Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

And disappointment-corrosive and bottomless disappointment-in her only son, who after thirty-five years had failed to distinguish himself either professionally or socially, displaying to Della’s hardened eye not a speck of ambition.

“Don’t tell me you got fired again,” she said as he sat down across the table.

“As a matter of fact, I’m getting promoted,” Boyd Shreave said, and then to the waiter: “I’ll have the jerked chicken sandwich with extra mayo.”

Della glared. “Are you trying to make me vomit? Extra mayo?”

“Why would you think I got fired?”

“’Cause that’s the only time you ever have lunch with me, when you’ve got stinking rotten news and you don’t want me to make a fuss. You know damn well I won’t raise my voice in a restaurant.”

Boyd Shreave shrugged. “Last time you called me a lazy sack of muleshit.”

“Yes, but quietly.” Della stirred her jumbo Diet Coke with a straw. “So what are you getting promoted to-deputy chief telephone harasser?”

“Floor supervisor,” Boyd Shreave lied pleasantly. Not even his mother’s taunting could spoil his sunny mood. He was flying away with Eugenie Fonda!

“That come with a raise, or is it all glory?” Della grumped.

“Two hundred extra a week, plus commission bumps.” Boyd Shreave was pleased to see that his mother was disarmed by his fictional success.

“Guess what else,” he said. “I had the most sales leads of all callers last month, so Relentless is sending me on a free vacation to Florida.”

Della studied him doubtfully. “Where in Florida?”

“It’s called the Ten Thousand Islands.”

“Never heard of ’em. How many did you say?”

“Thousands. It’s just like the Bahamas,” Boyd Shreave said. That’s what the lady telemarketer had told him, and that’s what he believed.

Wistfully Della said, “Your father and I honeymooned in Nassau. I liked it so much I made both your stepdads take me there, too.”

With horror Boyd Shreave realized that his mother was angling to accompany him. “I wish I could bring you along,” he said tightly, “but they only gave me one ticket.”

“And you couldn’t spring for another? Now that you got this big fat raise?”

Shreave felt the sweat collecting under his collar. “Mom, it’s a company junket. I can’t even take Lily.”

Della Shreave Renfroe Landry grunted and reached for the soup crackers. “Boyd, are you screwing somebody from work?”

He gripped the edge of the tabletop. “What?”

His mother gnawed at the cellophane wrapper on the crackers. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Who gives away a free vacation where you can’t bring your wife or even your mom? For all I know, you could be running off with some dumb tramp from the call center.”

Boyd Shreave was shocked to hear himself say: “She’s not a tramp. She’s one of the Fondas.”

Della spit half a saltine into her lap.

“A cousin of Jane’s,” Shreave added.

His impulsive burst of candor made it official: Like a lizard, he’d shed his old skin. He felt like dancing on the table.

“This is not funny,” his mother wheezed. She couldn’t picture her chronically unmotivated son as a philanderer.

“If you tell Lily,” Shreave said, “I’ll never forgive you.”

The waiter brought their sandwiches. Della tidied herself and said, “Well, does this girl at least look like Jane?”

“More like Bridget. Only taller.”

“You got a picture?”

He shook his head. “I meant what I said-if you rat me out, you’ll be sorry. Everybody’s got ugly little secrets.”

Della didn’t need her son to spell it out. She had cheated on her last husband, Frank Landry, with one of the hospice workers who’d been caring for him in the final days. If the incident were made known, it would surely incite Landry’s grown and highly litigious offspring. There were still a few bucks kicking around probate that Della had no wish to forfeit.

She said, “Of course I won’t say a word. But seriously, Boyd, where are you headed with this thing?”

“To happiness, Mom. Where else?”

He bit into the jerked chicken and smiled, pearls of mayonnaise glistening on his chin.

While Fry scrubbed the kayaks, Honey Santana sat down to write a letter to the Marco Island Sun Times about what had happened to Louis Piejack. One of Honey’s past therapists had told her to do this whenever she got worked up. The therapist had said writing was a healthy and socially acceptable way of expressing one’s anger.

So far, Honey had gotten forty-three letters published in thirteen different newspapers, including the Naples Daily News, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times. Once she’d almost had a letter about the Alaska oil drilling printed in USA Today, but the editors had objected to a sentence suggesting that the president had been dropped on his head as a child.

Honey kept scrapbooks of all her newspaper letters, including the 107 that had been rejected. Sometimes she felt better after writing one; sometimes she felt the same.

To the Editor:

Regarding today’s front-page article about the violent assault on Mr. Louis Piejack, I certainly agree that the perpetrators of this act ought to be pursued and brought to justice.

However, as a former employee of Mr. Piejack, I feel obliged to point out that his own conduct has occasionally bordered on the criminal, particularly the way he treats women. I myself was the victim of both verbal and physical abuse from this man, though I derive no pleasure from his current troubles.

Perhaps during his long and excruciating recuperation, Mr. Piejack will take a hard inward look at himself and resolve to change. As for the unfortunate mix-up during the reattachment surgery on his fingers, Mr. Piejack should be grateful to have all five, in any order, considering the places he has put them.

Most sincerely,

Honey Santana

Everglades City

She slipped the letter into an envelope and affixed three first-class stamps, even though it was traveling only thirty miles up the road.

Fry came indoors and flopped down in front of the television.

“Did you ask your ex-father if you can stay there?” Honey asked.

A sour glance was the boy’s only response.

She said, “Sorry. I meant your ‘dad.’”

“Not yet, but I will,” Fry said.

“Be sure to tell him it’s just for a few days.”

“Mom, chill, okay? It won’t be a problem.”

When the local news came on, Honey sat down beside her son to watch. The lead story was about a red tide that had killed thousands of fish, the majority of which had inconsiderately washed up to rot on the public beach in Fort Myers. The tourists were apoplectic, while the Chamber of Commerce had been scrambled to Defcon Three crisis mode. A video clip showed acres of bloated fish carcasses on the sand, pallid beachcombers fleeing with towels pressed to their noses.

“Look, it’s the seafood festival from hell!” Fry said.

His mother frowned. “That’s not funny, young man. We’re poisoning the whole blessed planet, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Fry didn’t want to get her fired up, so he said nothing.

The last story on the TV news was about a missing Wisconsin salesman named Jeter Wilson. After a night of partying at the Hard Rock Casino, he’d announced that he was driving alone to the Seminole reservation in the Big Cypress Swamp. Wilson’s family back in Milwaukee hadn’t heard from him in days, and it was feared that he’d dozed off and run his rental car into the canal somewhere along Alligator Alley. A search was under way, and in the meantime the Hard Rock had provided a photograph of the missing man, taken at the hotel bar. In the picture, Jeter Wilson’s ample lap was occupied by a full-lipped woman wearing a blue-sequined halter, whom the TV reporter identified as a “local part-time masseuse.”