With a nod of thanks, she slipped it on over the leotards. Keyes wondered why she was so quiet; it wasn’t a hostile silence, or even a sulk. It reminded him of the first few days at the house, when she was sizing him up. Kara Lynn was a pro when it came to withdrawal, a real blank page when she wanted to be.
“What’s on your mind?” he finally asked.
“I was just wondering about you and Jenna.”
“Ancient history.”
“Go on.”
“Very boring.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And painful.”
“Oh.” She took a sip of diet cola, a concession to her father. “Didn’t mean to pry.”
“Forget it,” Keyes said. “But do me a favor: no more aerobics classes until after the parade.”
“How come?”
“Call it a security precaution.”
“For heaven’s sake, you’re not saying Jenna’s dangerous!”
You don’t know the half of it, Keyes thought. “Did Jenna ever say anything about the Orange Bowl?”
“Sure. She wished me luck before the pageant—even sent a bouquet of wild sea oats to the dressing room.”
“She would have made a great florist.”
“Actually she’s the one who convinced me to enter the contest. To be honest, I was burned out on the darned things. Besides, I didn’t think I had a chance—you should’ve seen some of the other girls. But Jenna said to give it a try. Strike a blow for small-breasted women, she said.”
“A great florist and a great psychologist,” Keyes said. So Jenna was in on it from the beginning. What the hell did he expect? He decided to leave it at that, though. Jenna wouldn’t be back, and there was no use scaring Kara Lynn.
“She says I look like her, ten years ago.”
“Maybe a little,” Keyes said. It wasn’t the beauty they had in common, so much as the aura—an aura of absolute control. The ability to conquer with a shy glance or the slightest of smiles.
“I hope I look that good when I’m twenty-nine,” Kara Lynn remarked.
“You will.”
A waitress brought the pizza, hot and pungent. They attacked it hungrily. Keyes got tomato sauce on both his sleeves. Kara Lynn rolled her eyes, pretending to be mortified.
“Have you had many girlfriends?” she asked.
“Thousands. I was once engaged to half the Rockettes.”
“You don’t like this subject, do you?”
“Look, I never asked you what it’s like to be the Stone Crab queen, with a dozen greaseball contest judges staring up your crotch. I never asked because it seemed personal and none of my business, and I knew you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re right. It’s awful, that’s why.”
“It looks awful,” Keyes said. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Kara Lynn plucked an anchovy from the pizza and dropped it neatly on a napkin; a little anchovy graveyard. “It’s easy to become Stone Crab queen,” she said. “All you have to do is get some black heels and a bikini and learn to play ‘Eleanor Rigby’ on the French horn.”
“You got my vote.”
“I hate it. All of it.”
“I know.”
“Half the girls get boob jobs and butt tucks,” Kara Lynn said. “Nobody does anything about it.”
“What happens to them when there’s no more beauty pageants?”
“Two, three years of modeling. A few local TV commercials if you’re lucky. Guy once offered me three grand to lie on the hood of a Dodge truck and say: I got my Ram Charger at Cooley Motors. Real Shakespearean television. Daddy had a seizure when I turned it down.”
“What do you really want to do, Kara Lynn?”
“Stop world famine, of course.”
Keyes laughed. “And after that?”
“See Europe.”
Keyes cut another slice of pizza but it surrendered grudgingly. A web of cheese hung elastically from his mouth to the platter.
“What about you, Brian? Your life all mapped out?”
Keyes chewed pensively.
“Someday I’m going to buy a sailboat,” he said. “Move down to Islamorada, live off seaweed and lobsters. Let the sun fry me so brown that my hide gets tough as a turtle shell. I think I’d make a helluva good sea turtle—hey, don’t look at me like that.”
“But you’re serious!”
“A turtle’s got no natural enemies,” Keyes said.