Chapter 5
“Joe’s back!” Christina crowed when Helen came into work the next day. “He says he has my birthday present, and he wants to give it to me tonight. We’re doing the South Beach clubs first, then going to his house for my present. He says he has something I’ll love forever. It’s a ring. I know it.”
Helen had never seen Christina look so pretty. Her face seemed lighted from within. The deep lines around her mouth were almost erased. Her hair shone like burnished gold.
“Joe’s going to pick me up after work,” she said. “In a limo!” She was beside herself with excitement.
Helen hoped that Joe really was going to give Christina a ring. It would solve everything. The head saleswoman would marry her rich man and live happily ever after. She wouldn’t have to skim money or sell drugs. Helen wouldn’t have to worry about finding another job. She could stay at Juliana’s.
When she went out for lunch, Helen saw a flyer on a telephone pole that said “WANTED: WOMEN 21 TO 65! Earn $35 an hour. No experience necessary.” Helen called the number. A bar on East Sample Road was looking for lingerie models.
“I’m Frank, the owner,” he said. His voice oozed out of the phone like oil. Snake oil. “Our customers ain’t the youngest, you get my drift. Age ain’t a problem, long as you got yourself a good figure and big boobs. Forty’s young to them. They don’t mind a good-looking granny. Like ’em better than the young stuff, sometimes. Your older gal appreciates the attention and ain’t so inhibited, you know what I mean?”
Helen hung up the phone while Frank was still oozing. Once again she felt the Greek diner owner’s gut bump against her and his hairy paws on her chest and shuddered. Helen wanted this evening with Joe to succeed almost as much as Christina did.
When the store closed at six that night, Christina was waiting for Joe at the green door.
She was wearing a short black Gucci dress that managed to bare lots of skin and still look sophisticated instead of trampy. Her legs were impossibly long in her sleek Charles Jourdan heels. Her blonde hair was pulled into a low knot. Christina looked confident and ready for her brilliant future.
“How do I look?” she asked Helen.
“Stunning,” Helen said.
“Do you think he’ll like it?” Christina said, and twirled gracefully. Do you think he’ll like me, was the unspoken question.
“He’d be a fool not to,” Helen said. But she thought Joe was a fool.
Joe’s limousine was a black Mercedes superstretch. The driver opened the door for Christina, and she looked so happy, Helen was afraid for her. The last thing she saw, before the limousine door closed with an expensive
Helen hoped that Joe wouldn’t disappoint Christina again. She resolved not to say anything to Christina tomorrow, no matter how great her curiosity. She would wait for Christina to tell her.
Helen couldn’t spend any more time thinking about Christina. She had her own date with Cal that night. He was picking her up at seven. She was as excited and hopeful as a teenager. Helen tried on six outfits and four pairs of shoes before deciding on a slim black pantsuit and flat strappy sandals. She was determined to look graceful when she climbed into the boat.
She wondered if she should bring some money. Would they split the tab, or would Cal pay for their meal? She didn’t know how dating worked any more, but she was not going to ask the women at Juliana’s. Helen didn’t want their men or their lives.
Money is power, woman, she told herself. Give yourself some. She boldly pulled a hundred dollars out of Chocolate the bear and stuffed it into her little black purse.
Cal showed up at her door in South Florida formalwear: long khaki pants and a blue cotton shirt open at the collar and rolled up at the sleeves. Helen was a sucker for rolled sleeves.
“You look lovely,” Cal said, and Helen glowed. It had been a long time since a man had admired her.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she said, and felt shy again.
The drive to Lighthouse Point took almost an hour in Cal’s dented Buick. On the way, Cal entertained her with stories of his marathon drives from Toronto to Florida, his daughter the marketing expert, and his grandchild, the world’s most brilliant two-year-old.
“How long have you been divorced?” she said, finally.
“Almost fifteen years. My ex-wife is a fine woman.”
“You don’t sound bitter,” Helen said.
“I’m not. The divorce was my own fault. I was at the office until late every night, and she found someone else.”
Helen was silent for a moment. “What are you thinking?” Cal said.
“How nice it is that you got over your wife. There’s nothing worse than spending an evening with the undivorced.”
“Are they like the undead?” Cal said.
“Exactly,” Helen said. “Like the undead, the undivorced are in a state neither dead nor alive. They’re obsessed with their exes and spend the whole evening describing their faults and draining the life out of you.”
“You haven’t mentioned your ex-husband. I gather you’re over him?”
“Yes,” Helen said, so abruptly it cut the conversation like an ax blade. There was an awkward silence until Cal said, “Here’s the parking lot for Cap’s.”
Cal parked, and they walked a short distance to the dock. The waterway was lined with high-priced, low- slung homes and boats that were bigger and whiter than the Coronado Tropic Apartments. But Helen saw no sign of the restaurant, and there was no attendant or phone on the deserted dock.
“How does Cap’s know we’re here?” Helen said.
“They always do,” Cal said. “I see the boat now.” He pointed toward an open motor launch heading their way.
“It looks like the
All too soon, the boat docked, and they walked up the path to the long gray restaurant. Helen saw the waterline on the building’s side from a long-ago flood. A rotund yellow cat greeted them at the entrance.
“I wonder if Kitty got that fat on Cap’s food?” Cal said. Helen thought it was nice that he stopped to pet the cat.
Helen liked everything about Cap’s: its timeworn wood, the bare yellow light bulbs in white porcelain sockets, even the sound her sandals made on the uneven floors. She examined the photos of Floridians from around 1900, young men fishing in heavy wool suits. “How could they stand those clothes down here?” she asked Cal.
She’d never had salad with fresh hearts of palm before. She liked its odd nutty taste. She had the pecan- crusted mahi-mahi. Cal had the blackened grouper. They both ordered Key lime pie.
When the check came, Cal presented it to her with a flourish. “You pick up this one,” he said. “The next dinner is on me. I’ll take you to another Florida favorite, Catfish Dewey’s. I have to be in Tampa all week. Could you go next Saturday?”
Helen was so surprised, she agreed. Good thing she’d brought that hundred bucks. The dinner cost seventy- two dollars. She couldn’t afford it, but she was tired of worrying about money. It had been a wonderful evening.
“Maybe I’m the tightwad,” she told herself. But another part answered, “Cal was supposed to buy the dinner. He invited you. Remember what Margery said about never going to dinner with him?”
Cap’s boat brought them back by moonrise. The black waterway was sliced by the blinding white, rotating, lighthouse beam. The wedding cake yachts were lighted now. The interiors were molten gold against the dark velvet sky, but Helen saw no people inside.
