Paul Levine: Riptide

“How’d you know?”

“Cindy called last night. Figured you’d get around to me when you felt like talking.”

Lassiter watched the water ripple over the plug. “I miscalculated, Charlie. I tried to help Sam and Berto and let them both down. Tubby, too. He was a good man, and he’s dead because of me. And a couple guys who weren’t so good. Plus a woman, a woman who was beautiful and fearless and lived by no rules except her own. Maybe I could have changed her, saved her…”

“Did you learn from your experience?”

“Yes, but too late.”

“No. We give ourselves the name Homo sapiens, which means ‘wise man,’ but of course, We are not born that way, and we don’t gain wisdom from books. We learn how to live by living. Vive ut vivas — “

A splash interrupted him, then a flash of silver erupted from the water, and Charlie’s rod bent violently toward the bay.

“Tarpon, Charlie!”

“ Megalops atlanticus, a great game fish, eh?” Charlie Riggs jerked the rod tip straight up, and six feet of fighting fish exploded into the air, then began its run. “ Deo volente, my twelve-pound line will hold.”

After giving a hundred yards of line, Charlie turned the tarpon with thumb pressure on the reel, and the fish jumped, end over end, and hit the water again. Then it threw the hook and was gone.

“Sorry,” Jake Lassiter said.

“Doesn’t matter. Can’t eat ‘em. Too many bones. And I never mounted a fish in my life. Would have liked to land it, but sometimes, the big ones put up such a fight, they don’t survive it. With some animals it’s better to just enjoy their beauty, leave them alone.”

“You trying to teach me about life, Charlie?”

“Just about fishing, Jake. Just fishing.”

The next morning, Jake Lassiter drove to Kazdoy’s All-Nite Deli where he knew Sam would have his hot tea and prune danish at seven-thirty sharp. Lassiter spotted his friend’s bald head over the back of the red vinyl-covered booth. There alongside him was the platinum mop of Violet Belfrey. Just like a couple of kids sharing a soda.

Jake Lassiter told Sam Kazdoy that the bonds were gone, torn to shreds in an explosion. It was okay, Kazdoy said, could use the write-off, lots more where those came from, and his stock portfolio was doing fine. And good thing too, because a married man’s got obligations. “A what?” Jake Lassiter asked him.

“A married man,” Sam Kazdoy said again, and Violet Belfrey flashed a seven-carat rock and they each twirled gold wedding bands, shiny in the fluorescent lighting.

Lassiter was about to mumble congratulations but the waitress called him to the phone.

“Thought you’d be there,” Cindy said, trying to put the old bounce into her voice. “Got some good news for you. The partners’ executive committee says you’re to come back to work, pronto. They want you and need you.”

“I suppose that’s good,” Lassiter said without enthusiasm.

“It didn’t hurt your case that Thad Whitney called. Seems the wife of the bank president has a problem. Her poodle bit a neighbor down in Gables Estates. Well, the families haven’t spoken for years before this happened, some dumb dispute over whose yacht smacked the seawall. Now the neighbor hits them with a big suit over the dog, he wants punitive damages, the works. Thad the Cad says you’ve got to handle it or he’ll take the bank’s work elsewhere.”

Only thing worse than a slip-and-fall, Lassiter knew, was a dog-bite case, the bargain basement of the legal profession. “It’s my penance,” he said. “Thad’s way of getting even.”

“Jake.”

“Yeah?”

“Please come back. I miss you.”

Lassiter hung up and returned to the table where Sam Kazdoy held each of Violet Belfrey’s bony hands. “You’re too late to be best man, but you can still wish us mazel tov,” Kazdoy said.

“Sure, Sam.”

“Jake, boychik, you look all farchadat, like you’re in a daze.

Nu? We’re off on our honeymoon. Flying to Los Angeles tonight, then tomorrow, a cruise to Hawaii.”

“Hawaii?” Jake Lassiter said as if he’d never heard of the place.

“Hawaii,” Sam Kazdoy repeated. “Travel agent booked us into whadatheycallit?”

“Maui,” Violet pitched in.

“Right. Good to get away from all the crime around here, go someplace peaceful. Maybe you can tell us what to see, the sights, I mean. I know what I’ll be seeing at night, and I don’t need a tour guide for that.”

“Careful, Sam,” Lassiter said. “At your age, sex can be risky, even fatal.”

The old man’s eyes twinkled and he patted Violet’s hand. “If she dies, she dies.” He laughed and Violet Belfrey flashed a grin that would frighten a watchdog.

Kazdoy reached out and gave Lassiter’s arm a grandfatherly squeeze. “ Shalom, Jake.”

“ Aloha, Sam.”

Jake Lassiter rigged his board on a chilly December day, a northeaster sweeping across the coastline, the sky ashen gray. He bucked over the chop near shore then sliced into the open ocean, a hard rain piercing his skin like a million needles, the wind singing a mournful song through the sail.

He sailed due east, far from shore until he saw no land. An Atlantic ray, six feet across, shot under his bow. A dolphin followed him, leaping gracefully alongside. The sun would set early now but still he went on, his back to land. Tiring, he dropped the boom and let the sail fall into the water. He sat down, straddling the board, his feet dangling in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, drifting farther from shore. He wanted to keep going, to float into the abyss and let it swallow him.

Suddenly a splash, the dolphin leaping again, its silver skin gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Once more, closer now, a silly dolphin smile grinning at him, inviting him to play. Then the dolphin turned and headed west, toward land. Follow me, the dolphin seemed to insist. Lassiter watched until it leapt one last time. Then he uphauled his sail, jibed, and headed back to shore.

Jake Lassiter returned to work. He avoided partners’ meetings and stayed away from bar association luncheons. He tried his cases without fanfare, deriving no pleasure from the victories, no pain from the defeats. And when he was alone he would think it through, step by step. What had he done wrong? Would Tubby still be alive if he had acted differently?

Would Lila?

Always Lila in his mind. He remembered the warmth of her body next to him in the crater, the sweetness of her breath visible as puffs of white steam in the mountain air. He could feel her pressed against him and could hear the short gasps catch in her throat. He could see the silversword bloom, but once, in the morning sun, Lila watching it in awe.

Could he have changed her? Or would that have stripped away whatever it was that made her singular? The questions kept coming. And coming back to the same one. What had he done wrong? He figured out part of it. He had mistaken youth for innocence and beauty for purity. He had been swept away by the myth of a woman of beauty, grace, and talent, a woman without flaws.

We are all flawed, Jake Lassiter thought, but Lila’s were fatal. In her the bad had swamped the good. He knew now that he had adored a totally amoral creature devoid of compassion. Where he saw the sun and a warm breeze, there were only shadows and a graveyard chill. But still he wanted her.

After a while he tried to banish her but could not. So he gave in to it. Each night, just before sleep, he summoned up again and again, the image of a woman so young and beautiful, so beyond his reach as to be an image in a dream. He saw Lila then as he did that first night when a stiff breeze carried the salt air and gathered her skirt between her legs. He captured the image, focused it sharply, and erased everything else. So he had it always, a memory for eternity, Lila Summers standing there with eyes closed, back arched and long hair flying, listening to a silent song, laughing into the wind.