Carl Hiaasen (5 page)

When she got home at half past midnight, he was waiting at her front door.

With more flowers.

“Oh Lord,” said Eugenie Fonda.

“Okay if I come in?”

“You look terrible, sugar.”

“Bad day,” said Shreave, following her inside.

They began to make love on the sofa, Eugenie bouncing with her customary determination upon his lap. Within moments she found herself detached, literally, Boyd having waned to limpness.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Eugenie climbed off and pulled on her panties. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

“It’s Lily. She’s acting really weird.”

“You think she knows?”

“How could she? We’ve been so careful,” Shreave said.

“Right. Like that day in the sub shop.” Eugenie clicked her teeth.

She went to get a vase for the flowers, Shreave calling after her, “I’m telling you, Genie, she doesn’t know about us. There’s no way.”

What a voice, she thought. Sometimes when Boyd was talking, she’d close her eyes and imagine for a moment that he looked like Tim McGraw. That’s how good he sounded.

By the time she returned to the living room, he’d removed his shoes and socks and was sucking loudly on a lime Jolly Rancher candy that he’d taken from a silver bowl on the end table.

Eugenie Fonda put down the vase and got two beers from the refrigerator. “So,” she said, stationing herself beside him on the sofa, “what’d your wife do that was so weird?”

Shreave spit the sticky chunk of candy into an ashtray and attacked the beer. Eugenie waited.

“Just a strange vibe,” he said finally. “Things she said. The way she was looking at me.”

Eugenie nodded. “She wanted to have sex, right?”

“How’d you know?” Shreave was amazed.

“Boyd, we need to talk.”

“I didn’t bone her, Genie, I swear to God!”

Eugenie smiled. “Sugar, she’s your wife. An occasional orgasm is part of the deal.”

Shreave reddened and lunged for his beer once again, dark crescents blooming under his arms.

“Boyd, I can’t do this anymore,” Eugenie told him. “And please don’t say you’re going to ask Lily for a divorce, because you aren’t. And even if you did—”

“I haven’t told her I got fired. That means we can be together every night!”

“How, Boyd? What about my job?”

He set down the beer bottle and damply clasped her right hand. “Suppose you quit Relentless and started working days somewhere else. It’ll be great—I could have dinner ready when you get home and stay here till midnight, Monday through Friday. Lily won’t suspect a thing. She’ll think I’m at the call center.”

Eugenie Fonda withdrew her hand and dried it on his shirttail.

“Boyd, listen up,” she said. “I really don’t want to be your full-time fuck buddy. Call me a dreamer, but I still think I could wind up with a normal guy in a normal relationship, once I stop sleeping with married men.”

Shreave sat back, ashen.

“Now don’t you dare start to bawl,” Eugenie said.

Shreave’s head drooped. “I can’t believe this. First I lose my job, and now you want to break up with me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find out I’ve got cancer.”

Eugenie led him toward the door, saying how sorry she was and what a blast they’d had together and how it was time for both of them to figure out what they truly wanted from life.

“But I
know
what I want,” Shreave said. “You.”

“Good-bye, sweetie.” She bent down to kiss him, but then he didn’t leave.

“Boyd, I said good-bye.”

He remained rooted and defiant in her doorway. “I’m not going anywhere till you tell me the real reason you’re dumpin’ me.”

Seriously, Eugenie Fonda said to herself, do I need this?

“It’s the least you can do,” Shreave said.

In addition to the best damn hummers you ever had in your life, Eugenie thought.

“Genie, I want the truth.”

“Fine,” she said. With some guys, cold and cruel was the way to go.

“Boyd, you’re boring. You’re gonna put me into a coma, you’re so fucking boring. I’m sorry, but you asked for it.”

He looked up at her with a twisting and skeptical smile. “Boring? Nice try. What’s his name?”

Eugenie Fonda took hold of Boyd’s shoulders. “There is no
him.
Now, adios, cowboy,” she said.

He shook free. “No, wait—how’m I boring?” His strong, silky voice had shrunk to a tubercular rasp.

“No, sugar, the question is: How are you
not
boring?” Eugenie Fonda felt a disquieting nibble of guilt, so she hastily unloaded both barrels. “When’s the last time you did anything interesting? Anything at all?”

“With you?”

“
With
me.
To
me. Anything that wasn’t totally predictable,” she rolled on.

“But—”

“But nuthin. I don’t care to spend the rest of my days servicing a couch potato. When’s the last time you were even out in the sunshine, for God’s sake? Michael Jackson’s got a better tan.”

“But I told you about my accident!” Shreave interjected.

Eugenie waved him off. “Don’t even start. You fell on a cactus, big fucking deal. Everything still works fine.” Then, letting her gaze drift below his belt, she added: “More or less.”

That did the trick. Wordlessly Shreave plunged down the steps and reeled toward the parking lot.

As his car screeched away, Eugenie Fonda experienced a tug of remorse. If only he’d surprised me just once, she thought.

Flowers just don’t cut it.

Five

From 1835 to 1842, the United States government for the second time directed its military might against a small band of Indians settled in the wilderness of Florida. During those years the Seminoles were pursued by almost every regiment of the regular army, and more than fifty thousand volunteers and militiamen. By the time it was over, the Second Seminole War had cost the United States an estimated thirty million dollars, a mountainous sum in that era, and more than three thousand lives.

The toll was all the more astounding because, at the peak of its strength, the Seminole tribe had no more than a thousand warriors.

Absurdly outnumbered, braves would lure the white infantry deep into the boggy swamps and pine barrens, then attack in lightning flurries. The strategy proved highly effective at first, but in the end the Indians were overrun. Their home camps were razed, hundreds of families were wiped out and nearly four thousand tribal members were deported to Indian Country, the bleak plains of Oklahoma. Nevertheless, the small numbers of Seminoles who remained in Florida refused to surrender, and to this day their descendants have never signed a peace treaty with Washington, D.C.

In late 1880, the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology dispatched the Rev. Clay MacCauley to Florida “to inquire into the condition and to ascertain the number of Indians commonly known as Seminole.” MacCauley spent the winter of 1881 traveling to tribal settlements at Catfish Lake, Cow Creek, Fisheating Creek, the Miami River and Big Cypress. His account, published six years later, was praised for its rich descriptions and perceptive commentary.

Sammy Tigertail’s father bought him a copy for four dollars at a used-book sale at the big public library in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The volume became one of the boy’s most treasured belongings, and it was not exaggerating to say that it changed his life.

“They are now strong, fearless, haughty and independent,” MacCauley wrote in summary of the Indians he met, then added:

The moving lines of the white population are closing in upon the land of the Seminole. There is no farther retreat to which they can go. It is their impulse to resist the intruders, but some of them at last are becoming wise enough to know that they cannot contend successfully with the white man. It is possible that even their few warriors may make an effort to stay the oncoming hosts, but ultimately they will either perish in the futile attempt or they will have to submit to a civilization which, until now, they have been able to repel and whose injurious accompaniments may degrade and destroy them.

From the moment he first read those words, Sammy Tigertail had dreamed of shedding his plain life as a Chad and disappearing into the Big Cypress, hideout of Sam Jones and Billy Bowlegs and other heroes of the second war. Above all, the great-great-great-grandson of Chief Tiger Tail would not allow himself to be degraded and destroyed by the white man, a process he feared had already commenced during his suburban childhood. He planned grandly to recast himself as one of those indomitable braves who resisted the intruders, or died trying.

But then he was only a teenager, stoked with idealism and newfound native pride.

Now, re-reading MacCauley by firelight, Sammy Tigertail struggled to envision the noble and fiercely insulated culture so admiringly documented in those pages. He wondered what the journalist-preacher would say about the twenty-first-century clans that eagerly beckoned outsiders to tribal gambling halls, tourist traps and drive-through cigarette kiosks. For not the first time the young man contemplated the crushing likelihood that the warrior he aspired to become had no place to go.

As much as Sammy Tigertail cherished the Mark Knopfler guitar, embracing it made him think of the casino from whose garish walls it had been lifted. The great Osceola would not have allowed his people to put their name on such a monstrous palace of white greed; more likely he would have set a torch to it.

But Osceola was long gone, dragged in chains out of his beloved Florida and left to die on a dirt prison floor at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. As for Dire Straits, the band had split up while Sammy Tigertail was still in grade school.

Morosely he closed the MacCauley book and reached for the Gibson. He didn’t feel torn between two cultures so much as forsaken by both. Soon, he knew, the spirit of the dead tourist would appear again. Sammy Tigertail was certain that what had happened to Wilson on the airboat was no ordinary heart attack; it had been arranged by the Maker of Breath, to touch off the events that now found the Seminole marooned on a mild winter night in the Ten Thousand Islands.

Obviously the high spirits were testing him.

Sammy Tigertail let his left hand wander up and down the frets of the guitar while he chopped at the strings with his right. For a pick he used a broken seashell, half of a pearly pink bivalve. The music he made was in its dissonance both melancholy and defiant, the bass notes pounding a martial beat. He played until his fingertips stung, and then he stretched out on the ground near the fire.

Before long he drifted off, lulled by the soft crackle of the embers and a breeze moving through the leaves. After a time his sleep was interrupted by singing, which he assumed was the ghost of Wilson returning to pester him. Who else would be warbling “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer” in the sacred dead of night?

Yet Wilson didn’t show himself, and the unseen chorus began to swell. Soon Sammy Tigertail could make out several voices, some unmistakably female.

He sat up, realizing it wasn’t a dream—the wind had switched direction, bringing not only white man’s music but harsh bursts of laughter and acrid whiffs of lighter fluid. Hurriedly the Seminole arose and kicked sand over his campfire. Then he loaded his rifle and headed upwind into the darkness. He was not an experienced tracker, nor was he particularly light-footed in the bush, but his heart was true and his aim was improving.

Lily Shreave hadn’t expected to see her husband when she walked in the front door.

“What’re you doing here? It’s six-thirty—you’re late for work,” she said.

“I called in sick,” Boyd Shreave told her. “You were right. We need to talk.”

“Well, well.” Lily motioned him to the couch. “I’m gonna have myself a cocktail. You want one?”

Her husband said definitely not, and sat down. He felt steadier than the last time they’d spoken, having now devised a more compelling explanation for his monkish behavior. In a fog of vanity, Shreave believed that Lily’s simmering hunger for him was genuine. He would have been poleaxed to learn that she’d just returned from meeting a private investigator who was compiling evidence for a divorce.

When Lily returned to the room she was sipping a martini. She had also stripped down to thong panties as red as a pepper.

“So.” She put down her drink and straddled him. “Let’s talk.”

But Shreave couldn’t. He sat mute and immobilized as Lily planted both fists in his sternum and began churning piston-like against his crotch. That her gyrations reminded him of Eugenie Fonda wouldn’t have been so bewildering had he known that only an hour earlier his wife had been studying his mistress’s upright style of lovemaking on a videotape recorded by the private eye, shooting through a window of Eugenie’s apartment. Later, while viewing the tape, Lily had commented with clinical neutrality upon Boyd’s weak performance.

He wasn’t doing much better on his own couch. His wife’s uncanny mimicry left him numb with confusion.

“Lily, please don’t,” he bleated.

“Oh, just sit back and enjoy.”

“I saw another doctor today!” Shreave practically shouted. “The news is bad!”

Lily ground to a halt. “You went to a new shrink? Why?”

Shreave nodded somberly. “After what happened at the bagel shop, I was desperate. His name’s Dr. Coolidge.”

“Yeah?”

“He says it’s much worse than depression.”

“Go on.” Lily seemed in no hurry to dismount.

“I wrote it on a piece of paper. It’s in my pants,” he said.

“Right or left pocket?”

“Right one, I think.”

As his wife went delving for the note, Sheave squirmed. He had mixed feelings about the stubbornness of his erection—as reassuring as it was after the humiliating episode with Eugenie, it definitely sent the wrong message to Lily.

“Is this even in English?” She frowned at the lined scrap of paper she’d found.

“It says ‘aphenphosmphobia,’” Shreave said. He’d practiced pronouncing it all afternoon—the weird stuff you could find on the Internet was amazing.

“So, what
is
it exactly?” Lily didn’t sound nearly as concerned as her husband would have hoped.

He said, “Aphenphosmphobia is the fear of being touched.”

“By your wife?”

“No, Lily, by anybody.”

“Touched where?” she asked. “Just on your pecker?”

“Anywhere,”
Shreave said impatiently. “Fingers, toes, lips, ears—all skin-on-skin contact triggers what they call a ‘phobic reaction.’ Could be anxiety, the sweats, even a panic attack. Dr. Coolidge says it’s a very rare condition.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he’s only seen a handful of cases—get it?
Handful
of cases.”

“Oh, that’s hysterical.” Shreave was appalled at her heartlessness. What if he’d been telling the truth?

He said, “You think this is funny?”

“What I think, Boyd, is that you’re still hard.” Slowly she pressed down on him. “That means one of two things: Either you’ve been miraculously cured, or you’re totally full of shit. Here, let’s take off your pants and try a little experiment—”

Shreave bucked loose and bolted for the den, locking the door behind him. “Look it up yourself!” he called out. “A-p-h-e-np-h-o-s-m-p-h-o-b-i-a.”

Lily knocked lightly. “Open up,” she said.

“Not ’til you apologize.”

“Boyd, I’m sorry. I had no idea.” Lily was smiling on the other side of the door.

Shreave said, “And could you please go put some clothes on? This is torture.”

I’ll bet, thought his wife. “You chill out. I’ll be right back.”

Alone in the den, Shreave began to pace. Being rejected by Eugenie Fonda had imbued him with something that resembled determination, a trait heretofore lacking from his flaccid personality. A quitter by nature, Shreave now felt positively propelled. He was resolved not to let his girlfriend slip away, and not to be diverted by his wife in her fiery thong underwear.

The phone rang on the desk. Shreave didn’t feel like answering; however, he’d been harboring an inane fantasy that his boss at Relentless would call to offer him a second chance. Of course he would demand his old cubicle next to Eugenie.

He picked up the handset. “Yes?”

“Hello, is this the Shreave residence?”

It was a woman. She sounded remotely familiar but then so did everybody these days. Shreave had calculated that during his call shifts at Relentless he’d conversed with at least seven thousand strangers, and had heard just about every kind of accent, dialect, pitch, timbre, drawl, twang and speech impediment on the planet.

He glanced at the caller ID, which read
BLOCKED
.

“I’m Mr. Shreave,” he said curtly.

“Oh, good. My name is Pia Frampton and I’m calling with a very special offer—”

“Save your breath, lady.” Shreave chuckled mordantly. In happier times he’d been working at the call center during the dinner hour, so he hadn’t had to deal with telemarketers phoning his own damn house.

“Please don’t hang up, Mr. Shreave. If I could just have a minute of your time—”

“You’re new at this, aren’t you, Pia?”

“No, sir—”

“Come on, tell the truth.”

“Okay, yeah. It’s my first week on the job.”

“Thought so,” Shreave said. “Free piece of advice: Don’t ever tell the sucker not to hang up, because all you’re doing is putting the idea front and center in his head. Just keep talkin’, okay? Stick to the script. And don’t beg for a minute of his time because then you sound desperate, and nobody trusts a desperate salesman.”

“Wow,” the woman said.

“It’s what I do for a living, Pia.”

“Seriously? You work at a call bank, too?”

“One of the biggest.” Shreave told her she had a nice voice, almost too nice for the phone.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Lacks authority. It’s too, I dunno, creamy-sounding.”

“Creamy?”

“See, the guys on the other end might want to date you, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna buy whatever it is you’re selling,” Shreave explained. “Sexy doesn’t work when you’re hawking Krugerrands or discount equity loans. You ever thought about hiring on with one of those adult chat lines? I hear the pay’s pretty good.”

There was silence on the line. Shreave wondered if he’d offended her.

“I was just thinking,” the woman said finally. “Talking to you is just what I needed—all my friends said I wasn’t cut out for this job, and I guess they’re right. Thanks for being so straight with me.”

“Now hold on, don’t give up so easy.” The new Boyd Shreave, dispensing motivational advice. “Tell me what you’re pitching.”

“Real estate.”