Bonnie Lamb couldn’t stand her husband’s lordly tone. She couldn’t stand it so much that she’d have done anything to shut him up.
“All right, Max. Bring me my robe.”
He kissed her noisily on the forehead. “Thatta girl.”
TWO
Snapper and Edie Marsh got two rooms at the Best Western in Pembroke Pines, thirty miles north of where the storm was predicted to come ashore. Snapper told the motel clerk that one room would be enough, but Edie said not on your damn life. The relationship had always been strictly business, Snapper being an occasional fence of women’s wear and Edie being an occasional thief of same. Their new venture was to be another entrepreneurial partnership, more ambitious but not more intimate. Up front Edie alerted Snapper that she couldn’t imagine a situation in which she’d have sex with him, even once. He did not seem poleaxed by the news.
She went to bed covering her ears, trying to shut out the hellish moan of the storm. It was more than she could bear alone. During the brief calm of the eye, she pounded on the door to Snapper’s room and said she was scared half to death. Snapper said come on in, we’re having ourselves a time.
Somewhere in the midst of a hurricane, he’d found a hooker. Edie was impressed. The woman clutched a half-empty bottle of Barbancourt between her breasts. Snapper had devoted himself to vodka; he wore a Marlins cap and red Jockey shorts, inside out. Candles gave the motel room a soft, religious lighting. The electricity had been out for two hours.
Edie Marsh introduced herself to the prostitute, whom Snapper had procured through a telephone escort service. Here was a dedicated employee! thought Edie.
The back side of the storm came up, a roar so unbearable that the three of them huddled like orphans on the floor. The candles flickered madly as the wind sucked at the windows. Edie could see the walls breathing-Christ, what a lousy idea this was! A large painting of a pelican fell, grazing one of the hooker’s ankles. She cried out softly and gnawed at her artificial fingernails. Snapper kept to the vodka. Occasionally his free hand would turn up like a spider on Edie’s thigh. She smashed it, but Snapper merely sighed.
By dawn the storm had crossed inland, and the high water was falling fast. Edie Marsh put on a conservative blue dress and dark nylons, and pinned her long brown hair in a bun. Snapper wore the only suit he owned, a slate pinstripe he’d purchased two years earlier for an ex-cellmate’s funeral; the cuffed trousers stopped an inch shy of his shoetops. Edie chuckled and said that was perfect.
They dropped the prostitute at a Denny’s restaurant and took the Turnpike south to see what the hurricane had done. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper lunacy, fire engines and cop cars and ambulances everywhere. The radio said Homestead had been blown off the map. The governor was sending the National Guard.
Snapper headed east on 152nd Street but immediately got disoriented. All traffic signals and street signs were down; Snapper couldn’t find Sugar Palm Hammocks.
Edie Marsh became agitated. She kept repeating the address aloud: 14275 Noriega Parkway. One-four-two-seven-five. Tan house, brown shutters, swimming pool, two-car garage. Avila had guessed it was worth $185,000.
“If we don’t hurry,” Edie told Snapper, “if we don’t get there soon-”
Snapper instructed her to shut the holy fuck up.
“Wasn’t there a Dairy Queen?” Edie went on. “I remember him turning at a Dairy Queen or something.”
Snapper said, “The Dairy Queen is gone. Every goddamn thing is gone, case you didn’t notice. We’re flying blind out here.”
Edie had never seen such destruction; it looked like Castro had nuked the place. Houses without roofs, walls, windows. Trailers and cars crumpled like foil. Trees in the swimming pools. People weeping, Sweet Jesus, and everywhere the plonking of hammers and the growling of chain saws.
Snapper said they could do another house. “There’s only about ten thousand to choose from.”
“I suppose.”
“What’s so special about 1-4-2-7-5?”
“It had personality,” Edie Marsh said.
Snapper drummed his knuckles on the steering wheel. “They all look the same. All these places, exactly the same.”