James Hall - Off the Chart

‘You want something flimsy, something you can control, something you can walk away from when you’re ready.’

‘This isn’t real,’ Anne said. ‘It’s heat lightning on a summer evening.’

‘You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘That it’s real. That it’s solid.’

She was silent. Staring up at the darkness.

‘I don’t scare easy,’ she said.

‘Then you’re a rare woman.’

‘You’re just noticing?’

The ghostly curtains stirred with a warm breeze.

‘So who was that guy at the restaurant?’

‘Restaurant? What guy?’

‘The Lorelei, that day we met. I saw you kiss some guy. Your boyfriend?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He’s nobody. A local I went out with for a while. It was finished centuries ago.’

‘What’s his name?’

She hesitated a half-second and said, ‘Thorn.’

‘First or last?’

‘That’s what he goes by. I don’t know which it is.’

‘So it’s over, is it? He won’t be wondering where you’ve gone off to these last three weeks?’

‘Stone-cold over.’

‘You kissed him. I saw that. You still have feelings.’

His body stiff, Daniel stared up into the dark.

‘Hey, what is this? You store away a meaningless kiss from weeks ago. Are you some kind of green-eyed control freak? Tell me now. I don’t want any big surprises later on.’

Her words hung in the darkness. When he answered, his voice was solemn, almost apologetic.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t lie to you. I suppose I can be fiercely protective of what I care about. Is that a crime?’

‘Well, there’s nobody to be jealous of, Daniel. Nobody at all.’

He took her hand and shifted beside her. As he fit his length more snugly against hers, the tension seemed to drain from his body.

‘So you’ve been saving yourself for me,’ he said. ‘For this.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not at all what I had in mind.’

‘What about now? Do you have me in mind?’

He touched her in the dark and she made an uncertain groan.

‘You’re not happy? This doesn’t make you happy, Anne Bonny?’

‘Two inches lower and it will.’

Anne called in sick one day too many and the Lorelei let her go. Three weeks together, she and Daniel had talked easily, focused on the moment, but without sharing history on either side. Now it was over.

This morning while Anne lay in bed, Daniel’s cell phone rang for the first time since they’d met and he stepped out on their balcony and spoke quietly for a moment, then came back inside and told her that he was going to have to leave.

‘For the day?’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘And do what? Go where?’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘Oh, you can’t talk about it. I see.’

Anne rose from the bed and went to the closet and yanked her clothes off the hangers: Large structures were collapsing in her chest. Her vision muddy.

‘Not right now.’ Daniel waved at her, then motioned her to the far wall.

Naked, she hesitated at the closet door, then stalked across the room. Daniel tipped the table lamp to the side and tilted its golden shade. He pointed at the white plastic disk mounted there. Hardly larger than a bottle cap, with a tiny aerial sprouting from its edge. Anne stared at it and was about to speak, but Daniel pressed a finger to her lips.

He pointed to his ear, then pointed to the lamp.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’

‘Breakfast?’ he said in a normal voice, settling the lamp back into place.

Now, outside on the patio of the Cheeca Lodge, their waitress brought the coffeepot and topped up their cups.

When she was gone, Anne said, ‘Is anyone eavesdropping out here?’

‘Not likely,’ he said.

‘So you’re dirty?’

‘Dirty?’

‘Crime,’ she said. ‘A bad dude.’

Daniel smiled.

‘You are, aren’t you?’

He looked out at the yacht. One of the men was standing by a piling watching the others heave boxes aboard.

‘For years I worked for my father,’ he said. ‘Vincent Salbone. Have you heard that name?’

It took her a moment to place it, then another moment to absorb the fact.

‘On TV,’ she said. ‘Always surrounded by lawyers, always gets off.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘He always has.’

‘So you grew up in the Mafia. A little prince.’

His smile faded.

‘Hardly a prince,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been a disappointment to my father. Especially these last few years.’

Daniel scanned the patio. A family chattering two tables away, another young couple with a noisy toddler. The other tables were empty.

He reached out and took her hand and cradled it in both of his. His voice was quiet and resolved. But his words came haltingly, with awkward edges, as if he’d never pronounced these exact phrases before.

‘The family business, I struggled to make it work for a few years, but I was restless, impatient. Doing things the same way they’ve always been done, I felt trapped. Not a good match. Drugs, gambling. I was confused. I felt tainted and unnatural. So I cast around for a while until I found something different, more stimulating. Cleaner. An old-fashioned form of commerce that died out a while back but is making a return. Something that suits me better. More adventurous.’

Anne fixed her eyes on him.

‘What’re you saying, Daniel?’

‘My father was from the streets. Philly, a city guy. But I was born here. I’m South Florida through and through. Boats, water. I’m more at home when I’m out of sight of land.’

‘You don’t look like a fisherman to me.’

‘I think you know what I am. I think you’ve known since the first time we spoke. Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara. All that.’

The toddler screamed and threw a handful of silverware onto the patio.

Anne leaned forward and drew her hand out of Daniel’s grasp.

‘You’re telling me you’re a pirate?’

‘I’ve always preferred the sound of buccaneer ,’ he said.

She leaned back in her chair. The air was pinched in her throat. She brushed a hand through her hair, felt her face warming.

‘Well, this is just perfect. My mother would’ve fainted away.’

‘Those are my men out on the dock. That’s one of my vessels.’

Anne stared out at the yacht. The work had finished, the men standing around smoking.

‘So how does it work?’ she said. ‘You commandeer a ship at sea, repaint its name, hoist a new flag, sail it away like it’s yours?’

‘That’s one way,’ Daniel said.

‘Kill everybody, throw them overboard?’

‘We sometimes have to defend ourselves. But no, we’re not killers. Five years, no casualties yet. On either side.’

‘But you would if you had to. You’re armed.’

‘If we had to protect ourselves. Yes.’

Daniel met her eyes, a defenseless gaze she hadn’t seen from him before. Every spark of cockiness vanished, his debonair smile gone. This was who he was, no hedging, no juking and jiving. Her lover, a goddamn pirate.

Anne touched a fingertip to her forehead, combed a stray hair back into place. She hadn’t been waiting for this man. She hadn’t been waiting for any man. She was still young; other guys would come along, or no guys. She’d always told herself that either way suited her fine. She could grow old in Islamorada. A weathered waitress with sun-brittle hair, her voice coarsened from secondhand smoke. Take your order, sir? She knew a lot of those. Living in their silver Air-stream with their overfed cat and their quart of rum. Carpenters or boat captains sharing their bed for a week or two. It wasn’t so bad.

She closed her eyes and listened to her body, felt the alien quiver spreading through her gut. All these years with little more than a tingle. Now this. This man who was way too handsome, way too dangerous. For all these years she’d stayed well inside the lines, a good citizen, invisible. Ten-hour shifts, then back to her apartment. At night in bed she’d read thick biographies from the library, getting lost in other people’s lives, their quirks, the moments of triumph and despair. On her hours off she puttered through the mangroves in her aluminum boat, watched the endless reshaping of the clouds. There were a couple of waitresses she talked to, not friends exactly. Over the years she’d allowed a couple of dozen men to lead her to their beds, but no one who stirred her blood. Except maybe Thorn, and even with him she’d managed to cut it off on the brink of something more. She refused to let them charm her. Always disciplined, drawing back at the first warm shiver. She wasn’t going to sacrifice everything. Hand her life over to a dark-eyed dreamboat. Be a martyr for love like some sappy heroine in a pirate movie.