Reef Dance Read online

  “Yeah,” said her friend. “Must be looking for Ken.”

  I reached the front door and squatted to straighten an Indian throw rug that lay rumpled in the entryway. “Ahh . . . J.?” Phoebe called out behind me. A short, hard-muscled party boy had stepped into her path and was cornering her against the wall, his tattooed forearm locked like a steel bar behind her ear. He had a small gold nostril ring and a thick goatee that gave his face the look of a barnyard animal.

  “Get with it, Miss America!” he shouted over the grinding rhythm guitar. “It’s my birthday so you gotta kiss me!”

  I reached him just as he put his hands on her shoulders. “Take your paws off her,” I said, tearing his forearm away.

  He turned and confronted me, his face flaring red. “Who the fuck are you, pal? You got no right! I’m gonna kick your ass for that.” Phoebe stepped clear as he began to remove his wristwatch.

  I was exhausted, emotionally beaten-up from court and the Randall case, from Phoebe’s breakup and the high-wire display I’d pulled a few hours ago at Bill Davenport’s dinner. Definitely not in the mood for a melee in my own house. I stepped into him without hesitation, drove him into the wall and pinned his chest with my left forearm. He yelped breathlessly as I took his nostril ring between my thumb and forefinger and tugged down on it.

  “Hey birthday boy, you may not know this, but you’re in my house, in my living room. That means I’ve got all the rights, understand?”

  “Yeah, man, yeah.”

  “The lady you just accosted is my guest. In fact, she’s the only person who was invited here tonight.” I kept all my weight against him. “Two things. First, you apologize to her, then you split, got it?”

  Beads of sweat curled off his forehead and streaked his temples and jaw. “Got it. I’m cool, I swear. Lemme go.”

  I took a step back. He faced the wall, rubbing his face and nose, and turned to Phoebe. “Sorry.”

  Phoebe barely looked at him. “All right,” she said.

  He glared at me for an instant, and I saw a combustible mix of hatred and humiliation brewing behind his beady eyes, but he’d lost his nerve. “Later,” I said, holding the front door open.

  Phoebe brushed the hair off her forehead and tucked in the front flap of her shirt.

  “Punk,” I said. “The kind of guy that experiences a major testosterone surge with his second beer.”

  She eyed me as if wary of something new. “You looked like you were having a surge of your own. I didn’t know you were so readily prone to violence.”

  “Readily prone? Pheebs, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “No, no, I’m impressed,” she said. “A little shaky, but impressed.” I put an arm around her shoulder. She was quivering. “You’re full of surprises tonight,” Phoebe said.

  I didn’t know whether to draw encouragement or despair from her last remark, but I knew our intimate evening was beginning to resemble many former, typically doomed romantic campaigns. “I’ll have this under control in five minutes,” I said.

  A burst of raucous laughter rained down from the second floor. We stood at the foot of the staircase, which rose in fourteen straight steps along the house’s center-dividing wall to a small landing above the living room.

  “We’ve got to find Jackie,” I said.

  “Really,” Phoebe said. “I’m not so sure I want to meet him.”

  “He’ll help wind this thing down in a hurry,” I said. I led Phoebe to the upstairs hallway and my bedroom, which, to my relief, was empty save for two girls in their late teens. They sat on the edge of the bed, quietly leafing through a surf magazine together.

  “It’s getting late, ladies,” I said through the doorway. “Time to go.” They put down the magazine and left without protest.

  The heavy action was going on across the hall, in my mother’s old room. “One, two, three!” The cheer came from the outside balcony. I stopped at the bedroom door and drew a heavy breath.

  “Come on, aren’t we going in?” Phoebe said.

  It’s not as if I dress up in my mom’s clothes or have long chats with empty chairs when I’m in her room, which is seldom. I’d just never been able to pack up all her things and convert the space to another purpose. To me, this was still her old room. A long time ago, when at eighteen I was safe to move back home on my own, I tried to erase her presence by boxing up her belongings and storing them in the attic. But I hadn’t the resolve to finish the job. I kept picturing her returning, gazing at an empty room, a good life prematurely dismantled by a son who’d given up on her. Or perhaps it was she who’d given up on her son, a boy who, as he grew into a man, reminded her daily of her dead husband. A sad reminder, so sad that eventually the boy’s company became simply too much for her to bear.

  “Was this your mother’s bedroom?” Phoebe asked.

  “It’s a spare.”

  She took in the armoire, the antique dresser, the vanity along the far wall. “Oh. Looks like the master bedroom to me. J., how long ago did you say your mother—”

  “Look—he’s out on the balcony,” I said, anxious to end Phoebe’s line of questioning.

  Through the open sliding glass door, I could see a huddle of young surfers outside, some wearing nothing more than shorts, tees and open Pendeltons against the late-night chill. Together, they formed a tight circle, and their backs rose and dipped in unison. The smiling face of a bald black man in a white dress shirt and loose necktie rose above them, dropped, then rose again, bouncing like a ball in the center of the circle.

  Jackie Pace, the master of ceremonies, commanded the balcony at the place where the railings formed a V, his legs splayed like a rodeo rider straddling a bull-chute as he presided over the festivities. His face was that of a wild-child, a feckless explorer intoxicated with the freedom of the moment yet, at the same time, tempered by a fierce bent to move on to the next conquest. At forty-two, it was still a face of considerable youth and formidable intelligence.

  Jackie was dressed in his usual straight-legged black jeans and faded black alligator-skin cowboy boots. A white V-neck tee stretched flat across his chest as if it was concealing two steel plates, the rolled sleeves resting high on his sinewy arms. His wavy, medium-blond hair curled between the widow’s peak on his tanned forehead, hooked neatly behind his ears and grazed the square of his shoulders. As usual, his eyes were hidden behind a pair of black wraparound shades, but I knew them to be a startling, impudent blue. A dark, carefully trimmed mustache curled down to his chin like a claw. Combined with the small tuft of beard just beneath his lower lip, the mustache gave his face a mildly menacing slant.

  “What’s that on his head?” Phoebe said.

  With a final touch of the outrageous rather typical of the man, he’d fitted on his dome a black paper pirate’s hat fashioned from a folded Captain’s Galley kiddy menu.

  “This ship is mine!” he roared in a thick pirate’s brogue. “Make no mistake, lads: them that sails with me shall do my bidding!” A chorus of whoops went up beneath his feet.

  They were using a blanket to toss the man into the air by snapping it tight, then slackening it to catch him. To my horror, I realized the blanket was not one of the extras stacked in the hall closet but the quilt from my mother’s bed, a lacy, hand-stitched beauty her great aunt Miluca had toiled over for months before proudly presenting it to her as a wedding present. This was too much. I pushed out onto the balcony just as they gathered themselves to send the man airborne another time. “One!” they counted, dipping and rising together. “Two!”

  “Put down the quilt!” I shouted. “It belongs to Marielena Shepard!”

  Why I blurted my mother’s name to a bunch of kids who were probably still drooling toddlers when she was last seen, I will never know.

  “Marielena Shepard?” Jackie said.

  “Put it down,” I said.

  “Aye, mates,” Jackie said, “ya flipped enough cakes to feed the crew fer a week! Fine work, lads, but yer dooties be done fer now
.”

  Jackie’s suntanned buccaneers loosened their grip on the quilt and gently released the African man onto the decking just outside the sliding glass doors. He rolled himself over a few times until he was at our feet, face down in a drunken heap.

  “Show’s over, Long John,” I said over my shoulder to Jackie.

  “Aye, maties,” he said with mild resignation, “Master Shepard’s returned to reclaim the ship, and with a fine lass in tow I might add. We best be making port ’fore a tempest starts a brewing.” The crew disbanded and the onlookers slowly dispersed. Jackie leapt from the railings and landed before us both. “Aye, mate!” He got me in a headlock and hugged me. Phoebe stood by, the passive observer. “How about an intro, Master J.,” he said, smiling at Phoebe.

  Before I could oblige, a blast of whining machinery and hooting came from the kitchen below. “Come on!” I shouted to Jackie. We tore downstairs, leaving Phoebe behind.

  “Look at me, I’m locked in the barrel!” A sloe-eyed surf punk known as Stone Me Stevie crouched on the dishwashing machine’s open door as it sagged nearly to the floor beneath his weight. He was shirtless and stripped down to a pair of shorts and slip-on tennies. His wiry frame was compressed into a tube-riding surfing stance as the glass-holder carousel spun madly, shooting jets of water over his head and across the room.

  “Shut it off!” I yelled at a half-soaked cohort of Stevie’s who was stationed next to the machine, laughing uncontrollably. He didn’t budge, so I stepped closer and took a shot of water across the face and chest. “Now!”

  Stevie’s pal reached into the machine and jiggled something inside, and the motor shut off. At the same instant, the door’s hinges moaned and broke, sending Stevie to the floor in a splash of steaming water.

  The kitchen door burst open and Britt stormed in, blowing by us to collar Stevie and the other kid. “You little kooks are dead!” he shouted into their startled faces.

  I wiped the water from my eyes with my shirtsleeve. “Just take them home,” I said.

  Britt kept his hands clamped on both their necks. “Don’t worry, ladies,” he said, “I’ll be taking this out on you in the water. Any wave you paddle for is mine. You kooks will get no quarter at the pier.” He shoved them through the kitchen door and followed them into the night.

  The hinges jutted from the dishwasher like a pair of badly broken fingers. “That is just too out of hand, man,” Jackie offered after a prolonged silence.

  Phoebe walked into the kitchen and leaned against the far counter, looking like she’d had about enough of this little surprise get-together.

  “Who’s the major talent, brah?” Jackie whispered, taking in a full view of her curves. “You must’ve done some heavy spadework. She’s a fucking goddess.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I whispered back. “And to think, this was going to be our first night alone together. That is, until you and your three-ring circus blew into town.”

  “No worries,” he said, his eyes lighting with a new scheme. “Jackie will fix all.”

  “Jack, no, don’t!” I stuttered, but I wasn’t quick enough, and he straightened up to meet Phoebe’s eyes with a boldness that only fools or unreasonably handsome men like himself can muster when addressing a beautiful woman.

  Jackie bowed gently, extending his hand to Phoebe. “Permit me to introduce myself properly, my sweet,” he said. “John Hampton Pace, the Third—not that anyone’s counting,” he added, “but I’d like it if you’d call me Jackie.”

  Phoebe was keeping her distance and seemed flustered by the grandeur of Jackie’s self-introduction. “Nice to meet you,” she said, tilting on her heels.

  “My sincerest apologies to you for interrupting your special night with J.”

  “Special night?” Phoebe glared at me. “What did J. tell you?”

  “Why, only that the two of you had a quiet evening alone in store, and, forgive me for being so bold, but I can see that an exclusive rendezvous with someone as fetching as yourself would be special indeed. I do apologize for this most unfortunate intrusion on your plans.”

  “Intrusion? I think it’s called breaking and entering,” Phoebe said. She retreated a step and cast a full-length glance at Jackie, her hands on her hips and chin raised imperiously. Facing off toe-to-toe, the two of them were of equal height.

  “Well, now,” he said, “I won’t quibble about the legalities of the situation, but I should point out that this little gathering was totally spontaneous, and these good-natured young ruffians will clear out in no time flat if I give them the signal.”

  “Give it to them, Jack,” I said.

  Phoebe sighed. “I feel tired. I’m going home.”

  From the moment she and I arrived I had feared it would come to this. “Pheebs,” I pleaded.

  “Oh no, no, you can’t go!” Jackie insisted. “Please, my dear.” He eased her from the door. “You must stay a little longer, really, I mean it. You see, I’ve just returned from an extended sojourn abroad, and I’ve brought my old friend J. a gift tonight, a very precious gift, so fine it simply has to be shared among a select few friends. And who better for us to share it with than you.”

  Phoebe glanced at me as if for guidance, but I had no idea where this was going and merely shrugged.

  “All right,” he said, as if we’d just sweated a closely guarded secret out of him, “it’s an extremely rare and valuable bottle of sherry, given to me by an itinerant bureaucrat from the British government. We met during a rather nasty sandstorm not far from the Skeleton Coast. His Land Rover was in a ditch, night was falling and a rather sizable pack of hyenas was loitering in the dunes nearby, eyeing the poor chap’s sunburned limbs like so many choice cuts hanging in a meat-market window.” He raised an eyebrow at Phoebe. “Brazen little beasts. Noisy as hell, too. Anyway, you could say the old dog was forever grateful to me for the bit of winch wizardry I performed to pull him out and deliver him from harm’s way.”

  “It’s late,” Phoebe said, trying to look bored, but I knew a part of her was digging Jackie’s attention.

  “So it is,” said Jackie, “so it is. You know, I think it’s time I leveled with you.”

  “Jack, please,” I said, “enough.” I’d never known Jackie Pace to lay bare his true feelings, so naturally I was highly skeptical.

  “No, J., I must,” he said.

  “Let him say his piece, J.,” Phoebe insisted. “I want to hear it.”

  “My dear,” he said, “there’s a woman upstairs, her name is Fiona, and while she may not be a jaw-dropping betty like you, she does know the words to a song or two about a man like me and—how can I say this?—she knows about the music that can make a man like old Jack crazy. And that’s a good thing, no doubt about it.”

  “A good thing, right,” I said. “Maybe Phoebe and I should—”

  “Oh yeah, Fiona wants to make me sing tonight,” Jackie said as if I wasn’t there. “And myself? Well, suffice it to say, time passes mighty slowly in West Africa when it’s just you and a coyote crooning a lonely ditty at the moon. A man begins to see the world through a different prism, a window of intense longing, of skewed desire. Your mind begins to warp. Strange thoughts take hold, strange . . . possibilities, if you will. In time, even the wild animals start to look good. You find yourself—”

  “Hell of a story!” I said, stepping between them before he could spool out any more wisdom on the topic of unbridled lust. But Jackie wasn’t finished.

  “Out of my way, J.,” Phoebe said, her eyes on Jackie.

  “Just picture it!” he exhorted her. “You and J. and Fiona and me, reclining comfortably and toasting away, our glasses brimming with those brilliant libations. Van Morrison commanding the stereo, revealing the romance of the soul to us. Forgive me, but”—he seared me with a look of unbridled enthusiasm—“I can feel it in the air, and you can too, J., I know it! My sweet, this is going to be a slamfest to remember!”

  Phoebe’s jaw went slack. “Good night, J.,” she said at la
st, hiking her overnight bag on her shoulder. As she reached the door, she turned as if to say something to Jackie, whom I guessed was still savoring the thought of an impromptu orgy behind those dark shades and a lunatic grin. But apparently she thought better of it and instead stalked through the kitchen door.

  I ran out behind her, catching her at the back gate. “Pheebs, wait!”

  “I’m going home now, J.,” she said. “Let me go.”

  “Babe, wait. Jackie’s a bit of a wild man, but he’s—”

  “It’s all right. I don’t care about him.”

  “Then stay,” I pleaded. “He’s leaving, right now. They all are.”

  She dropped her bag, car keys still in hand. “It’s not just the party. It’s everything.” Checking her leather boots instead of my eyes. “It’s you.”

  This sounded familiar—and very bad. “Tell me,” I said. “Please.”

  She dug her hands into her jeans pockets and traced an invisible line on the brick walkway with her toe. “I don’t really know much about you, do I?”

  “What do you need to know?” I said. “I’ll tell you now. You name it.”

  She shook her head and flipped a wave of amber hair off her shoulder. “It doesn’t work that way, J. You know that.”

  I felt my defenses kicking in. “This is about your father, isn’t it? He told you I popped off on him. I can explain that.”

  “No,” she said. “He doesn’t like any of the men I date. I told you that months ago. Daddy is just . . . Daddy.”

  “I was going to tell you about the D.A. job sooner, when it was a done deal. When I finish this baby-selling case, I’m through with dependency.”

  “I care about you, I do. You’re a nice guy, J.”

  Her last words signified that the situation was hopeless. “Wait,” I said, waving her off. “If you don’t mind, I don’t think I deserve the ‘nice guy’ speech.”

  My hopes of a miraculous save with this girl were deflating. I felt drained. “Sorry about Jackie and all this,” I said.

  “Don’t apologize for him. At least he’s not shy about saying what’s on his mind.”