'Damn straight you should be flattered. Your problem is, you lose your sense of humor when you lose your energy. Not that it didn't take a while. Here—' She reached into the icebox and brought out ajar of her tea. 'You drink some of this. It'll fix you right up.'
I drank her tea—felt the caffeine jolt. I picked fish and nudged the conversation toward safer topics. A few minutes later, she was telling me, 'The way it used to work was, we'd take our mullet in and sell them to Arlis. Sell them in what we call the round, meaning the whole fish. Anytime but December and January—the roe season—he'd pay us maybe forty cents a pound. Not much, and Arlis didn't make much either. But roe season, like now, he'd pay us maybe two bucks a pound, then sell them for maybe two-forty to the big wholesale fish plants in Tampa or Cortez. Freezer trucks would come around and pick them up.
'Up there,' she said, 'the fish go on a conveyor belt. They got women who cut the roe out of them—they use these ball-pointed knives so they won't nick the sacs—and they grade the roe by color and weight. The big plants, like Sigma and Bell, they'll sell the best roe for maybe twenty-two dollars a pound to exporters. The exporters ship it to the Philippines, or Hong Kong—places like that—where
Hannah twisted a mullet from the net, held it out and squeezed the flesh around the anal fin. Tiny yellow globules began to ooze out: fish eggs. 'We call it red roe, but it's really more like gold. Get it? Not just the color, but what it's worth.'
I said, 'But now you have a better deal because of Raymond Tullock. Didn't you tell me that?'
She was nodding; collected the mullet roe on her index finger before she tossed the fish into the box. Held the gooey finger out to me. 'It's not bad. In Asia, they dry it into little cakes and give it as gifts. During the Chinese New Year, it's like the best gift you can give, 'cause it's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Puts lead in their pencils. Couldn't hurt you to take a taste.'
I thought it would surprise her when I licked some off her finger—the tiny eggs burst between my teeth, gelatinous and rich—but she only looked blankly at the roe that remained before putting the finger in her own mouth and slurping it clean.
She said, 'Raymond went to Asia—this was a couple of years ago— and hunted around until he made his own contacts. I know he got some Japanese backers for money. But the importer he made friends with is in Indonesia, only sometimes he calls it something else. Where he goes, I mean.'
'Jakarta?' I guessed.
'You mean, like a city? No, it wasn't Jakarta. A funny name ... it had a weird sound.'
The Republic of Indonesia is comprised of many thousands of islands, but I tried again. 'Borneo? New Guinea?'
'No. . . .'
'Sumatra?'
She snapped her fingers. 'That's it! How'd you know?'
I reminded her that I had once traveled a lot.
She accepted that, but her expression told me she wanted to ask questions—How were the girls over there?—but instead, she said, 'I guess that's the main thing in the international seafood business. Having contacts? Like the guy who runs the big Tampa export business, he's got important family connections in the Philippines. Another guy has Hong Kong all locked up. I'm talking about mullet roe now. You ever go to one of those big fish export places?'
I had, but I wanted to hear Hannah tell it.
'It's like the way you would picture the New York stock market,' she said. 'Computers and fax machines all over. These huge rooms full of people, everyone yelling into telephones. Only you can't understand them because they're speakin' Japanese or French or some other language that I wouldn't recognize if I heard it. Right up there in Tampa. Somebody in Germany needs swordfish? They arrange it; maybe have one of their brokers ship it out from California that day. Tokyo needs stone crab claws? Same thing. They've got these blast freezers the size of a gymnasium. But even if they don't have the fish in stock, they know someone who does, and they take their cut. People don't realize that the international seafood market is like a multibillion-dollar business. We do the catchin', but everybody else makes the real money. We go down, the other countries will just fish that much harder. And of course, they got no regulations at all.'
I said, 'That's the business Tullock started after he quit his job working as a marine extension agent?'
'Kind'a, but he just rents space from one of the big export companies. His contacts—where we sell to now? —it's all to Sumatra. He calls it a 'niche' market. They're not as rich as the Philippines, but it still works out pretty good. Raymond handles everything, so Arlis sells to him exclusively. Now, instead of selling fish whole, we butcher them ourselves and end up
makin' five times the profit. See what I mean about contacts in Asia bein' important?'
'I bet Raymond does pretty well too.'
'Yeah, but he works for his money. Raymond rents freezer space in Tampa till he gets a container full—that's like a semitrailer that fits on an oceangoing freighter. He's already shipped one container, and in a few days, he's gonna get on a plane so he can fly over and meet it.' She locked onto me with her eyes before adding, 'He wants me to go along . . . and I plan to.'
What she was looking for was an expression of jealousy from me, any indication that I would limit her by trying to possess her. I tossed the last of the mullet into the box, and said, 'You ought to go. It's a fascinating island, Sumatra.'
'You been there?'
'Once.'
'What I want to do is learn everything I can about the business so I. . . so I—'
'So you won't need Raymond anymore? Make your own contacts?'
She was taken aback for a moment. . . slowly recovered . . . then spoke in a tone that I had not heard her use. The tone was resolute, uncompromising—yet not severe. She wasn't defending herself, just telling me how it was. Said, 'You know how to make it hurt, don't you? Only it doesn't bother me a bit, 'cause it's the same thing you'd do. Aren't you the independent type? Damn right I'll try to steal Raymond's contacts. It's business, and in business, that's part of the game—or so the menfolk tell me.' Gave that a homey, ladylike twist before adding: 'Raymond's tried plenty of times to use me—hell,
'You mean as in—'
'I mean as in fuckin' me. Yeah.' Looked hard at me to see how that was accepted. 'That's part of it. I haven't given him the first taste, which just makes him crazier for it, but it also makes him easier to handle.'
I said, 'Maybe the other part is that you know Raymond was never against the net ban. A buddy of mine told me Raymond lobbied for the ban behind your back.'
A thin, noncommittal smile. 'Maybe.'
'But if he makes his money selling mullet roe, why would he—'
'Don't you worry about my business, Ford. I know all about Raymond . . . but Raymond, he doesn't know all about me. That's just the way I want it.' She was tromping the last of the net down, getting the boat ready to go. Stopped for a moment and stared toward the southwest. A pale, luminescent cloud marked the night strongholds of the barrier islands: Captiva Island, its lights twinkling; Sanibel, a gray bloom beyond. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, 'See that?' She meant the lights. 'When I was little, my daddy would fish so close to that island that I could smell the fresh-cut grass. All those big, rich houses, and the golf course—Yankee millionaires, that's what Daddy called everybody who lived there.'
'A lot different than Sulphur Wells,' I agreed.
'We lived on Cedar Key then, but yeah, about the same thing. Daddy always said if I was smart, I'd marry one of them. He'd pick out some good-looking man on the golf course, or some guy sweating on the tennis courts, and he'd say, 'There ya go, Hannah. Marry him, you'll never have to worry about another thing all your life.' Being a little girl, I'd always think, yeah, right, some rich man would marry me?
'About the time I turned seventeen, though, those rich men started staring back. Started giving me that little smile—like,
