A short pause. Larry turned in a circle. “Ned, you’re freaking me out here. She’s wearing a beige skirt.”
I leaned into the diner’s window to get a better view of them. “Will ya tell me her name?”
“You already know her name.”
I ducked back behind the napkin holder. “Have you told her yet that she’s the love interest in your—”
“Ned?”
“What?”
“Don’t mention that when I put her on the line.”
“Why would you put her on the line?”
“She wants to ask you something.”
I paused and slid down in the booth, afraid of being spotted. “What could she possibly—”
“Just talk to her, Ned.”
“All right, put her on.”
Traffic hummed in the phone as I peered over the window sill and watched Larry hand her his cell. Then a female voice came on the line. “Is this Agent Orange?”
“Hi, Miranda. This is Ned, er, Agent Orange.”
“Pleased to meet you. Larry has told me about how the two heroes are running from some mean people, but he won’t tell me if there’s a romance in his story. So… is there some kind of romance?”
“I’m still reading it myself, but it looks like there is a male character who cares deeply about a female character.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Then I’m sure I’ll like the movie. Will you need any extras during filming? I took an acting class once—”
“Actually, there’s no deal yet. And hiring extras is not my job. My job is to sell the rights to the production company and its producers.”
“Oh.” A silent confusion took over. “Well, I hope you sell it. Do you swing dance, Agent Orange?”
“Nope. I used to slow dance in the kitchen with my wife, but that’s stopped for now due to—”
“That’s so sweet. Here’s Larry again.” Traffic noise whined in the phone. Then Larry’s baritone voice. “Talk to me, boss.”
“I won’t know anything else for a few days, Larry, but I gotta ask you something.”
“Ask away, Ned. Just hurry. Our dance lessons start in three minutes and we don’t wanna be late.”
“How did you come up with a volleyball game with Dunkers versus Sprinklers?”
“I googled it.”
“Thought so.”
“Call me when you have numbers. I gotta go jitterbug now; then I meet with my therapist again tonight. He’s bringing out some heavy stuff, Ned.”
And just as I was about to ask for more details that I had no right to know, Larry hung up.
I remained in the booth and rejected six more manuscripts. When I looked up from the last one, I noticed that the lunch crowd had dwindled to just me and my waiter, a strapping youngster who could not have been over twenty-one. He came over with a dish towel in one hand and a fresh mason jar of sweet tea in the other, which I accepted with a thumbs up.
“You a professor?” he asked, noticing the papers stacked as high as the salt and pepper shakers.
“Literary agent. Those are manuscripts.”
He nodded and wiped off the other side of my booth, casting interested glances at the papers as he wiped. “Any of ‘em a good read?”
I drank from my mason jar and nodded in the affirmative. “One has potential.”
The kid kept staring at the papers and wiping invisible crumbs. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. The one in the blue folder.” I pushed the folder toward him.
The kid wiped the same spot three more times. “Yeah?”
I figured a youthful opinion could be valuable. “You like to read?”
“Yeah. Plus I’m a theatre major at Georgia College.”
He smelled of dish detergent and sweat, just like I did when I waited tables at Pizza Hut in Duluth in ‘82. Perhaps it was this reminiscence, this flashback to Angie walking into that Pizza Hut on a slow Tuesday night, and my refilling her glass after every sip just so I could talk to her, that summoned my pushiness. Or perhaps I was just feeling insecure. Truth was, I craved some younger feedback. Plus I had calls to make, so I handed him Larry’s first nine chapters. “Enjoy yourself, kid.”
“You really don’t mind? You’re my last table and—”
“Enjoy yourself.”
He hurried over to the bar and began reading. I sat there computing fifteen percent of various sums, going against my usual professionalism and letting my imagination once again run ahead of reality. Then I thought of the relational variables that could accompany a deal—or no deal, if I allowed Baptist ethics to stunt the opportunity.
I thought of four possibilities:
Good money but unhappy wife.
Good money but no wife.
Content wife but no money.
Wife living with me in a cardboard box under 1-85, next to Victor, who eats all our chicken wings.
Thirty minutes later the kid was back beside me. “This is pretty wacked, man,” he said, handing me the stack of paper and shaking his head. “But it’s interesting.”
“In some circles it’s also controversial. So much so that my wife is upset with me.”
“Too bad.” He stood there awkwardly for a moment before flipping the dish towel over his shoulder. He went back behind the bar about the time I left my sixth phone message of the day on Angie’s cell phone.
Alone in the booth with my conscience, I was convinced that whenever Angie and I next spoke, I would persuade her to see things my way.
Out of nowhere my young waiter returned, this time in street clothes. And this time he leaned down to within a foot of me and lowered his voice. “Sir, do ya mind if I read some more? I start school next week, so I won’t be serving you in here again.”
I handed the kid chapters ten and eleven, and he went and sat at the bar to read.
10
DJ NED SAW LAND over the propellors. The coastline appeared washed and rinsed, though neither man could see enough detail to determine whether Hurricane Gretchen had air-kissed Cocoa Beach, or pummeled it.
In a steady descent toward the Florida coast, Ned grabbed his radio and morphed into a poser. “Request permission to land with Reverend Hoocher from the Caribbean. He’s exhausted from pursuing those two rebels and leading all-night revivals.”
An awkward pause lingered from Air Traffic Control. “Urn, okay. Permission granted. But tell the Reverend that he owes Marvin half of any monies collected from passing the plate.”
Lanny pulled out his wallet, thumbed the four twenties inside, and shook his head no. Not this week, Marvin.
Ned parked his plane at the far end of the airport. In the nearly empty Melbourne terminal he and Lanny ran past three more WANTED posters of themselves, dodging two flight attendants in the process and hurrying out to Ned’s Mercedes.
“That one attendant stared at us like we’re some kind of exhibit,” Lanny said as he strapped on his seatbelt.
“That’s because we’re not great posers yet,” Ned replied. “Maybe we should smile more… or shave our heads.”
He dropped his keys as he tried to insert one into the ignition. His next attempt was successful, and he started the car and drove them along the coastal highway, swerving around debris and downed limbs.
Lanny lowered his window and allowed the wind to buffet his face. “I’d like to revisit the marina in Cocoa Beach,” he said to his driver. “I have a feeling that Miranda is close by, looking for me.”
Ned raised his voice above the engine noise. “I have a feeling that there is a giant purgatory with three billion people in line to use the restrooms. And your Miranda is one of them, and so are my golf buddies.”
“Please?”
Ned thought about this request for the next mile. “You’re not afraid of getting captured?”
Lanny shut his eyes and stuck his head out the window like a dog craving relief. “I am no longer afraid of anyone!” he shouted to the wind.
Ned wondered if his friend was losing his mind, but
he agreed to his request. Five minutes later Ned parked among the oyster shells at Bluewater Marina. Both he and Lanny opened their doors and sniffed foul air. The receding waters had left a stench upon the coast—a mix of diesel fuel and tidal marsh.
Lanny got out, shut his door, and hurried across the parking lot to the edge of the marsh. What he saw from ground level was much worse than from the air.
As if all vessels had tried to crowd into the same spot at once, eight boats—including both versions of the I’m So Worthy—had pulled from their slips and plowed nose-to-nose into one another. Smoke eased from the engine compartment of the Formal on Sundays.
The main dock was still standing, but just barely. Twisted in some sections and folded like an accordion in others, it proved a challenge to negotiate. Lanny stepped carefully from board to board, and he winced each time one groaned louder than expected. Ahead of him, with no such worries, a crab crawled up between the boards.
“Checkin’ out the damage, eh?” Lanny said to the critter. “Or are you missing someone, too?” He watched it for a moment before nudging it into the water with his shoe.
Lanny continued on toward the boats, board by board. When he reached the point on the dock where he could see the first dozen slips, he was stunned to see a boat docked in the fifth.
The Miranda! he thought to himself.
Lanny recognized its shape and took off running. “Ned!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Ned, hurry up. I see the boat.”
DJ Ned was only a few feet onto the dock, still negotiating the most heavily damaged section. His extra weight proved a strain for the support posts, and the resulting ripples sloshed against the Humbleness, whose deck was covered in seaweed and driftwood.
Onto solid dock now, Ned jogged, clomp clomp in his size-twelve Adidas, down to where Lanny stood pointing at the rear of a three-level cabin cruiser.
The Saniti sat undamaged in the fifth slip, right next to the Sanitized 2.
Ned pulled up beside Lanny and stared at the name—Saniti, as if whoever was changing the moniker got interrupted by the storm and had no time to paint the z, e, and d. Or had someone stolen the boat before some zealot could finish the alteration? Or—and Lanny savored this thought—had Miranda recently docked the boat herself? Perhaps this very afternoon.
“I’m going aboard,” said Lanny, talking to no one in particular. He stepped down onto the boat without inviting Ned.
“I’ll, um… I’ll just wait right here,” Ned replied.
Lanny stood on the deck of the Saniti and turned slowly, observing details, searching for clues. After a full minute of tightlipped deliberation, he pointed to the Sanitized 2 in the next slip.
“See that, Ned?”
Ned turned and looked. “All the seaweed hanging off the side?”
Lanny turned and pointed the other way. “Now look at the Humbleness.”
Ned turned and stared. “She’s covered in seaweed, too.”
“Exactly. But this boat I’m standing on has no seaweed. Which means—”
“It wasn’t docked here for the hurricane. It just arrived also.”
Lanny descended into the cabin. He searched the stateroom, noting the familiar nautical pillows that Miranda’s mother had cross-stitched with blue anchors. He checked the tiny bathroom and saw a bottle of Pantene—Miranda’s favorite shampoo. He looked in the closet and saw nothing but a couple of T-shirts belonging to her father. No note anywhere. No sign of anyone. Yet the cabin had been left unlocked, as if whoever docked the boat had departed in a hurry.
Lanny emerged from the cabin and frowned into the sunset. The sky was clear in the way skies are on the day after a hurricane, as if Gretchen had sucked all the impurities from the air as she barreled north into Georgia and the Carolinas. Lanny’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “Nothing. No sign of her.”
Ned was a silhouette above him. “I’m really sorry, man. But look what I found.”
Lanny squinted up at Ned, who stood perspiring above him on the dock, holding a dead gull by the wings. “Nice bird, Ned.”
“While you were below deck I found it on board the Choir Girl.” Ned held the wings wide so that the gull’s head flopped to the side. “Think this is some kind of symbol—a dead bird on the Choir Girl?”
“It symbolizes that you should wash your hands before dinner.”
After tossing the gull into the water, Ned pulled at his sweat-soaked shirt and noted with a frown how many feathers clung to its side. “Any clean shirts in there?” he asked, pointing at the cabin door.
Lanny ducked back into the cabin. In seconds he emerged back on deck and flung a balled T-shirt at Ned. “Put that on.”
Ned pulled off his wet polo and slipped on the gray T-shirt, screen-printed with Pelican’s Harbor Retirement Home’s 2005 Shuffleboard Champion.
“It’s a bit tight,” Ned complained.
Lanny paid him no attention. He climbed back onto the dock and motioned for Ned to follow him. “Seen anyone lurking?”
Ned hurried to catch up. “This whole marina is empty except for us.”
“That’s just plain weird.”
“We didn’t see a soul on the road from the airport, and no one here either. You’d think we’d have seen somebody”
Lanny glanced left and right as he walked toward land. “Think all the zealots evacuated?”
“Air Traffic Control didn’t,” Ned replied. “That guy was one-hundred percent zealot. A purebred. Well, a gullible purebred.”
They left the dock and walked across the oyster shells to Ned’s car. Lanny paused at the front wheel and ran a finger over a small crack in the windshield. “Good luck getting insurance to cover this.”
Ned climbed back into his yellow convertible, nodding as if he’d noticed the crack earlier. “If it comes down to a choice between hurricane damage or religious damage, I’ll risk the hurricane every time.”
“Same here.” Lanny opened the passenger door and sat on a CD casing, which snapped under his butt. He tossed it into the backseat without apology. “Make sure you drive with extreme caution. Zealots could appear anywhere, anytime.”
Ned stuck his key in the ignition. “I know a way we can hide. We can go to my station.”
“The radio station? But they’ll have already staked out the place.”
The Mercedes engine roared to life. “I’ll announce that I’m doing my talk show from Jacksonville. I’ve broadcast from there many times.”
Skeptical of this plan, Lanny didn’t even offer a nod. The world comes to an end, and I get paired with Mr. Optimist.
Along the coastal highway, the blacktop was covered in sand and limbs. To the sides of the road sat beach houses in various states of destruction. Roofs missing. Windows blown out. A fishing boat impaled in someone’s living room. And the shingles… Roof shingles lay everywhere, mixed with palm fronds, Mother Nature’s tossed salad.
At Lanny’s insistence, Ned drove him back to Pelican’s Harbor Retirement Homes. They found only the beige Buick in the driveway, the black leather travel bag blown across the porch, wet and tipped onto its side. Frustrated, Lanny placed the bag back at the doorstep and left a new note for Miranda.
8/20 7:50 p.m.
Just back from the marina to Look for you. Will resume search in earnest tomorrow.
Lanny
Then he went over to the Buick and stuck a shiny penny in the tread of the passenger-side back tire. When he returned here again, he wanted to know if the car had moved.
Ned and Lanny drove swiftly on Highway 520, heading for Orlando. It was now 8:00 p.m., and the road was empty for the next several miles.
“Don’t forget about my truck,” Lanny said as a reminder.
At the next exit, Ned pulled into the convenience store to let Lanny pick up his Xterra. They both feared being spotted by hidden cameras, and each left skidmarks in his departure.
Lanny followed Ned out onto Highway 528, and proved himself a worthy tailgater. Soon he saw headlights in th
e distance, a long stream of headlights from a long stream of vehicles, headed right for them.
“There they are,” Lanny said to himself. He honked to Ned and pointed. “I knew it. A whole platoon of ‘em. Back to kidnap us and reclaim Florida for themselves.”
Ned veered off the highway, squealing tires as he sped up the next exit ramp, Lanny right on his bumper.
11
THE FIRST THING that DJ Ned and Lanny saw upon arriving at Fence-Straddler AM was a handmade sign on the door:
No one found. Fled premises.
At first this produced in them great alarm, but they figured the smart move was to leave the sign for all to see—and to barricade themselves inside the station. To accomplish this feat, Lanny employed his construction skills and his Craftsman cordless drill. With great efficiency he installed two-inch wood screws through plywood and into the door frames. Then he crisscrossed two-by-fours behind the plywood and affixed them with even longer screws. Three inchers. Even a few fours. Ah, safer now.
Above him on the second floor, Ned simply locked the windows. He was not much for manual labor.
Secured inside, the men had food, drink, and access to the airwaves. They had been away from the mainland for three days, however, and had no idea what had occurred in the States since that balmy Bahama night when Rose promised Frozen Jack she’d never use a swear word.
The next morning Ned came out of the shower room wearing a Fence-Straddler AM T-shirt and blue jeans. Barefoot but clean, he stepped inside the broadcast booth and began pressing buttons and testing the sound equipment. “Ever been on the air, Lann-o?” he asked.
Lanny sat against the wall, a turkey-on-wheat in one hand and an IBC root beer in the other. “Nah, never had the chance.”
Ned lifted his mic high over the Plexiglass to where Lanny could see it. “Wanna appeal to the country—or what remains of the country—about Miranda?”
Lanny let out a carbonation burp and said, “Absolutely.” He knew he’d sound emotional in his pleas.
First, however, he had to sit through Ned’s opening monologue.
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