Skin Tight

8

Stranahan caught four small snappers and fried them up for supper.

“Ri chie left me,” Tina was explaining. “I mean, he put me out on your house and left. Can you believe that?”

Stranahan pretended to be listening as he foraged in the refrigerator. “You want lemon or garlic salt?”

“Both,” Tina said. “We had a fight and he ordered me to get off the boat. Then he drove away.”

She wore a baggy Jimmy Buffett T-shirt over a cranberry bikini bottom. Her wheat-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and a charm glinted at her throat; a tiny gold porpoise, it looked like.

“Richie deals a little coke,” Tiny went on. “That’s what we were fighting about. Well, part of it.”

Stranahan said, “Keep an eye on the biscuits so they don’t burn.”

“Sure. Anyway, know what else we were fighting about? This is so dumb you won’t believe it.”

Stranahan was dicing a pepper on the kitchen countertop. He was barefoot, wearing cutoff jeans and a khaki short-sleeved shirt, open to the chest. His hair was still damp from the shower. Overall, he felt much better about his situation.

Tina said, “I got this modeling job and Richie, he went crazy. All because I had to do some, you know, nudes. Just beach stuff, nobody out there but me and the photog. Richie says no way, you can’t do it. And I said, you can’t tell me what to do. Then-then!-he calls me a slut, and I say that’s pretty rich coming from a two-bit doper. So then he slugs me in the stomach and tells me to get my butt out of the boat.” Tina paused for a sigh. “Your house was closest.”

“You can stay for the night,” Stranahan said, sounding downright fatherly.

“What if Richie comes back?”

“Then we teach him some manners.”

Tina said, “He’s still pissed about the last time, when you dragged him through the water.”

“The biscuits,” Stranahan reminded her.

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Tina pulled the hot tray out of the oven.

For at least thirteen minutes she didn’t say anything, because the snapper was excellent and she was hungry. Stranahan found a bottle of white wine and poured two glasses. It was then Tina smiled and said, “Got any candles?”

Stranahan played along, even though darkness still was an hour away. He lighted two stubby hurricane candles and set them on the oilskin tablecloth.

“This is really nice,” Tina said.

“Yes, itis.”

“I haven’t found a single bone,” she said, chewing intently.

“Good.”

“Are you married, Mick?”

“Divorced,” he replied. “Five times.”

“Wow.”

“My fault, every one,” he added. To some degree, he believed it. Each time the same thing had happened: He’d awakened one morning and felt nothing; not guilt or jealousy or anger, but an implacable numbness, which was worse. Like his blood had turned to novocaine overnight. He’d stared at the woman in his bed and become incredulous at the notion that this was a spouse, that he had married this person. He’d felt trapped and done a poor job of concealing it. By the fifth go-round, divorce had become an eerie out-of-body experience, except for the part with the lawyers.

“Were you fooling around a lot, or what?” Tina asked.

“It wasn’t that,” Stranahan said.

“Then what? You’re a nice-looking guy, I don’t know why a girl would cut and run.”

Stranahan poured more wine for both of them.

“I wasn’t much fun to be around.”

“Oh, I disagree,” Tina said with a perkiness that startled him.

Her eyes wandered up to the big mount on the living room wall. “What happened to Mr. Swordfish?”

“That’s a marlin,” Stranahan said. “He fell off the wall and broke his beak.”

“The tape looks pretty tacky, Mick.”

“Yeah, I know.”

After dinner they went out on the deck to watch the sun go down behind Coconut Grove. Stranahan tied a size 12 hook on his fishing line and baited it with a lint-sized shred of frozen shrimp. In fifteen minutes he caught five lively pinfish, which he dropped in a plastic bait bucket. Entranced, Tina sat cross-legged on the deck and watched the little fish swim frenetic circles inside the container.

Stranahan stowed the rod in the stilt house, came out, and picked up the bucket. “I’ll be right back.”

“W here youoffto?”

“Downstairs, by the boat.”

“CanI come?”

He shrugged. “You might not like it.”

“Like what?” Tina asked and followed him tentatively down the wooden stairs toward the water.

Liza hovered formidably in the usual place. Stranahan pointed at the huge barracuda and said, “See there?”

“Wow, isthata shark?”

“No.”

He reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the pinfish, carefully folding the dorsal so it wouldn’t prick his fingers.

Tina said, “Now I get it.”

“She’s like a pet,” Stranahan said. He tossed the pinfish into the water, and the barracuda devoured it in a silent mercury flash, all fangs. When the turbulence subsided, they saw that the big fish had returned to its station; it hung there as if it had never moved.

Impassively Stranahan tossed another pinfish and the barracuda repeated the kill.

Tina stood so close that Stranahan could feel her warm breath on his bare arm. “Do they eat people?” she asked.

He could have hugged her right then. “No,” he said, “they don’t eat people.”

“Good!”

“They do strike at shiny objects,” he said, “so don’t wear a bracelet if you are diving.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

This time he scooped up two pinfish and lobbed them into the water simultaneously; the barracuda got them both in one fierce swipe.

“I call her Liza,” Stranahan said. “Liza with a z.”

Tina nodded as if she thought it was a perfectly cute name. She asked if she could try a toss.

“You bet.” Stranahan got the last pinfish from the bucket and placed it carefully in the palm of her hand. “Just throw it anywhere,” he said.

Tina leaned forward and called out, “Here Liza! Here you go!”

The little fish landed with a soft splash and spun a dizzy figure eight under the dock. The barracuda didn’t move.

Stranahan smiled. In slow motion the addled pinfish corkscrewed its way to the bottom, taking refuge inside an old horse conch.

“Wh at’d I do wrong?” Tina wondered.

“Not a thing,” Stranahan said. “She wasn’t hungry anymore, that’s all.”

“Maybe it’s just me.”

“Maybe it is,” Stranahan said.

He took her by the hand and led her upstairs. He turned on the lights in the house and vented the shutters on both sides to catch the cool night breeze. On the roof, the windmill creaked as it picked up speed.

Tina made a place for herself on a faded lumpy soda. She said, “I always wondered what it’s like out here in the dark.”

“Not much to do, I’m afraid.”

“NoTV?”

“No TV,” Stranahan said.

“You want to make love?”

“There’s an idea.”

“You already saw me naked.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Stranahan said. “The thing is-”

“Don’t worry about Richie. Anyway, this is just for fun. We’ll keep it casual, okay?”

“I don’t do anything casually,” Stranahan said, “This is my problem.” He was constantly falling in love; how else would you explain five marriages, all to cocktail waitresses?

Tina peeled off the tropical T-shirt and draped it across a barstool. Rockette-style, she kicked her way out of her bikini bottoms and left them in a rumple on the floor.

“How about these tan lines, huh?”

“What tan lines?” he asked.

“Exactly.” Tina pulled the rubber band out of her ponytail and shook her hair free. Then she got back on the sofa and said, “Watch this.” She stretched out and struck a smokey-eyed modeling pose-a half-turn up on one elbow, legs scissored, one arm shading her nipples.

“That looks great,” Stranahan said, amused but also uneasy.

“It’s tough work on a beach,” Tina remarked. “Sand sticks to places you wouldn’t believe. I did a professional job, though.”

“I’m sure.”

“Thanks to you, I got my confidence back. About my boobs, I mean.” She glanced down at herself appraisingly. “Confidence is everything in the modeling business,” she said. “Somebody tells you that your ass is sagging or your tits don’t match up, it’s like an emotional disaster. I was worried sick until you measured them with that carpenter’s thing.”

“Glad I could help,” Stranahan said, trying to think of something, anything, more romantic.

She said, “Anyone ever tell you that you’ve got Nick Nolte’s nose?”

“That’s all?” Stranahan said. Nick Nolte was a new one.

“ Now the eyes,” Tina said, “your eyes are more like Sting’s. I met him one time at the Strand.”

“Thank you,” Stranahan said. He didn’t know who the hell she was talking about. Maybe one of the those pro wrestlers from cable television.

Holding her pose, Tina motioned him to join her on the old sofa. When he did, she took his hands, placed them on her staunch new breasts, and held them there. Stranahan assumed a compliment was in order.

“They’re perfect,” he said, squeezing politely.

Urgently Tina arched her back and rolled over, Stranahan hanging on like a rock climber.

“While we’re on the subject,” he said, “could I get the name of your surgeon?”

Even before the electrolysis accident, Chemo had led a difficult life. His parents had belonged to a religious sect that believed in bigamy, vegetarianism, UFOs, and not paying federal income taxes; his mother, father and three of their respective spouses were killed by the FBI during a bloody ten-day siege at a post office outside Grand Forks, North Dakota. Chemo, who was only six at the time, went to live with an aunt and uncle in the Amish country of western Pennsylvania. It was a rigorous and demanding period, especially since Chemo’s aunt and uncle were not actually Amish themselves, but fair-weather Presbyterians fleeing a mail-fraud indictment out of Bergen County, New Jersey.

Using their hard-won embezzlements, the couple had purchased a modest farm and somehow managed to infiltrate the hermetic social structure of an Amish township. At first it was just another scam, a temporary cover until the heat was off. As the years passed, though, Chemo’s aunt and uncle got authentically converted. They grew to love the simple pastoral ways and hearty fellowship of the farm folk; Chemo was devastated by their transformation. Growing up, he had come to resent the family’s ruse, and consequently the Amish in general. The plain baggy clothes and strict table manners were bad enough, but it was the facial hair that drove him to fury. Amish men do not shave their chins, and Chemo’s uncle insisted that, once attaining puberty, he adhere to custom. Since religious arguments held no sway with Chemo, it was the practical view that his uncle propounded: All fugitives need a disguise, and a good beard was hard to beat.

Chemo sullenly acceded, until the day of his twenty-first birthday when he got in his uncle’s pickup truck, drove down to the local branch of the Chemical Bank, threatened a teller with a pitchfork (the Amish own no pistols), and strolled off with seven thousand dollars and change. The first thing he bought was a Bic disposable safety razor.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that it was the only bank robbery by an Amish in the entire history of the commonwealth. Chemo himself was never arrested for the crime, but his aunt and uncle were unmasked, extradited back to New Jersey, tried and convicted of mail fraud, then shipped off to a country-club prison in north Florida. Their wheat farm was seized by the U.S. government and sold at auction.

Once Chemo was free of the Amish, the foremost challenge of adulthood was avoiding manual labor, to which he had a chronic aversion. Crime seemed to be the most efficient way of making money without working up a sweat, so Chemo gave it a try. Unfortunately, nature had dealt him a cruel disadvantage: While six foot nine was the perfect height for an NBA forward, for a burglar it was disastrous. Chemo got stuck in the very first window he ever jimmied; he could break, but he could not enter.

Four months in a county jail passes too slowly. He thought often of his aunt and uncle, and upbraided himself for not taking advantage of their vast expertise. They could have taught him many secrets about white-collar crime, yet in his rebellious insolence he had never bothered to ask. Now it was too late-their most recent postcard from the Eglin prison camp had concluded with a religious limerick and the drawing of a happy face. Chemo knew they were lost forever.

After finishing his stretch for the aborted burglary, he moved to a small town outside of Scranton and went to work for the city parks and recreation department. Before long, he parlayed a phony but impressive resume into the post of assistant city manager, a job that entitled him to a secretary and a municipal car. White the salary was only twenty thousand dollars a year, the secondary income derived from bribes and kickbacks was substantial. Chemo prospered as a shakedown artist, and the town prospered, too. He was delighted to discover how often the mutual interests of private enterprise and government seemed to intersect.

The high point of Chemo’s municipal career was his savvy trashing of local zoning laws to allow a Mafia-owned-and-operated dog food plant to be built in the suburbs. Three hundred new jobs were created, and there was talk of running Chemo for major.

He greatly liked the idea and immediately began gouging illegal political contributions out of city contractors. Soon a campaign poster was designed, but Chemo recoiled when he saw the finished product: the four-foot photographic blowup of his face magnified the two ingrown hair follicles on the tip of his otherwise normal nose; the blemishes looked, in Chemo’s own distraught simile, “like two ticks fucking.” He ordered the campaign posters shredded, scheduled a second photo session, and drove straight to Scranton for the ill-fated electrolysis treatment.

The grisly mishap and subsequent murder of the offending doctor put an end to Chemo’s political career. He swore off public service forever.

They rented an Aquasport and docked it at Sunday’s-on-the-Bay. They chose a table under the awning, near the water.

Chemo ordered a ginger ale and Chloe Simpkins Stranahan got a vodka tonic, double.

“We’ll wait till dusk,” Chemo said.

“Fine by me.” Chloe slurped her drink like a parched coyote. She was wearing a ridiculous white sailor’s suit from Lord and Taylor’s; she even had the cap. It was not ideal boatwear.

“I used to work in this joint,” Chloe said, as if to illustrate how far she’d come.

Chemo said, “This is where you met Mick?”

“Unfortunately.”

The bar was packed for ladies’ night. In addition to the standard assembly of slick Latin studs in lizard shoes, there were a dozen blond, husky mates off the charter boats. In contrast to the disco Dannies, the mates wore T-shirts and sandals and deep Gulf Stream tans, and they drank mostly beer. The competition for feminine attention was fierce, but Chemo planned to be long gone before any fights broke out. Besides, he didn’t like sitting out in the open, where people could stare.

“Have you got your plan?” Chloe asked.

“The less you know, the better.”

“Oh, pardon me,” she said caustically. “Pardon me, Mister James Fucking Bond.”

He blinked neutrally. A young pelican was preening itself on a nearby dock piling, and Chemo found this infinitely more fascinating than watching Chloe Simpkins Stranahan in a Shirley Temple sailor cap, sucking down vodkas. It offended him that someone so beautiful could be so repellent and obnoxious; it seemed damned unfair.

On the other hand, she had yet to make the first wisecrack about his face, so maybe she had one redeeming quality.

“This isn’t going to get too heavy?” she said.

“Define heavy.”

Chloe stirred her drink pensively. “Maybe you could just put a good scare in him.”

“Bet on it,” Chemo said.

“But you won’t get too tough, right?”

“What is this, all of a sudden you’re worried about him?”

“You can hate someone’s guts and still worry about him.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

Chloe said, “Chill out, okay? I’m not backing down.”

Chemo toyed with one of the infrequent black wisps attached to his scalp. He said: “Where does your husband think you are?”

“Shopping,” Chloe replied.

“Alone?”

“Sure.”

Chemo licked his lips and scanned the room. “You see anybody you know?”

Chloe looked around and said, “No. Why do you ask?”

“Just making sure. I don’t want any surprises; neither do you.”

Chemo paid the tab, helped Chloe into the bow of the Aqua-sport and cast off the ropes. He checked his wristwatch: 5:15. Give it maybe an hour before nightfall. He handed Chloe a plastic map of Biscayne Bay with the pertinent channel markers circled in red ink. “Keep that handy,” he shouted over the engine, “case I get lost.”

She tapped the map with one of her stiletto fingernails. “You can’t miss the goddamn things, they’re sticking three stories out of the water.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were drifting through a Stiltsville channel with the boat’s engine off. Chloe Simpkins Stranahan was complaining about her hair getting salty, while Chemo untangled the anchor ropes. The anchor was a big rusty clunker with a bent tongue. He hauled it out of the Aquasport’s forward hatch and laid it on the deck.

Then he took some binoculars from a canvas duffel and began scouting the stilt houses. “Which one is it?” he asked.

“I told you, it’s got a windmill.”

“I’m looking at three houses with windmills, so which is it? I’d like to get the anchor out before we float to frigging Nassau.”

Chloe huffed and took the binoculars. After a few moments she said, “Well, they all look alike.”

“No shit.”

She admitted she had never been on her ex-husband’s house before. “But I’ve been by there in a boat.”

Chemo said, “How do you know it was his?”

“Because I saw him. He was outside, fishing.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Three, maybe four months. What’s the difference?”

Chemo said, “Did Mick know it was you in the boat?”

“Sure he did, he dropped his damn pants.” Chloe handed Chemo the binoculars and pointed. “That’s the one, over there.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Captain Ahab, I am.”

Chemo studied the stilt house through the field glasses. The windmill was turning and a skiff was tied up under the water tanks, but no one was outside.

“So now what?” Chloe said.

“I’m thinking.”

“Know what I wish you’d do? I wish you’d do to him what he did to my male friend. Krazy Glue the bastard.”

“That would settle things, huh?”

Chloe’s tone became grave. “Mick Stranahan destroyed a man without killing him. Can you think of anything worse?”

“Well,” Chemo said, reaching for the duffel, “I didn’t bring any glue. All I brought was this.” He took out the.22 pistol and screwed on the silencer.

Chloe made a gulping noise and grabbed the bow rail for support. So much for poise, Chemo thought.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Stranahan, this is my just-in-case.” He laid the pistol on top of the boat’s console. “All I really need is a little friction.” Smiling, he held up a book of matches from Sunday’s bar.

“You’re going to burn the house down? That’s great!” Chloe’s eyes shone with relief. “Burning the house, that’ll freak him out.”

“Big-time,” Chemo agreed.

“Just what that dangerous lunatic deserves.”

“Right.”

Chloe looked at him mischievously. “You promised to tell me who you really are.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“At least tell me why you’re doing this.”

“I’m being paid,” Chemo said.

“By who?”

“Nobody you know.”

“Another ex-wife, I’ll bet.”

“What didI say?”

“Oh, all right.” Chloe stood up and peered over the gunwale at the slick green water. Chemo figured she was checking out her own reflection.

“Did you bring anything to drink?”

“No,” Chemo replied. “No drinks.”

She folded her arms to show how peeved she was. “You mean, I’ve got to stay out here till dark with nothing to drink.”

“Longer than that,” Chemo said. “Midnight.”

“But Mick’ll be asleep by then.”

“That’s the idea, Mrs. Stranahan.”

“But how will he know to get out of the house?”

Chemo laughed gruffly. “Now who’s the rocket scientist?”

Chloe’s expression darkened. She pursed her lips and said, “Wait a minute. I don’t want you to kill him.”

“W ho asked you?”

A change was taking place in Chloe’s attitude, the way she regarded Chemo. It was as if she was seeing the man for the first time, and she was staring, which Chemo did not appreciate. Her and her tweezered eyebrows.

“You’re a killer,” she said, reproachfully.

Chemo blinked amphibiously and plucked at one of the skin tags on his cheek. His eyes were round and wet and distant.

“You’re a killer,” Chloe repeated, “and you tricked me.”

Chemo said, “You hate him so much, what do you care if he’sdead or not?”

Her eyes flashed. “I care because I still get a check from that son of a bitch as long as he’s alive. He’s dead, I get zip.”

Chemo was dumbstruck. “You get alimony? But you’re remarried! To a frigging CPA!”

“Let’s just say Mick Stranahan didn’t have the world’s sharpest lawyer.”

“You are one greedy twat,” Chemo said acidly.

“Hey, it’s one-fifty a month,” Chloe said. “Barely covers the lawn service.”

She did not notice the hostility growing in Chemo’s expression. “Killing Mick Stranahan is out of the question,” she declared. “Burn up the house, fine, but I don’t want him dead.”

“Tough titties,” Chemo said.

“Look, I don’t know who you are-”

“Sit,” Chemo said. “And keep your damn voice down.”

The wind was kicking up, and he was afraid the argument might carry across the flats to the house.

Chloe sat down but was not about to shut up. “You listen to me-”

“I said, keep your damn voice down!”

“Screw you, Velcro-face.”

Chemo’s brow crinkled, his cheeks fluttered. He probably even flushed, though this was impossible to discern.

Velcro-face- t here it was, finally. The insult. The witch just couldn’t resist after all.

“Now what’s the matter?” Chloe Simpkins Stranahan said. “You look seasick.”

“I’m fine,” Chemo said, “But you shouldn’t call people names.”

Then he heaved the thirty-pound anchor into her lap, and watched her pitch over backwards in her silky sailor suit. The staccato trail of bubbles suggested that she was cursing him all the way to the bottom of the bay.