Читать книгу Hooked - Jane May - Страница 10

Woody revved up his engine one last time.

“You all set, man,” said Ariel, draping the jumper cables over his shoulder.

Ariel Vega, the club’s prized mechanic, was a stocky, middle-aged Afro-Cuban with golden fingers and a heart to match. When he was fifteen, he, along with his mother and ten other Balseros, had struggled onto the Miami shore after spending several weeks on a vessel bearing no resemblance to a Carnival cruise ship. This determined immigrant now owned a piece of his own American Dream—a modest home in Little Havana with money reserved for his kids’ college education; a privilege which he, himself, had been denied.

“What’s the matter with you, man? You look lower than a snake’s asshole.”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“This has something to do with that new waitress, don’t it? Elizabeth said she could tell you got it bad for her. Maybe you get to do the horizontal cha-cha-cha with her?”

Ariel closed his eyes, pursed his mouth and gyrated his hips to demonstrate.

“Can we please leave my sex life out of this discussion? Besides, Madalina…”

“You should see how your eyes light up when you say her name. So what’s her problemo? She playing hard to get or something? I can help you if you got a problem. Make you an ebo. No sweat.”

Ariel, as did many of his island ancestors, practiced Santeria, a five-hundred-year-old religion imbuing African beliefs with Catholicism. An “ebo” was a spell which, among a multitude of uses, promised to remedy any number of physical, emotional or even financial maladies.

“Lemme give you a small stick of Jamaica rosewood. Next time you speak to her, you gotta chew it up and leave it in your mouth. I’m telling you, man, you do this and the girl will be yours.”

“Appreciate the offer,” said Woody. “But no thanks. I’m afraid it’d take a whole helluva lot of magic to ever get with a girl like that.”

Traffic on US1 moved as fast as a becalmed sailboat in a sea of sludge. But then again, what with rampant construction and overpopulation, getting nowhere fast anywhere, anytime, in Miami was a sure thing.

About a mile from the club, Woody’s air-conditioning crapped out. Opening the windows provided no relief from the heat and humidity, and within a few minutes he was a sweaty mess.

Needless to say, Woody was especially grateful to finally reach the turnoff for Rickenbacker Causeway. He left the gridlock behind and sped across Biscayne Bay, relishing the cross breezes which wicked the moisture from his body. It took him two minutes to traverse Virginia Key, and in the final leg of his commute, he ascended the mountainous William Powell Bridge which deposited him onto the barrier island he had called home since the age of five.

Shortly after his mother passed away, Woody and his father, Mike Woods, moved from a sleepy northwest corner of Connecticut to Key Biscayne where they had been invited to stay with Mike’s older sister, Katherine, and her husband, Herb Arnold, until permanent housing was found.

Woody’s aunt and uncle had purchased their modest, two-bedroom ranch on West Mashta Drive with its panoramic view of Biscayne Bay for thirty-five grand in the late fifties when the population of the Key consisted of World War II vets, stoned artists, assorted Bohemian types and battalions of kamikaze mosquitoes. In those days anyone who willingly chose to reside on this island, with its cookie-cutter Mackle houses and the village’s one working pay phone, was considered nuts. Fast forward to the twenty-first century and Herb and Katherine Arnold’s hurricane-battered, cement-walled box was now worth somewhere in the vicinity of eight million bucks. As a tear-down!

Meanwhile, Mike Woods, a freelance international photo journalist, accepted every extended assignment that came his way. Woody saw his dad so infrequently, the tot began to think of Katherine and Herb as his real parents and Mike as this Star Wars–type “action figure” who landed on earth every now and again armed with tales of heroism and wielding a light saber camouflaged as a banjo. Unfortunately, the “force” was not with Mike Woods when, less than a year later, a freak accident off the coast of Cyprus cost him his life and orphaned his son.

As his sole guardians, Woody’s aunt and uncle embraced the opportunity to nurture the child they could never have on their own. Who cared that they were old enough to be his grandparents? They absolutely adored him.

Katherine taught science at a ritzy private school in Coconut Grove. Although neither she nor her husband, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Miami, were thrilled to have Woody fraternize with those “rich, spoiled brats,” the allure of superior—and free—education at Grove Prep couldn’t be ignored.

Woody’s love affair with the ocean began the day he arrived in South Florida. Thanks especially to his uncle, who was a sailing nut. Herb had joined the Trade Winds Yacht Club back in the days when a lifetime membership could be bought for peanuts; and he had moored his boat, the Lady Katherine, there. The irony was that his wife, after whom the thirty-foot sloop was named, was prone to extreme seasickness and never once went sailing. Not so with “the boys,” who were on the water at every opportunity.

It was also Herb who taught his young nephew how to work with wood (giving additional meaning to his nickname). From model ships to furniture, their crowning achievement was a fourteen-foot wooden skiff which, along with the Lady Katherine, was lost years later during Hurricane Andrew.

When it came time for college, Woody reluctantly accepted a scholarship at the University of Iowa so he could, at Katherine’s suggestion, “get a taste of middle America” while taking advantage of a top-notch writing program. But the land-locked campus made Woody claustrophobic and terribly homesick. He finished out his freshman year and then transferred to the University of Miami which, like Grove Prep, was tuition-free for the kin of tenured professors.

Upon graduation, Woody, like many Gen-Xers, moved back in with his aunt and uncle until he figured out what to do with the rest of his life. Sure, he loved the creative word, but aside from one published short story in a quirky periodical, the starving-writer route was not financially viable.

Straight journalism wasn’t exactly his bag. At least at the entry level. Besides, he’d most likely have to relocate to some obscure town to report for an obscure paper for however long it took until he broke out of, well, obscurity.

Graduate school didn’t appeal. Much to the chagrin of his erudite guardians, Woody had no interest in teaching anything other than sailing. And forget about a law degree. His aunt and uncle often compared attorneys to subhumans who performed unthinkable acts with puppies.

In the interim, Woody fell back on his old job at the Trade Winds Yacht Club where he had worked summers and holidays since the seventh grade. And when Skip Edwards offered Woody the newly vacant position of assistant dockmaster, he readily accepted the job as an in-between until something more suitable came along.

Who could have guessed, after six years, he’d still be there?

Unfortunately, that same summer after his college graduation, Herb Arnold was diagnosed with prostate cancer. While he was in the hospital, his nephew read to him from one of their favorite books—about a captain named Joshua Slocum who, at the turn of the nineteenth century, rebuilt a wooden mess of a tub named the Spray and single-handedly sailed the thirty-six-foot boat around the world. Slocum’s memoir of his travels—Sailing Alone Around the World—became a best-selling seafaring classic.

With Herb’s enthusiastic endorsement, a seed was thus planted in his nephew’s brain. The realization of which would take a lot more time, effort and money than anyone could have ever imagined. Nonetheless, fueled by the memory of his uncle, who died that same year, Woody maintained a steady course to fulfilling his dream.

From the air, Key Biscayne—originally claimed by Ponce de Leon for Spain in 1515—looks rather like a vegetative sandwich. Two state parks—Crandon on the north and Bill Baggs on the south—flank the four-mile long island, and squeezed in the middle, from the bay to the ocean side, are single-family homes and high-density condo developments. To some, this “arrangement” might be interpreted as Mother Nature’s way of containing urban sprawl. But to others, an impediment to “twenty-first century progress.”

Woody followed the island’s sole access road—lined with nothing but subtropical flora for the first two miles—into the village of Key Biscayne. Far from sleepy, this micro-mini metropolis consists of several two-story, tastefully constructed strip malls, a gas station, a smattering of restaurants, a large Winn Dixie supermarket, a community center, a village green and a snazzy new firehouse. This being high season, Crandon Boulevard swayed under the weight of the combined bank accounts of its part-time residents, many for whom English was not their first language.

But despite how much the island’s profile had changed in the twenty-three years he’d lived there, the simple home Woody shared with his now widowed aunt Katherine remained constant.

Two cars were parked in the gravel driveway of 42 West Mashta Drive. Katherine Arnold’s ancient white Datsun—covered with politically charged bumper stickers—and her best friend Dorothy Little’s silver Cadillac with its silly “Dot2Trot” vanity plate.

Woody pulled up on the grass next to a mastless hull which, after over four and a half years of defying hurricane season, was still firmly balanced on jack stands. He took a moment to admire the keel of the Sea Sponge, which he’d painted with red lead preservative early that morning, but when he heard his mutt, Sweetie, barking, he hustled along to the house.

The moment Woody walked through the front door, the sixty-pound lapdog jumped into her beloved’s arms and slathered his face with her flat noodle of a tongue. He found her breath particularly atrocious.

“What on earth have you gotten into?”

Sweetie looked at him as if to say, Beats the shit outta me. Which basically meant, I love you but why bother asking me a question I can never answer?

“That you, Woody?” called a gravelly female voice from the kitchen.

“You were expecting Donald Trump, perhaps?”

“Very funny!” came the response. “Now, you and your wise ass better hightail it in here and give your old aunt some sugar.”

Before he took another step, however, Woody dutifully removed his Top-Siders. Katherine had had this no-shoes rule ever since he could remember. Judging from the massive amount of clutter everywhere, she certainly wasn’t anal. Nor was this New Orleans–born woman of Japanese descent. She had simply decided to adopt this centuries-old custom of “leaving the outside world, outside” in order to provide a “sanctuary where one’s bare feet can breathe in a dirt-free environment.”

Katherine Arnold also had a very definite opinion about interior design. In the main living area there were cerulean blue walls and curtains. Shelves crammed with coral, starfish and shells of every size. A coffee table made of driftwood, another from lobster traps. Sconces fashioned from conches. Lamp bases made out of pieces of polished sea glass. A thirty-gallon salt-water fish tank. Paintings of beach sunsets and rolling waves. And finally on the floor, sand-colored shag carpeting. Call it aquatic overkill, but Woody, whose whole life revolved around the ocean, rather dug it.

Woody found his Aunt seated at the ship’s wheel kitchen table he and Uncle Herb had built for her many years back. Petite and trim, save for her kangaroo-pouch middle, three-quarters of her body was all legs. She wore her white hair plaited into her signature braids, and her face—thanks to avoiding the sun, and genes—looked more than a decade younger than her seventy-nine years. A quirky dresser, today Katherine had on purple leggings and one of her favorite T-shirts, which depicted a red-cheeked blowfish and the tagline, Puffed up about the environment.

To Katherine’s left sat her buddy, Dorothy, a former cabaret singer with big hair, big heart and a big appetite for everything from food to politics. Dorothy had lost her husband a year prior to moving to a condo on the Key.

Now, given that Katherine served on the steering committees of several local activist groups—among them, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society—it was not unusual to see any number of ladies—mostly widows over the age of sixty-five—gathered at the house. But today somebody from a different demographic had joined the group. Specifically, a girl in her early twenties.

If called to describe one feature of her face, however, Woody would have been at a loss. He’d become visually impaired ever since laying eyes on a certain Romanian waitress.

“Hey, ladies,” he said.

He walked up to his aunt, leaned over and kissed her forehead. She was always a bit warm to the touch.

“Woody, honey,” said Dorothy. “I’d like to introduce you to my Kristin.”

She had pestered him about meeting her granddaughter the few times she’d visited from up north, but he had always created some emergency that needed attention. This time, however, Dorothy had obviously pulled a fast one on him.

“Oh, well, nice to, ah, meet you.”

It was against his nature to be rude.

The girl, in turn, mumbled an unenthusiastic salutation and resumed stuffing envelopes. Seemed she had been the victim of a setup as well and was none too pleased.

“Kristin’s staying with me for a month,” said Dorothy. “She’s going to work on that Everglades restoration project. I told you she’s getting a master’s degree in environmental studies at Brown, didn’t I? She’s also an excellent sailor and just so happens to have broken up with her boyfriend and—”

“Grandma,” she groaned. “No offense, but could you please cut the sales pitch?”

Woody chuckled to himself. Only hours ago, he’d used the same line with Elizabeth.

Back there at the Spinnaker Café.

Standing next to Madalina.

He could still smell her hair.

Hear her giggle.

Feel the way her tiny fingers slowly slid across the palm of his hand.

Woody suddenly felt a stirring in his boxers.

“Man, am I ever thirsty!”

And with that, he leapt in front of the refrigerator. Flinging open the door, he discretely brushed the front of his pants and confirmed the diagnosis. His only option was to pretend to rummage through the shelves until the cold air, hopefully, remedied the situation.

“We out of chocolate milk?”

“Just bought a new carton,” said Katherine. “It’s between my prune juice and flaxseed oil.”

Woody reached for the container and was about to close the fridge when he zeroed in on a large stainless steel bowl filled with cookie batter. He was about to steal a golf-sized ball of the dough which Katherine always let “season” prior to baking, when she interceded.

“I know what you’re up to! Get your dirty mitts out of there!”

“Aw, come on, just a little taste. Just to make sure it’s not poisonous.”

“Poisonous, eh?” asked Dorothy, laughing.

“Would you believe he’s been giving me the same bullshit line since he was six?”

“Yeah,” said Woody, pouring himself a large glass of chocolate milk and downing it in one gulp. “And she’s been falling for it just as long.”

Bloody Mary in hand, Katherine followed her nephew outside to the flagstone backyard patio.

“Ought to be a good one tonight,” she said, pulling up a chipped cast-iron chair. “No haze, clearly delineated horizon.”

Back when Herb was alive, the three of them would often gather to watch the “best free show in the world”—namely an unobstructed view of the sun setting over Biscayne Bay. Nowadays, the only way she could capture Woody’s attention long enough was to assign him grill duty.

“Too bad Dorothy and her granddaughter couldn’t stay for dinner.”

“Yeah, what a pity,” said Woody, throwing back a bottle of beer.

“Don’t be a wiseass. You know, it might be good for you to get out a little.”

Woody stoked the fire and didn’t respond.

Katherine stared at the boy. His face was nearly a carbon copy of her late brother’s. The angular profile. Those full lips. Those large, deep hazel eyes. Same nose. Same hairline. Minus that ragged scar on Mike’s chin for which Katherine felt responsible when she, at age fifteen, had briefly turned her back on her baby brother.

“Kristin seems like such a nice girl. And so smart. You two certainly have common interests.”

“Please don’t meddle,” said Woody. “You know I’ve got no time.”

Katherine had promised herself never to intercede with her nephew’s future plans. Still, every once in a while she was guilty of subliminal persuasion. Who could blame her for wishing Woody might have a change of heart and stay close to home.

“But I just thought it might be good for you to get out a little, Clarence. Have a little fun.”

“Oh, boy,” he said, moaning. “Playing the formal-name card. This is major. Look, I’m doing fine doing what I’m doing.”

“But you look exhausted.”

“It’s just been a long day.”

“Well, then, sugar, why don’t you give yourself a rest tonight? There’s all day tomorrow to work on the boat and—”

“Not exactly,” said Woody, interrupting. “I got offered this private teaching gig.”

“A kid?”

“No.”

“One of those horny married women?”

“Give me a break.”

“Why are you being so mysterious, then?”

“I’m not. He’s a new member. Guy bought a forty-five-foot stinkpot he’s got no idea how to handle.”

“Sounds like a real asshole. You think it’ll be worth the aggravation?”

“For three hundred bucks I think I can—”

Woody jumped out of his seat.

“Holy shit,” he cried, pointing at the horizon. “Look at that!”

“Look at what?”

“Shit, it’s gone. It was a burst of green light over the water! Just near the top edge of the sun.”

Katherine gripped the sides of the chair and leaned forward. “You mean to tell me you just saw a green flash?”

She had taught Woody about this phenomenon many years ago. A “green flash” could be witnessed only at dawn or dusk when atmospheric refraction was at its max. Neither she nor Herb had ever seen one. The only person she knew who claimed he had was one Captain Jimmy O’Neil, a longtime native who ran a charter fishing boat out of Key Biscayne. The “flash” he claimed to have seen was off the coast of Cuba. When he was, no doubt, drunk as a skunk.

“It was more like a green dot rather than a flash and lasted just a second or two,” said Woody. “But I’m telling you, this was the real deal.”

“Well, then, sugar,” said Katherine. “Count yourself as one lucky guy.”