Choke (9 page)

He turned into the Overseas Market shopping center, drove aimlessly around for a minute or two, then got back onto Roosevelt and headed toward home. The scooter kept pace, darting among cars a hundred yards back.

Chuck turned right on Palm Avenue and drove across the arching Garrison Bight bridge, past the naval base. Palm became Eaton Street as he headed into Old Town. He turned left on Elizabeth Street, picked up his laundry and dry cleaning, made a U-turn, and drove back to Key West Bight. He parked in his usual spot, put the tonneau cover on the car, and struggled toward
Choke,
burdened with groceries and laundry. He danced across the little gangplank and dumped his cargo on a deck chair while he unlocked the cabin. As he did so, he looked toward the parking lot and saw the Turk carefully not looking at him. A moment later, the man turned the scooter around and drove away.

As Chuck was putting away his groceries, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” Clare.

“Ah …” Chuck struggled for the right words.

“Is this a bad time?”

“Call me back in five minutes, but not from home.”

She was silent for a moment. “Right,” she said finally, then hung up.

Chuck mixed himself a drink and took the cordless phone onto the afterdeck. He sat and sipped, idly watching the sunset, until the instrument rang in his hand.

“Hi,” he said.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you with somebody?”

“No, I’m alone. Where are you?”

“I’m in the car.”

“Good.”

“Baby, what’s the matter? Aren’t we on for tonight?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“He’s left for Marathon. There’s some property up there he’s been looking at.”

“He may have left a representative behind.”

“A representative? What are you talking about?”

“When you and Harry came to tennis today, a man on a motor scooter seemed to follow you.”

“What did he look like?”

Chuck described the Turk.

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Anyway, it’s not the first time I was followed by a man. Maybe he’s a breast man.”

“Maybe,” Chuck said, “but when I left work tonight, he followed me, too, and I don’t think it was because he liked my tits.”

She laughed. “Are you sure you’re not imagining things?”

“I spotted him as I was leaving the grocery store; I took the long way home, and he was with me all the way. He just left, at least I think he did.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think there’s a better-than-even chance that Harry has put somebody on us.”

“Mmmm,” she said. “I wonder if he’d do that.”

“You know him better than I. Would he?”

“It’s unlikely, but you’re right, tonight might not be a good idea, considering.”

“Considering,” Chuck echoed. “Why don’t you keep an eye behind you for a couple of days, see if the guy turns up again? I’ll do the same.”

“I don’t want to wait a couple of days to see you,” she said, her voice low.

“Believe me, I feel exactly the same way,” Chuck replied. “But we don’t know if today is this guy’s first day on us, or if he’s been around for a while.”

“My guess is this is his first day,” Clare said.

“Why?”

“Because, as hard as Harry is to read, I think I’d know if somebody had reported to him that you and I are screwing each other blind twice a week. That would trouble him.”

“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?”

C
huck 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.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said, kissing him on the belly. “And when I’m through with you, you’re going to be downright
impractical.”

And he was.

C
huck sent Meg back to her own boat after breakfast, and he was happy that Dan wasn’t around at the time. He had no particular desire to face her brother this morning.

Driving to work, a new thought struck him. For the first time, he considered breaking it off with Clare Carras. God knew he loved being in bed with her, but he thought he liked being in bed with Meg better, and he liked Meg better. Meg was smarter, funnier, and more lovable than Clare, and she had the additional advantage of not having a husband who hired private detectives.

And, speaking of private detectives, the Turk had vanished. He was nowhere to be seen around Key West Bight or around the Olde Island Racquet Club, and when, in the late afternoon, Harry and Clare showed up to play tennis, he did not follow them.

There was something different about Harry, though. He was still affable enough, but edgier. Then he surprised Chuck.

“You think you’re all finished choking in your life?” he asked Chuck.

“Beg pardon?”

“You choked at Wimbledon. Have you put that behind you? Is your head on straight these days?”

“I think so.”

“I think not.”

Chuck glanced at Clare. She looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Why do you say that, Harry?”

“I think you’re a born loser, Chuck. When the pressure’s on, you fold.”

“What evidence do you have of that?” Chuck asked, surprised at the direction the conversation was taking.

“My own intuition,” Harry said. “I think I know a loser when I see one.”

Clare looked at the ground. “Harry, knock it off; you’re being rude.”

Harry ignored her. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll give you a chance to prove me wrong.”

“That’s kind of you, Harry,” Chuck replied.

“I’ll play you three games of tennis for a thousand dollars.”

Clare spoke up. “A thousand dollars! That’s outrageous, Harry!”

“Three games,” Harry repeated. “Any more than that and your comparative youth would give you too great an advantage. I serve two, you serve one; that’ll even us up a bit.”

“Come on, Harry, I don’t want your money,” Chuck said.

Victor had heard all this, and now he spoke up. “What’s the matter, Chuck? Can’t you use a grand?”

He could, Chuck reflected. He had about twelve hundred in the bank, but he wanted some new equipment for the boat, and a thousand would help a lot. “Harry, I’m the pro here, and I’ve got twenty years on you. I don’t think it would be fair.”

“Fair doesn’t come into it,” Harry said. “I’m just out to prove a point.”

“Go on, Chuck,” Victor said. “Take the man’s money.”

Chuck shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take your money, Harry.”

They warmed up for a few minutes, then Harry served. Chuck planned a bit of a hustle; he’d lose the first game, win his serve, then let the last game run close before he took it away.

Losing the first game was easy, since Harry seemed to be playing above his usual game. It was in the second game that Chuck got his first surprise. He served a hard one to the outside, one that should have been an ace against a man in his sixties, but to his astonishment, Harry ran to the ball and snapped a forehand straight down the line. It was in by six inches; love-fifteen.