Nature Girl

Ten

Eugenie Fonda didn’t complain about flying coach, although she let it slip to Boyd Shreave that her book publisher had always sent her first-class.

“Book publisher?” he said.

“Didn’t I mention?” Eugenie thinking: Damn those Valiums.

“That you wrote a book? No, I definitely would’ve remembered,” said Shreave. “What was it, like a cookbook?”

“Not exactly, sugar.”

The plane was sitting on the runway at DFW, eleventh in line for takeoff. Eugenie would have killed for a pre-flight vodka tonic, but there was no prayer. Not in fucking coach.

“It was a few years back,” she said. “I was involved with a man who turned out to be a seriously bad guy. Later they asked me to do a book-wasn’t my idea.”

“What was it called? Maybe I read it,” he said.

Eugenie Fonda would not have been shocked to learn that Boyd Shreave hadn’t cracked a book since twelfth grade.

She said, “Storm Ghoul. How’s that for a title? Sounds like a Halloween movie.”

“You make some bread off it?”

“I did okay. It was on the best-seller list for a while.”

“Oh, really.” Shreave sagged into a pout. “I thought you and me weren’t going to have any secrets.”

“I don’t recall such an agreement, Boyd.”

“You wrote a best-seller! That’s huge, Genie. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was a long time ago and the money’s all gone.”

“Fine. Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, there is,” she said. “I don’t date nine-year-olds, or guys who act like them. So sit up straight, paste a smile on your face and show everyone on the plane that you’re proud to be flying with a hot-looking lady like me.”

They didn’t speak again until they were somewhere over Louisiana, where Boyd Shreave screwed up the nerve to ask about the other man.

“Well, he turned out to be a killer,” Eugenie said, emptying the last droplet from the vodka miniature into her cup. “Bonneville was his name. The story was all over the media.”

“And you were married to this lunatic?”

“No, I was his girlfriend. He drowned his wife and blamed it on a hurricane.”

“Holy Christ. I do remember that one,” Shreave murmured. “It was on Court TV, right?”

Eugenie said, “Let’s talk about a happier subject-like famine, or polio.” She signaled a flight attendant for another drink.

They were passing over Panama City when Boyd leaned closer and whispered, “So, besides being totally beautiful and sexy, you’re also a famous writer. That’s pretty flippin’ cool.”

Out the window Eugenie could see the gleaming crescent shoreline of the Florida Panhandle. For one fine moment she was able to imagine that she was traveling alone.

She said, “I’m not a famous writer, Boyd, I’m a famous mistress. Big difference.”

He placed a hand on one of her legs. “But think about it, Genie. A man killed for you. How many girls can say that?”

“Somehow it didn’t seem all that flattering at the time.” She was irritated that he’d gotten aroused by the thought of her consorting with a homicidal nutball.

“It wasn’t exactly the high point of my life,” she added, thinking: But what if it was?

Boyd smooched her neck and simultaneously sent his fingers reconnoitering beneath her skirt. Eugenie Fonda clamped her knees so emphatically that he yipped and jerked away, drawing an amused glance from a young cowboy across the aisle.

“You behave,” Eugenie said to Boyd, who decamped into another slouch.

As she drained what she vowed would be her final cocktail of the flight, she observed through the clear bottom of the plastic cup that the young cowboy was smiling at her. She did not smile back, although her outlook vastly improved.

Five miles below, the green Gulf of Mexico licked at the coastline. Somewhere toward the east, nuzzled by the Suwannee River, was Gilchrist County, which in scraggly ten-acre parcels Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave had hawked over the phone to all those innocent saps. From high up in the clouds it didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Eugenie closed her eyes and sucked on the last ice cube, which clacked lightly against the pearl in her tongue.

Dealey was seated in first class, an expense he would fondly tack on to Lily Shreave’s invoice after the job was done. His camera gear was stowed in waterproof Halliburtons; his targets were sixteen rows back, in steerage.

He could have booked a different flight to Tampa but there was no point, since the lovebirds had no idea who he was or what he was doing. To them he would have looked like just another weary middle-aged suit, skimming the sports section of the Star-Telegram while the other passengers filed to their seats.

Penetration.

Lily Shreave was one twisted bird but she was right about one thing: If Dealey got what she wanted, he’d be a legend on the PI circuit.

Dutifully he had devoted an afternoon to surfing the voyeurcam porn sites, but he’d found nothing instructive. There was a tedious emphasis on up-skirt shots and toilet surveillance, neither of which required a particularly advanced level of cinematography. As for the couples videos, the sex scenes were plainly staged, the participants fully aware they were being taped. There was no other explanation for why, in the throes of lust, they unfailingly paused to reposition themselves at auspicious camera angles. It was practically comical.

Unfortunately, no one would be directing Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda in bed, or lighting their crotches for sweaty closeups. Even if Dealey devised a way to conceal the taping equipment, he might end up with nothing more explicit than two grainy lumps heaving and moaning beneath the sheets.

If I live a hundred fucking years, he thought wistfully, I’ll never top that delicatessen blow job.

It was golden. A classic.

Dealey had blurred out the faces on the photograph and E-mailed it to an on-line trade magazine, which had posted it the next day. Kudos (and reprint requests) continued to pour in from all over the country. A few other PIs had sent surveillance pictures of husbands being fellated by girlfriends-but none in broad daylight at a bustling lunch joint.

Some wives would’ve paid a ten-grand bonus just for the deli shot, Dealey thought, but my client happens to be a total kink. She wants penetration.

For a closer look at his targets, Dealey waited until the rest room in first class was occupied. Then he stood up and made his way to the back of the plane. Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave were sitting in one of the emergency-exit rows. She was staring out the window; he was thumbing through the in-flight magazine.

They don’t even look like a couple, Dealey noted with concern. They look like two total strangers.

Poised before the toilet in one of the aft rest rooms, the investigator pondered the dispiriting possibility that Boyd Shreave’s illicit romance was already cooling. If true, the sex in Florida would be infrequent, brief and subdued.

Which would make even more improbable Dealey’s quest for the coital grail.

Oh well, he thought, there are worse places to waste a few days in the wintertime. Hell, I could be flying to Little Rock instead of Tampa.

At that moment the plane hit turbulence, rocking the private investigator sideways and disrupting his otherwise-flawless trajectory.

“Goddammit,” Dealey muttered, snatching a handful of paper towels to mop the piss from his right pants leg. The stain, he observed bitterly, was the shape of Arkansas.

Stalking back to his seat, Dealey didn’t bother to look at Lily Shreave’s husband and Eugenie Fonda.

Who were now holding hands.

The island was quiet after the small plane passed.

Gillian shoved the rifle back to Sammy Tigertail and said, “Scared you, didn’t I, Thlocko?”

“Please go,” he said. “Take the damn canoe, I don’t care.” He wasn’t sure who was the actual hostage-the girl or him.

She punched a number on her cell phone.

“Ethan? Hey, it’s me. Alive and seriously pissed.”

Sammy Tigertail started to climb out of the cistern but Gillian motioned him to stay.

“Why’d you wait so long to call?” she said to Ethan. “Know what? You’re full of crap. I’ve got Verizon, too, and it’s workin’ loud and clear.”

To Sammy Tigertail, she said, “He says he couldn’t get a signal. How lame is that?”

The Indian sat down heavily and tuned out Gillian’s telephone chatter. His head was beginning to ache. He rubbed his palms across the concrete floor and for a moment imagined it was Louisiana mud, like in the government prison cell where his great-great-great-grandfather might or might not have perished.

Although pained by his tribe’s blood-soaked history, Sammy Tigertail had never believed that all white people were evil; his own father had been an honest, good-hearted guy. During his childhood in the suburbs, Sammy Tigertail had made friends with lots of white kids, and observed several acts of decency and kindness by white grown-ups. It was also true that he’d encountered plenty of assholes, though to what degree their obnoxiousness could be blamed on race was debatable. Sammy suspected that some of them would have attained asshole status in any culture, on any continent.

His uncle Tommy had occasionally mentioned an unusual white man named Wiley, who’d written articles for a Miami newspaper. Sammy Tigertail’s uncle said that Wiley had wanted to save Florida as desperately as any Seminole, and that he’d gone mad trying. Sammy Tigertail had gotten the impression that his uncle Tommy and the crazed white writer were friends of a sort. When he’d asked what had happened to Wiley, his uncle said that the great Maker of Breath had given his spirit to an old bald eagle.

Sammy Tigertail remembered that story whenever he saw a wild eagle, which wasn’t often. He had yet to meet a white person like Wiley, and doubted he ever would. Gillian’s flitty spirit was more akin to that of a sparrow.

“Oh, just some guy I met,” she was saying to her boyfriend, giving him the needle. “You really want to know? Well, let’s see. He’s like six-one and real tan and he’s got these drop-dead blue eyes.”

Tan? “God Almighty,” the Indian said.

“And I don’t even know his real name,” she went on, winking at Sammy Tigertail, “which makes things kinda interesting.”

The Seminole whispered for her to hang up. When he made a slashing motion across his throat, she smiled and shook her head.

“Ethan wants to know if you’re the same maniac who shot at them on the island. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to lay off the weed. Nobody shot at anybody.”

Gillian said into the phone: “My new friend’s sorta shy.”

Sammy Tigertail thought he could actually feel his cranium cracking like an egg. He lay down, clutching the gun to his chest. He heard Gillian tell her boyfriend: “I don’t know when I’m comin’ back. Tallahassee is such a drag, y’know?”

The Indian closed his eyes yet there was no hope of sleep. When Gillian turned off the phone, she said, “You look awful.”

“Thanks for not giving me up.”

Gillian laughed. “How can I tell him your name when I can’t hardly pronounce it?”

“If they knew I was a Seminole, they’d come after me for sure.” Sammy Tigertail rose to his feet. He hoped the dizziness was from hunger and not white man’s brain fever.

“Ethan promised to have them call off the search, but I can tell he’s sulking. He refuses to believe I’d rather be with someone else,” Gillian said. “You boys and your egos.”

“Speaking of names, yours is really St. Croix?”

“Ever been there? The beaches are awesome-you should take your girlfriend, or whoever.”

“No, I won’t be leaving the Everglades,” the Indian said. “Never again.”

They went outside, where Gillian counted four kinds of butterflies. Sammy Tigertail could identify a zebra and a swallowtail, but not the others; Gillian was still impressed. She climbed halfway up the old poinciana and perched on the end of a trunk-like branch, high among the bright green leaves. “Hey, Thlocko,” she called out. “Why don’t I want to go home?”

Sammy Tigertail was secretly pleased that Gillian remembered his Seminole name, even though she’d left out the second l. Others had trouble with Thlocklo, too. At the Miami public library he’d once found a copy of a muster roll of “99 Florida Indians and Negroes” delivered to the U.S. Army barracks in New Orleans on January 7, 1843. Among those on the list was “the party of Indians with the chief Tiger Tail or Thlocko Tustenugee,” transported for involuntary relocation west of the Mississippi. The man was Sammy Tigertail’s great-great-great-grandfather.

When Gillian climbed down from the tree, she said, “I seriously need a bath.”

“Good luck with the plumbing.”

“You said you wanted me to go away. Did you mean it? Because I can tell you’re not too thrilled.”

Against his better judgment, Sammy Tigertail found himself intrigued by the way she looked at that instant, how the breeze was nudging her hair and the sunlight was coloring her cheeks.

He said, “Ethan’s freaked out enough. You’d better go.”

“To hell with Ethan.”

“You don’t get it. Anything could happen out here.”

“Exactly!” Gillian exclaimed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Sammy Tigertail couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

She said, “How about this-what if I told you I can play the guitar?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Don’t move, Cochise.” Gillian ran out, and came back carrying the Gibson. “You got a pick?”

“I sure don’t,” Sammy Tigertail said, curious.

“That’s okay. Check out these fingernails.”

She played. He listened.

That evening, another telemarketer called and tried to sell Honey Santana a term-life policy for $17.50 a month. Instead of scolding the man, she was appallingly patient and polite. “God bless you, brother,” she said before hanging up.

Aghast, Fry dropped his fork in the lasagna. “I’m definitely tellin’ Dad.”

“You’ll do no such thing. I’m absolutely fine,” Honey said.

“You’re not fine, Mom, you’re going bipolar. Maybe even tripolar.”

“Just because I’m nice to a stranger on the phone? I thought that’s what you guys wanted.”

“Yeah, but that,” Fry said, clearing his plate from the table, “was creepy.”

Honey elected not to mention the aberrant pang of sympathy that had inspired her to visit Louis Piejack at his home that afternoon. Misled by a pleasant greeting and a seemingly benign offer of lemonade, Honey had taken a seat in her former employer’s living room only to hear him announce that (a) his wife was away in Gainesville, receiving chemotherapy, and (b) his testicles had fully recovered from the pummeling Honey had delivered at the fish market. Piejack had gone on to say that the brutal stone-crab amputation and subsequent surgical reshuffling of his fingers, while problematic for his piano ambitions, promised an innovative new repertoire of foreplay. That was when Honey Santana had dashed for the door, Piejack bear-pawing at her with his bandaged left hand. Honey didn’t want Fry to find out because he’d tell his father, who might do something so extreme to Louis Piejack that Skinner would end up in jail.

The boy went to pack while Honey stepped outside to test her latest mosquito remedy-citronella mixed with virgin olive oil, which she slathered on both legs. After several minutes she decided that the night was too breezy for a bug census, so instead she began rehearsing the lecture she intended to lay upon Boyd Shreave, the man who’d called her a dried-up old skank. She planned to wait until the second day of the eco-adventure, when they were so deep in the wilderness that Shreave wouldn’t dare make a run for it. He’d have no choice but to sit and listen while Honey Santana straightened him out.

The theme of her rebuke would be the erosion of manners in modern society, the decay of civility. Honey was prepared to accept responsibility for her own sharp words during the sales call. Perhaps she’d begin by apologizing for mentioning Shreave’s mother.

“That was wrong of me, Boyd, and I’m sorry. But I was upset, and now I want to tell you why-”

“Mom?” Fry’s voice, from behind the screen door. “Who’re you talking to?”

“Nobody. Come out here and sit.”

She scooted over to make a place for him on the top step of the trailer. His backpack was slung over one shoulder and he was eating an apple.

“When’s your old man showing up?” she asked.

“Ten minutes. Who were you talking to?”

“Myself. Lots of perfectly sane people do that, Fry.”

Honey leaned against him. His hair was damp, and it smelled like her shampoo. She felt like hugging his neck and crying.

“They had a plane up today,” he said, “looking for some college girl who supposedly got snatched from one of the islands. Then her boyfriend calls up and says she’s okay. She’d dumped him and took off with a poacher.”

Honey sniffled a laugh. “Sounds like true love.”

Fry turned to gaze up at the nature mural his mother had painted on the trailer, which was partially illuminated by a street lamp. “Your parrot turned out cool. The monkeys are killer, too,” he said.

“Thanks, but the neighbors aren’t real impressed. Hey, whatever happened with that girl you used to like at school? Naomi.”

“Moved to Rhode Island. And her name was Cassie,” Fry said. “So, what’ve you got planned for your friends?”

“I dunno, just hang out. I heard there’s a crafts show in Naples.”

“High-octane excitement,” said Fry.

“Or maybe we’ll break in those kayaks, if the weather’s decent.”

“How come your eyes are all red?”

“Cat dander.” She pointed to Mrs. Saroyan’s spavined gray tabby, which was squatting on the chain-link fence and spraying their mailbox.

Fry reached into his backpack and took out something that looked like a BlackBerry, only smaller. “Here, take this. It’s a GPS receiver, in case you get lost on the water.”

Honey grinned. “Lemme guess where you got it-my guilt-ridden former spouse?”

“He had an extra one lying around. It was my idea.” He showed her how to use it, and she seemed to pay attention.

“Everybody’s so damn worried about me. I suppose I should be touched,” she said.

A pair of headlights appeared at the end of the street.

“That would be him.” Fry stood up.

Honey told her son to have a good time. “But don’t forget to do your homework. I’ll call tomorrow to set up a dinner, so you can meet my friends.”

Of course there would be no such gathering, but Honey had to keep up the act in case Fry was buying it.

“And, for God’s sake,” she added, “wash your jock after track practice.”

“You’d better not be crying. I mean it.”

“I told you, it’s allergies.”

When Perry Skinner braked to a stop in front of the yard, Honey thought she saw him give a small wave. Fry pecked her on the cheek and said, “Love you, Mom.”

“Love you, too. Now stop worryin’ so much, would you?” She smiled and teasingly shoved him toward his father’s truck.

“Don’t run off with any poachers,” he said.

“Hey, I could do worse,” Honey called after him.