“I’m an economist, just as I told you, my dear, and McGee here is in the salvage business, on contract.”
“It’s more interesting than I thought,” she said wistfully. “Maybe no matter what I work out, it is going to get back to those people I’m walking around, and they’ll try again. They can’t miss twice.”
“If you’re looking for advice,” Miss Jane Doe we can’t guide you any without knowing the problem Miss Doe.”
“Vangie,” she said. “I owe you at least my right name, huh? Short for Evangeline. The whole name will kill you, honest. Evangeline Bridget Tanaka Bellemer. Bellemer is sort of French meaning beautiful sea. That’s a gas! Actually what I got dropped into-the beautiful sea. I guess I have to settle down and think things out somehow. When do we get to Miami? After lunch?”
It amused me. “Maybe by five or six tomorrow evening.”
She looked relieved. “I wish it was next month, or next year. Anyway, there’s more time than I thought, and that’s a help.”
“Ask for advice if you think you need it,” Meyer said. “And you look well enough to accept a temporary appointment as dishwasher.”
She stared at him. “Are you kidding!”
“On this vessel,” I said, “everybody works.”
“I’m not so big on housework,” she said with a trace of sullenness mixed with acceptance of her fate.
After I’d settled the bill for dockage and fuel, Meyer handled the lines and I ran the Flush out of there, sitting up at the topside controls forward of the sun deck. When we were out into the channel Meyer went below. In a little while she came up and asked permission to sit in the co-pilot seat. She had found a white shirt of mine and put it on over the borrowed blouse. She had found a hat left aboard by a guest, a straw thing with cute sayings on it and a floppy brim a good yard in diameter. She had found some sunglasses. She had a tall highball in hand, almost as lethally dark as iced coffee.
“Okay I made myself a knock?” she asked. “Want I should go get you one too?”
“Later on, maybe. Won’t you be too warm?”
“It’s not so bad now, with the wind. What the sun does to me, I break out. Like little boils. So I have to watch it. You know, Meyer is pretty fussy, isn’t he? I washed the damn dishes. He said I left grease on, I should wash them again. I said once was all I bargained for, so he’s down there washing them all over. Gee, I can see how come it takes so long to Miami. This thing is really slow.”
“But cozy.”
“What it’s like, Travis, is a real great apartment pad, the hi fi and furniture and all. You could fill it with swingers and really blast away.”
She was quiet for a long time. She was not exactly killing her drink. Tiny sips were widely spaced. I was aware of her examining me from time to time, long glances behind the dark lenses.
“Look, in this salvage business, I suppose it’s like other kinds of things, there’s a contract you want to get and a lot of people want to get it too because there’s good money in it. In business you do better if you have some kind of an edge, right? Maybe what would be a help to you, I was thinking, some way to soften up those guys, so they want to have you do the work. What you could do, maybe, is put the price a little higher, to cover whatever it would cost to make them feel friendly.”
“Sorry, honey. It doesn’t work that way.”
More silence. We passed a bar where about forty pelicans stood in single file in about an inch of water. I pointed it out to her and she said, “Yeah. Birds.”
Most people are as blind as Vangie. Eyesight is what you use to get around without running into things. But they find no real value in what they see.
Her drink went down, a little bit at a time. Suddenly she started questioning me about my houseboat. I really owned it? could I take it any distance? could I get it over to New Orleans, or maybe Galveston? Did I get to use it often, or was I too busy with my salvage business? Costs something to run such a nice boat, huh? Don’t lots of people charter their boats to get some of their bait back? A boat like this, did you ever think there could be a way to turn it into a real gold mine? Like sort of little weekend excursions, with everything done real tasty.