Reunion (41 page)

Photographers. Questions. She waved just as if this was the everyday routine for all of them. Then she climbed onto the bike, put her foot on the pedal, and pushed off.

The first thing she noticed was that the bike’s tires needed air. Still, she wasn’t turning back. Not when she’d gotten this far, not when the warm air, the breeze she made by riding, felt so good against her face. No one was looking for her here, like this.

As she rode through the blocks of Old Town, cars passed her without slowing. Closer to the main streets, she cruised past groups of pedestrians on their way to dinner or to Duval, no one much interested in the ordinary woman on the bicycle. She was factually, blissfully anonymous. In a fit of daring, she turned the bike onto Duval Street and began riding toward the port. When she stopped at Southard Street to wait for the light, she kept her head down and hoped that with all reports saying she was holed up, no one would imagine they might see her here. She was just a chick on a bike, not an uncommon sight in the slightest.

To her left, she remembered, the street made a short trip through the Truman Annex to the submarine basin, passing the Green Parrot on its way. How long ago that night at the Parrot seemed. Julian so edgy, until
they’d gotten out into the night, alone, and then he’d shown her a side of him she suspected few ever saw.

How preoccupied she’d been at first, waiting to hear from Branford. Well, if nothing else, Meredith’s wonderful daughter had relieved her of that stress.

She hadn’t been so preoccupied that she didn’t notice Julian—for what little good it had done either of them. It had been a nice walk in the mist, though.

The light changed and she rode farther down Duval, then right onto Greene and up to the marina. A flock of catamarans and ketches bobbed on calm, turquoise water, masts and ropes cutting vertical lines in the blue sky. A small crowd was milling near the dock; she sat on her bike and watched, curious, but nothing appeared to be happening.

“Still room, miss!” she heard from nearby, on her right. A weathered, fiftyish man inside a tiny white booth waved to get her attention. “We got room, yet. Thirty-nine dollars gets you the Snorkel and Sunset, free wine, beer, champagne, soda.”

“Oh, thanks, but I don’t snorkel.”

“Don’t, or won’t?” the man challenged.
“Thirty-five
dollars, let’s call it. We got all the gear, we’ll teach you on the way. Flotation devices are included, vests, noodles, no charge. Every day we got kids going out, families, first-timers. Every day. Key West has the finest reefs in the northern hemisphere. Now’s your chance to see the coral, see the colorful fish.”

He was as amusing as he was annoying, but the best part was that she knew this was the spiel he used on
everyone.
All day, from this booth, he enticed tourists to part with their money and get on a boat. He didn’t watch daytime TV, he didn’t read the tabloids, he didn’t surf the Web. He didn’t recognize her.

“I don’t have my swimsuit,” she said, shrugging.

“Can you have one in ten minutes? Bikinis aplenty down Front Street or Duval.
Thirty
dollars, call it, Snorkel and Sunset. You’ll love it. Three relaxing hours. Free beer, wine, champagne, soda.”

She laughed. “Does anyone succeed in resisting you?”

“Why would they want to?” He smiled, a rakish smile that she imagined he used quite successfully in other places and for other purposes. Little slowed him down.

She thought of her son’s smile
—Ryan’s
smile. He certainly didn’t seem to be the type to hold himself back. She said, “You know what? I’ll do it, I’ll go.” She leaned the bike against the booth and bought a ticket, already thinking about how she would tell her mother this tale later. “Now I have to get a swimsuit—don’t let them leave without me.”

At the first shop she came to, she hurried inside, paying no attention to who else was there; she scanned the racks and racks of bikinis, every color, every style from full coverage to thong. A red floral print caught her eye; not knowing what size would fit, she took down four suits in her best-guess range and bought them all, plus a towel and sunscreen—but not the T-shirt that read, “For my next trick, I need a condom and a volunteer,” tempting as it was. Maybe tomorrow night she and Mel could browse some shops and have a few laughs. Better than old times.

The sales clerk chatted loudly using an earpiece phone, never looking at Blue as she took her credit card, processed it, and bagged the purchase.

Fabulous.

The crowd that had been milling by the dock was now milling onboard a catamaran accented in vivid orange, red, and gold. Blue left her bike at the booth and went to board, with more than a little trepidation. A lone woman was sure to be noticed no matter what. A lone woman who was also a newly fallen celebrity was sure to be apprehended; she could only hope the bold apprehender, or apprehenders, would not be obnoxious.

Besides, no one could talk with their face in the water, so how bad could it be?

She managed to get on the boat, get her gear, and find a seat, all before she sensed she’d been recognized. Her sunglasses were a welcome shield while the boat motored away from the dock and a tanned, shirtless crewmember, blond hair pulled back and tattoos in full display, briefed the twenty or so passengers about safety, and toilets.

An hour out, an hour there, an hour back. The sun would oblige them by setting on their return, and then, just as evening got fully underway, she’d hurry back home
(home!)
to change and join her mother’s reception, which would have only just started.

Excepting the contortions it took to change her clothes in the storage-bin-sized head, the sail out to the reef could not have gone better. Two women, look-alike dyed blondes with wide designer sunglasses and the barest signs of stretch marks on their sunburned bellies, spent the time that wasn’t used by the crew for snorkel instruction and shark jokes telling her how much they admired what she’d done. Adoption, career, retirement, all of it. They had kids, they said (back at home, with the husbands) and there were plenty of times they’d second-guessed their choices. “Hell, I want to give away my four-year-old at least once a week,” one said. Blue did not visibly flinch.

When the captain, a dark-haired, dark-tanned, jolly guy in hibiscus-print shorts announced that they had reached the reef and it was time to gear up, she tried to quell her sudden panic. In almost every direction as far as she could see, there was water. Beautiful Disney World water, but water—ocean—just the same. Land was the briefest sketchy line on the horizon, an hour’s sail behind them. An hour’s
sail.
And now she was meant to put on a thin vest, rubber fins, and a face mask, stuff a tube in her mouth, and climb off or jump off a perfectly good boat?

Her new friends were at the bow waving their encouragement. She waved back and slipped the vest over her head. “Go on, I just need to … er,” she grabbed the small plastic tube that protruded from the vest. “I’ll be there in a minute.” The tube was for inflating the vest, which would somehow keep her buoyant but not too buoyant; too much and she would flip belly-up like a stranded turtle.

The blond crewman saw her and walked over. “Need help?”

“Will you snorkel for me?”

He laughed. “Pull that bit up, there, then blow into it until you’re just the littlest bit fluffy.”

He watched while she tried it. She felt idiotic, unsure whether she was now fluffy enough. “Good, thanks,” she said, to make him go away.

Up front, kids, old ladies all were hopping into the sea with the enthusiasm of a Cousteau crew. She carried her fins and got in line for the stairs. She repeated the actions of the people ahead of her, positioning her mask and snorkel, sitting on the top step, putting her feet into the fins. Down the center stairwell she scooted, and down, and down while the boat was heaving left and right—to and fro? Fore and aft?—water sluicing across the stairs. One sharp dip to the left and she was pulled suddenly into the chilly waves.

Pulled under, salt water rushing into her snorkel, her mouth, her mask where it wasn’t seated well against her face. She came up gasping, kicking, but the fins felt wrong, foreign, impossible for treading water. The vest was doing nothing for her. Water washed over her again. She went under, bobbed back up, tried desperately to get her arms and feet coordinated, to lay on the water the way they’d described. Through the sloshing water in her mask she could see the boat’s hull about twenty feet away, the boat suddenly enormous and towering above the water’s surface, the sun behind it, blinding. She’d bobbed off to the side of the boat, away from the group. Her arms flailed; she thrust up her chin—forget the snorkel—struggling to keep her nose and mouth above water. Another swell dunked her and she was pulled down into the cool, blue emptiness, water filling her nose and mouth, and she knew without question that she would die here.

She would not see Julian’s face again. None of the past week’s crisis would matter. In a few days or a week, it, and she, would be old news, archives on a Web server, a name carved into granite. Nothing left behind but footage of her encouraging someone to talk, observing while someone else cooked, or sang, or stitched, or joked, or danced, or loved, or suffered, all in front of a studio audience. Centuries from now, archaeologists would uncover the footage and think, Now where was that filmed? Where did she live? Only to discover upon closer examination that in every important way she hadn’t.

She bobbed back up, coughing and gasping.

“You okay down there?” a voice called from above. She pushed her mask up and looked in the voice’s direction, straight into the sun.

She coughed. “Define
okay.”

“Here, this will help.” A foam noodle landed on the water near her. With a black spot in the middle of her vision she reached for it, noticing the hull was now just five feet away. “Lay on the water,” the crewman called. “Let it be your lift.”

With the noodle under her armpits, she fixed her mask, cleared her snorkel, put it into her mouth. She’d be damned if she’d drown out here, not if no one else was drowning, not if the friggin’ boat wasn’t going down.

She challenged herself:
Lay
on the water.
Arms out, legs out, move them from the hip. Breathe with your mouth. Lay
on the water.

Lie
on the water, wasn’t it?

Whatever, she was doing it, lying, breathing—sounding like Darth Vader after aerobics—breathing, seeing! A school of cobalt and yellow fish, with a black dot in the middle! A green fuzzy donut-looking thingy on the ocean floor, with a black dot in the middle! The black-dotted ocean floor! Her mask was fogged, but she was seeing! Praise-the-good-lord-jesus-buddah-allah-krishna-hallelujah-amen.

lue toweled off after her shower. The salt water and sunscreen were washed away now, but the feeling of accomplishment remained.

Without the daily deliberations of product and flat-iron and stylist, her hair was reverting to nature’s intended curls. She bound it up in a loose twist and put on the one dress she’d packed when she thought she was coming down for only last weekend. A pale green cotton sundress—a daytime dress for a nighttime event. A fashion violation that she was pretty sure would violate no one who’d be at the reception.

It looked good on her less-exercised, slightly softer body. So did the low-heeled sandals she wore with it, and the everyday diamonds, which were the only jewelry she’d brought. She was rosy-cheeked from the sunshine, something that had become all too rare for her in past years. Even at garden parties, even on yachts, even on those weekend trips to Jamaica where she’d sunned beside a pool inside a walled estate, she’d taken pains to keep the sun from actually reaching her skin.

Tonight, she felt like she was imbued with sunshine.

The photo of Ryan waited on the kitchen counter, tempting her to bring it for her mother and sister to see. She’d meant what she told her mother earlier, though; the focus should not be on her life but on her mother’s and Calvin’s. She tucked the photo back into the envelope. It could keep until after the wedding tomorrow, and then she would show it, proudly.

Progress.

The paparazzi, embodied now in only three photographers, waited dutifully outside her gate. They seemed bored as they took her picture climbing into a cab. Where was the news? Where was the drama? She heard one of them say, screw this, he was going for a drink.

Me too.

Except her stomach was still a little queasy from so much swallowed salt water; she would go easy on the champagne tonight.

Two photographers patrolled the lobby doors at the Ocean Key. In darkness, with so many tourists thronging the Mallory Square area, she thought she might pass them and use the entrance off the pier, but no such luck. They saw her. They yelled. Their cameras flashed. At one time she would have acknowledged them with a smile or nod—good press, always. Now she ignored them as she passed. Disdained them, in fact. Who chose such a job, and why? There were so many better ways to be a photographer. Take Julian, for example.