made friends, Buzz says they still have to play chicken with the stolen cars on the cliffs. James Dean asks him why, and Buzz says, ‘You gotta do something for kicks.’ Did I make you mad last night?”
“No. The only people who ever made me mad are dead or doing hard time,” she replied.
“Say again?”
“I’m talking about some of my mother’s boyfriends. One way or another, they got cooled out. The guy who burned me with cigarettes got his out in the flats somewhere. That’s on the back side of Key West. They say his bones and some of his skin got washed out of a sandbank in a storm. Whoever did him stuffed his cigarette lighter down his throat.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy. I just have one regret,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I wish I’d been there for it.”
They drove to a rental dock and boathouse on East Cote Blanche Bay where Clete kept an eighteen-foot boat mounted with a seventy-five-horsepower Evinrude engine he’d bought at a repo auction. He loaded his saltwater rods and tackle box and ice chest and a big crab net into the boat, and a plastic garbage bag containing six empty coffee cans capped with plastic lids, then hit the starter button and drove the boat out of the slip and into the bay. The sun was hot and bright on the water, the waves dark and full of sand when they crested and broke on the beach. Gretchen was sitting on the bow, wearing cutoff blue jeans and shades and a V-neck T-shirt, without a hat or sunblock.
“You need to get behind the console and sit next to me,” he said.
“Why?”
“I can’t see.”
She turned her face into the breeze, her hair blowing. Then she took off her shades and rubbed her eyes and put the shades on again. She slid her rump along the bow and stood up in the cockpit and finally sat down on the cushions. “What do you catch out here?” she asked.
“A lobster-red sunburn, if you’re not careful.”
“How many times have you been married?”
“Once.”
“Where’s your ex?”
“Around.”
“Therapy, the methadone clinic, electroshock, that sort of thing?”
“You got a mouth on you, you know that?”
“You have some sunblock?” she asked.
“Under the seat.”
She retrieved a bottle of lotion and unscrewed the cap and began rubbing it on her calves and knees and the tops of her thighs. Then she spread it on her face and the back of her neck and her throat and the top of her chest. Clete opened up the throttle, cutting a trough across the bay, heading southeast toward open water. In the distance, he could see a line of black clouds low on the horizon, electricity forking silently into the water. He made a wide arc until he entered a long flat stretch between the swells. Then he cut the engine and let the boat slide forward on its own wake. “There’s a school of white trout right underneath us,” he said.
“That’s not why we’re here, is it?” she said.
“Not really.”
“What are the coffee cans for?”
“You see how calm the water is here? It’s because of the shift in the tides. High tide was two hours ago. The tide is on its way back out.” He opened the garbage bag and lifted out three capped coffee cans and set them one by one in the water. “We’re going to see where these guys drift.”
“Did you ever think about making movies?”
“Are you listening to me?”
“No, I mean it. You’re always thinking. You could be a better movie director than most of the guys around now. I read this article in Vanity Fair on how easy it is to make a successful movie today. You sign on Vin Diesel or any guy with a voice like a rust clot in a sewer pipe, then you blow up shit. You don’t even have to use real explosives. You can create them with a computer. The actors don’t even have to act. They stand around like zombies and imitate Vin Diesel and blow up more shit. I can’t reach my back.”
He couldn’t track her conversation or line of thought. She turned around in the seat and worked her T-shirt up to the strap on her halter and handed him the bottle of lotion. “Smear some on between my love handles.”
“What?”
“I always burn right above my panty line. It hurts for days.”
“I need you to listen to me and keep your mind off movies a minute, as well as other kinds of distractions.”
“Are you gay or something? Is that the problem? Because if it’s not, you’re deeply weird.”
“You need to learn some discretion, Gretchen. You can’t say whatever you feel like to other people.”
“ This from you? Have you checked out your rap sheet recently? You have more entries on it than most criminals.”
“What do you know about rap sheets?”
“I watch CSI. Cops in neon shitholes like Las Vegas have billions of dollars to spend on high-tech labs staffed by Amerasian snarfs. In the meantime, hookers and grifters and the casinos are fleecing the suckers all over town.”
“What’s a snarf?”
“A guy who gets off on sniffing girls’ bicycle seats.”
“I can’t take this,” Clete said. He reached into the ice chest and retrieved one of the fried-egg-and-bacon sandwiches, wiped the ice off the bread, and bit into it.
“Can I have one?” she asked.
“By all means,” he replied, chewing with his eyes wide, like a man trying to keep his balance while standing in front of a wind tunnel.
“Tell me the truth-you’re not a closet fudge-packer, are you?” she asked.
He tossed his sandwich over the side. “I’m going to bait our hooks and set up our outriggers. Then we’re going to drift and watch where those cans float. In the meantime, no more movie talk, no more insults, no more invasion of somebody else’s space. Got it?”
“Where the fuck do you get off talking to me like that?”
“This is my boat. I’m the skipper. Out at sea, the skipper’s word is absolute.” He looked at her expression. “Okay, I apologize.”
“You should. You’re a one-man clusterfuck.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “How many times have you seen Rebel Without a Cause?”
“Four, I think. I saw Paul Newman in The Left Handed Gun six times.”
“I knew it. You’re like me. You just don’t want to admit it.”
“Could be, kid.”
“I don’t usually let any man call me that,” she said, “but for you I might make an exception.” She removed her shades, revealing the violet and magical intensity of her eyes. Her forehead was popping with sweat, her nostrils dilated. “I don’t understand my feelings about you. You’re a nice guy. But every nice guy I’ve ever known ended up wanting something from me. For some of them, that didn’t work out too good. What do you have to say to that?”
“I’m a used-up jarhead and alcoholic flatfoot with no tread left on his tires. What’s to say?”
Twenty minutes later, Clete drove the boat through a bay that was copper-colored and flecked with a dirty froth when the wind blew. When the keel struck bottom, Gretchen dropped off the bow into the water and waded through the shallows and threw the anchor up on dry sand. Clete stood up in the cockpit and gazed through a pair of binoculars at the line of plastic-capped coffee cans disappearing in the south.
“I don’t understand what we’re doing,” Gretchen said.
Clete eased himself over the gunwale and dropped heavily into the shallows and walked up on the beach
