Time to see the old man.
I bathed, rode to my slip at Chokoloskee, and drove to Miami, realizing my visit might well leave a bitter taste on his favorite day of the year. Other than his sunrise service, his eight p.m. mass would be the most attended. And a larger crowd meant it would be easier to get lost. I parked, pulled up my collar, and waded into the crowd looking like a guy who was punching his card on his once yearly mass attendance—the sound of my flip-flops drowned out by the nearly thousand people talking and echoing off the walls.
A thousand candles lit the interior. Lingering smell of incense. Hushed tones. Families hurrying to a pew. Rows squeezed tight. People kneeling, genuflecting, lips moving. Little girls in white and pink dresses. Boys in seersucker suits. Mothers fussing over their hair and tucking in their shirts. Fathers fussing over mothers fussing over kids who looked just fine.
Steady meandered near the front door, shaking hands, hugging babies, kissing children. Draped in purple, his smile wide. Face beaming. The gold stitching on his vestments reflected the candlelight. He liked to say that the church had bedazzled him.
I found a place in the back. The last row. On the end. A long way from the front and even farther from Steady’s eighty-four-year-old eyes. I didn’t want him to see me until after. Didn’t want to ruin his service and seeing me alone, without Katie, would ruin his service.
The music started, as did the processional, and it’s a good thing the fire marshal was not in attendance. Sardines had more room than us. I’ve often thought that Catholic services were good exercise and that Catholics were, or should be, in better shape than, say, Baptists or Methodists. The Catholics stand up, sit down, kneel, repeat. While most other denominations only stand up and sit. ’Course, the Anglicans and Episcopalians stand up, sit down, kneel, too, so I’m not sure what that says. Anyway, every time I attend one of Steady’s services I am reminded of a term he once used with laughter: “aeroba-church.”
Wasn’t long and the entire congregation was kneeling. I followed suit. Heads bowed. Mine, too. I fought the urge to leave. Drive to Katie’s condo, see if she’d hung herself from the balcony, slit her wrist in the bathtub, or passed out in the foyer after eating a hundred or so pills. But something told me that was not the way she’d go out.
After the readings, Steady invited the kids up front. Sat among them. Explained why today was his favorite day of the year. Behind him, high on the wall over his head, the banner read: EGO SUM LUX MUNOIS. The kids listened, laughed. He had them eating out of his hands.
Following his mini-sermon, he returned to the altar, broke the body, and offered the blood with a smile, saying that it “speaks better things than that of Abel.” Up front, the rows emptied as people made their way to the front, where Steady dipped a wafer in the wine and placed it on their tongue.
I sat and stared at the worn marble at my feet. A tear dripped off my nose and landed on the floor beneath me. Then another. Then another. The drops gathered in the vein of the marble.
Another was cascading down when a thumb appeared from over my shoulder and gently brushed my cheek.
She wore a scarf, sunglasses, no fingernail polish, faded jeans, flip-flops, white oxford, collar up, untucked. She placed her hand on mine and knelt. She was trembling. Her fingers wove between mine like vines.
Katie lowered her sunglasses and stared at me. She kissed my cheek, exhaled through a tear-stained smile. She pressed her hand flat across my heart. Tried to speak, could not, tried again, and still could not.
She leaned against me. Melting into me. Temple to temple. Worn marble floor staring back at us. Her tears mixed with mine. Up front, Steady showered us in Mass. His voice echoing. She scanned the horde around us, mustering her courage.
She took a deep breath, then brought her legs up beneath her, coiling, as if readying herself to stand. She pressed her lips to my ear. Her breath warm on my face. “You were wrong about one thing.”
I looked at her.
“Words do bring people back to life.” She held my face in her hands and kissed my lips. “Especially, yours.”
Katie stood, walked around the back of the pew, and stopped in the center aisle. No script. No rehearsed lines. Katie Quinn was directing herself. Steady stood before her, forty or so rows forward. He saw her, squinted, then his shoulders rolled, he choked up, composed himself, and his smile spread. Maybe he let out a breath. Katie turned toward me, then gently untied the scarf around her face, pulled the sunglasses from her eyes, let them fall to the ground, and began the slow walk toward Steady.
A woman to her right screamed. Followed by another. And another. Whispers grew into loud conversation. People stood on the pews.
Katie approached Steady. Glassy eyes and a smile he couldn’t erase. She stood before him, penitent. He dipped the wafer and placed it on her tongue. She bowed. He placed his hand on her head and his lips moved. Pandemonium might best describe the congregation at this moment.
I stood, slipped around the back, and pressed against the back door. Before I walked out, I turned. Steady was hugging Katie, who was crying, but his eyes were trained on me, and his smile was gone.
PART THREE
What began the change was the very writing itself… Memory once waked will play the tyrant… The change which the writing wrought in me was only a beginning—only to prepare me for the gods’ surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.
—C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Katie returned through door number three. Once a one-way exit with “No Reentry” written above the frame, she tore the door off its hinges—proving the world wrong—once again. Her reemergence covered front pages all over the world. Headlines such as THE MIAMI MIRACLE, EASTER SURPRISE, THE RESURRECTION OF KATIE QUINN, and LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! One French writer called it “The Summer of St. Katie.”
Katie made the rounds, all the talk shows, news shows; Steady even appeared on a few. Questions abounded. Katie was appropriately vague. She took responsibility for all her own stuff. Had the scars to prove it, which she didn’t bother to cover with clothing or makeup. The cameras zoomed in. She sat stoically. Unmoving. Unashamed. When they asked her why she’d come back, she said, “I met someone.”
“Who?”
“Somebody who made me want to live again.”
“How did he do that?”
She paused. Thoughtful. “He gave me a reason.”
“And what reason was that?”
She stared into the camera. “Maybe someday he’ll share that with you, too.”
“What will you do now?”
A shrug. “Play somebody I’ve never played—whose script is unwritten.”
The search for that someone was exhaustive; news agencies spared no expense, but they came nowhere close to me. She had kept her word. I was safe. Unbecoming Katie did not mean unbecoming me.
Katie visited the memorial in the gulf and thanked all the folks who had kept the vigil. One guy who had been drunk for the better part of the last two or three decades took full credit and shined for the cameras. Katie seemed more at peace, like the demon that tormented her had been cut loose. I know—I was watching.
I anchored Gone Fiction, loaded Jody with as much gear as I might need for a few months, even a year, and disappeared, moving farther through the islands. I traveled up the west coast, through the inland waters of Louisiana, over to Texas, and back down to the Keys—never spending more than one night in any one spot. About once a week, I’d find a hotel and hot meal. I’d fish some, record high and low tides, and stare off the stern. Months passed.
I was buying gas one morning in Key Largo when I picked up a Wall Street Journal. Katie had taken a lead role in a Broadway show that sold out within hours of the announcement. USA Today said she’d signed contracts for a few movies. The highest-paid female in the business.
I put Jody in a slip, took a train to New York, rode the subway into the city, and stayed at a hotel on Fifth Avenue. Blue lights and neon. Seemed like everybody was drinking a martini but me. I bought a new suit, cut my hair, shaved, even wore black patent leather shoes. My feet didn’t know what to do with themselves. The man tore my ticket, gave me my stub, and I sat on the front row of the balcony, staring down at the world Katie commanded. She was mesmerizing. Larger than life. Had us eating out of her hand. All the way back in the cheap seats.
I sat there shaking my head. Steady was right. She was the one. The standard by which others were judged.
At the end of the show, the audience stood for the better part of ten minutes clapping, whistling. She brought out the cast, introduced each one, and they all bowed and waved. People threw flowers. Some guy in the audience yelled, “Katie, will you marry me?”
She laughed. She was happy. Less guarded. She’d gained a few pounds.
I tucked the present under my arm and found an usher. An older gentleman, gray hair. I handed him three hundred-dollar bills and the present. I had hired a guy in Miami who works in rare books and asked him to find an older edition of La Belle Au Bois Dormant. Something from another century with leather binding. He had. I figured she’d like that. I’d wrapped it in an Hermès scarf, then wrapped all this in brown paper and tied it with a bow. The usher looked up at me. I said, “Will you please take this to Miss Quinn? She keeps the gift. You keep the money.”
He shrugged. “Sir, I can only put it with the others.”
I nodded. “Fair enough,” and handed him both the book and the money.
He smiled. “But I can put it on top of the pile.”
I smiled. “I’d be grateful.”
I turned and walked out into the street.
The train ride home was lonely, as was my life, now measured in rising and falling tides. Weeks passed. I kept to myself more. I thought a lot about my life and what it had become. And to be honest, it wasn’t much of a life. Even I knew that.
The only person I saw was Steady. He’d drive out every Monday and Thursday, bring me some essentials, and we’d fish the last hour of the incoming and several hours of the outgoing tides.
The sun set. I read the water and followed the fish to a feeding frenzy on the northeast side of Pavilion Key—the same small island where Katie had spent the day quietly thinking before she asked me to walk her through door number three. Maybe, in a sense, I was trying to go back. Circle around.
I beached Jody, built a fire, and sautéed a few flounder fillets from the afternoon’s catch. With the sun dropping below the horizon, I heard the faint whip and pop of a helicopter. It came in from the gulf side, circled the island, and landed on the far end, a couple hundred yards from me.
The pilot cut the engine and Katie stepped out. She smiled, waved, and started walking. A breeze washed through the trees, the waxy leaves smacking each other. Even the trees clapped at her entrance.
We met in the middle. She stood half smiling, hands behind her back, head tilted. I shook my head. “Figures that you’d find me.”
She hugged me. “Thank you—for the book.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You could have come backstage, you know. All you had to do was tell them—”
“I know.”
She nodded, kissed my cheek, and brushed by me en route to the fire. The feel of her warmed me. She wiggled her toes in the sand. “What’s for dinner?” She looked good. No. Scratch that. She looked fantastic. The scar on her neck had faded but she didn’t try and hide what remained. The smell of her filled me. She knelt next to the fire, picked up my skillet, and began slowly eating my flounder. I sat, opposite her—painted in firelight and bathed in her.
She held up a forkful of fish. “You hungry?” Her voice was strong. Resonating.
I shook my head.
She devoured it and spoke without looking. “Did you like my show?”
“Yes.”
She forked the flounder around the skillet. “What’d you like about it?”
“I’ve never seen anything so wholly engrossing. You were phenomenal. I—”
She smiled. “Say something original.”
“For three hours, you made me believe that the world onstage was real and the one I was sitting in wasn’t.”
“Funny.” She pointed the fork at me. “I get the same feeling every time I read one of your five books—which I’ve read several times.” She raised both eyebrows. “Which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” A pregnant pause. “Book number six—when can I get my hands on it?” She tapped my temple. “I know you’ve got it around here somewhere.”
“Did my publisher send you down here?”
She laughed. It was easy. And she did not hold it back.
The helicopter blades had quit spinning. The pilot stood alongside smoking a cigarette. I said, “What are you doing here?”
“I had a night off. Came down to see Steady. He told me I might find you here.”
“Figures.”
“Was wondering if maybe I could convince you to come back with me.” She stopped chewing and looked at me. “The show will be wrapping up in a few weeks and I’ll have some time.”
“Before?”
“Filming in Europe—with a good slice of time in northern France. Besides, the script needs some work and they’re looking for writers.”
I stared east. “I can almost taste those croissants.” I studied her. “You look happy.”
“You just ignored my comment about the needing writers part.”
“Yep.” I laughed. “It was purposeful.”
“The world needs good writers, you know.”
“And you ignored my part about being happy.”
She nodded. “I am.” An honest shrug. “Life’s not perfect—but it is better. I am seldom happier than when I’m onstage.”
“You deserve it.” She waited. A measured pause. Silence in which she was comfortable and I was not. “Katie, I can’t go back with you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Touché.” I nodded. “Both.”
Eyes on the water, she set down the skillet. “How’s the fishing around here?”
A wide grin. “Fair.” She stood, I handed her a rod and threaded on a four-inch Gulp! shrimp—an artificial lure infused with the smell of shrimp—and she started throwing across current. She bumped the bait along the bottom. In an hour, she’d caught over thirty fish.
With the moon climbing, I fed the fire and we sat on the beach and pushed our toes through the sand. We talked about her life now—the show, the upcoming movies, the endorsements, the crazy pace that sought to squeeze the life out of her and the boundaries she’d set in place. She sounded good. Above and below the surface. She said, “Several publishers are asking me to write my story—the real thing.”
I raised an eyebrow.
She continued, “They’ll pay an unworldly amount for the whole thing—including the mystery guy who patched me back up.” She chuckled. “They’re dying to know about him.”
“And?” I asked.
“It’s not my story to write.”
It wasn’t until that moment that I knew how healthy she really was. How whole. Katie had made it. She’d unbecome herself.
Toward midnight, she stood. The pilot was reclining on the sand on the far end of the island. Every few seconds he’d draw on his cigarette, the tip glowing ruby red. She glanced at her watch. “Sure I can’t convince you?” She waved her hand across the island and Jody. “Nobody ’round here will miss you.”
“I’m sure.”
She pulled on my shirt with both hands, leaned in, and pressed her forehead to my chest. Finally, she looked up. “Still hurts, doesn’t it?”
I stared southwest. Across the gulf. Then down at her. “Every day.”
She smiled. Eyes wet. A nod. “Me, too.” She kissed my cheek, then the side of my lips, and began walking toward her helicopter. The pilot
had climbed inside and begun his preflight. The blades had started spinning slowly. A few feet away, she stopped. Turned. And chose her words. “Sometimes, when I stand on that stage, I am reminded.”
“Of?”
“That my gift isn’t mine. And all of this—” She waved her hands across herself and her helicopter. “It isn’t about me.”
“What’s it about?”
She smirked, almost spoke, held her words, and turned. Three minutes later, even the whip and pop had faded.
Weeks passed. All stories end.
It was Saturday morning. I was sitting with a cup of coffee on my lap, dodging mosquitoes, thinking about my life. Something I’d been given to lately. What had become of it. What kind of life it was. Resigned.
When I heard the small engine and saw the small skiff approaching, I was surprised to see Steady sitting in the back with his hand on the tiller. Even more so since it was neither Monday nor Thursday. Seeing him had me a bit worried.
He cut the engine and I tied off the bowline. “You all right? Something wrong? Katie okay?”
He stepped out, straightened his robes, and stared at me a long time, finally touching his chin with his index finger. “I think you are my greatest failure.”
Even through my sunglasses the sun’s reflection off his robes was brilliant. “What?”
He straightened. “I’m sure of it.”
“Is Katie okay?”
His finger shook when he pointed it at me. “A lifetime wearing this collar and I have had no effect on you.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I?”
He spat in the water. “I’ve seen bleach-white bones more alive than you.”
“Nice to see you, too. Kind of grumpy, aren’t we? Is this really what’s got you out here this time of day?”