8
Stranahan caught four small snappers and fried them up for supper.
“Richie 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, it is.”
“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.