by Amie Denman
Things being out of proportion—the root of most of my disasters.
It was gratifying to note, in the split second before I fell off the boat, that two positive things happened. Old Lady Clark really did try to reach out and grab me, but missed. And every one of those damn ducks made it into the river with me. My floundering and flapping in the water also gave them a little turbulence to speed them on their way into the plastic racecourse. It was probably one of the fastest starts in the history of the duck race.
Those facts were some consolation as I tried to keep my duck head above water and simultaneously wondered if the glue Harry used on my feathers was waterproof. Even with wet feathers blocking half my vision, I saw a shiny green hull edge closer on my left and a hand reach out for me. I had a moment of déjà vu looking at Cerberus on the swim platform of Greenback.
As I considered taking the offered hand, a yellow hull with black numbers edged closer on my right.
“Here, Jazz, I’ll pull you up,” Kurt said.
“I’ve got her,” Cerberus protested.
I treaded water for a second and tried to think. I didn’t want to alienate Cerberus since I’d signed up to be his boat ho and needed to get to the bottom of the missing money. Going to the bottom of the river in my heavy costume was also on my list of things to worry about. In a perfect world, Kurt would have been my only rescuer. I’d get in a boat with him any time. But the Virgin Mary already possessed the first mate’s chair on that particular boat. I saw her disgusted look through a haze of river water and feathers. I needed to choose, and fast.
Apparently the Fates decided they’d screwed with me enough for one day and sent me a pirate in a rowboat. Sherman’s one eye and gleaming bald head had never looked so good. He and Marlena hoisted me over the side of the small boat, and she quickly threw a blanket over me.
“Christ, Jazz,” she whispered. “You sure do know how to put on a show. They’ll be talking about pulling a naked duck out of the river for years.”
Naked? From my huddled position under Marlena’s merciful blanket, I saw an armada of yellow feathers floating on the top of the water. As Sherman rowed us back to shore, I watched them find a current and follow the rubber ducks into the race chute.
Chapter Fourteen
I awoke the next morning resolved to do two things. Go to work at the marina and bravely face the fact that the whole town of Bluegill had seen my exposed tail feathers, and stop by the garage where the tow truck had taken my car nearly a week ago. I either had to have it fixed or put it out to pasture for its final rest. Throwing any money at that tin can was like polishing a turd. Still, I didn’t exactly have the cash for a new car and resurrecting the beast might be the cheapest way to go. Either way, I had to face it.
After all I had gone through, Harry must have felt sorry for me. He had the whole day off and kindly offered to chauffeur me to work and even did my makeup for me. Fake eyelashes were a bit much for working at the marina, but there was a festival in town. And I hated to turn down talent like his. He had a gift. Men who dress like women in their leisure time have to work extra hard at it. To his credit, he made polite small talk as I settled back onto his smooth leather seats on the way to the garage.
The mechanic looked me over curiously when I pulled in with Harry. Probably wondering why I had such a shitty car when my man friend had that fabulous black truck. If he only knew. He led us to the graveled lot out back where they put the cars waiting for visits from loved ones. Mine was looking particularly abandoned.
The side window had given up the ghost for good and slid halfway down at a crooked angle. If I’d had any affection at all for my ex-father-in-law’s cast-off car, I might have thought it looked like a lopsided smile. In the stark sunshine of a Saturday morning, it just looked like abject failure. I wondered if anyone would come visit me when I got put out to pasture with a lopsided expression on my face.
“We looked ’er over real good,” the mechanic began as he looked alternately at Harry and my breasts. He must have decided that they were the ones worth talking to. “It’s gonna be pretty expensive to fix.”
“How much?” Harry asked.
“Depends on what we find when we git ’er apart, but could be upward of fifteen hunert.” The mechanic looked away from Harry and made this final proclamation to my breasts alone. They were no more delighted than the rest of me to hear the news.
Neither Harry nor I said anything. We waited for option B.
“Course you could just scrap her out. Might gitcha five hunert or so.”
Harry’s look confirmed my own opinion. Five hundred bucks in hand was more than I had walked away from my divorce with. I considered kicking the crap out of the side panel of the car as a final gesture of farewell to my disappointing marriage, but I practiced restraint. That car was one of the last symbols of my old life. No point kicking it when it was down. I’d moved on. And I’d be better off saving my strength for my summer project: staying alive while outwitting the bad guys and handling my hottie fireman addiction.
I did walk over to get a closer last look at the hunk of metal fatigue. I glanced into the backseat. No wave of happy Kurt memories washed over me, but something more tangible stood out. Lying on the floor was a piece of dark material. I peered through the dirty side window and realized it was my ticket to a little personal gratification. Kurt had probably given his jacket up for lost, so when I mustered up the courage to deliver it personally he’d have to be happy to see at least one of us. Hopefully, me.
I’d meet up with Kurt on my own terms this time. No water, no disasters, no partial nudity. Just a friendly visit to return a jacket. I’d already driven by his house about fifty times after some elementary sleuthing with a phone book. It was conveniently located right in the marina-fire station-Catholic school triangle, and that jacket was my admission ticket.
With the festival and the holiday weekend, the marina was summer busy with lots of boats arriving, lots of phone calls about dock space and lots of people coming into the store to get marine supplies like ropes, new bumpers, electronics and classy navy deck shoes. I was sporting a new pair of deck shoes myself, figuring I ought to look the part. I was also still missing a shoe from the infamous floundering incident on the swim platform of Greenback. Although I had fostered some hope of the lost shoe floating up from the dark recesses of the marina, Marlena made me see the light and gave me wholesale price on a sleek new pair of size sevens.
Busyness breeds itchiness when there’s something else you feel like doing. Greenback, as promised, was snuggled up against one of our outer docks. No sign of Cerberus yet, but it wasn’t quite lunchtime and he’d probably had a late night at the festival. My night had involved slinking home under cover of darkness and hiding in my bedroom with the lights out. I’d heard Harry come in sometime after midnight, but he didn’t venture upstairs.
My itchiness increased tenfold every time I glanced out the store window to see if there was any action on the fireboat. While it would be convenient if Kurt happened to swing those sweet buns down the dock in my general direction in his capacity as hottie fireman, I also had to consider my strategy. I wanted him to be at home today because I was armed and dangerous. I had his jacket and a burning desire. Escalation was the plan for the day. As soon as it was a decent time to announce to Marlena that I was taking my lunch break, I’d make a break for Kurt’s house.
“You’re probably gonna hurt your neck watching out that window all day,” Marlena observed.
I gave her a guilty grin. Caught red-handed. What could I say?
“Hoping to see Mr. Greenback or sexy fireboy?”
“Both. Or neither,” I answered, shaking my head. “Can’t decide.”
“You got man problems.”
“Nope. I’d have to have a man to have man problems.”
Marlena rummaged through the junk drawer under the counter. I couldn’t tell if she was letting my man problems go or if she was just really intent on getting past the ball
s of string, old phonebooks, a rubber doorstop, a squashed box of bandages, notepads, pencils with no erasers and even a lonely condom that made up its contents.
“You planning to take Cerberus up on his offer?” she asked as she triumphantly extracted a dried-up tube of superglue from under an old calendar.
No use pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about. He had told me himself that he got my name from her. She knew about his boat show just as she certainly knew what a boat ho was. I wouldn’t doubt that she might have been one in her younger days. Maybe that’s how she met one-eyed Sherman. Someday I’d have to ask her. Someday when I was feeling brave and not so itchy.
“Thinking about it.”
Marlena carefully drew a bead of superglue on one of her fake fingernails and stuck it back where it belonged. “That’s better,” she said. “Now, about being a boat ho, you can’t argue with the money. Cerberus doesn’t skimp on the show and it tends to bring in some big spenders.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. What are they buying with all that money?”
“That’s where ya gotta be smart.” Marlena tapped her head with her newly glued electric yellow fingernails for emphasis. Too bad she hadn’t tried to match the hair and nails today. She might have made an awesome blonde. “Ya gotta show ’em enough to make it interesting without having to seal the deal.”
“Sounds like a fine line,” I said. This was making me more nervous than ever. If Marlena was telling me to be careful, I was in real trouble
“You ever play with fire? It’s like that. You wanna have fun and pour a little heat, but not get burned.”
Boy, did I know about heat. I was consumed by Kurt flames at the moment and anxious to take my pseudo-lunch break.
“So, do you think I should do the show for Cerberus next weekend? I feel like it might be kind of disloyal to you and Sherman.” This could also be a convenient excuse to get me out of it. “He is competition, after all.”
“Shit, it’s nice of you to think of us like that, but Cerberus isn’t our competition. He’s clear across the lake and we don’t do boat sales or shows like he does. If he was our competition, d’ya think we’d be happy to dock him here on the weekends?”
I glanced across the river at the abandoned boat factory.
“What do you think he plans to do with the old factory?”
Marlena looked out the window.
“Nothing probably. He inherited it and probably doesn’t give two craps about it. Probably tearin’ it down ’cause it’s too old to fix up.”
“I thought it was tied up with a problem with a will.”
“That problem went away, I guess.”
“It would make a good place for a marina.” Suddenly, I thought I understood why Cerberus was always hanging around in Marlena’s marina.
“Nope. It’s landlocked by the park. There’s nothing he can do with it ’cept clean it up and sit on it. Maybe try to sell it.”
So much for that theory.
“One of these days I’ll tell you some of the dirt I’ve heard about Cerberus. It’s all speculation and probably only half-true, but I’ll fill you in before next weekend. Just in case you’re gonna take the boat ho job. I imagine it’s gotta be pretty tempting unless you’re looking forward to walking and hitching rides the rest of your life.”
That sounded like a ringing endorsement for taking the job.
“Good thing it’s lunchtime for you.” Marlena handed me Kurt’s jacket, which I had slung over the back of the chair behind the counter. “And good thing sexy fireboy lives close enough you can walk over there for your three-hour lunch break.”
I raised an eyebrow at the unusual time frame.
“I’d give you the rest of the day, but there’s this damn festival and I’ve got a dinner date. It’s Sherman’s birthday. He’s finally officially old enough to collect social security, the old fart.”
It appeared I was being shipped out on a treasure hunt and being told to take my time.
Chapter Fifteen
Kurt’s house was the last kind of house you’d think a young bachelor adrenaline hound would live in. A Victorian on a quiet street close to the fire station, the house, despite showing some age here and there, still had the frilly details. Gingerbread trim on the front porch, a wrought-iron fence with a little gate and stained glass down both sides of the door.
A gray pickup was half parked in the garage off to one side, clearly too large for what had originally been a carriage house. The door couldn’t close with it inside, and the end stuck out a few feet like a giant bending down to peep into Hansel and Gretel’s cottage. It also meant hottie fireman was probably home. He lived close enough to walk to work, but he couldn’t work all the time, could he?
I clutched my admission ticket in my hand as I boldly strode down the front sidewalk, through the fancy iron gate and onto the front porch. I rang the doorbell like a woman on a mission. Fully clothed, dry and having a good hair day, I’d suffered through no embarrassing incidents or accidents in over twelve hours. Such conditions inspired confidence. I rang the doorbell again to show that I meant business.
I waited the customary thirty seconds before ringing the doorbell for the third time and then considered that maybe it didn’t work. It was, after all, an old house. Although the paint cans on the porch and a ladder in the side yard implied that Kurt was probably working on the house, it was possible that he hadn’t fixed the doorbell yet. I knocked. Nothing. I knocked a little harder, and the door swung open by itself.
Now I had a moral dilemma. Did I know this guy well enough to enter his house uninvited? Did lots of kissing, usually in or near vehicles, qualify as friendship? I’d be doing him a kind service by stepping in to make sure he was all right and checking that everything was secure. You never knew who might come along. He could have been robbed. He could be unconscious. He could be lonely and waiting for me. Stark naked. I stepped across the threshold.
“Kurt?” I called, hoping for a reply so that I wouldn’t have to go snooping through his house and find out all his secrets before stumbling across him naked and horny in bed.
“Kurt?” Once more, for good measure and to say I tried. I paused just inside the front door and listened. Water running. Upstairs. He was in the shower.
I took a peek around. Seeing his house reminded me how little I knew about him. Marlena had supplied a few details, and I knew where he worked and went to church. I did not know what he liked to eat or what he did when he wasn’t out fighting fires. It seemed he was always working, but maybe he thought the same thing of me. He knew where I lived and with whom, but he’d never been in my house either. Maybe he wondered what I liked to eat. Well, he knew about the ice cream already.
From the entrance a staircase led to the second floor. The steps had an ancient flowered runner down the center. A small table by the front door had a cell phone and a set of keys on it. Some security freak this guy was. When you were a tough firefighter and knew pretty much everyone in town, you could take showers with the doors unlocked and not give it a second thought.
The hardwood flooring in the foyer was in need of serious refinishing, but it was obvious that Kurt or somebody was working on it. Though furnished with only a card table and one folding chair, the dining room had gleaming, recently refinished floors. A fast-food bag sat on the table and an empty beer can lay on its side under the chair. Kurt apparently didn’t have much company for dinner. Good to know.
The living room also gave me a few clues. The corner fireplace contained remnants of burned wood, and I pictured myself snuggled up in front of it with Kurt. Two framed pictures sat on the mantle. I had to look. One was of Kurt standing with three men who looked like him, but a little less devilish and sexy. All tall, dark hair. His brothers, I assumed. Another picture was of an older couple in classic fiftieth anniversary pose, taken by a professional photographer. Respectable people, nice suit on the man who had Kurt’s eyes, classy lavender jacket dress on the lady. Parents, o
f course. What a sweet guy to have pictures of his family on the mantle. No Virgin Mary pictures. That was a good sign.
Under the somewhat squashed looking loveseat lay an old braided rug that had hand-me-down written all over it. This morning’s newspaper was on the scarred coffee table along with an empty bag of doughnuts and a coffee cup with only a swallow left in the bottom. What an awesome match for me, I thought. He likes doughnuts and coffee on Saturday morning.
A TV sat on the floor in the corner of the room like an afterthought. I would have put it on a table or something, but guys don’t care about aesthetics when they’re watching TV. With me around, I figured Kurt wouldn’t have time for TV. He’d be stoking the fire.
Just as I was about to head into the kitchen and maybe peek through the hall closet, the water pipes clunked then fell silent and I heard rustling upstairs. I grabbed Kurt’s jacket and ducked back outside to ring the doorbell. He was out of the shower now, so if the bell worked, he’d hear it.
Not ten seconds after my finger touched that button did I have a half-naked, very damp six-foot tall, handsome man standing in front of me. Firefighter conditioning—Kurt was used to running when he heard a bell. My life would be bliss if I could press a button and get the same thing every time. Like hunk on demand, a hunk vending machine, a hunk automated service. This particular hunk made my knees weak and my internal fires start blazing. He looked flustered and not at all displeased to find me standing on his front porch. I doubt that his knees got weak very often, but I’d like to think he was having a more useful physical reaction.
