“What do you make of that?” I asked my mother.
“He was a flake job. Case closed,” she said. “Listen, Jack, I’m quite fond of your new girlfriend. Please don’t scare her off, like you did with Anne. Keep the morbid stuff to yourself, okay?”
“I’ll try, Mom.”
Emma and I spent last evening on the couch trading manuscript chapters of Juan Rodriguez’s novel about his voyage from Cuba to Key West. It is heart-stopping but also humbling; Juan is gifted beyond my most improbable aspirations. A serious New York publishing house is launching his book in the fall, and I anticipate it will bring him wealth and acclaim. I only hope it will bring him sleep. He’s dedicating the novel to his sister.
Today Emma and I have come to the Silver Beach pier for lunch, as we often do. One windy morning a few months ago, Janet Thrush joined us. She kicked off her flip-flops and clambered up on the rail and poured her brother’s sworling ashes into the Atlantic. “Bye, Jimmy,” she sang out, heaving the empty urn into the water. At that instant, I swear, a dolphin came up and rolled in the surf—just once. We never saw it again.
I keep bringing Emma here because I want her to meet Ike, the ancient obituary writer, yet he hasn’t reappeared since the day we first spoke. I’m beginning to think I dreamt him up. Emma wonders, too, though she’s too kind to say so. Even if it means I’m still wacked, I’d prefer to know that I imagined Ike than to learn he has died.
As always, Emma and I choose the bench near the phone at the end of the pier, the same phone on which she called me after being kidnapped. Once I mentioned that to her, and all she said was: “Those creeps.”
Today the Atlantic is flat and glassy, the perfect mirror of a cloudless periwinkle sky. Kids are out of school so the pier bustles; above, a circus of swooping gulls and terns. Emma and I shield our pasta salads, in case of bombardment. Squinting against the fierce summer sun, I search for Ike’s fluffy gray head among the anglers lined along the rails.
“Maybe he went back north until the weather cools off,” Emma suggests.
“Maybe.”
“Or he’s laid up in the hospital. Have you called Charity?”
“Not yet.” I don’t even know the man’s last name.
We’re distracted by a lumpish, hirsute tourist in a sweat-stained tank top. He has reeled in a small barracuda, which flops frenetically on the wooden planks. The tourist has his heart set on supper, for he’s endeavoring to stomp on the fish before it flips back into the sea. He seems unheedful of the ample dentition of barracudas, impressive even in juvenile specimens. Within minutes the man’s pallid ankles are striped crimson, and in retreat he can be heard moaning like a branded calf.
Emma walks over and, with the toe of a conservative navy blue pump, carefully nudges the wriggling fish off the pier. Rejoining me on the bench, she says, “It’s that time again.”
“No, I’m begging you.”
Every day she asks: “When are you coming back to the paper?”
Abkazion has offered me a slot on the new investigations team, but the time isn’t right. I’m still having night sweats about what happened on Lake Okeechobee. These I don’t mention to Emma, because she’s had some unsettling dreams of her own.
“Jack, you should take the job. You worked hard for it.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. As Jimmy Stoma would say, I’m all humped out.”
“And, as Emma Cole would say, I’m going to hurt you now.” She thumps the side of my head. “Come back to work, dammit. I miss you.”
“She’s right. What’s your problem, Tagger?” a scratchy voice demands at my back.
I spin around and there’s Ike, a sly smile on his whiskered possum face. He is carrying an orange bait bucket, a small cooler and his three spinning rods. He looks fit and frisky.
“Where’ve you been?” I ask.
“Battling an unmannered polyp,” he replies cheerily, “but fear not. I prevailed.”
“Ike, this is my friend, Emma.”