Stuart Woods - Choke

“Maybe we got lucky. We’ll give it a rest for a few days, then?”

“I’m not feeling very restful.”

“I’m feeling downright horny just talking to you,” he said.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“But only call me from the car,” Chuck said. “If he’s Harry’s man, he might have done something to your phone.”

“Only from the car,” she said. “‘Bye, lover; I’m going to miss you.”

Chuck started to respond, but she had already hung up. He put down the phone, sucked on his drink, and began feeling sorry for himself. He was very randy indeed, and alone.

Then he looked to his right and there was Meg Hailey, dressed in her inadequate bikini, watering the potted plants in the catamaran’s cockpit next door.

“Hi,” she said, catching sight of him.

“Hi yourself,” he replied. “Buy you a drink?”

Chuck mixed them a drink, then set up the little stainless steel grill, which hung outboard in a special bracket, and got a charcoal fire going.

“Haven’t seen much of you,” Meg said, sipping her drink. She had changed from her bikini to bleached cutoffs and a chambray shirt, unbuttoned and tied in a knot under her breasts. This passed for dressing for dinner in Key West.

“Work, work, work,” Chuck said.

“Teaching tennis is work?” she snorted.

“That’s what everybody thinks,” Chuck replied. “If your work is somebody else’s sport, then it’s not work. Actually, I put in five or six hours of instruction a day, in the hot sun, on my feet, every week of my life.”

“Poor baby,” she said. “What’s your idea of recreation?”

Chuck looked her up and down. “You haven’t had enough to drink for me to tell you.”

She laughed heartily and handed him her glass. “I guess I’d better get to work if I want to find out.”

“I was at a cocktail party in Palm Beach once,” he said, “and I was talking to a famous writer, a novelist; his name escapes me at the moment. A woman came up to him and told him how much she enjoyed his books, then she asked him what he did for a living! It was like, his books were so much fun to read that writing them couldn’t possibly be work.”

“Okay, okay, I concede your point,” she laughed. “You work hard for a living, even if it is on a tennis court.”

“That’s better,” he said, taking her empty glass. “Now you deserve another drink.” He glanced toward the parking lot in time to see the Turk making a slow U-turn on his scooter. Good; now the man had seen him with another woman. “So,” he said to Meg, “you been living aboard for a while?”

“Nearly a year. Tell you the truth, when Dan suggested the trip, I didn’t think I’d last two weeks. But it grows on you- if you can get used to living in a fiberglass coffin and taking showers sitting down.”

“Seems to me I’ve seen you take a shower or two standing up,” he said.

She looked blank for a moment. “Oh, you mean in the cockpit. Sure, I’d rather do it that way, even if…”

“Even if you draw a crowd?” he asked. “You do, you know. Half of Key West Bight seems to amble by when you’re hosing yourself down.”

“Well, what the hell,” she laughed. “I’m not going to let a lot of gawkers crowd me.”

“You’re accustomed to gawkers, I imagine.”

She blushed. “My share, I guess. If you spend most of your life in a bikini…”

“Half in a bikini.”

“Are you objecting?”

“Not in the least. I consider you part of the view from my boat.” He put the steaks on the grill. “How do you like your meat?”

“Are you being vulgar?” she asked archly.

“Sorry, your steak?”

“Medium.”

“Me too; that makes dinner simpler. Hang on, I’d better go below and put the rice on to cook.” He did that, and when he came back on deck, she was turning over the steaks. “They smell wonderful,” she said.

He leaned over and sniffed behind her ear. “So do you,” he said. As he straightened up, he saw the Turk sitting at waterside in the Raw Bar, eating conch fritters. He kissed Meg on the neck for the Turk’s benefit. Well, not entirely for the Turk’s benefit.

“You keep doing that, and we’ll never get to the steaks,” she said.

He stepped away to make himself another drink. “I’ll back off until after dessert.”

“What’s for dessert?”

He was tempted to tell her she was for dessert, but he thought better of it. “Ice cream,” he replied.

“On a boat?”

“This boat has a freezer,” he said.

“What kind of ice cream?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I love surprises,” she said.

“Stick around,” he replied.

He rolled over and reached for the ice cream, then fed her a spoonful.

“Mmmm,” she said, “macadamia brittle, my favorite.”

“I knew it would be,” he said.

“How could you know that?”

He shrugged. “You just look like a macadamia brittle kind of woman to me.” He liked this girl. Thank God she’s married, he thought. I could get into serious trouble here.

She plumped up the pillows and sat up in the double berth, bumping her head. “Ouch,” she said.

“Forget you’re on a boat?” “I’m unaccustomed to this much space on a boat.”

“Well, there’s just the saloon, the head, and this cabin.”

“No room for guests?”

“Not unless they sleep with me.”

“Somehow I have the feeling I’m not the first guest to share this berth with you.”

“I confess,” he said. “Before you, there were other women.”

“We didn’t exactly practice safe sex,” she said.

He lifted his head from the pillow. “Aren’t you safe?” he asked, half alarmed.

“Of course,” she said. “It was you I was wondering about.”

He raised a hand. “Absolutely safe,” he said. “I swear.”

“You’ve had a blood test?”

“About three months ago,” he said.

“And how many women since then?”

“Only safe ones,” he replied. “Let’s not talk numbers.”

“Would the numbers be embarrassing?”

“Embarrassingly small,” he said.

She snuggled up next to him and ran a hand down his belly. “Me too,” she said.

“I should hope so,” he replied. “Married woman like yourself.”

“Me, married?” she asked. “Not likely.”

Alarm bells rang. “But what about Dan?”

“What about him?”

“You have the same last name.”

“Our mother wanted it that way.”

“He’s your brother?”

“Since birth.”

“Oh, shit,” he whispered to himself.

“What did you say?”

“I said, and shipmates, too.”

“Oh. Does it somehow bother you that I’m not married?”

“Oh, bother isn’t exactly the word,” he said. Terrify is the word, he thought.

“I don’t believe in marriage,” she said.

“Well, that’s something.”

“I guess you don’t believe in marriage, either.”

“Only for the married.”

“The way I look at it,” she said, “is if you suddenly come over all hot to get married, what you do is the two of you disappear for a few days, and when you come back you say to your friends, ‘We got married.’ And everybody says, ‘Congratulations.’ Then, when the relationship doesn’t work anymore, you disappear again for a few days, and when you come back to say to everybody, ‘We got divorced,’ everybody says, ‘Congratulations.’”

“I think that makes a great deal of sense,” Chuck said. “You’re a very levelheaded woman.”

“I like to think so.”

“But what you’re doing down there is not keeping me levelheaded.”