FOUR
It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!
Razzles on the River
South Miami Beach, Florida, 11 P.M.
Once again Kathy Marie Harmon glanced up and into Panic’s alluring, azure eyes… once again. They were the eyes of dreamy miracle within a house of crystal and aqua- blue mirrors-where a girl could get lost and giddy and not care if her head were spinning; they were the eyes of cool, blue ocean swells into which she could so easily splash. He spoke with such assurance and confidence, yet without the arrogance of other men Kathy had met in and around the bar scene in South Miami’s Biscayne Bay area.
Kathy had come to Razzles in the company of two girlfriends, all of them looking for Mr. Right, Mr. Good, Mr. Solid. Usually, they wound up with Mr. Jell-O, a spineless creature with one thing on its mind-satisfying horny urges through unadulterated self-gratification. And most were in fact engaged in some base form of “adulterating” self- gratification, many turning out to be married.
Most of the guys hanging out at bars like this just wanted someone to stick it to, to feel warm flesh against their privates, to “get inside” a woman.
She hadn’t wanted to come out tonight. She was going to sit at home, do her hair, watch an old movie, maybe pop some corn, curl up with a Vincent Courtney or a Geoffrey Caine horror novel and read her brains out, maybe. But the tug and pull of her two girlfriends was too strong. Melissa and Cherylene could not be denied. They, like Kathy herself, believed in rainbows and lotteries and love and romance, all under a full moon, and tonight there hung at least a crescent moon, aglow in the sultry Miami night, rocking like a stellar cradle over the City of Dreams, Oz South.
Perhaps it’d been the moon that had tipped the scales to bring her here tonight. Whatever it was, sitting across from Patrick Allain, she was eternally grateful, while her two best friends had turned a resonant shade of chartreuse that shone through the purple-blue Art Deco lights of the evening world of Key Biscayne.
The live band did their best imitation of Jimmy Buffet, Dylan and Bob Marley tunes all evening long while she and Patrick sipped pina coladas and munched on curly cheese Cajun fries below the moon out on the ocean deck, where beautiful Biscayne Bay met the incoming swells of the Atlantic on picture-postcard Key Biscayne. Over one shoulder blinked the moon, over the other the colored lights of the Sheraton Royal Biscayne. Stretched before them were the milky white sands of Sonista Beach on one side, Harbor Drive and the Harbor Drive Wharf on the other. The night was enchanted lit, the ocean breeze like a lover’s caress, and Kathy’s dreams had all come alive. Patrick had arrived by boat-his boat, an incredible seventy-footer, all wood and sail and lovely, and all his, bought and paid for. He must be rich beyond rich, Kathy surmised. Maybe Patrick was the one. Who knew? Life was a gamble, an exquisite dice game, and love and heartache formed the soft felt playing field of white lines, numbers, colors, rules and order. If you remained on the rail, outside the borders, afraid to toss the dice, nothing happened, all was nil… If she hadn’t shown up here tonight, if Cherylene and Melissa had come here without her, it might have been one of them sitting now across from Patrick instead of her-Melissa most likely, since she was so much prettier than Cherylene-and if so, it’d be Melissa’s eyes all dreamy and swimming with handsome Patrick’s at this moment… But it was as if Patrick had come on the wind of fate for her alone, as if she had heard the enchanted, holy wind call her name so that she might meet the one eternal lover for whom she had longed her entire life.
He sat across from her now.
She didn’t stop to analyze her thoughts or doubts, whether Patrick would simply have found Melissa instead had she come to Razzles without Kathy, nor what this said about him. There was no time for analyzing. There’d be more than enough time for going over the details tomorrow when Cherylene and Melissa came sniffing around to find out what happened.
So, thanks to lovely, intricate destiny, chance, fortune, circumstance, karma, kismet-all stepping in at once to play Cupids-this time it was Kathy Harmon’s turn to shine instead of Melissa’s or Cherylene’s. Yes, this time it was her time, her fortune, and Patric was the treasure of a lifetime, meant only for her, fated. And what a treasure, looking as if he’d stepped off the cover of a romance novel or magazine cover. And the way he’d picked her out from among her friends, just as if he’d come directly here from some exotic port of call for her and her alone; just as if he had sailed across the Atlantic to find her, and with that dreamy accent-British maybe, or perhaps Australian- maybe she wasn’t far wrong. He obviously had money, and didn’t mind spending it, either. And he hadn’t gotten the least annoyed when she’d been unable to finish her veal parmigiana dinner across the street at the Sheraton, where he had insisted on taking her.
“ We’ve wasted so much time, Kathleen,” he suddenly said. No one ever called her Kathleen. “I have been to many places, I have done many things and I have loved many women, but tonight, it is as if my life has been one long search.”
“ Search?” she squeaked.
“ A search for you, of course… and it has taken so awfully long.”
Sure it sounded like a line, but by now she didn’t care. “A search for me?”
“ I’ve dreamed dreams about you.”
“ That’s just ridiculous. How could you? You don’t- didn’t even know me until tonight.”
“ No, it is true. Dreams are like mirrors held up to the soul, and you are the one in my dreams, and I want now to show you my virtual soul, my other love which allows me the freedom of the seaman’s life.”
“ Virtual reality I’ve heard of, but virtual soul?” she asked, looking out beyond the riggings of the many boats and ships in harbor. “Is that like some new rock band?”
He pointed toward his sailing vessel. “It is where my other self resides, where I am free, unencumbered…”
“ Oh, I’ll bet.” She tried to laugh, but something in his eyes told her not to. “I mean, I bet you can do just about anything you want with that kind of a… a ship. So what kind of weed or pill is this virtual soul? Or are we talking PCPs? I don’t do needles.”
“ No, you misunderstand. It is not a drug. It is my life.”
“ Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound gross or anything.”
“ It is where my Tauto lives.”
“ Your tattoo? Lives?”
“ No, not tattoo, dear. Certainly you’ve heard of the Tau cross?”
“ Tau cross? That sounds like a good name for a boat, but what’s a Tau cross?”
“ The T-cross. It is an essential element of nature. Where two lives cross, such as our lives are crossing tonight, now… below this moon.”
“ Is that like what you mean by virtual soul? Or is that just what you call your boat?”
“ Never mind,” he replied, pointing toward his boat, which was lost amid the forest of others. “Isn’t she beautiful? All I need now is someone like you to share her with.”
“ How did you get… I mean, how can you afford such a boat?”
“ It was an inheritance. One of many.”
She could hardly believe her luck. “What do you do, besides sail, I mean?”
“ I write.”
“ Really? What kind of writing?”
“ You will laugh.”
“ No, no I won’t. I think it’s romantic, that you write.”
“ I write stories, mysteries, romances. I earn some from that, and as I said, I have an inheritance.”
“ You’re independently wealthy?”
“ Well-off, let’s say. Now, will you come aboard? We can take her out, and you can enjoy the river from a whole new and exciting perspective.”
