Baiting & Fishing

by Meredith Rae Morgan

  Ray said, “God, I hope I don't get pulled over for speeding on the way back to the hotel. They'll arrest you for murder.”

  She shot him a strange look before she laughed.

  When it came time to pay, the captain initially did not want to charge them. He said he felt he owed her a free fishing trip in honor of her dad. She shrugged and said that seeing as how she had done well financially, she owed it to him to pay her way. She not only paid the charter; she gave him a huge tip besides.

  As they got in the car, Ray noticed the mate watching her with naked adoration. He chuckled, “Like father, like son.”

  “What?”

  Ray nodded in the direction of the kid, “I think they are both infatuated with you.”

  She snorted, “They are infatuated with what they think I am.”

  Ray decided to let the remark slide.

  They had given most of the catch to the captain and his son, taking only a bag of thick grouper steaks to grill for dinner. They stopped at a grocery for beer, bread and the makings of tartar sauce. Ray went into the store and Marcella waited in the car.

  When they got back to the motel, she headed straight for the shower while he took the fish and a bag of charcoal out to the dock where there was a large outdoor grill. Marcella came out a little while later with plates, bread, a bowl of tartar sauce and some lemons. She also carried a bucket of ice with a few bottles of beer peeking out. She was wearing a bathing suit with a beach towel wrapped around her like a sarong. She said, “I thought we should make a party. Want to have dinner by the pool?”

  He said, “It will be a while before the coals are hot enough. Let's have a drink and cool off in the pool for a while.”

  “Did you bring a suit?”

  He shrugged. “We are about the only people here. I reckon I can go swimming in my shorts.”

  She dropped her towel and jumped into the deep end of the pool. She came up spluttering. “Whoa! It's cold.”

  “It probably isn't heated.” He tested the water and then just jumped in all at once, too. They did not linger in the water. When they got out, Ray realized his khaki shorts would take a long time to dry and the air was growing cool. He said, “I'll be right back.”

  He went inside to change into dry jeans. When he came back out, she was standing at the fence around the the pool enclosure which overlooked a boat ramp, watching some amateurs try to pull their boat out of the water.

  She was facing away from him. He stopped before opening the gate to the pool and studied her carefully. He had never seen her in a bathing suit. There were tiny tell-tale signs of her age. She had a few spider veins on her legs and a couple of spots on her thighs that looked like the beginnings of varicose veins. She had a few tiny wrinkles around her eyes and some lines that looked like they could become wrinkles around her mouth. But, she was slim and very, very muscular. She obviously worked out a lot. She looked totally natural to him. He thought it was very interesting that the only part of her that wasn't honed to hard-bodied near-perfection were her breasts which were small and the only part of her that appeared to jiggle. He thought that was funny. Almost every other woman he had met who moved in her circles had plastic breasts that did not sag, bag or jiggle.

  She turned around and saw him looking at her. She smiled and motioned for him to join her. He tried to make his face neutral, but was very afraid she had realized he was checking her out. He was embarrassed. He joined her at the railing where they watched the would-be boaters finally get their boat on the trailer and out of the water. He checked the coals and said they still had a ways to go. He re-joined her by the pool and stretched out in a chaise. She brought him a beer and leaned over to whisper in his ear, “I have never had any kind of plastic surgery if that is what you were wondering about.”

  He blushed.

  She laughed. “Thanks for that look of approval, by the way.”

  He blushed more deeply and concentrate on carefully tearing off the label of his beer bottle.

  They made sandwiches for dinner. The fresh fish with lemon, rye bread and home-made tartar sauce were fabulous. After dinner, they stretched out on the chairs by the pool and talked.

  They discussed going to the bridge where they could watch the sunset, but they were both tired, relaxed and they'd each had two beers. They decided to stay put. When the sun went down, she went inside and put on sweats. She also brought out a blanket from the bed. They pushed their chairs together and snuggled under the covers, talking.

  Eventually, the bugs drove them inside. Marcella got ready for bed first and padded out into the sitting room in her pajamas and flip flops. She said, “You know. I am really pooped. There was a day I could fish all day and then party all night. I think I'm getting old. I'm ready for the sack.” She looked at him and asked, “What's on the agenda for tomorrow?”

  He shrugged. “We have to be back in Sarasota for me to go to an editorial meeting on Wednesday morning. Other than that, I have nothing planned. Do you want to rent a boat and go out on the water, or do you dive?”

  She shook her head, “No. I don't really like to swim in the ocean. Swimming is for pools. I know a little too much about the critters that are under the sea to want to get in the water with them. And, we can go out in your boat when we get home. How about we sleep in, then go for a run. Before we head north, I'd like to drive across the Seven Mile Bridge. We don't have to go all the way to Key West, but I would like to go across the big bridge.”

  He nodded and pulled her down on the couch next to him. “There's a place a couple of miles up the road where you can run or walk about two miles out on what used to be the old bridge. We could run down there and then out over the water.”

  “Is the highway lighted? Could we go there to watch the sun come up?”

  “Sure. We can run out, watch the sun come up and then walk back. I'll bet there are some great breakfast places along the Overseas Highway. We can stop and have breakfast on the way back to the hotel.”

  “How far is it?”

  “I don't know. Maybe four miles one way. We usually run much farther than that. What do you think?”

  “I'm definitely up for it, since we got no exercise today.”

  “Correction. I got no exercise today. You got tons of exercise.”

  She laughed. “I guess you're right, although I don't really consider fishing to be exercise.”

  “The way you do it, it most certainly is.”

  She chuckled. “Well since we're getting up before dawn again tomorrow, I guess I'll turn in. Feel free to watch TV as long as you want. You won't bother me. I sleep like a log.”

  He had his arm around her and he tightened his grip. He leaned his head down, kissed her forehead and murmured, “You know........”

  She put her fingers over his lips and said, “Shhhh. Not here. Not now. When we take that step, I would prefer it to be at your house or at mine.” She looked a little sheepish. “I guess you could say I've never really seen myself as the kind of person to make assignations in cheap hotels in the Keys.”

  He held her close, “You'll spend the night in a cheap motel with a man you barely know, which would get a lot of attention if someone found out, but you won't sleep with me?”

  She pulled away and said, “First of all, I think I know you very well, or at least I know the important things about you. Secondly, I learned many decades ago not to be concerned about what other people think about what I do. I'm the one who has to look at myself in the mirror in the morning. What other people may think we are doing in here is not my problem. What we are actually up to is what matters to me. Does that make sense?”

  “It makes perfect sense. However, in my business, perception is reality.”

  She cuddled up next to him, “That is total bullshit. Do you know how easy it is to be manipulated when you believe that? ”

  He laughed, “I know you're right, but to most people appearances are everything.

  “As far as the other thing, you are probably righ
t to want to wait. But, I want you to know that if you change your mind, all you have to do is ...”

  She interrupted, laughing, and said as she headed into the bedroom, “Yeah, I know 'pucker up and blow.'”

  He laughed, too, and said, “Wrong island, Shweetheart.”

  She was still laughing when she closed the bedroom door behind her. He waited until he thought she would have fallen asleep and then he crawled into his bed. He was very tired and went to sleep a lot faster than the night before, but the last thing he heard was the sound of her breathing. It occurred to him just before he slid into sleep that he was falling in love with her. Or, more likely, he already had fallen in love with her and was only now noticing.

  Chapter 14

  The sidewalk on the Overseas Highway was well lighted, so they ran to the bridge before sunrise. They were not the only ones running early. They arrived at the approach to the Seven Mile Bridge a little while before sunrise. The old bridge had been converted to a walking, running and biking path that juts two miles out into the water. They ran nearly to the end and stood by the railing waiting for the morning show to begin. It was chilly. They stood with their arms around each other, only partly for warmth.

  Sunrise in the Keys is only slightly less glorious than sunset, and has the advantage of being at a time of day when fewer people are out and about, so it seems more intimate. They watched the fireball rise from the sea and turn the water from black to purple and, eventually, to its usual daytime palette of green and blue. Ray rested his chin on Marcella's shoulder. She leaned her head against his cheek. They watched the sun rise in silence. When it was fully light, they ran back in the direction of the motel. They stopped for breakfast at a likely-looking spot a mile or so away from the motel where they gorged on grits, fried fish bites and home-made biscuits. Too full to run they walked hand-in-hand the last mile back to the hotel.

  It only took them a few minutes to gather their things and load the car. Ray turned in the keys well before the 11:00 a. m. checkout time. As they prepared to leave, he asked, “You still want to go over the bridge?”

  She said, “Yes, if you don't mind.”

  He turned right and drove in silence across the Seven Mile Bridge while they both marveled at the beauty of the scenery and the incredible feat of human engineering and labor that made it possible to drive across open ocean. He asked her if she wanted to go all the way to Key West. She said she didn't unless he wanted to. He shook his head and told her he did not plan to go back to Key West, ever again. She took his hand in both of hers. He believed that she knew all too well how difficult it was to leave your childhood home behind forever.

  They turned around on Bahia Honda and headed back across the bridge in the other direction, toward the mainland of Florida. The scenery on the eastbound trip was as spectacular as the vistas they had enjoyed heading west. They talked very little, too engrossed in the scenery and their own private thoughts.

  It was mid-morning in late October. The traffic was light (at least as far as traffic in the Keys goes). The weather was spectacular. Ray drove fast enough to keep from being run over and slow enough to enjoy the scenery. Periodically he stopped at roadside pull-offs to let the line of cars behind him pass by. It had been a long time since he'd had a day with absolutely no deadlines or plans. He apologized to Marcella for behaving like such an old fart. She laughed and said she was having a wonderful time.

  As they passed through Homestead he said, “Unless you want to do some shopping or some such, I plan to avoid Miami.”

  She shrugged, “Please do. I have not been to Miami since Roland died, and I frankly was never that crazy about it before.”

  “Yes. Sorry. I forgot about that.”

  She smiled, “You know that is one thing I like about you. You do not seem to be obsessed with that story. Sometimes I think you don't even know the story at all.”

  “That is very close to the mark. When all of your trouble was going on, I was down in the 'Glades working on an environmental story. Anyway, I spent a pretty fair chunk of that period sleeping in the cab of a rented pick up truck or bunking on the couch of a Miccosukee Indian family who sort of adopted me. They had a TV, but most of the time it was tuned to game shows and reality shows which were the only shows the matriarch of the family – and owner of said TV – watched. When I went to town it was usually to spend time in newspaper archives or libraries. I sort of missed the whole Techtron disaster. When you first moved to Sarasota and there was a big flurry of interest, I frankly had to look you up on Google to find out what the buzz was about.”

  She howled. “How many hits did you get?”

  “I dunno. Something like 300,000.”

  She shook her head and was quiet for a long time. “Would you like to hear the story?”

  He thought about that. On the one hand, he knew he sure as hell would love to hear the story from her lips. On the other hand, he had promised her confidentiality. He shook his head. “I would love to hear it, if you want to tell it. But, I want to caution you. Please don't tell me anything that hasn't been published already. Even if you give it a different interpretation and different meaning, don't tell me anything I might be tempted to use.”

  She thought about that for a while, “The problem with that is I don't know what has been published because I stopped reading the papers very early on in the game. I couldn't handle it.”

  She paused, “Here's what I'll do. I'll tell you what I think the public knows or what I wouldn't mind for the public to know. I still want everything that went before my marriage to remain private between you and me.”

  “As I told you the other day, I left graduate school at U. S. C. because I suddenly had the wherewithal to relax and have fun. The initial trust fund my benefactor had set up was enough for a student to live on, if I were careful, but it was not enough to live on permanently. When he died, he left me a bequest that added enough to the trust fund to live on, very comfortably, for the rest of my life. I did not need to work. I could simply enjoy life. I wasn't in the league of the super rich who could spend wildly, but I was set for life if I were careful.

  “As you might expect, that was pretty heady stuff to someone with my background. As if he anticipated that, the bequest included a provision giving the Trustee control over how much money I could take out at any one time. That particular attorney and I had a sort of love-hate relationship for years.” She chuckled. “Much more hate than love to be honest, in both directions.

  “As I told you, I sort of drifted around for a while. I lived in New York City for a time, then I moved to London. At one point in the late 1970's, I took a trip around the world. That was incredible.

  “When I came back to the States, I decided to try to do something useful. You will understand that it would be difficult for a person to grow up the way I did and not feel passionately about species endangerment and/or clean water.

  “I got involved in a couple of environmental organizations. I moved to Galveston because I wanted to be near the ocean but I didn't want to go back to Florida, and I really hadn't liked L.A. I traveled a lot working with the Ocean Conservancy.

  “I met Roland Wilson in Palm Beach during the charity ball season in 1992. I was not really rich enough to be part of that scene, but a woman I worked with at the Ocean Conservancy was a filthy rich denizen of Palm Beach society. She invited me down for the charity ball season. I didn't have anything better to do, so I went.

  “Roland was from an old aristocratic family in Atlanta. They were sort of Georgia blue bloods. They were comfortable, but they weren't exactly Palm Beach rich either. He was interested in economic development as well as social and educational issues. I don't remember who invited him, but I think he ended up in Palm Beach that season sort of like I did: an outsider invited by a Palm Beach insider. In both cases, perhaps they misjudged how much money we actually had and wanted us to make large donations to their charities.

  “We met at one of the balls. You can't have lived your wh
ole life in Florida and not have heard about the Palm Beach balls. It's quite an experience. I think they are the most hideously disgusting experiences imaginable. They'll spend $5 million to throw a party ostensibly for the purpose of raising money for charity; the charity will end up with maybe a few hundred thousand or a million. The whole thing is an excuse for the super rich to try to outdo each other with over-the-top entertainment. That first time I went there, I was overwhelmed by the opulence of it all.

  “Roland saw it differently. He was underwhelmed by it. He thought the whole Palm Beach set lacked breeding and class. The folks in the Palm Beach behave as though they need neither because they have enough money to do as they please. Roland was always a snob when it came to that. He didn't care about how much money people had, or didn't have. The only thing he cared about was whether or not the person had class, which he defined a little differently than you would ordinarily think. For him someone with class was someone who was honest and decent and truthful. He didn't care if you knew which fork to use at a fancy dinner, which was good because it took me years to learn all that etiquette stuff and I know I embarrassed him more than once with my gauche behavior. He didn't like Palm Beach because he thought those people were phonies. I think he was right about that.

  “The weird thing is there was always a sort of phoniness about Roland, too. He was too good to be true in some ways, but he was kind of a bastard in other ways. There always seemed to be something artificial about him.

  “And I will say this before you do: I am perfectly aware of how much that sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

  “Anyway, he hadn't yet spun off the vision of a laptop computer for every poor child in the third world, but he was definitely headed in that general direction. He was all about economic development of depressed areas, including those in the U. S., although mostly he focused on the Third World.