Tampa Burn

FIFTEEN

Seeing Dewey’s mattress bouncing away in the back of a pickup not only hurt, but it created in me a kind of emotional numbness. Her bed was such an intimate symbol of the time we’d spent alone in her house. That she had made the decision to move so impulsively-irrationally, it seemed to me-was a measure of the pain I’d inflicted.

I went to the open door and, stupidly, knocked before entering. I expected to see Janet Mueller, and there she was, dressed for sweat and hard labor in baggy shorts and a man’s shirt, sleeves rolled up.

She stood in the center of a room full of boxes, and garbage bags, and stacks of Dewey’s clothes still on hangers. Her mousy hair was piled under a ball cap, a couple of curls touched with gray hanging out. She’s always been on the chubby side. In the last six months or so, though, she’d lost too much weight, and her face was gaunt. It’d aged her.

I said, “I can’t believe she’s done this. All in less than twenty-four hours?”

Janet finished taping a box closed and pushed it aside. “You’ve always said you like strong women. Dewey was never the indecisive type. I guess there has to be a downside to a man dating his equal.”

“I need to talk to her, Jan. For just a few minutes. It’s important. Where is she?”

She started to reply, but then stopped, studying my face. Janet’s a close friend, too. In ways, closer than Jeth. She knows me well, and so probably accurately diagnosed my coloring, or my expression.

“Are you O.K., Doc? You don’t look good. Have a seat, take some deep breaths, and I’ll get you something to drink. I haven’t cleaned out the fridge yet.”

“Janet, please. Tell me how to contact her.”

“No. I can’t do that. Please don’t ask me again. Dewey’s gone. She’ll be in touch-she said to tell you that. She also said to tell you not to try and find her.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “She’s gone where? ”

“Gone, that’s all. She’s moved to another place. That’s all I’m going to say. So no more pressure. O.K.?”

She turned from beneath my hands and went to the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open, then the carbonated signature of bottles being opened. After a moment, she poked her head out and said, “That doesn’t mean I’m not your buddy anymore. I know it’s a heck of a shock, so let’s go talk. Just you and me, out there in the Florida room. But no more prying. You’ve got to promise.”

I followed her through the kitchen, out the sliding doors toward the lighted pool. It was a rectangular plunge pool floored with black tile, so the water appeared iceberg blue. The pool lights projected shimmering lines onto the area’s high-screened paneling, illuminating the deck, showing potted plants, barbecue grill, weight machine, wet bar. On the other side of the screen were silhouetted trees, and stars.

I accepted the beer. She went back to the kitchen, returned with chunks of cheddar, chorizo sausage, a bottle of hot sauce, and crackers. She took a seat beside me in a deck chair while I tried not to look at the water, because I could see Dewey floating naked after a tough workout, or late at night, just the two of us, after making love.

I said, “We were together here just last night. I talked to her. She didn’t mention doing anything this drastic.”

Janet sipped, swallowed, chewed, nodded. “I know.”

“She told you?”

“Not the details. Just that something happened between you two. That it was serious. And that she needed to get off the islands for a while to think clearly. I can understand that. Sanibel and Captiva are like luxury liners with palms and a beach. Leave your cabin, and you can’t help but run into the same old fun-loving crew. There are times, though, when you need a little distance.”

I said, “If I write her a letter, can you see that she gets it?”

“Yes. I can do that.”

“I really screwed up, Jan. No one’s ever called me talkative, so why is it my mouth that always gets me in trouble with the women I care about? I think she may be gone for good.”

Janet stirred beside me, and I felt her hand pat my arm then come to rest atop my hand. “Do you know why women like quiet men? Because it’s easier for us to believe they’re really listening. Relationships are a pain in the ass, Dr. Ford.”

I said, “Yes, they are, Dr. Mueller,” laughing softly with her, and realizing that she’d already helped dissipate some of the emotional trauma, which is exactly what she was trying to do.

“After the last time I got dumped, I swore I’d never get any closer to a permanent relationship, or marriage, than going to a sex store and telling the sales clerk ‘I do’ when she asked if I wanted to buy a vibrator.”

I was laughing harder as she added, “But nothing shocks me anymore when it comes to relationships. Nothing. ”

She gave it so much emphasis, I knew she was referencing something recent and personal. Which meant she had things in her own love life she wanted to talk about, too.

As much as anyone I know, Janet reminds me why I like women as people. She is also my secret reminder that, for women who are not born with great looks, or who are past a certain age, the world is an unfair place.

Men can compensate for their genetic bad luck by being successful in business or politics. The same is not true for women. Inequity becomes a fact of life. Some of the very best of them end up settling for guys who are not their intellectual or emotional equals, and lead lives that never offer them much challenge or reward. These are the private ones, the undiscovered treasures whose gifts are forever concealed by an oversized body, or a facial conformation that’s a few centimeters off the current Hollywood ideal.

As we sat and talked, and had another beer, I thought about this good person and all that she’d endured. Maybe she hoped that’s what I’d do. It certainly reduced my feeling of being overwhelmed.

Most people stop maturing long before they stop aging, but not this lady. Whatever her own rocky life had demanded, she’d evolved and grown in whatever way it took to compensate. I admired that. Same with everyone at Dinkin’s Bay.

Janet had arrived at the marina a few years back with lots of emotional baggage, after losing her husband in a car wreck, then their unborn child to a miscarriage. Many people move to Florida hoping to save themselves or to reinvent themselves. Janet’s one of the few resilient enough to have succeeded at both.

While she healed, she worked regularly in my lab and lived aboard her little blue houseboat. After a split-up with Jeth, her on-again-off-again love, she’d moved her vessel to Twin Palms, but continued to work for me and remained a part of the Dinkin’s Bay community.

Janet was always the quiet girl with glasses, the sisterly type who was there when you needed her, but was never glib or showy. She was the one with the frazzled hair and heavy hips, but a cute face; the one who liked to laugh and socialize. If you were a man, you wanted to protect her, just as women, on first meeting, knew immediately they could trust Janet and confide in her.

She was nice, but lacked confidence. She could be outgoing, but never assertive.

That changed.

Not so long ago, Janet, along with friends, had been set adrift in the open sea after a boating accident, only to be picked up by the worst sort of people.

Once again, she’d endured. Then she’d prevailed.

I remembered what Merlin Starkey had said about his life being scarred by his failures. Janet has too much character and courage to allow herself to use such a transparent excuse.

The woman who sat next to me now was a very different Janet Mueller from the soft-spoken lady who’d come shy-eyed into the marina years back. There was no shortage of self-confidence, she had no problem being assertive-but my friend had also lost something during the process.

There’s always a price.

As I finished my second beer and the last of the food, she said, “If you don’t feel better, at least you look better. You were so pale, I thought you were going to pass out on me.”

I said, “Years from now, when I’m older and even more decrepit and you’re nursing me through my dotage, maybe I’ll tell you the whole story about my day. Finding out about Dewey wasn’t the worst of it, but it’s close.”

“I’m tempted to ask.”

“Like I said, down the road, when you’re feeding me with a spoon.”

“Another one of Doc’s secrets,” she said, musing. “The marina folks wonder about you sometimes, you know. You disappear for a week or a month at a time, then come back and never say a word. Like last November, you show up with your hand bandaged and your tan almost gone. They whisper behind your back.”

When I didn’t reply, she stood-my signal to leave. “It’s going on one o’clock in the morning, sweetie. The guys’ll be back soon. They’re gonna make another trip, then call it a night.”

I wasn’t ready to leave yet, though. There was one last thing I wanted to do.

I dropped my bottle in the recycle bin, said, “Gotta use the head first,” then walked down the hall, past the guest bath and bedroom, to Dewey’s master suite. I turned on the bathroom light and locked the door behind me.

The wastebasket hadn’t yet been emptied. It’s what I’d hoped. I flushed the toilet to cover the noise, then knelt and pawed through the bathroom detritus. I didn’t expect to find what I was searching for, so I was enormously pleased when I did: A small blue box that read CLEARBLUE HOME PREGNANCY TEST.

I touched index finger to glasses, adjusting them, before I looked inside.

Empty.

The printing on the box said that it had contained two test strips. Where were they?

I knelt over the trash again and sifted more carefully. I found a plastic wrapper that had held one of the strips, but nothing else.

What did that tell me? I stood, thinking about it.

Dewey had used the kit. Once, at least. Maybe twice. That meant that she knew. She knew if she was pregnant or not.

Would she have decided to leave Captiva if she was not pregnant?

Possibly. The woman had a temper, and she also had as much willpower and pride as anyone I’ve ever met. So what could I infer additionally, if anything?

Not much, I decided. Positive or negative, she could have done the test twice just to be certain.

From the front of the house, I heard Janet call, “Doc? Hey in there. What’d you do, fall in?”

I shoved the box deep into the trash, then flushed again.

Janet stood on the front stoop outside, lights off, looking at the sky. A commercial airliner was transecting airspace between Pine Island and Sanibel, on the standard landing pattern into Regional Southwest Airport. With its landing lights fired, the plane looked like a bright planet descending

I stopped beside her and said, “What’s Dewey going to do with the house? Am I allowed to ask that? She’s leaving it empty, I hope. She is coming back.”

Still looking at the plane, Janet replied softly, “Jeth and I are moving in. For a while, anyway. A few months. Just to see how it goes.”

I said, “What?”

The roller-coaster affair between Janet and the good-looking fishing guide had ended forever, we all thought, when Jeth had fallen in love with Janet’s younger sister, Claudia. Claudia was a funnier, rowdier edition of Janet. She was athletic, more of a guy’s girl, and a better match, it seemed. But that hadn’t made it any easier for Jeth when he tried to break the news to Janet. He stuttered so badly that Claudia had to take over.

I said, “How long have you two been back together? Usually, I at least hear rumors.”

“A couple of months. We kept it quiet. We knew how damn foolish we’d both look if it didn’t work out. There was something the big goof had to find out for himself about Claudia. All our lives, whatever big sister had, little sister wanted. But once she got it, Claudia got tired of it real quick. Jeth caught her in the bedroom with not one, but two other guys. Tourist guys down from Boston. That’s something else he didn’t know about Claudia. She’s always been on the kinky side.”

Now it made sense, the way Janet said that nothing surprised her about relationships.

Because I was her friend, I had to say it. “So Jeth came back to you on the rebound. How’s your pride dealing with that?”

“Pride? I really don’t give two hoots about pride anymore. What’s the worst that can happen? I get hurt?” She made a fluttering sound with her lips: As if I haven’t been hurt before! “Doc, after all the crap I’ve been through, here’s about the only thing I’ve learned for sure: It’s one hell of a short and lonely life. If I can make it a little happier, and a little less lonely, by forgiving someone I care about, then I’m going to risk it.”

I put my arm over her shoulder, the two of us standing, looking into the late sky and at the airliner. “Do me a favor. Pass that little gem along to Dewey, would you? I could use some forgiveness.” After a moment, I added, “What time did her flight leave this morning?”

Janet started to answer, “She didn’t leave this morning because-” but caught herself and stopped. Using two fingers to lift my arm away as if it were soiled laundry, she then turned and said, “Don’t do that to me, pal. I’ve worked with you, I know how that little calculator you call a brain functions. If I give you the flight time, you’ll figure out all the possible destinations, then start narrowing it down from there. Don’t you dare get tricky with me. So show a little respect. Or maybe we’re not as close friends as I thought.”

The last was added with a real edge-a verbal slap that told me how serious she was.

I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. That will never happen again.” I held out my hand. “Forgiven?”

The woman shook her head at me severely, smiled, ignoring my hand, and gave me a quick hug-“Of course I forgive you. Because I love you.”-then paused, listening. “Hey-do you hear something ringing? Kind of a weird warble?”

I listened and heard it, too. Muted, rhythmic. It seemed to be coming from the rental car.

Then I realized: The satellite phone was ringing.

I sprinted toward the Ford.