Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

“Wow,” Shreave said.

“Too long, Boyd. Way too long.”

“Yeah.” Already the back of his neck was moist and clammy.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Lily leaned forward, letting her robe fall open. Shreave couldn’t help but observe that her breasts seemed larger than Eugenie Fonda’s. He wondered if he’d somehow forgotten what they looked like, or if his wife had secretly been to a plastic surgeon.

She touched his arm softly, then lobbed a question that lay there like a ticking grenade: “Boyd, is there something you want to talk to me about?”

Oh Christ, does she know? he wondered anxiously. Or is she fishing?

Working from slickly worded scripts had dulled Shreave’s talent for the improvisational lie. He knew he needed something better than an oil change to handle Lily’s current line of interrogation.

“It’s not you, it’s me,” he began.

Slowly she pulled her robe closed and crossed her arms.

“It’s a flashback from the accident in Arlington,” he said, aware that he was raising a touchy subject.

“Three years ago?” Lily raised her eyebrows, but Shreave soldiered on.

“I’m what they call ‘clinically depressed.’ The doctor says it’s affected my…you know…”

“Libido.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyhow, I got some of those pills, but they haven’t helped at all.”

“What brand? The kind Bob Dole uses?” Lily was very active in the local Republican leadership committee, and a longtime admirer of the former senator from Kansas.

Shreave said, “The exact same stuff, but it doesn’t work on me. I still haven’t got the slightest interest in…you know…”

“Fucking?”

“Right. Off the agenda completely.” He shrugged in resignation.

His wife said, “Well, what do you suppose you’re so depressed about?”

“Hell if I know. But the doctor says that’s pretty common.”

Lily nodded sympathetically. “And who’s your doctor?”

“Kennedy,” Shreave said, following Eugenie Fonda’s presidential advice on made-up names. “Some hotshot shrink over in Irving. Don’t worry, he’s on the company HMO.”

Lily got up to refill his coffee cup, which Shreave interpreted positively. “Is something wrong at work?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? They love me. I’m up for a promotion.”

“That’s great news.” Lily bit her lip. “This is my fault, too, Boyd. I’ve been so tied up with the restaurants that I didn’t notice what was happening between us.”

In fact she’d been very busy-quietly closing a deal to sell her six pizza joints to the Papa John’s corporation for a boggling sum of cash and common stock, none of which she intended to share with Boyd Shreave in the upcoming divorce. Lily felt sure that her husband’s unfaithfulness would make him an unlikely candidate for alimony in the eyes of most Texas judges, especially the Republican ones. In the meantime, Lily was finding it strangely enjoyable-almost exciting-to toy with him.

She said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s get dressed.”

Shreave frowned. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“But Judge Joe Brown is on in fifteen minutes.”

“Great. Now I’m married to Rain Man.” Lily steered Boyd out of the kitchen, saying, “When’s the last time Judge Joe gave you a hard-on?”

Later, in the car, Shreave sat solemn and petrified. He feared that Lily was taking him on a shopping adventure to the adult-video store a few blocks from their house-the same place he’d been renting DVDs for his clandestine visits to Eugenie Fonda’s apartment. Shreave had no faith that the video-store clerk would be merciful enough to pretend not to recognize him, or to not mention the $37.50 in late fees he’d piled up.

But Lily went speeding past the porn parlor, and Shreave sagged in relief. She wheeled into a busy strip mall and led him into a bagel shop, which he vaguely recalled from a long-ago date, before they were married.

“We came here the morning after our first night together,” Lily reminded him.

“Oh, I remember,” Shreave said.

“The night, or the bagels?”

“Both.” Shreave forced a laugh. He was sweating like a hog with typhoid.

Lily clearly was planning something dramatic, and Shreave waited in a state of pale dread. He couldn’t possibly resume sexual relations with his wife and still carry on with Eugenie; it would be way too much work. While some men were able and even eager to juggle the needs of many women, Shreave withered at the thought. Whether on the job or in the sack, he’d never been burdened with an abundance of ambition.

“We’ll have two raisin cinnamons,” Lily told the waiter, “with cream cheese.”

“And ice water for me,” Shreave added urgently.

For some reason his wife had not removed her sunglasses. She appeared to be smiling to herself as she pulled her frosted hair back into a ponytail. From her handbag she took the car keys, which she let fall with a jingle to the linoleum floor.

“Oops,” she said, and disappeared beneath the tabletop.

Shreave gripped the arms of his chair as if plummeting on a crippled jetliner.

“What are you doing!” he whispered bleakly.

The question was answered by the sound of a zipper, his own. “Sshhh,” came the muffled counsel from his wife. “Just relax, sweetheart.”

Never before had Boyd Shreave felt a need to fake impotence, and he was not up (or rather, down) to the task. As Lily rapidly got the better of him, he floundered in a state between panic and marvel-not once in thirty-five years had he been publicly fellated, and now it had happened twice in as many weeks, with different women! Most men would have found the coincidence thrilling, but Shreave worried about the heavy implications. He understood that yielding to his wife would officially reinitiate his marital obligations, and compromise his secret life.

He ignored the gapes of other diners and pretended to study the menu listings printed on the paper place mat, all the while endeavoring to compress his knees together. However, Lily would not be dislodged.

Just as surrender seemed imminent, the raisin cinnamon bagels arrived. Shreave seized the moment to stage a mishap, overturning a tumbler of cold water on his lap. Lily came out sputtering from beneath the table, Shreave loudly chastising the innocent waiter for his clumsiness.

The restaurant manager picked up their tab for breakfast, but the couple rode home in a slack and deflated silence.

The circumstances of Sammy Tigertail’s conception had not been concealed from him. His father drove a Budweiser truck three times a week between Naples and Fort Lauderdale, and was a regular customer at the Miccosukee service plaza where Sammy Tigertail’s mother worked in the gift shop. Because she had serious doubts about trying to raise a half-white son on the reservation, Sammy Tigertail’s mother reluctantly agreed to let his father keep the boy.

So, for his first fourteen and a half years, Sammy Tigertail was Chad McQueen. He lived in a middle-class subdivision in Broward County with his father and, beginning at age four, a stepmother who aggressively attempted to acculturate him. Growing up, the boy showed no interest in soccer leagues or video games or skateboarding. His passion was roaming the outdoors, and learning the rock music that his father played on the car radio. By the time he was in first grade, the kid was singing along to Creedence and the Stones and the Allman Brothers. Everybody said he was going to turn out fine, despite his Indian genes.

Then one day his father died suddenly. After the funeral, the boy’s stepmother drove him back to the Everglades and dropped him at the truck stop. He had sensed it coming, and he was privately looking forward to the move. Every other Sunday his father had taken him to visit his real mother at the Big Cypress, and the boy liked it out there.