Matecumbe (8 page)

“Are you game?”

“That’s the best offer I’ve had in years.”

Three deliverymen came to Mary Ann’s door on Friday afternoon.

When she unwrapped the bouquet of roses and carnations, it was as if she’d turned on a light to illuminate the semi-darkness of her kitchen. Flowers that were brightly colored and aromatic had always fascinated Mary Ann. She loved to smell them, having pressed her nose to thousands of petals ever since childhood.

Just last year, she had planted petunias, snapdragons, and portulacas outside her apartment, next to the walkway, but a group of neighborhood boys had trampled on some of the young growths and had uprooted others.

The additional gifts from Paul that awaited Mary Ann included a bottle of Chanel No. 5 and a terry cloth bathrobe.

“A lady must always have a robe,” Paul had recently told her, after she’d admitted to not owning one.

Paul and Mary Ann were planning a weekend tour of nearby Delaware, stopping at museums and perhaps spending an evening at the racetrack near Wilmington.

“My last out-of-town trip was back in October,” Mary Ann told Paul. “I took the girls on a bus ride to New York City, and then we got on a boat to visit the Statue of Liberty.

“I’ll never forget the look on Melissa’s face after I gave her the money to pay for our lunch at that little restaurant in Manhattan. I was already out on the sidewalk with the rest of the girls, waiting for her, when she ran up to us and said, ‘Mommy, the man at the cash register must have gotten me mixed up with somebody else. He didn’t take my money, and he gave me $17. He said it was my change.’”

“You’ll like what you see in Delaware,” Paul advised. “After we stop at the Hagley Mansion and walk along the Brandywine Creek, we’ll visit the gardens at Winterthur. I know you’ve called me a ‘rich’ person several times already, but this DuPont fellow who designed the gardens had so much money that he could afford to collect trees from around the world. He planted hundreds of different types throughout the grounds on his estate.”

And although she found the landscaping at Winterthur to be indeed beautiful, Mary Ann fell in love instead with the magnolia tree that was in full bloom right outside the door of their motel room. She insisted that Paul take her picture as she stood amidst the purple-colored blossoms.

Inside that room, Mary Ann and Paul would make love for the first time, and Mary Ann was prepared—having packed her suitcase with two scented candles. “A special touch,” she thought, for a special occasion.

“Peppermint. They’re peppermint candles,” she told a sniffing Paul, laughingly, as they lay on the bed—hard in each other’s embrace.

Mary Ann giggled again when she told Paul that his large, uncircumcised penis looked like a fire hose. And he, surprised by her frank, childlike commentary, giggled in return. Since she had borne four children, Mary Ann was convinced that even an extra-large penis would not be painful to her.

While she and Paul began their breathtaking, inaugural act of love, Mary Ann’s mind raced back to her early high school days. She and her girlfriend, Sherry, were still virgins when they first fantasized about orgasms. Her coupling now with Paul far exceeded those fantasies.

In their motel the following morning, Mary Ann woke up before Paul. First, she purposefully gazed throughout the room and then walked around busily, tossing the clothing from her suitcase and flipping the plastic pages of her wallet, trying to find something, anything that she could give to Paul at the moment he awoke. An old photograph of her perhaps, or any small, meaningful memento would only help to increase the strength of their growing bond.

She had a craving to please this gentle, thoughtful man to whom she felt she owed the life-tasting rebirth she was now experiencing.

Mary Ann left the room briefly, and when she returned, she sat on the bed alongside Paul’s feet, watching his eyelids while she waited.

“Here, drink this,” she smiled, as soon as he awoke. “It’s a cold glass of water. And if you want a refill, there’s more ice.”

Despite being in Islamorada—a luxurious vacation setting—Melissa spent what she considered a boring day on Saturday. She had gotten used to Joe’s company and accustomed to the way the hours seemed to fly by with him at her side. On this day, though, she found herself staring at her watch—and at various clocks—from dawn until evening. So, even in the face of continued warm weather, it was, figuratively, a day without sunshine.

Her constant thoughts during this contemplative, intervening period centered on the unknown activities that awaited her during the proposed forty-eight-hour visit to Key West—scheduled to begin tomorrow.

Melissa’s daydreaming touched on all aspects of a possible serious relationship with Joe. Primarily, she fantasized about the ultimate— marriage—and whether she could ever consider living with him in Islamorada, or, in the alternative, if Joe would consent to relocating to Philadelphia. True, his uncle, his only remaining relative, lived in nearby New Jersey, but with so many painful memories of Becky linked there, could he handle such a move?

Also putting her psyche on edge was the distinct likelihood of sex in Key West. Did spending the night away from Islamorada mean they would be sharing a single motel room? Would Joe be expecting her to provide sex? Did he purposely give her a day without him so she could have time to convince herself that sex would be an acceptable complement to this overnight vacation within a vacation?

What does Joe hope to gain by taking her to Key West? Is his only motive a one-night stand? Does he flirt with every tourist the same way? A week from now, will he be charming some vacationer from Minnesota and taking her to the same local attractions?

There were questions, many questions. But also, there was hope.

Early on Sunday morning, Joe stopped by the Seascaper to pick up Melissa. As she’d promised him, she was dressed casually. On the left portion of her white blouse was a wide, vertical red stripe that ran from the collar to the belt line. Her short, white linen skirt and white sneakers completed the outfit, giving her the look of a tennis player—or perhaps even a cheerleader.

After they had greeted each other, Melissa fixed her eyes on Joe’s facial expression, looking for smirks that could be interpreted as signs of lust or anticipation of sexual conquest. She could, however, discern no hints of either. In fact, he was able to maintain his gentlemanly smile even after opening the trunk of the car and placing her overnight bag next to his.

“Joe’s probably a very good poker player,” Melissa thought, as she thanked him for holding open the car door. “Putting my bag away would have been the perfect time for a wisecrack.”

Melissa briefly considered a flippant comment of her own, like, “Did you bring the prophylactics, Joe, or should I go back and get some?” She decided, however, to hold her tongue.

Melissa knew, though, that the day ahead would be a much more pleasurable experience if the air were cleared right away about the evening’s sleeping arrangements.

So, almost as soon as the car had accelerated to fifty-five miles per hour on Route 1, Melissa uttered the inevitable question. She offered it in an indirect, casual fashion, letting Joe know that she was aware of the possibilities, but at the same time giving him an opportunity to ask her about her preference—or to provide an option.

“Did you make a reservation for one room or for two?”

“Actually, I made a pair of reservations,” he answered. “The Jones reservation at one motel is for a single room. The Carlton/Tomlinson reservation at another motel is for two rooms. Sometime today, either now or later, you can tell me whether you’d be more comfortable as Mrs. Jones or as Miss Tomlinson.”

“Did you bring the prophylactics?” Melissa asked him, giving an indirect but obvious answer. “Or should we stop along the way and buy a few?”

Joe grinned sheepishly and replied, “I think we’re covered.”

The nearly two-hour drive to Key West took them across what seemed like endless stretches of water covered by hundreds of arching highway bridges, some of which were longer and larger than the islands they joined.

The twenty-odd “major” Keys that form the archipelago were dotted with sparsely populated, New England–type towns, most looking like board-by-board restorations of American fishing villages circa 1950. On Ramrod Key, possibly the most typical, a trailer park and a few tiny bungalows were clustered around a general store that bore a tired, wooden façade.

In each town along the way, almost to a shingle, the centrally located commercial building, which usually bore the sign of a major gasoline company, was bordered on the rear by a bayside dock—with the obligatory fuel pump for servicing local boaters.

Joe stopped the car only once on the way to Key West, about halfway from Islamorada. The spot he picked was on the edge of Marathon, just before the start of the so-called Seven Mile Bridge, the longest span linking the Keys.

Their parking spot off to the side of the highway was at the point where the bridge ramp left the land and began its skyward climb.

As they walked down toward the nearby shoreline, they could see miles of clear water, both blue and bluish-green, in every direction. Faintly visible, near the horizon, was a tiny section of the next nearest island, where this gracefully designed bridge, seemingly bound for infinity, would once again meet highway.

As Melissa’s eyes tracked the westward path of this mammoth steel structure, she thought it similar to a star trail or the flight of a meteor that could splash down anywhere at all in this vast expanse of water but chose instead to settle on a remote sliver of land, far into the distance, that looked to be but a tiny toy in God’s gigantic hot tub.

Joe, too, seemed awestruck.

“I love to stop here and gaze at the water,” he confided, with one foot propped on a bulkhead. “I can do it for hours on end. If I ever need a little time by myself to think and to clear my mind, I seek out an ocean, and I just stare.”

“I guess I get the same kind of a high you’re describing when I look into my fireplace on cold and windy winter evenings,” Melissa observed, “or when I travel to the New Jersey shore and sit on one of those boardwalk benches, watching the whitecaps crashing onto the beach.”

“Fire and water are powerful symbols.”

“You’re right, Joe. Maybe that’s why I always come away with a silent confidence, as if I’ve just completed some sort of prayerful penance.”

Hand-in-hand now, they walked back up the sandy incline and kissed, ever so briefly, before continuing their southwestward journey.