingway. So Edward is either putting me on for some reason, putting everyone on, or he belongs at some place like The Sanctuary for treatment of his delusions.
No matter, I can use a friend, now that the Disciples are back home, someone with an upbeat personality and a certain joie de vivre, who can, at least for a little while, serve the same purpose as Jenna’s medication does for her. And why hurry back to an empty house and no job?
This morning, it’s blue water fishing, which I agreed to when Edward assured me that we’d follow a strict catch-and-release policy. That is, unless one of us hooked into “a real trophy.” Then we’d have to talk, he said. I’m seated in Pilar’s cockpit as Edward navigates out to a location where he believes that there just might be some tuna running.
An early fog has burned off; there is a light chop, not enough to make me seasick, which is a possibility if the wind picks up, causing Pilar to rock and bob more than it is right now. We have steaming mugs of good coffee Edward made in the galley. My mood has improved. I’m enjoying myself, out on the deep blue sea with an interesting companion, even if he is a total head case, and not simply a big-time Hemingway aficionado. Even if this is only palliative relief, I’m grateful for it. I wish Jenna were here too, for a dose of whatever it is I’m experiencing.
“I was thinking about inviting that kid, Slater Babcock, out for some fishing,” Edward says above the wind and engine noise. “Who knows, he might hook into a big one that pulls him right in.”
He’s joking, of course. Isn’t he? But maybe that’s not a bad idea. Edward is maybe ten years older than me, but he is muscular, and a former amateur boxer, he said. More of the Hemingway résumé there; will he end up shooting himself with a shotgun to complete the act? If so, I hope I’m not around. With Edward as my wingman, maybe I’ll be able to confront Slater in a more meaningful way than I did at the Drunken Dolphin. I certainly couldn’t do any worse.
“Look,” Edward exclaims, pointing to the front of the boat, where two dolphins are riding the bow waves. “That’s good luck, you know.”
I hear a whirring noise behind me. Edward swivels his chair to look and calls out, “Fish on! Fish on!” One of the four fishing rods, mounted on the stern in chrome sleeves and rigged for trolling, is bent under the weight of something big, and line is running out fast. Edward powers down the twin engines and yells, “Go for it, Jack! Grab that rod! You’re in for a fight, that’s for sure!”
When the big fish makes a leap, I see it’s a blue marlin. It does not want to be caught; he tests my resolve and my arms and shoulders for more than an hour as he dives deep, then breaks the surface to dance on his tail, as Edward expertly maneuvers the boat and keeps shouting, “Tip up! Keep the goddamned tip up or you’ll lose him!”
It feels like I’ve hooked Moby Dick. Edward repeatedly asks me if I want him to take over the rod, just long enough to give me a rest, but I always decline, feeling that somehow fighting this fish is the most important thing I’ve ever done. Finally, just as my arms feel like they are being pulled out of my shoulder sockets, the fish begins to tire, and remains on the surface for a longer time, not diving so deep.
“You’ve got ’im!” Edward calls out, backing the boat slowly toward the fish. “Tip up and reel in that big boy. Steady now, Jack, he’s yours to lose!”
When the marlin is alongside, Edward puts the engines in neutral, comes down to the deck, pulls on leather work gloves, grabs the steel leader on the line, and lifts the head of the fish up, gently, being careful of the long, sharp sword, as if he is going to kiss it.
“A beauty,” he says, as he holds the leader with one hand and takes a pair of pliers out of the back pocket of his shorts. “Maybe six hundred pounds. Not trophy size, that’s over a thousand, and I have caught some that size and more, so no problem here, we’ll put him back and let him grow some more.”
He looks directly into one of the marlin’s big round blue eyes and says, “I’ll be baa-aack! Ha!” Then he uses the pliers to remove the barbless hook from the fish’s mouth, leans over the transom and massages the fish’s belly. After a while, he puts his hands on the marlin’s back and pushes him slowly away from the boat. I watch as the fish floats motionless for several minutes, wondering if he’s dying. Then he shakes himself and, with a whip of his tail, is gone beneath the shimmering surface of the Gulf Stream. I hope the fish will be smarter or luckier or still too small for trophy size the next time he comes across a hook in the water.
“That was a very good catch,” Edward says, smiling. “You know the quote, ‘Anyone can be a fisherman in May’? That’s from The Old Man and the Sea. The book was written in Cuba. You should read it if you’re going to do more of this blue water stuff. Hemingway could have been referring to this month, too. But in July, when the big ones run deep, anyone cannot be a fisherman. More than anything, including luck, it takes persistence, and most people don’t have it. It’s very similar to finishing a novel, which is a distance run and not a sprint and why so many people who start one never make it to the end.”
He takes two cans of Foster’s Lager from an ice chest under one of the bench seats, pops the tops, and hands one to me.
“You know what the Old Man, whose name was Santiago, says as he’s fighting his marlin? ‘Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.’ Now that’s some damn fine writing, don’t you think? You get that by starting with one true sentence, and then you write another, and another, and finally you have a book of fiction that’s truer than real life. That’s the secret to telling a good story, Jack!”
I nod as if I know what Edward is talking about and drink down half the can of Foster’s in one swallow, foam bubbling down my chin. I wipe off the foam with the back of my hand and say, “It was a nice fish, wasn’t it?”
Edward unrigs the four rods, lays them on the deck, goes below, and comes back with two long cigars. He gives me one of them and says, “Arturo Fuentes. Let’s have a victory smoke, just like good old Red Auerbach.” Red, I know, was the legendary coach of the Boston Celtics, and he always lit up a cigar after a victory.
Then Edward climbs up into the captain’s chair, lights his cigar with a Zippo from his pocket, and offers me the flame, which I accept. The tips of the cigars already are snipped off. He savors a long puff and says, “Let’s head back to the barn, counselor. That’s quite enough fun for one morning, I’d say.”
IT’S NOON. Pilar is moored at a dock at the Key West Bight Marina. Bone weary after my marlin encounter, I’m below deck taking a nap on the stateroom bunk when I’m awakened by the clanging of the ship’s bell and the captain’s voice calling out, “Lunch!” Clang-clang-clang! “Lunch is served!”
I see that all three cats have been napping with me on the bunk. I scratch one, a calico, behind its ears, then hold up its paw: six toes. Also awakened by the bell, the cats stretch, hop off the bunk, and walk up the stairway; apparently it’s their lunchtime, too. I follow them.
Edward is cooking two grouper fillets on a small gas grill. “Just bought these off a commercial fishing boat right here at the marina,” he tells me. “They were swimming just a few hours ago. Can’t get any fresher. Do you know that all the supposedly fresh fish you get inland were in fact frozen?” I didn’t.
To accompany the grouper, there is a mango and avocado salad with lemon vinaigrette dressing, a loaf of crusty French bread, and more Red Stripe from the ice chest. Among his other talents, Edward is a gourmet cook. He said he came to appreciate good food while living in Paris as a young man; years later, when he could afford it, he went back to study at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. I wish I could introduce him to Marissa Kirkland, then eat a meal they jointly prepared. He still has not been specific about what business or businesses he’s undertaken, saying only, “Oh, this and that over the years, some of which still generate royalties.”
He’s been interested in every small detail of Hope’s disappearance and the ensuing events, with a particular interest in why I believe that Slater Babcock is responsible. When I asked him, as I did Vernon Douglas, what he would do in a similar circumstance, Edward thought about it for a while, and replied, enigmatically, “Oh, I never know the ending of a story until I get there and see what the characters themselves want to do. We’re not there yet with your story, Jack. But trust me, we’re getting close.”
20
Edward and I hang out together for the next several days. This time spent with the man who thinks he’s a deceased writer is like attending an Outward Bound school. There is more fishing, this time a full day of fly casting for bonefish from a flat-bottomed skiff which Edward poles around the backwaters while standing on a raised seat in the rear of the boat. Edward rented the skiff at a marina where he bought live shrimp for bait; the fly rods and tackle came off Pilar. There is skeet shooting at a gun range on Big Coppitt Key. Edward, I’m not surprised, is an expert with a shotgun; the two shotguns and shells also came off his boat. I manage to hit only two of the clays, which draws high praise from my companion. There is snorkeling on the reefs off Key West, which are teeming with sea life, including several sharks that glide—too close for comfort—below us. There is a sightseeing cruise aboard Pilar to the Dry Tortugas, a group of islands seventy miles west of Key West, where we see all kinds of birds.
Ride Away Home Page 13
