Chapter 9
About ten days after his conversation with Victoria, Marcella called him on his cell phone while he was having a beer at the beach waiting for the sun to go down. They chatted for a few minutes. He asked her where she had been. She responded by telling him she had some personal business to attend to but did not divulge any details. She asked what he had been up to and he replied that he had been basically up to 'no damned good'. She laughed, but did not inquire further into what that involved.
After a couple of minutes, she asked him if he were still willing to have dinner with her; she said she would love to hear more stories about the local lore. He said he was about out of stories, but would be more than happy to have dinner. She suggested two nights hence and asked him where he liked to eat.
He laughed, “Mrs. Wilson, you would not be caught dead in the kinds of places I frequent. My idea of fine dining is a joint that serves draft beer in glass mugs instead of plastic cups. Some of the places I frequent don't even have draft beer. They serve their beer in bottles, and they don't offer glasses at all. I think you should make the suggestion as to the restaurant.”
“Since you told me you are a native Floridian, may I assume you like seafood?”
“I actually eat little else.”
“Have you been to Moore's Stone Crab?”
He laughed, “Yes. That is my 'special occasion place'. Birthdays. Outrageous celebration spurges. It's out of my price range for frequent dining, but I love the food.”
“I have not been there, but a number of people have told me it is good. Shall I meet you there about 8:00 p. m.?”
“That sounds fine,” he said, thinking that 8:00 p. m. was an ungodly late hour to start dinner. What was more, he knew they would probably have cocktails first and would not eat until 9:00 or after. He made it a point to get his weekly work turned in by Thursday afternoon. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be worth a damn on Friday.
On Thursday, he arrived a few minutes early and waited for her outside. She was delivered to the door in a black Mercedes driven by a uniformed chauffeur. She was in the back seat. For the umpteenth time it crossed his mind that she had some money somewhere, and he couldn't understand why the FBI hadn't looked into that, when there were still hundreds of millions missing from the Techtron retirement plan.
He opened the door for her and she stepped out. Before they entered the restaurant she stopped him with a light hand on his chest. She cleared her throat and said, “This is awkward, so I'm just going to blurt it out. Dinner is on me, but I don't want to embarrass you. I gave them my credit card information in advance. When we are finished, we can simply leave. You will be spared the awkwardness of sitting there while I pay, and I will be spared the awkwardness of paying for a gentleman.”
He chuckled, “First of all, thank you for your consideration, but I have to tell you I don't feel the least bit awkward when someone, even a woman, offers to buy me dinner. And,” he paused, “I am by no means a gentleman, at least not in the sense I think you meant that comment.”
She looked at him with an odd expression but did not reply.
They were ushered to a table overlooking the water. The view probably would have been spectacular a little earlier in the evening. By the time they arrived, it was dark already. The inky blackness of the water, which ordinarily gave him the creeps, was offset somewhat by the twinkling lights along the coast. She asked if he wanted to order a cocktail or a bottle of wine. He grimaced. “I am strictly a beer drinker for the most part. Especially when I eat seafood. Please order wine for yourself, but if you don't mind, I'd rather have a glass of beer.”
She smiled. “Roland and I used to go fishing with a captain out of the Bahamas. The chef on his boat insisted on serving only beer with seafood. He could cook haute cuisine with the best of them and he made some amazing food-wine parings when he served meat, but said that real seafood should be consumed with only local beverages. In the Bahamas that meant water, tea or local beer. He said in France or California it is okay to drink wine with seafood if it is local wine and local seafood. I thought that was strange until the first time I ate grilled grouper and washed it down with a bottle of Red Stripe on the beach in Jamaica! Are there any good local beers here?”
“There are a few Florida beers, but most are strictly micro-breweries you have to drink on site. With seafood, I like Red Stripe or Kalik; I guess the Bahamians know how to make beer to go with all that seafood. To be totally honest, though, my favorite beer, period, is Yuengling draft.”
She laughed, “I love Yuengling!”
He was surprised. “You do?”
“Yes, I do. Roland tried it on a trip to Philadelphia a number of years ago. He started bringing it home with him whenever he traveled. At the time they didn't sell it in Georgia. Roland liked the regular lager. I love Black & Tan.”
“Black & Tan is a little too heavy to go with fish, I think.”
“I agree, but I might have a glass for a cocktail.”
He grinned, “I like your style, lady.”
They ordered glasses of beer and studied the menu. It only took a minute for them to realize their tastes in seafood were remarkably similar. They decided to share an order of steamers and then share a combination of blackened fish and grilled scallops. When the food arrived, they switched to Red Stripe. They ate the messy food and talked, mostly about food and beer and fishing. He was surprised to find that Marcella loved to fish, and was very knowledgeable both about deep sea and freshwater angling.
She told him she learned her love of fishing from her husband. Ray knew she and her husband had only been married a few years. Her knowledge and passion about the subject struck him as much older than that. Ray was willing to bet she had grown up around water and had fished her whole life. That didn't narrow things down much, but it was a clue he hadn't had before.
She peppered him with questions, but deflected questions when he turned them back on her. On safe subjects (which meant any subject that did not involve her personally) she was funny, witty and loquacious. She clammed up completely when he tried to extract any personal information. He realized he was going to have to take an indirect route.
She liked to fish. That was a start. He would invite her to go fishing. Nothing facilitates sharing stories like a day on the water.
They enjoyed their meal, which they topped off with a shared piece of key lime pie. On the way out of the restaurant, she said, “I'm going to have to put in an extra couple of hours in the gym tomorrow.”
He said, “I'm already planning to add an extra couple of miles on my run tomorrow.”
She asked, “Where do you run?”
He told her about his route around Siesta Key and she asked if he would mind a running partner from time to time. He couldn't believe it when he blurted out, “Any time. Since you like great seafood and good, cold beer, it occurs to me you might not be as repelled by the joints I frequent as I originally thought. Why don't you plan to join me for a run one afternoon, and we'll end up at my local hangout for brewskies and swimmers at sunset.”
She grinned with what looked like genuine pleasure and said, “That sounds positively wonderful!”
“How about Saturday?”
“What time?”
He thought about it for a minute and, ignoring the bells going off in the back of his head telling him to stop this nonsense, he said, “Well, the sun sets these days about 7:00. How far do you usually run?”
She said, “I don't run as much as I should, but about three days a week, I run five to six miles. Once a week or so, I like to go a bit farther, maybe eight to ten miles.”
He nodded. “It is 5 miles round trip from my house to the end of Siesta Key, up to the bridge and back. We could add another couple of miles by running all the way to the public beach and back. I like to stop at a little bar near the public beach for my nightly brew, and sunset observance.”
She smiled, “That sounds lovely. You'd make a great Islander.”
He l
aughed out loud, “I am an Islander. Grew up in downtown Margaritaville. I was living the Island life back when only old fishermen, hippies and bums were doing it.”
“You were a Parrot Head before it was cool.”
Her car pulled up. He opened the door and helped her inside, he said with a wink, “Ma'am, I was a Parrot Head before there was such a thing.”
“I'll bet you have great stories about Key West.”
“I do. They all predate the coming of the cruise ships and Yuppies who ruined the place. We knew the place had gone purely to hell when Jimmy up and moved to Miami, of all the damned places.”
She smiled, “I can't wait to hear the stories. I'll see you on Saturday. Where shall we meet?”
“I could pick you up?”
“That won't be necessary.” She handed him a calling card. “My email address is on this card, please send me your address. I'll have my driver drop me off. What time do you think?”
“Five should be plenty of time to get in a run and then find a good spot for the sunset show.”
“Won't we need to shower and change before dinner?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You're welcome to do so if you want, but I usually just pop in straight from my run. When the barkeep sees me coming, he puts out a pitcher of ice water, which I drink pretty much straight down. Then he opens my beer. It's a straight-off-the-beach kind of place. They require patrons to wear shoes because the law insists on that. Half the people there of an evening are in bathing suits (often wet) or running togs (usually very sweaty). We won't stand out, trust me.”
“Okay,” she said with some misgiving in her voice. She waved and the deeply tinted window slid up, hiding her from his view.
He walked to his car feeling like a complete idiot. It had been a long time since he had been out on a date, but he recognized when women were flirting with him. Marcella had sat across from him all evening flirting like crazy. Part of him figured that it was important for her to understand the kind of person she was actually dealing with. He assumed that if he gave her a taste of his lifestyle she would go scurrying back to her fancy condo on Longboat Key and bother him no more. He would put her and her story behind him. Part of him wanted that to happen. She was out of his league and he knew it.
But, there was something else that worried him. He was flattered by the attention of such a lovely lady. He told himself he was just emotionally vulnerable what with the whole business with Deborah. The facts or logic of the situation notwithstanding, he rather liked looking across the table into those amazing doe eyes.
He puttered around on Friday, and made a few calls, checking in with sources. He called Victoria and filled her in on his dinner with Marcella. She was puzzled. “None of that makes any sense. Why would she pick you out like that? Don't get me wrong. You're not bad looking and you've got a wonderful personality. I'm surprised there isn't a line of neighborhood women hanging out in your front yard. But, please don't be offended when I say that you are not the kind of man I would expect a woman like Marcella Wilson to be interested in.”
“I am not offended at all. I'm trying to figure it out myself.” He chuckled. “I will be interested to see how she likes Cap'n Dick's.”
“What?”
“That's the name of the place I'm taking her to dinner.”
“Cap'n Dick's bar? Is that place still in business?”
“Don't even tell me you know that place!!”
“She laughed. As a matter of fact I think I do, at least I did once many years ago. It must have been several owners ago. Actually, the few times that Henry and I went there, I think the owner was actually a former fishing vessel captain named Dick something or other.”
“Dick D'Amato. Actually it was Riccardo D'Amato. He wasn't a captain at all. He was a mate. He immigrated to America shortly after WWII. I think he was only a teenager at the time. He spent a couple of years in a DP camp in Europe and then some GI from Sarasota took him under his wing and promised him a job on his dad's fishing boat if Dick could get to the US. He never actually confessed but I heard from a credible source that Riccardo stowed away on a ship transporting refugees and orphans to the US. Anyway, somehow he got to the States and made his way to Sarasota. The GI's family hired him and he worked as a mate on their charter boats when the weather permitted and as a bus boy in restaurants all over Siesta Key when the weather was bad. The boat captain he worked for let him live on the boat sort of as a night watchman.
“He saved every dime he earned, and eventually had enough to open a bar of his own. He sold fish sandwiches, shrimp po-boys and cold beer. Called the place Cap'n Dick's, which was a joke. Actually, the original name of the place was supposed to be Swabby Dick's but the city council made him change it. They thought the name was obscene.”
Victoria laughed. “Surely he's not still running the place?”
“No. Sadly, Cap died about ten years ago. His son actually ran the place for a long time. He still comes in occasionally, although he has a sort of fancy place on the mainland where he spends most of his time. Dick's grandson now runs the bar. He's doing a great job. Fantastic food. Nice atmosphere. Hardly any tourists.”
“How does he manage that?”
Ray explained about the anti-tourist policy. Victoria laughed until she got the hiccups. When she recovered, she said, “First of all, I can't wait to hear how Mrs. Wilson likes the place. Second of all, do they still have those fabulous hush puppies?”
“Oh, yeah. They use same recipe that Dick got from the wife of the first captain he worked for. That old gal was from up around Cedar Key where they take their fish and all the accouterments very seriously. Best damned hush puppies on the planet.”
“The next time you stop by my house, come for lunch. Bring us some fish sandwiches and hush puppies.”
“Deal. Do you want me to call you on Sunday?”
“Yes. I'll be dying to hear.”
“What time do you get home from church?”
“Who says I go to church?”
“I thought all you Southern ladies go to church every Sunday, all gussied up in your hats and white gloves.”
“I suppose a lot of them do, but not me. I quit going to church when I married Henry.”
“Huh?”
“Henry was Baptist. My family was Catholic. We had irreconcilable religious differences which we surmounted by both of us giving up religion altogether. That turned out to be one of the best decision either of us ever made besides getting married in the first place.”
It was his turn to laugh loud and long. He got himself under control and rasped, “Miss Victoria, you must be the most amazing woman I know.”
She said softly, “You don't know the half of it.” She changed tone. “Call me anytime Sunday. I get up early and I usually stay home all day on Sundays. I may be a heathen, but I try not to flaunt that fact before my evangelical friends in order to prevent them from trying to 'save' me.”
“Your secret is safe with me. I'll talk to you soon.”
He spent most of Saturday cleaning his house. That was stupid and unnecessary because the place was already immaculate, but it gave him something to do.
A few minutes before 5:00 p. m. he heard a car pull in the driveway. Marcella got out and waved the driver away. Ray thought it was interesting that she sent the driver away before she made sure he hadn't stood her up. He noticed she had a purse and sweats with her. He invited her to leave them inside the house. He noticed that she scanned the room with a practiced eye. She would know at a glance the origin and probable cost of virtually every piece of furniture in the room. If there had been any doubt about his not being in her league, giving her a peek at his house would prove it. To her credit, she did not make a bad face or otherwise react to the surroundings at all.
They stretched a few minutes on the porch and then took off at a slow pace, chatting. After a mile or so, she said, “Would you mind if we picked it up a little. I like to go just a tad faster.”
&nbs
p; “Set the pace. I'll try to keep up.”
She sped up to a comfortable six miles an hour. He was a little surprised she didn't go faster. He was quite a bit older than she was. He assumed she as holding back for his benefit. After another mile or so, he said, “Want to pick it up just a little more?”
She stepped aside and let him move forward and set the pace. They were both running too hard to talk but not so hard that either of them was out of breath. They ran a total of about eight miles and then looped back toward his house. He said, “In the summertime, I stop into the restaurant along my run. Once it gets to the time in the year when it will be dark by the time I am finished with dinner, I like to drive. I don't like to walk out here at night. There are no street lights and way too many tourists who are unfamiliar with the roads. I'm terrified of getting hit by a car. If it's all the same to you, let's drive to the restaurant.”
“That's fine. Mind if I use your bathroom to splash my face?”
“Sure. Clean towels are under the sink. I'll get us some water.”
She came out from the bathroom, wearing the sweat suit, with her hair freshly combed, looking fresh and relaxed. He handed her a bottle of water. She looked around as she drank it. “I'm impressed.”
“By what?”
“You're a bachelor. I've heard tales of bachelor pads my entire life. This place makes my house look like a pigsty. I'm a bit on the messy side. I'm embarrassed to admit that to an obvious neat freak.”
He looked around his living room, seeing it through the eyes of a stranger. “Actually, come to think of it, this place looks like nobody lives here at all, doesn't it?”
“It does rather lack personal touches.”
He was grateful she didn't state the obvious: the place desperately needed a woman's touch.
They drove to Cap'n Dick's and found a table facing the beach. The sunset spectacle was about to begin. Ray ordered two glasses of beer and leaned back to watch the show. She started to say something but he put his fingers to his lips. Some things simply demand to be observed in respectful silence. Sunsets, for him, ranked at the very top of that list. The waitress knew he would not be ready to order until the final rays of the sun had disappeared and the purple trailers started to fade. He relaxed and all but forgot that Marcella, or anyone else, was there.
When the last of the rays had faded from red to purple and the sky began to darken, he turned to her and smiled, “Is that not the most incredible thing imaginable? I'm not technically a religious person, but I have to tell you, I fail to understand how anyone could watch a sunset over the ocean and not be moved.”
She looked surprised, but did not respond. He felt a little embarrassed at having said that aloud.
They ordered grilled fish sandwiches for dinner. Marcella was quiet. At first he thought she might be uncomfortable in the setting. He rather hoped that was the case. She made him uncomfortable and he found himself wanting to be done with her. He thought that was odd. There was much about her he liked. There was even more about her – or, more importantly, his reaction to her – that troubled him.
They ate without talking, enjoying the tasty fish and the freshly baked sandwich rolls. The bar was strictly a late-afternoon, early evening place. It cleared out shortly after dark. Soon Ray and Marcella were the only ones left. They lingered over their beers, talking about food and fishing and travel, until it was obvious the bartender wanted to close up. Ray walked up to the bar and paid the bill. Then they walked to his car. He said, “It's not a Mercedes, but it's German engineering.” She laughed and hopped into the front seat of his VW.
Ray slid behind the wheel and asked, “Where to, milady?”
She looked at her watch. She said, “I told my driver to pick me up at your house at 8:30 p. m.” He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was 8:30 already. He drove home and found her car waiting in the driveway. He walked around to the passenger's seat and opened the door. As he led her to her car, he said, “Since you like to fish, I was wondering if one day you might like to go out on the water with me.”
She grinned and said, “I would love to. I haven't been fishing in a while. Give me a call next week. My number is on the card I gave you the other day. ”
He shook her hand and she closed the door.