Surface Tension

by Christine Kling

  When I returned to the table, Cesar Espinosa was halfway across the dining room, headed for the exit. “Sorry I took so long,” I said, settling into my seat.

  “That’s all right.” James smiled. He looked completely calm; there was no trace left of the wildly animated speaker of a few moments ago.

  “That man you were speaking to. Was he a friend?”

  He looked surprised. “Him? No way. He’s an unsavory character who has dated some of the girls at the Harbor House. I try to warn them, but some young girls are just attracted to bad men. You know the saying ‘Good guys can’t win.’ ” He flashed those perfect white teeth and shrugged.

  I nodded and grinned back at him like a smitten teen.

  “Apparently he wants to see one of our girls now, and Minerva won’t put his phone calls through. Sometimes I can’t help feeling paternal about the girls. I want them to get their lives back on track. He’s not going to help them out in that direction.”

  I nodded. It made sense. For now.

  The night was cloudless when we left the Mai Kai, and James asked if he could put the top down. I told him I would have asked if he hadn’t, that I wasn’t exactly the sort to mind wind-whipped hair. We drove down to A1A and along the beach, and I felt like purring, nestled into that buttery leather admiring the few stars that could overpower the city lights and the velvet night wind that was teasing my face with loose wisps of hair. He put a Louis Armstrong CD in and we cruised to “What a Wonderful World.” I felt more than a little woozy from the wine, and it was only when we cruised past Bimini Lane and I looked down at the darkened outline of Harbor House that I started to sort through my confusion about what I was doing in a Jaguar cruising the beach with James Long.

  James left me to my thoughts, and I added that to the list of things I liked about the man. For more than twenty minutes, we cruised along and reveled in another spectacular Florida night, the waves breaking in plankton-lit foam in the background, the parade of tourists with their sunburned glow in the foreground. Louis launched into “La Vie en Rose.” I was trying hard just to empty my mind, to let the cleansing breeze blow the events of the past couple of days away, but Collazo’s words kept coming back to me. Why were so many people connected to me turning up dead?

  “Would you like to stop and walk awhile?” he asked as we approached the most populated stretch of the strip.

  “Sure, that would be nice,” I said.

  To my surprise, instead of heading for the beach, James turned up Las Olas Boulevard, away from the beach, and drove inland into the ritziest little shopping district in Fort Lauderdale. For a stretch of less than a mile, this quaint street was lined with old buildings— old by Fort Lauderdale’s standards, anyway—that had been turned into galleries, cafes, and boutiques. Big old oaks grew up in the street’s median, creating a canopy over the sidewalk eateries, and the homes just a block to the south were riverfront mansions. The area reeked of money, which is why it wasn’t exactly high on my list of frequently visited shopping spots.

  James parked in the lot behind the Riverside Hotel and walked around to my side of the car to open the door. I always feel like a complete incompetent sitting in a car waiting for a man to open my door, but I was trying hard to be socially correct. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure. I had agreed to go out with this man in the belief that I would find out something about Harbor House that would provide some answers, and I found myself not doing a bit of interrogating, but rather wanting him to like me.

  After a short stroll, James turned into an art gallery and walked over to a group of oils all clearly painted by the same artist. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look at me, in fact, he seemed to have forgotten I was there. He just stared at the paintings with a half smile.

  From a distance, they looked like photographs. All five paintings were done in shades of black and white and gray, and they depicted very realistic objects against stark backgrounds: a single black enameled vase in an all-white room, a white sickle moon in the black sky, a black hand reaching for a silver knife on a white tablecloth. Two paintings hanging side by side were of matching eyes, huge eyeballs nearly a foot across, one in white skin, the other in black. Though you could not see the expression on the face in either painting, there was something disturbing about the eyes. I felt a chill looking into them. I knew the features outside the frame included raised brows, flared nostrils, and a mouth in an open scream. I had to look away.

  “You did these, didn’t you?” I said, turning to look at him, waiting for his answer, but he hadn’t heard the question, apparently. He just stood there with that odd little smile.

  When we pulled into the driveway at the estate, James was out of his door and opening mine before I’d collected my shoulder bag from the backseat. Oh, hell, I thought, I’m a big girl, and it’s not all that late. Besides, I really hadn’t learned anything from him yet.

  But as I stepped from the car, I knew it was more than that. I could make all the excuses I wanted about how I was really inviting him in only to pump him for information, but in fact there was something very charming and exciting about the man, not to mention that his interest in me was doing great things for my recently bruised self-image. The fact that he might be dangerous as well only made him more interesting. Part of me hated myself for the attraction I felt, but it was not that part of me that spoke first.

  “Would you like to come in for a drink? Actually, beer is about all I have. I haven’t had a chance to do much shopping lately.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I’d better go lock up my dog first. She can get a little weird sometimes.”

  I let myself in, took Abaco to the Gorda, and locked her into the wheelhouse. She stood up on her hind legs and rubbed her wet nose against the glass in the door. I felt sorry for her, but I pointed my finger: “Now, you be a good girl.”

  James was leaning against his Jag, his head back, staring up at the sliver of a moon, very similar to the moon in his painting. He looked just like something out of one of those perfume ads where all the gorgeous people appear faintly sad. The gate squeaked, and he turned to look at me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “I was just thinking about Elysia. It was such a waste to lose her like that.” His voice cracked, and his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed. I walked over and leaned my butt against the warm car hood next to him. The stars visible through the the branches of the oaks were few and far between, as the lights of the city just across the river had washed most of them away.

  “What do you think really happened to Ely?”

  Over the sound of the insects humming in the underbrush, I again heard him swallow. He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something, but then he only looked down at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “You said something about a beer?”

  I led him back to the cottage and unlocked the door. Before swinging it open, I felt a little moment of panic. For all I knew, this man had played a part in Ely’s death and could be plotting the same for me. After I’d switched the lamp on and the light filled the room, though, such fears seemed foolish. After all, he was the head honcho, the director of Harbor House. He probably dined at the mayor’s house, for Pete’s sake. And lots of people had seen us together this evening.

  He went straight to the easel and paints.

  “You paint?” he called out as I retrieved two beers from the fridge.

  “Yeah, just as a hobby.” I handed him the can, and from his look, I could tell he would have preferred his beer in a glass. He took a paper napkin from the holder on the bar and began to wipe the aluminum top of the can.

  “Are you any good?” He settled on the couch and stretched his arm across the back. I wondered if I was expected to sit inside that arm.

  “Hmmm ... tough question. Technically, I’m decent, but I don’t have the passion for painting—you know, the artistic temperament. My mother had it, so I know what it is.” Standing in the center of the room with my back
to him, I pointed to the dark canvas on the far wall. It depicted a bird-of-paradise flowering in an unruly garden in the midst of a threatening summer squall. “That’s one of hers. My mother had all this emotion in her, all this thought and spirit and soul that she just couldn’t express any other way.”

  “I know what you are talking about. That is why many people paint.”

  I turned to face him. “Of course. I saw that tonight in your paintings.” I didn’t go so far as to say that I found it very difficult to believe that such a warm, sociable person could make such cold paintings. “You said those canvases were several years old. Do you still paint?”

  “No, I’ve found other outlets for my passion.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, without a wink or a leer. My mother had found another outlet, too.

  I turned back to my mother’s bird-of-paradise painting. “It tortured my mother when she couldn’t paint, when what she managed to get on canvas didn’t look like what was in her head. But when things were going well, she knew a real serenity. I just wish it had happened more often for her.”

  The sofa creaked when he stood, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when he rested his hands on my shoulders.

  “And your mother? Where is she today?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. As soon as the subject of her death came up, I was that little girl again, the one who couldn’t speak for months.

  James bent down and brushed his lips against the side of my neck, and I could barely hide the shiver I felt. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

  No matter that I’d been insisting to myself that I really was only with him to try to get some information from him, when he slowly turned me around and kissed my mouth, I didn’t push him away. My eyes closed, and I reached up and ran my hands lightly along his jawline. His skin was smooth and cool, not at all like B.J.’s.

  B.J. I placed my hand in the center of his chest, applied gentle pressure, and our lips parted. “James, there’s something I need to ask you ...” I opened my eyes for just a second, and in that flash, I became aware of a movement just past his shoulder at the kitchen window. My eyes flew wide open, and I turned my head in time only to see the blur as a head ducked below the window. Through the closed window, I could hear the rustling of the vegetation as someone pushed through the bushes out there.

  “What the hell—” I disentangled myself from James and ran for the front door.

  My kitchen window, which is at the back of the cottage, is accessible only through the thicket of bushes that separates the Larsen estate from its neighbors. I pushed my way through the clipped ficus and bougainvillea, ignoring the thorns and branches that cut into my flesh. By the time I’d fought my way clear to the neighbor’s large expanse of lawn, there was no one in sight.

  “Damn!” I looked down at my thighs. Blood trickled down from numerous slashes. “Shit.”

  “Seychelle? Are you all right?” James’s voice sounded distant, muffled as it was by the thick hedge. Then Abaco started barking inside the wheelhouse.

  “Yeah,” I shouted. “I’ll be right there.” I trotted down the hedge to the wooden gate that joined the two properties, where on the rare occasions when both sets of neighbors were in town at the same time, they could socialize without having to exit their enclaves. It was standing open.

  James was in front of my cottage when I returned. “Look at you,” he said, the lines on his forehead clear above his arched brows.

  I glanced down at my pareu. The cloth had ripped, and a piece hung to the ground. The blood on my legs was starting to coagulate.

  “They’re just scratches. No big deal.”

  The dog was still barking. “Abaco,” I shouted. “Quiet!”

  “What was that all about?”

  “Didn’t you see him, or at least hear him?”

  James shook his head. “See what?”

  “There was a man at my kitchen window. I didn’t get a clear look at him. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye.” I didn’t tell James, but there had been something familiar about that fleeting glimpse.

  Had it been a prowler, someone else come to rob me, or someone who was spying on me? Suddenly, I remembered B.J. watching me from backstage at the Mai Kai.

  “I didn’t know what was going on when you just ran out of there like that.” James was looking at me as though I were something he had stepped in and he didn’t know how to politely wipe me off his shoe.

  Suddenly, I started laughing. “God, you must have thought I was nuts, huh?”

  He stepped back, staring, as I bent over laughing. He nodded.

  “Guess this whole thing kind of broke the romantic atmosphere, eh?” I tried to control myself, but the giggles just kept erupting every time I thought I was under control.

  “Seychelle, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Don’t worry.” I caught my breath and finally managed to pull off a straight face. “I’m fine. Whoever that was is long gone by now. Probably just a Peeping Tom,” I said, although I didn’t really think so. “I think we’d better call it a night, James.”

  “I agree,” he said, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in his shirt and tucking it tightly into his pants.

  “Before you go, though, I’ve just got to ask one more thing. It’s about this business with Ely and the sign-in sheet. I saw her go in the door and bend down to sign in, James. I could see there was a person sitting there behind the desk. Now you’re saying no one saw her last night? I was just wondering if you really know everything that goes on at Harbor House. I mean, isn’t it possible that those girls could be into something behind your back?”

  “There is nothing that goes on there that I don’t know about. I’m sure of that.”

  “Then how can you explain the fact that your story just doesn’t mesh with what I know I saw?”

  “I can’t explain it, but I don’t think I’ll have to, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Seychelle, look at yourself.” He spread his hands wide, smiling his little half smile. “Then look at me,” he said. “Who would you believe?” It was his turn to laugh out loud.

  The night felt very cold. The flesh on my arms was dotted with goose bumps.

  Then he was flashing me that megawatt smile. “I’m just kidding you. There is a logical explanation for the discrepancy, and I trust that Collazo will find it. He seems very determined.”

  “Yeah, Collazo. But I don’t want just any answer, James. I want the truth.”

  “How sweet. Seychelle . . .” He started to say something, then paused and looked around. He jingled the keys in his pocket. “I really don’t like leaving you alone if there is someone prowling around out here. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Are you sure you’ll be safe?”

  I wondered what he had been about to say. “I’ll be all right. I can take care of myself, and I have the dog. You go on home. Hope you don’t mind if I don’t walk you out to your car.”

  After a curt good night and a peck on the cheek—he was careful not to touch me anywhere else—James let himself out through the gate. I heard his Jag start up when I let Abaco out of the boat. After she peed on the lawn, I called her inside and locked the door to the cottage. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I slipped out of my sarong and looked down at the scratches on my legs. I needed a shower but I was afraid to stand alone and naked under that noisy stream of water. I switched off the bedside lamp, and in the dark, I sponged off my cuts, brushed my teeth, and climbed under the covers, pulling them up right under my chin.

  I couldn’t seem to get warm. The sheet was soon knotted around my legs, and the little voice in my head wouldn’t shut up and let me sleep. There was no question in my mind that I had seen that figure at the window. Someone was watching me.

  XII

  When Gorda motored her way out the mouth of the New River on Sunday morning, it was still dark. I was astounded to see how many boats had turned up and were just circling around on the Intrac
oastal off the Lauderdale Yacht Club. There is a camaraderie of sorts among the folks who make their living on the waterfront, but I’d never realized before how many there were, and how much they had all liked Neal. When Neal and I broke up, for over a month I went around calling him an asshole to anyone who would listen, and most folks had agreed with me. But he was a likable asshole.

  Nestor led the group with his boat, My Way. He blew once on his air horn and everyone fell in line behind him. I maneuvered Gorda up front, right behind the My Way. Jimmy St. Claire’s old Chris Craft, Rhumb Runner, followed me. Then there were a couple of water taxis, some sport boats I didn’t know, and Jack, the guy who had bought Neal’s old sailboat, the Wind Dancer. I was surprised to see Hightower back toward the end of the line on the Ruby Yacht. He had planned to spend a week in the boatyard so he must have had some kind of problem with his haul-out. He was so bad at handling the old girl, he rarely took her out, although I noticed he did have Perry along as a deckhand.

  As we went through the Seventeenth Street Bridge, I looked back at the Rhumb Runner and saw there were two people on the flybridge: Jimmy, and next to him stood B.J. Moana. My stomach did a couple of strange little flip-flops at the sight of him. He smiled and waved. It couldn’t have been him last night outside my window, could it? The very idea seemed foolish in the light of the dawning day.

  The Top Ten was still tied alongside the Coast Guard dock, and all heads turned to look at her as we passed. I shuffled my deck shoes across the nonskid when I saw Gorda's wheelhouse running lights reflected in the big yacht’s hull windows. I was filled with the same restless discomfort that had plagued me all night.

  As we filed out between the breakwaters, the clouds on the horizon were starting to glow around the edges. Overhead, Venus had yet to vanish, but otherwise, the night was nearly a memory. Along the beach to the south, where the Australian pines at John Lloyd Beach State Park obscured the hustle of the cargo port, the shallow turquoise water near shore appeared almost luminescent against the pale pink of the morning sky. A lone pelican flew a few feet above the smooth swells with a grace and precision no man-made machine could ever mimic.