by Ralph Zeta
I padded quietly on bare feet into the main salon. Nora turned up one hand, palm out, stopping me dead, then lifted her index finger, indicating she needed another moment. I stopped all movement. I felt a raindrop sliding down from my hair to my eyebrow, where it found some sort of invisible groove that took it down the side of my nose. It tickled like hell, but I didn’t dare move.
After a moment, she finally opened her eyes and said, “Hello, sailor.” She rocked up onto her feet and faced me. “You’re dripping!” She strode off to one of the storage cabinets and plucked up a pair of beach towels.
She began to towel me dry. “This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?”
“What?” I asked, feigning confusion.
“My hands all over you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not quite right,” I replied. “I don’t remember clothes in my version. And your hands were elsewhere.”
I pushed off the towel and embraced her... and forgot all about nautical charts, tides, Gulf Stream currents, gale-force winds, channel markers, everything. Reality just seemed to meld into a torrent of excitement. I felt her kiss my cheek between giggles. God, she felt good. I was glad she was back, and I expressed it quite predictably.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said as she playfully pushed me away. Somehow, though I had nine inches and nearly ninety pounds on her, she was still strong enough to shove me around a bit.
I moved in on her, my hands fast and nimble, seeking. She pushed me away, saying, “No way, mister. I’m sweaty...”
“Then let’s get sweatier,” I replied, moving in again.
“There’s no way, Jason!”
“Hey, you’ve been gone five days,” I retorted. “A man has needs.”
She countered my advances, informing me she had just returned from her yoga class and had spent the hour before that at the gym. A hard workout. She was filthy, she claimed, but she had completed her assigned share of the predeparture tasks. The liquor cabinet, refrigerator, and galley were fully stocked.
“Yes, well,” she said, her hands still on my chest in a futile attempt to keep me at bay, “those manly needs will simply have to wait. We have more important things to worry about.”
As I dropped my head in mock dejection, Nora brought up the weather forecast. She had been listening to the official NOAA reports on the radio. The weather was expected to remain unfavorable for all small craft for at least a couple of days. Worse, it was expected to worsen in the next twenty-four hours. Even on a boat of this size, crossing the Gulf Stream under such conditions was a bad idea.
I gazed out the long rectangular windows framing three sides of the main salon and saw nothing outside to contradict NOAA. The rain-darkened skies made it seem as though night had fallen.
“I’m sorry.” Nora leaned in and kissed my cheek. “But hey, look at it this way, sailor: maybe we won’t have to cancel the entire vacation. Maybe we just lose a day or two.”
I sighed and sank into one of the deep-padded chairs. The blare from the radio startled both of us. From the small navigation station tucked neatly into starboard wall of the salon, a disembodied voice delivered another official weather advisory:
“Small-craft advisory is in effect. Weather is worsening. Waters east of the coast and especially in the Gulf Stream are experiencing unusually high seas and waves. Expected to continue like this for at least forty-eight hours...”
Great. Sammy had been right after all. This whole vacation was in peril. I glanced at Nora. She gave me a sympathetic glance. It seemed nothing ever ruffled her feathers. Even in the worst circumstances, she always managed to keep that positive outlook, that bright smile that first caught my attention. It was a quality that so many of her terminally ill patients, like my father, cherished.
She gave me a shrug and said, “What do they know? They never seem to get this stuff right. Maybe it’ll blow over by tomorrow. You’ll see.”
I just smiled. It was a nice attempt to cheer me up, but the view out the windows told the real story. It was pouring, and the wind showed no signs of weakening. I ambled over to the navigation station and flipped on the Si-Tex weather chart plotter. The six-by-six color screen told the digital version of the story: the large low-pressure area and cold front extended for hundreds of miles and was now draped over the Florida peninsula. Soon it would be over the Bahamas. To make matters worse, the weather system was a slow mover, and although not a huge event like a tropical storm, it still packed quite a punch. Offshore buoys north of Ft. Pierce were reporting swells in the twelve- to fifteen-foot range not the kind of seas you wanted on a pleasure cruise.
My reverie came to an abrupt end as Nora approached me and kissed me softly. “Hey, I wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“For agreeing to talk to Amy.”
“Sure,” I said. It wasn’t as if she had given me much choice. I leaned down and kissed her. She kissed me back, which once again brought those manly needs to the fore. My hands took on a life of their own and went a-hunting. It didn’t work.
Nora pushed away and declared, “You’re good, I’ll give you that, counselor.”
“What?” I had thought we were getting somewhere.
“Men like you are so dangerous.”
“Not dangerous enough, it seems.”
“What time is it?” she asked, ignoring my remark.
“Almost six. Why?”
“Plenty of time.”
“For what?”
“To clean up,” she said. “You’re meeting Amy at Duffy’s on the Waterway,” she said as she opened the door and went into the head. “She’ll be there at seven. As in tonight. Waiting for you. That gives you plenty of time to change and get there.”
Five
I arrived at Duffy’s on the Waterway and parked the Porsche in a corner spot where it wouldn’t be dinged by blind or careless drivers.
I was ten minutes late not too bad, considering the short notice. Privately, I hoped my “date” wouldn’t show up. Outside, the weather seemed to be going from bad to worse. The occasional bolts of lightning that lit up the clouds to the northwest were becoming more frequent, and the distant rumble of thunder echoed closer in the night. My shirt got a bit damp as I sprinted to the entrance. Umbrellas were for sissies.
The expansive restaurant was typical of south Florida dinning hangouts by the Intracoastal Waterway. It was the kind of place where good-looking kids from nearby universities waited for scarce job openings. Management was very friendly, and the place was spotless, served an enviable menu of locally caught seafood and top cuts of beef, and had a large bar that attracted plenty of well-heeled customers. In winter, when the snowbirds had all flocked down to Palm Beach County, it was damned hard to get a reservation for dinner on a weekend evening before nine o’clock. Sometimes you had to wait up to two months for a six or seven p.m. table. Tonight, even though the restaurant’s big lobby and bar lacked the usual throngs of diners waiting to be seated, the place was still hopping. The din of the crowd, the clink of silverware on china, and soft island music gave the place an air of exotic charm. I had a quick conversation with the attractive hostess, who promptly informed me, to my disappointment, that my date was already seated. Yet another young and very friendly hostess escorted me to my table.
Her back was to me, but I could see a delicate hand stirring what looked like a tall glass of iced tea, lime wedge sitting on the rim. The hostess pulled out my chair, left a menu, and announced that our server, Kevin, would be by shortly to take my drink order. Then she promptly excused herself, but not before flashing me a smile brimming with possibilities.
Amy considered me with some apprehension, her eyes quickly sizing me up. I hadn’t worn anything resembling business attire: just a light blue button-down long-sleeve shirt that I hadn’t bothered to tuck inside my blue jeans, and a pair of very casual leather loafers and no socks which is to say, my standard casual evening wear.
“Ms. Kelly?” I said.
“
Mr. Justice?” She stood and offered her hand.
“Please, sit,” I said. She sat, and I took the seat across from her. “Call me Jason.”
She was maybe five four and slender, and she had overdressed for the occasion. She wore a basic black little dress, pearls, small diamond studs, and a small black purse. Her sandy blond hair was pulled back, and her short bangs fell over her alabaster forehead to make her look younger than she was. Under her bangs, wide blue eyes stared at me with a certain degree of nervous anticipation. She blinked quite a lot, which made me focus on the eyes more than I otherwise would.
“Very well,” she said with a shy smile. “Jason it is, then.”
And then I saw it: there, in the eyes. They spoke of sadness, unresolved issues that cut deep, a melancholy she could not hide. Even though she looked to be in her late twenties, the lines under those expressive eyes gave her a bit of a weathered look. I instantly felt for this woman my softer side bubbling up.
“Please, call me Amy.” Her voice was soft and low, almost a sweet murmur.
Our waiter came, was appropriately cheery, and left with my order for a Cabo Wabo margarita. Then we were finally alone.
She broke the ice first. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Justice.”
“Jason, please, remember?” I smiled at her. I could see that she was a bit tense, so I decided to ease her into the conversation. “You and Nora known each other long?”
She shook her head. “Not really. We’ve spoken on the phone mostly. She had been keeping me informed of my mother’s condition for the last couple of years. My mom and I didn’t communicate all that much. You know what I mean?”
She let that hang in there as though begging me to inquire further. I didn’t. I had learned the hard way always to let potential clients explain their situation in their own words and their own time. Our drinks arrived, and we ordered dinner. Cesar salad for Amy and fresh grilled Wahoo for me. I took a sip of my drink. Perfect.
“I really don’t know if you can help me,” she said. “Maybe I’m just wasting your time.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said as I took another long swig of margarita. “Maybe there isn’t anything anyone can do. But for the argument’s sake, why don’t we assume it’s not an impossible situation, and we start with you going over what happened.”
“Very well.” She let out a deep sigh. “First of all, I want you to know that I am a recovering drug and alcohol addict,” she announced firmly, almost defiantly. “That’s one of the reasons my mom and I grew apart. She married this man, this bastard that screwed her up even more. He convinced my mom to cut me off from everything, even from her life. And she let him.” Her voice grew a little louder, and her eyes flashed.
“She kicked me out. Told me I was a loser. A junkie. All of this while her jerk husband watched, big smirk on his stupid face. She told me not to come back until I was clean.”
“I’m sorry,” was all I could mange in the moment.
She looked straight into my eyes and said, “I’ve been clean now for the better part of two years. I even went back to college, Jason. UCLA. I have only four more classes left to graduate. Somehow, I don’t know how, but I’ve even managed to make the dean’s list and all. I have worked really hard at everything I’ve done since I decided to clean up my act. It hasn’t been easy.” She took another sip of her drink, which was almost half gone.
“So, as I go to enroll for my last semester, those last twelve credits I need to graduate, I discover that I can’t pay my tuition. The accounts were cleaned out! There’s no more money left. My mother was broke! Left destitute thanks to the bastard she married, and then he leaves her just disappears!”
She took another sip of her iced tea, her hands a bit shaky now, and looked away for a long moment, as if searching for strength to finish. “So I finally called my mother and asked about the funds in the family trust, the funds that were supposedly earmarked to pay for my tuition, and that’s when she told me: Evan, the man of her dreams, had betrayed her.” Another pause. She lowered her gaze. She seemed to be contemplating her hands.
“My mother was a dreamer, Jason,” Amy went on. “She wasn’t a very strong person. She was highly emotional, always dependent on her medications and men. Always needing a man by her side to feel secure and perhaps even worthy. Boy, she sure knew how to pick them. She liked bad men men that had some growing up to do. Guys that chose to live hard and fast. The kind of guy every other woman wants but is smart enough to walk away from. She had a real knack for picking the wrong guy. I mean, look at my father how smart a choice was that?
“I guess eventually her luck ran out, you know? She finally married a real bad guy. One who stole not only her heart but everything she owned, only to abandon her. I mean, this piece of filth timed it perfectly. The very next day after he flew the coop, a man from the bank showed up to deliver a notice of default on her house. Which she didn’t understand. There was never a mortgage on the house. That’s when my mother finally decided to check on her affairs. He had mortgaged the house. She discovered she was dead broke. He had taken everything emptied all her bank accounts, sold or cashed out everything in the trusts and brokerage accounts. I mean, my mom was not billionaire rich, but she had more than enough money.”
“How much money are we talking about?” I asked.
She thought about it for a moment and said, “Would you believe me if I told you I really don’t know?”
I smiled. “Sure.” No surprise. Most kids were kept in the dark about such matters. “How about a guess?”
“Well, the house in Palm Beach, a friend told me, is about eleven million. He mortgaged it to the tune of six million. I know my grandfather, her father, had left her with a trust fund that had over fifty thousand shares of General Electric, another fifty thousand of Ford Motors, and ten thousand shares of a few other companies companies that sell electricity, if I recall correctly. They paid the best dividend, is what he always said. Does that help?”
“It does,” was my response. It all added up to well over twenty million dollars at today’s significantly depressed valuations. Good old Evan had definitely struck gold on this one. “That is a significant inheritance.”
She just shrugged.
“We were well off or rather, my mother was. I had my own issues. Went down the wrong path. Bad choices when it came to friends. But I hit bottom and decided to turn my life around. I guess I owe Evan that much. If he hadn’t convinced my mom to kick me out, I would have...” She hesitated, then looked up at me and sadly announced, “I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“So I’m told.” I smiled. “Do you know if your mom was on antidepressant medication?” I don’t even know why I asked that particular question.
“Nora would probably know. I don’t. I’m sure she was depressed. I mean, she was fifty-nine years old. She had MS and had been battling cancer for a long time and had to have constant medical attention. And one day she wakes up and finds herself alone, betrayed, broke and about to join the ranks of the homeless. It’s too much for anyone to bear. I don’t think antidepressants would have helped her much; wouldn’t you agree?”
“I can’t really answer that,” I mumbled, vowing to listen more and talk less.
“Three days after the bastard disappeared she wrote me a short note apologizing for everything. She signed, ‘I am so sorry, baby. I always loved you so very much. Mom.’ She also said that Evan had duped her, that he was not the person he claimed to be. The note was left on her nightstand.” She tried to hold back tears. “My mother supposedly killed herself that night.” She opened her small black purse and pulled out a small tissue and dabbed at her eyes.
“I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult this must be for you,” was my lame response.
She nodded, took another sip of her iced tea, and gazed at me with red eyes. “Even though my mom and I were not that close, she was still my mother and I still loved her, so yes, it is very hard. The thi
ng is, growing up, things were great. The way I remember it, we had a wonderful family life. I have great memories. I was a very lucky child.”
She folded her hands on her lap and played with a small ring on her slender finger. I simply watched her in silence. She then raised her eyes and glanced emptily around the restaurant and said, “It all ended one Monday evening in late October. I was almost six years old. All I knew was that something very bad happened in my dad’s work. Then my dad started coming home late. He seemed preoccupied, I guess... sad, very tense, and irritable after that. For the first time, I heard my parents fighting and screaming. It was very strange for me. They had never fought before, at least, not in front of me. I knew then things were bad. I also knew they would get worse; I just didn’t know how much worse. Then, about two months later, it all came unraveled. My dad was arrested. It was all over the news and the newspapers.
“Life changed completely after that. My mom became a pariah in her L.A. social circles. I became the subject of ridicule and jokes at school. My mom still had the house in Palm Beach, so we moved back here. She went by her maiden name, and she changed mine to hers so we wouldn’t have to endure the insults. We went to visit my dad in jail twice. The first time, I was almost ten years old. The second time I saw him, I was almost fifteen. His appeal was pending, and he had high hopes for an early release given that he cooperated with authorities and returned most of the money. He was turned down, and he knew then he would never leave that prison alive. By that time, my mother was dating men right and left. Drinking heavily, too.
“Shortly thereafter, my mother was diagnosed with MS. She became even more irrational. I went to see my dad in prison. I was worried she would spend everything she had and we’d be in trouble. He told me not to worry. That’s when he told me he had put away what he called an ‘insurance policy’ in a safe place. For a rainy day. And that I was not to tell anyone about it, especially not my mom. He made me promise not to touch whatever it was under any circumstances unless it was an emergency. Or when I turned thirty. He asked me to promise, and I did. He told me this ‘insurance’ was hidden in the old family tapestry that hung over the main staircase of the house in Palm Beach. That it would be safe there. Then, when the time came, I should get it. I guess it was his way of providing for my future. That was the last time I saw him. He was who he was, I get that, but I know he loved me. I know he disappointed a lot of people, but he was still my father. He always brought me little presents from his business trips. Stuffed animals, things like that...” Her voice trailed off as she held back more tears.
