by Anna Roberts
“Nope. I was only in Houston for a year; I don’t think that’s long enough to pick it up.”
He cocked his head to one side as he listened to the sound of her voice. “Oh wait,” he said. “New Orleans?”
“Born and bred.”
“Interesting,” he said. “So what brings you to the Keys?”
Blue crumpled the plastic in her pocket. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she said, deflecting.
“Because,” he said. “You’re fresh meat. Our little tourist trap can be pretty goddamn boring once you’ve worn out swimming with dolphins and drinking things with umbrellas in them. You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened since The Saga of Greg’s Leg. Sure, it’s a funny story, but I promise you’ll be sick to death of hearing it by the end of next week.”
She pulled the robe tighter around her body. “Funny?” she said, conscious of her own guilt in the matter. “You think a man having his leg amputated is funny?”
“No,” said Gabe. “Of course not. That part’s as sad as hell, but you have to admit that’s kind of a picture. Some big old stray dog padding through the town with a foot stuck in his mouth, like he was looking for someone to play frisbee with it.”
Blue pressed her lips together, trying not to giggle. “Okay, you got me. I did nearly laugh at that part. With Renee standing like six feet away.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah. I guess some things are just so sad and disgusting that your mind searches for the funny side. Just to keep you sane.”
He gave her another curious look, one she was used to by now. Once they knew she was from New Orleans people tended to guess her age and do the math. Some asked straight out. But he didn’t. He was smarter than that. Or kinder. Whichever one it was, she appreciated it.
“Wait,” he said. “Is your last name Beaufort?”
“Yes. Why?”
Gabe smiled. “Ah. There you go. You’re the one my...um...Gloria was talking about. Stormy Blue, right?”
“Is Gloria a relative of yours?”
He shook his head. “No. But she’s kind of like everyone’s grandma. We look out for her.”
“That’s nice.”
“The least we can do,” he said, with a short sigh. He scraped his fingers through his hair. There was a blond streak at the front so light that it had to be artificial; the rest of his hair was jet black. “It just really fucking sucks that it had to happen to her, pardon my French.”
“No, it’s very sad. I met her just this afternoon.”
“She makes these weird connections in her head,” he said. “Like you’re Stormy because Beaufort is a scale for measuring wind, see? Or Charlotte’s is the Apple Place because apparently there’s like a dessert called apple Charlotte or something.”
“Okay. I get it. That’s kind of...cool.”
He grinned again. One of his teeth was chipped. “I never thought of it like that before, but yeah. It is. It’s her way of thinking around the holes in her mind.”
“Like a step sideways.”
“Just like that, yeah. She’s smart. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she’s done. You know the Jimi Hendrix song? Allegedly he wrote that for her.”
“Wait? Gloria?” said Blue. “I don’t think he wrote that one. It’s a cover.”
Gabe frowned. “Huh. Still might have been written for her. She was everywhere back then. London, Paris, West Berlin. The rumor goes she even dated Keith Richards for like two weeks, but he thought she was too freaky even for him.”
And now she was wandering in and out of stores and diners, thinking she was talking to women who had been dead for ten years. Blue folded her arms even tighter and tried not to shiver; the wind was cool now that she’d been standing still for a while, and she was conscious once again that she was wearing nothing under her robe. “Well, I should get back,” she said. “I have an early start.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Are you taking the boat out?”
“Bright and early,” he said.
“Do you go out on the reefs and stuff?”
He nodded and there was that snaggletooth grin again, the one she already liked. The one that said there were things in the world that he loved so much they lit him up inside. “About a mile out, yeah,” he said. “You ever seen a live coral reef? I’ll take you out there sometime if you want.”
“I’d love that. Thank you.”
“No worries. If you’re gonna dive, dive with me, because there are some shady operators around here. They’re not nearly as tight on safety as they need to be.”
“Okay, thanks.” She glanced back up at the hotel, its long balcony rails gleaming bone white in the light of a bright, waning moon. “Well. Back to the sweatbox, I guess.”
“Sure. It was nice talking to you.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
There was another stiff pause between them and he jumped in too quickly to fill it. “Listen,” he said. “And stop me if I’m way off base, but if you can’t handle the heat and the...well, you know, upstairs anytime, I can always put a cot in the boat shed for you.”
“Oh no, really. I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble, I promise. I can leave the key for you and you can come and go as you please. I mean, I’ll be in and out now and again...”
“...cutting up bodies?”
He looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed. “No,” he said. “Of course not. I never do them in the boat shed. You’d get DNA everywhere.”
Not for the first time she wondered what he’d say if he knew what she had in her pocket. The childish impulse to one-up him was gone before the thought was even complete in her head; if she told him there would be questions. And with questions came the residue of that which the tide had just washed away, and the whole sad mess of who she was and who she had been.
She liked herself so much better now that she was just a girl on a beach.
3
No such thing as a silent night around here.
The nightsong chitters and chirps and croaks all through the dark and sometimes the only thing to do is make a noise right back at it. Yell, laugh, sing. Play back the old record player at it - Howling Wolf, I Ain’t Superstitious. Still works. Still good. They toss everything out before it’s even old these days. Poor cardboard Stacy’s boy has a new phone thing every six months it seems. Blue ones, red ones, black ones and a whole bunch of other colors the kid can’t even see.
But I saw. Kept an eye on that child. Oh yes.
Black cats, thirteens, don’t walk under ladders. Throw salt over your right shoulder to knock the devil off, should he be sitting there. I ain’t superstitious and maybe it worked for the devil but it never did a damn thing for Yael. Some devils are too hot even for Hell.
Oh, here he comes. Smells of tar, hot and sticky. Hair all a prickle and hackles a crackle. A hop, skip and a jump and he makes the needle fly out of the groove. Scratches old Howling Wolf, the little shit, then knocks over my tea for an encore. I feel you, beastie. I know you too well for this game. Don’t fuck with me now.
Used to be teacups spinning like Disneyland in my kitchen, be our guest be our host be our flesh be our blood. Singing and dancing - who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Tra la la la la.
His favorite, you know. Loved that song. The biggest baddest wolf of the lot. Adolf, whistling Three Little Pigs while he stoked the furnace with half of Europe. Not one of our monsters, but he wanted to be. Like Charlie. The other one, not my Charlie. Charlie is my darling.
Yael knows the words. They whisper in the palms and through the beams of the house. The walls shiver and I know it’s time. Time to fly.
Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling. Charlie is my darling, the young chevalier.
Ash. Grease. They used to say it was the fat rendered from murdered babies, back in the merrie olde days of strappado and thumbscrews. Fly me to the moon and kiss the Devil right there in the puckered center of his dem
onic bunghole. Oh these dark Satanic thrills. Jarmara and Holt. Vinegar Tom. Writhing and whining and scratching - head and heels, arc en cercle - that’s how it gets you when the ergot bites.
Grease is bacon. Ash is Grandma. She’s nearly out. One day I’ll be the ashes and I won’t care. Anoint me now in fat and frenzy - skyclad, black bra. Don’t want these old titties dragging on the ground. Smear Grandma over my head and heart and away we go, hey diddle diddle over the moon.
Cold up here, the islands like jewels in a necklace of lights. Electric. Galvani jerking frog legs, young Mary mourning her dead babies, dragged from pillar to post by the poet. The lone and level sands stretch far away. The sea killed him - ding dong bell - swallowed him up in the blue and the black like so many before him. Darkness is upon the face of the deep. Black sea, bright sparks. The wind burns but the smell is all the same. Blood and hair. Hackles-a-crackle. It carries all the way down here; let those who have noses smell it.
Miami. The buildings are nearly high enough to land on, but that’s not where I’m going. Into the suburbs. Spanish style. Little houses. Stucco shades of brick and straw - little pigs, little pigs, let me come in.
Oh, they’re already there, but us old broads are invisible - me and Yael. Easy to slip past the flashing lights and the yellow tape. In through the wide open door.
Ugly modern wallpaper. Either that wallpaper goes (splatters of red) or I do - and went she did. All up in iron-smelling arcs as high as the dado rail. Dark red and shiny all over the nice hardwood floor. Face down, head turned to one side, one cheek red, one cheek white. Red as blood, white as snow. Hi ho, hi ho.
Click click click. Cameras capture her clouded eye. Used to think you could find the killer’s face in the back of the retina - last thing the victim saw. Tried it with those girls in London back in the day, but the next time Jack went a ripping he left poor Mary Jane in shreds, splattered all up the wall and even her eyeballs pulled halfway to pieces. Only a rose I pluck from my mother’s grave.
Mother. Oh, I can smell it. So that’s what got your dander up, Yael?
There’s another. They don’t know it yet. They won’t know it until they lift her onto the slab and open her up, but he’s in there. A boy. Curled like a question mark and dead as a doornail. Maybe he lived as long as the life took to leave her body but when she stopped breathing, so did he. Never to be born.
Yael, hush your noise. There’s nothing can be done for either of them.
Nothing but vengeance, and that won’t bring them back.
Into the kitchen. Fans of green on the counter where she left them. Paint swatches. Mint and apple, peppermint and pistachio. Seems like every shade of green is a thing you can taste. Almost dulls the smell of blood. Almost. So much red in that hallway that I forgot that green was even a thing.
*
The drink she brought him was bright electric blue.
Even the sugar frosting the rim was dyed blue. Gabe waved the straw around in it and glanced around the bar, looking to see if anyone else was drinking theirs. A blonde girl threw her head back, laughing; her teeth and lips were stained.
“Excuse me,” he said, waving to the bartender. “What is this?”
She was a slender honey blonde with eyes so large that the spikes of her black mascara made them look like big dark stars. She smiled, showing a full-lipped mouthful of lovely white teeth. “That’s a Blue Moon, sir.”
“Of course it is.”
“On the house.”
“And what’s in it?”
A large hand landed on his shoulder. The whiff of testosterone was near palpable; that honey of a bartender swayed towards him like a wood nymph, showing the deep soft shadows in her cleavage.
“Tequila,” said Eli. “Triple sec, blue curacao...and some other stuff.”
Gabe slid off the stool and glanced up at him. “And what if you’re driving?”
Eli grinned. “Then give it to someone you like.” He wrapped both arms around Gabe and caught him in a solid, backslappy hug. The male smell of him stood out stark and Gabe suddenly realized why. The place was all but full of women.
“Come on,” said Eli, taking the bright blue drink from the bar and handing it to Gabe. “It’s my new thing. House specialty. You gotta try it. Besides, you’re not driving. Not tonight. I hardly ever see you and you’re like ten minutes away; it’s fucking stupid.”
I’m busy, Gabe started to say, but Eli was off, leading him through the crowd to the big double doors. So many girls. Since they banned smoking almost everywhere you couldn’t go to a club or a bar without drowning in the smells of pits and perfume, but female sweat had a tang that male sweat didn’t, and the breath of mingled sweetness was enough to almost knock him over. A wall of scents – flowery, musky, citrus and sweet. Basenotes of civet and artificial ambergris, the things that gave a fragrance its staying power. Aldehyde. Chanel No.5 – someone was stinking it up old school. Maybe the redhead with the black framed glasses and the picture of Marilyn Monroe tattooed on her shoulder blade.
He bumped into a brunette on his way. “Sorry,” she said, pulling her Lana del Rey lips into a little moue of apology. Her breast jostled his arm as she passed and he felt lust rise and shake and stretch its jaws.
Eli led the way out on to the balcony overlooking the marina. Strings of fairy lights were wound around the railings. On each weathered wooden table was a candle lamp made from an old mason jar. Women sat around in groups, their small hands cradling tulip shaped wine glasses half the size of their heads. Conversations drifted.
“...so I had some encouraging customer feedback from the UK, which was good...”
“...it’s like they’re behaving like Big Tobacco did in the Fifties and Sixties...”
“...there is no way you can get away with those boobs and a boat neck. You’ll look as wide as a tank.”
Gabe pulled up a chair opposite Eli. “So what gives?” he said. “Where are the men? You’ve turned this place into a gay bar now?”
Eli laughed. “Nope. They’re not all lesbians. Some of them will let you watch. And join in.”
“You’re an animal.”
“Duh.” Eli winked and took a pull of his beer.
Gabe peered down into the drink once more. Something blue. Couldn’t seem to get away from it these days. “You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re going to sit there with your Cerveza and watch me drink this girl-drink.”
“It’s good. Try it.”
“In general I try to avoid drinking things that look like Windex,” said Gabe, but he took a sip anyway. It was sweet and cold – the kind of drink that slipped down one after the other and then left you wondering why your legs no longer worked when you got up to go to the bathroom.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. It’s pretty good.”
“You see? Trust me, little cuz. When have I ever steered you wrong?” Eli gave a shiteating grin and leaned back in his chair, stretching his big shoulders. His beer bottle swung from between his fingers, drawing the eye to the snake tattoo around his wrist. Gabe still remembered when it was fresh, watching Eli carefully lift the dressing to show him the raw new ink. How he had sucked in his breath at Eli’s daring, and in anticipation of all the ways in which Gloria was going to kill Eli when she found out.
Did it hurt?
Like hell. It was right on the bone nearly all the way around.
“Oh, I can think of at least half a dozen times,” said Gabe.
Eli laughed. “Yeah. There were a few.”
“More than a few.”
“It’s funny,” he said. “Just the other day I was thinking about how we used to leap off the railings at high tide. You remember?”
“Think a happy thought -”
“ - and fly!” Eli shook his head and laughed again. “You know we had no idea how high or low the water was when we did it? I looked at the same spot at low tide and wondered how we didn’t break our goddamn necks. We just jumped like lemmings. And yo
u trying to impress that skinny little nutcase – what was her name now? – with the dyed black hair and the green glitter nail polish. You remember.”
“Oh, her. Tori. Yeah, I remember.”
“She kept busting out singing songs from Cabaret. Like some kind of theater kid.” He took another pull of his beer and chuckled. “I gotta say it; I have no idea what you saw in that girl.”
Figured. Eli had never really had any idea of his own power; it was part of his charm. Sun King, Gloria had used to call him; everyone whirled in his big, bright, oblivious orbit. There were the smallest pinpricks of gray in his beard scruff now, but they only seemed to lend a new gloss of long-ago nostalgia to those vivid sense memories of long ago summers; sugar and heat and sand between the toes, short thunder of ecstasy, gone too soon.
“So,” said Eli, taking Gabe’s silence for interest. He waved a hand around the bar. “What do you think?”
“Place looks great. You taken up interior design or something?”
“Me? No. It was this girl. She has really good taste. She’s like a teacher or something but she could have made a fortune doing interiors for yuppies. The green railings were her idea – said they’d stand out more than the usual white.”
“She’s right; they do.” Gabe took another careful sip of the sickly blue drink and decided to just ask. “So. What happened to her?”
Eli sighed and scraped his fingers through his dark curls. “You know. The usual. I can’t help it, man. It’s just how I’m built.”
“What? It’s biological now?”
“Sure,” said Eli. “It’s fucking science. I’m not supposed to be monogamous. I’m supposed to spread my seed.”
“Gross.”
“What’s gross? It’s nature. Besides, we could do with...replenishing the stocks. We’re a little thin on the ground these days.”
Gabe shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get? I’m not gonna sit on my ass like a panda, eating bland vegetables and waiting to become extinct. Not when I’m surrounded by red meat and pussy.”
Gabe folded his arms and leaned back. “You know what I mean, Eli. Replenishing. You sound like you’re expecting trouble.”
