Swim to Me (22 page)

Roy was walking around, stretching his legs, when he chanced to
look up and see what was happening on the screen. It seemed as if some reporter had just run into the ocean. This was more interesting than anything he'd seen all afternoon, and he moved closer to the television. The sound of nothing but the microphone soaking up the wind seemed to catch everyone's attention. Then the anchorman, Chuck Varne, said something about the reporter jumping into the water to save a little boy. The camera seemed to be careening. This wasn't the kind of slick camera work they'd gotten used to seeing on the news; it made Roy a little seasick to watch.

For a while all you could see on the screen was the gray of the water until the image of a girl, her arm around a young boy, started to come into focus. Roy's heart jumped. He turned away from the screen and blinked a few times, as if his eyes were playing tricks on him. But now the picture of the girl and boy was perfectly sharp. His eyes were telling him the truth. Roy didn't know what to do: shout out; touch his fingers to the screen; keep quiet. For now, he would sit with the others and watch.

Hanratty moved closer to the TV set and turned up the sound. When, at last, Chuck Varne said something about “WGUP's own Delores Taurus,” he pulled out a pen from his vest pocket and wrote something down on a paper napkin. Hanratty spoke to no one in particular. “Torres. Delores Torres,” he said, pronouncing it with a Spanish accent. “I've seen her before. The girl's a natural.” Roy came close to correcting him.
Walker,
he started to say,
her name's Delores Walker.
But he stopped himself.

Up until now, life had been pretty cut-and-dried for Roy. He'd married young, he'd had some children; it didn't work out and so he left. Boom, boom, boom, nothing complicated about it. He had no tolerance for complications or for the kind of people who allowed them to dominate their lives. So far, this philosophy—if you could call it that—had worked just fine. He had a good job; he was well
liked. But even he had to admit that seeing Delores on television plunged him headfirst into tangled thoughts.

They stayed at the café through the night until early the next morning, while the rain came down like nails and the wind screamed. Whenever the noise became particularly loud, Lucy would screech back as if she were answering some primal taunt. Nobody got much sleep. When the pie ran out in the middle of the night, Rex whipped up some oatmeal and another batch of coffee that tasted so bitter that the clowns took to spitting it at each other. Soon it became a game of who could spit the farthest, and the others became engaged. It wasn't a fair contest really, because Lola Lava Lips, the fire-eater, had a certain advantage. At daybreak, Carmen the aerialist started to sing “Here Comes the Sun.” Rex joined in with his hollow bassoon voice. The midgets with their cupid voices chimed in, as did Lava Lips, though her voice was so hoarse she could barely be heard. By and by everyone was singing as they went through some of their favorite Beatles' songs: “Help!” “Rocky Raccoon,” “Yesterday.” Even Hanratty was tapping his fingers on the table and mouthing the chorus of “Yellow Submarine.” Only Roy sat silent, chewing the end of a straw and staring into space. When the singing was finished, Carmen came over to him. “Hey, sugar face, you're some glum bunny today. One of the cats got your tongue?”

“No, I guess I'm just tired is all,” he answered.

“Well, soon we'll get out of this rathole and you can give those pretty li'l pecs of yours a workout. Buck up,” she said, giving his arm a little punch. She walked off, swaying her hips in a way that seemed odd to Roy for this hour of the morning.

News from the television said that the storm was dying down and moving out to the Gulf of Mexico. Hanratty stood up, still in his jacket and hat, and banged a spoon on a glass again. “Decorum.
Please, can we have some decorum? We can leave here now, but please be careful when returning to your quarters. Also, keep the animals tied up or caged at all times until the sounds are less extreme and we are sure they will not be startled and try and break away. You've been very cooperative, and I appreciate your patience.” Hanratty always spoke to them as if he was addressing a group of tax lawyers. Nonetheless, his words brought them to their feet. They hooted and hollered and bolted out the door as fast as they could, except for Roy who stayed seated at his table.

When the room was clear, Rex came over. “What a mess,” he said, looking at the dirty dishes on and under the tables. There was lemon meringue everywhere, and there were puddles of coffee from the spitting contest. “It looks as if the humans were caged and Lucy and her family took over the place.”

“Yeah, it really is a mess,” said Roy, looking around for the first time. “Tell you what, Rex, I'll help you clean the place up if you'll give me some advice.”

“Sounds like a fair trade to me,” said Rex, pulling up a chair next to Roy. Rex might as well have been sitting on a toadstool. His knees nearly covered his face, and he had to hunch over to listen to what Roy had to say.

Roy told him everything: about how bad things had been at home and how he'd felt he'd go crazy if he stayed; how he left his wife and two kids; how he drove south and now was starting all over. He told him about seeing Delores on television the night before and how he saw, for the first time, that they had some connection. A physical connection was how he saw it. He would have done the same thing—swum against a riptide—if he'd had to. She had his strength; or maybe he had hers. He wondered if he should try to get in touch with her.

“I haven't contacted her or anyone in my family in more than
two years,” he said. “Now, to come out of the blue just like that because suddenly she's on TV. I don't know. It seems wrong. Like I'm trying to use her or something. Besides, what . . . lemme see, how old is she now?” Roy started counting backwards on his fingers. “What seventeen-year-old girl whose father walked out on the family would even want to see him again? No, never mind, it's not even a question. I'm going to leave it alone. That's that. Okay, Rex, let's clean this pigsty up. And I'd really appreciate it if we could leave this conversation between us.” Roy stood up.

Rex put his hand on Roy's arm and pushed him back into his seat. “Whoa, hang on there one minute. What you did was very human. Heartless maybe, but human. Still, your child will always be your child. If you are lucky enough to have someone in this world that is of your blood . . .” Rex turned away without finishing that sentence. “You let her get away one time. Maybe that was a mistake and maybe she won't forgive you for it. But whoever's watching over you clearly wanted you to meet up with her a second time. I'm expecting there won't be a third chance. I guess that's all I have to say.”

The two men stood and started cleaning the walls and floor in silence. When Roy was finished, he went over and shook Rex's hand.

“Thanks, pal,” he said. “I'll let you know what happens.” Rex smiled his shy, broad smile. “Roy Taurus, aay?”

T
HE PREVIOUS DAY,
Thelma Foote had been at her desk paying bills. The constant downpour had begun to make everything soggy. Even the invoices felt heavy and damp. As she studied the bills, she realized that although Delores was drawing more crowds to the park than they'd had in recent years, they were barely turning a profit: the pump needed replacing, the carpet in the theater
was getting mildewed. It was always something at a place like this.

Weeki Wachee was small, and it relied on real live people for its entertainment. Maybe that was starting to be a problem. Over in Orlando, the Disney people were packing them in, using all the technical gizmos and wizardry known to man. And they had already bought up nearly forty-three square miles of cattle-grazing country—twice the size of Manhattan, or so she'd heard. How could little Weeki Wachee begin to compete? Not thinking clearly, she wrote out a check to the Florida Power and Light Company calling it the “Florida Lower and Plight Company.” Funny slip, she thought, as she crumpled up the check and tossed it across the room into the trash can.
Damn, missed.
She used to be an ace shooter—and not bad at kickball or baseball either.

She thought about the land that Disney was chewing up. That used to be land that couldn't be measured in miles. The pine forests and swamps had gone on and on, without anyone laying claim to them. It had been hard to imagine that it would ever be different until perfect concrete squares started replacing those familiar patches of land, and then shopping malls with more rug stores and discount shoe outlets than anyone could possibly need started sprouting up everywhere. But because she was used to being the oldest person around, Thelma tried to not tell stories that began, “When I was younger . . .”

No one can say I'm not modern,
she thought, as she wrote out checks to
Cosmopolitan
and
Mademoiselle,
renewing the girls' subscriptions for another year. Lord knows, she'd relaxed her views on sex, telling herself what do you expect when you put a bunch of young women in provocative outfits and have them waggle their tails underwater? She could always pretty much tell which of her girls were having sex and which were not. She knew that Blonde
Sheila and the preacher were doing it like bunnies every chance they had, but what could she do? Unless one of her girls got pregnant, it was really not her business.

She even understood the commercial value of what Sommers was trying to do. Weather was a safe story involving no controversy. These days, with the whole Watergate shebang going on, it was one of the few things you could talk about without getting into a fight. Sure, having a young girl in a bathtub wearing a scanty costume was tawdry, but crassness seemed to be in vogue. Besides, it got people's minds off the really cynical stuff that was going on in Washington. She doubted that anyone gave her credit for understanding all that.

Damn, she was in a cross mood today. Clearly she wasn't the only one. Why else would the DJ on the radio station she was listening to have played “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” at five in the afternoon?

The next song he put on was one that she really liked: Janis Joplin, singing “Piece of My Heart.” Thelma knew all the lyrics and belted them out along with the radio. She felt she had an affinity with Janis, maybe because she seemed like someone whom the world judged from the outside, never giving her inner self much of a chance. Thelma had taken it very hard when Janis died at twenty-seven.

When Thelma finished singing along, she checked her watch. Five fifty-eight—time for the six o'clock news. She switched off the radio and turned on the television, continuing with her check writing. As soon as she heard the teaser, “Live, from Belleair Beach, our weathergirl, Delores Taurus, will bring you the latest on Hurricane Claudia,” she put down her pen. Now he's gone too far, she thought, dialing up Sommers on his private line.

“What the hell are you doing, sending her out on a story like that?” she shouted.

Sommers had Doug Perry, the producer, on the other line and was trying to have two conversations at once.

“It's a huge story,” he said. “She was the perfect choice. Doug—the trees, the wind. Please!”

“She's not a reporter, Mr. S. She's not even a weathergirl.”

“You're overreacting. No, not you, Doug. Mess the hair a little more.”

“You can't go putting people at risk like this.”

“Don't be ridiculous, she'll be fine. She's not as dumb as she looks.”

Thelma was still on the line when Delores dropped her microphone and jumped into the ocean. “Oh Christ. You are a jackass!” she screamed down the phone at him. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Come in on her as close as you can,” Sommers said to Doug. Then, to Thelma: “You wouldn't know a hot news story if it came up and licked you in the face, would you, Miss F.? Doug, where the hell is the kid? Find the kid!”

There was something frantic in his voice that made Thelma even more furious.

“I don't care if you get higher ratings than
All in the Family.
If one hair on that child's body is harmed, I promise you I will sue you and that ridiculous organization that calls itself a television station for every penny you're probably not worth.”

“I don't see her,” said Sommers, his voice getting small. “Where the hell is she? Oh my God, Miss F., I don't see her, do you?”

They both sat silently, staring at the blank screen. Sommers was the first to spot her. “Oh thank God, there she is.” Then he shouted to Doug: “That's it! Keep it on the girl and on the kid. Come on in with them. That's it! That's it!”

Thelma watched as Delores and the boy came onto the screen. Just as the camera remained focused on Delores and the boy, so
would she. She would stare at Delores until she was safely back to shore, holding the phone in one hand while pressing her other hand to the television screen.

She could hear Sommers breathing on the other end of the line—heavy, uneven huffs. They were both quiet as Delores swam her last strokes and stumbled to shore. Only when Armando wrapped the blanket around them did Sommers speak again. “How about that? Nice work, Doug.”

“All I can say is, thank heaven they're all right,” said Thelma.

“I'll be honest, I was sweating bullets over here,” said Sommers. “Sometimes I think I really am a jackass. But it worked out okay.”

“What if it hadn't?”

“A bridge we don't have to cross,” he said. “Now our problem is that we have a gold mine on our hands. Do you understand that? I'm talking bigger than Mark Spitz.”

“Mark Spitz?” Thelma said, walking around in tiny circles.

“Yes, I'm telling you, she is going to be huge.”

W
EEKI
W
ACHEE AT NIGHT
looks as if the light of imagination has been switched off. Without the sun, the red bougainvilleas and lavender water hyacinths go mute. The amphitheater and outdoor pavilions are mere shadows, and even the clear, bottomless Springs can be overlooked as a puddle; a pond, maybe. Only the lamp in Thelma's office was visible from the highway, and, with all the rain falling that night, it appeared as a dim twinkle at best. Unless you knew it was there, right after the stoplight, you'd just keep driving down the road.