it as being ‘as tough as your toughest customer.’ Say it’s the ‘most popular gun in American crime.’ No lie, they actually say that.”
The phone rang again.
“I know they love it down in Medellin.”
Melanie looked at Ordell as he stopped the tape and they stared at each other a few moments before she got up and went over to the phone. She said hello, put the phone down, and said, “It’s for you.”
Ordell was telling Louis how he’d bought all kinds of military shit a man had picked up after the war in Panama and brought over to the Keys in his boat. Ordell saying it was where he got the M-60 machine guns he’s told Louis about. Saying it was like a garage sale with hand grenades and rockets and shit.
“It’s a woman,” Melanie said.
That shut him up. Ordell went over to the phone.
She said to Louis, “Can I get you anything?”
He raised his empty glass.
She said, “It’s not too early?”
“I’m not working,” Louis said.
“So you went shopping.” She felt the lapel of his jacket between her fingers. Part rayon and something else. “Who picked this out, Ordell?”
“We don’t have the same taste,” Louis said.
“In clothes.”
“Yeah, in clothes.”
She went into the kitchen with his glass. Ordell, a few feet away, was saying into the phone, “They might be watching your place. Lemme think a minute. . . . Yeah, go to the public beach. . . . The one over the Blue Heron bridge. Walk up toward Howard Johnson and I’ll see you around there. . . . Right now if you want. Get in your car.” He hung up and looked across the counter at Melanie.
“I have to go out for a while. Will you be nice to my friend? Try not to assault him? Tear his clothes off? They brand new.”
“I wouldn’t mind sitting out on the balcony,” Louis said. “I could use some sun.”
Melanie said, “You aren’t kidding.”
“You’re nice and brown.”
She said, “You want to see my tan lines?” and sat up straight on the sofa with her back arched, hooked the bra top with her thumbs, and pushed it down from her breasts.
“You’re tan, all right,” Louis said. “You don’t ever let them out in the sun, huh?”
“I used to. I think they look better natural, though, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” They were big ones. He kept staring at them, seeing little blue veins like rivers on a map. When he raised his glass to take a sip he found there was only ice left.
Melanie said, “Let me fix you up.”
Looking him right in the face rather than at the glass. When she did take it from his hand and went to the kitchen, Louis got up and walked out on the balcony.
The building was kind of tacky, faded light-green paint peeling from the concrete, but had all the view you needed of the Atlantic Ocean, right there out the back door, and a white sandy beach that went clear up to Jacksonville. Tiny people down there. Not too many till he looked toward the public beach, to the left, and saw rows of blue wind shelters, or whatever they were called, more people out of them than in. It was a perfect kind of day, enough wind to raise the surf and blow in a cloud every once in a while to relieve the sun heat. Melanie, next to him now at the concrete rail, said, “Keep watching over that way. You’ll see Ordell walking out to the beach.”
“He’s meeting a woman?”
“That’s what he said.”
“You don’t mind?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I mean if you’re living with him.”
“He doesn’t live here, he stops in. You know Ordell, he does whatever he wants.”
It seemed Melanie did too, still exposing herself handing him the fresh drink.
“You don’t want to burn those babies.”
“I’ll keep my back to the sun,” Melanie said. “Why don’t you stretch out on the lounge, take your shirt off. Your pants too, if you want.”
She held the drink while he got out of the shirt, folded it, laid it on a low metal table, and sat down in the lounge. Melanie saying, “Boy, you really need sun. Where’ve you been?”
“In jail. Two months shy of four years.”
It seemed to brighten her eyes, talking to a convict.
“Really? He didn’t tell me that. What did you do?”
“I robbed a bank.”
That got her moving, throwing her head to the side to get her blond hair out of her face. She had an awful lot of hair. She said, “I’ve thought about you a lot, wondering what you’ve been doing. . . .”
“We only met that one time. Thirteen years ago?”
“Almost fourteen. I know, and when I saw you come in I couldn’t believe it. I recognized you right away.” She glanced over her shoulder
toward the public beach.
He said to her, “What’ve you been up to?”
Now she was looking at him again, the sun hitting him from directly above her head. He had to squint.
“I lie in the sun.”
“That’s all?”
“I read.”
“You get bored?”
“A lot. You want to fuck?”
Louis said, “Sure,” and put his drink on the floor. She was the kind who liked to be on top. She would moan and say Oh God throwing her head back and rubbing her hands in the hair on his chest like it was a washboard, back and forth, or a surface she was scrubbing clean. She had long red nails that scratched him but felt good too. He wanted to get on top and do it right, but the sun got brighter against his closed eyes, red-hot, and it was over before he could get around to it. She hopped off and got into her cutoffs, not wearing any underwear. Louis pulled his pants up, got his drink off the floor, and estimated maybe five minutes had passed.
Melanie said, “Whew, I feel a lot better. How about you?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah, that hit the spot.”
“We can relax now,” she said, “and get caught up.
Ordell said to Jackie, “I can’t hear what you’re saying. Come up here and talk to me.”
She was facing away from him, standing on wet sand, and letting the surf wash up over her bare feet, the wind blowing her hair. Irritating, this woman could bug you; but still fine to look at this morning in her T-shirt, her long brown legs coming out of those white shorts.
She said over her shoulder at him, “Take your shoes off.”
“What do I do with them?” Four-hundreddollar oxblood-colored alligator loafers with tassels. “I put my shoes down, somebody gonna walk off with them.” He had sand inside his shoes and should’ve known better than to say meet him here. Every time he walked out on the beach he got sand in his shoes. Ordell would never go barefoot, though, like Melanie and Sheronda. He didn’t have a reason other than something in his head telling him to keep his shoes on except when he went to bed. He didn’t swim, never went in the water. . . . He said, “Girl, you want to be drug over by the hair?”
Look at her. Wasn’t mad, wasn’t nervous being here. Coming over to him now, hair blowing in her face. Bathers walked by looking at the ground for seashells.
“You think anybody followed you?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie said, “I don’t do this too often.”
Smelling of some kind of powder. Clean and healthy.
“You act like it, you cool.”
