When I hung up the phone, I immediately dialed information and asked for the number of Dexter Money, Cortez, Florida. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to work it, but the first thing I had to do was establish the man’s whereabouts. How I would contact him, I’d decide later.
I was relieved when the automated voice responded with the ten-digit number.
Caller ID has mitigated some of our modern problems, and it has created others. I wrote the number on a sheet of paper and walked to shore, then up the shell road to the Hess convenience store next to the old Sanibel Police Station. There’s a pay phone there. I went inside, exchanged dollar bills for coins, then dialed the number.
I listened to it ring several times before a girl’s voice, in a rush, said what sounded like, “Obie, you ain’t got no use to keep callin’ here, pesterin’ me, and if you doan stop I’m gonna set daddy loose on your ass, boy!” A harsh, Dixie-girl accent, very nasal, but with an adolescent, hormonal rasp.
Playing it as I went along, I answered, “’Scuse me, miss, but this ain’t Obie. I’m callin’ for Dexter Money.”
She made a deprecating noise of chagrin. “Aw, I’m sorry, mister. That damn Oberlin Carter, he been calling and calling, just won’t take no for an answer, so that’s who I… well, that don’t mean nothing to you. You want my daddy, right?”
“If your daddy is Dexter Money, yes, miss, I’d like to speak with him.”
“Does it have somethin’ to do with pit bulls?” For some reason I got the impression she was asking me two questions, not one. Respond with the correct password or signal phrase and I’d be recognized as part of the inner sanctum.
I gave it a try. “I’m a big fan of that particular breed, yes I am, miss.”
Wrong answer. In a flat voice, she said, “He’s down working on one of the boats right now, something about one of the flopper-stoppers busted. So I can tell him to give you a call when he gets back to the house.”
“That’s okay, dear. I got a few things to do, I’ll try later.”
“Maybe he’ll be here later, maybe he won’t. You want to talk to my daddy or don’t you?” When I didn’t answer immediately, some of the aggressiveness returned. “I don’t believe you told me what your name is, mister.”
“It’s not important. I can call back. What you think, maybe an hour or two?”
Families that live outside the law are naturally and pointedly suspicious. The girl said, “I think you best give me your name and number, and let Daddy decide who calls who.”
As if I hadn’t heard her clearly, I said, “Okay, about two hours then,” and hung up.
I’d gotten only a few steps away when the pay phone began to ring. Yep, Money had caller ID.
There was no reason to put the father or daughter on guard, so I answered the phone and listened to the girl say, “Mister, you best tell me who the hell you are and what it is you want.”
I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, miss! No need to get upset. My company gives me a list of potential clients, and I’m down here on Sanibel, gettin’ ready to swing north. Your daddy’s name’s on the printout sheet they give me. That’s all.”
“Oh, really? What kind’a business you in?”
I tried to add a solemn note to my voice when I said, “I sell full memorial packages, miss. From the funeral to a final resting place, and on easy monthly payments. None of us are too young to plan ahead and spare our loved ones the pain of dealing with financial details during their time of grief.”
The girl thought that was hilarious. “Mister, you walk onto our property and say that to Daddy, he put you in a hole. Your final resting place be right here!”
I was relieved when she hung up.
I checked my watch: 2:15 on a Friday afternoon. I looked overhead: The sky was a December blue with a few cumulus clouds suspended in isolated plateaus over the mangroves, motionless. No wind. I’d already listened to the VHF weather that morning, the maddening computer voice predicting winds to ten knots, seas calm. It’s difficult to imagine what kind of idiotic agency would employ an indistinguishable computerized voice to communicate information so valuable.
In my six-cylinder Chevy pickup, it would probably take me two and a half hours to drive the eighty miles to Cortez. In my new twenty-one-foot Maverick flats boat, though, I could chop a lot of miles and half an hour off the time, and the trip would be a hell of a lot more enjoyable.
Another consideration was that, if need be, I could more easily escape unnoticed in a boat, and there was less chance of being intercepted by law enforcement. No way of telling how Money would react to my questions or what I’d have to do to get information.
At the marina, I topped off the fifty-gallon fuel tank and the oil reservoir, then loaded on block ice, beer, and liter bottles of water. In the big hatch beneath the swivel seats, I’d already stowed extra clothes, a tent, minimal camping gear, and several MREs-the military acronym for meals ready to eat-in their rubberized, brown bags.
At just after 3 P.M., I turned my skiff toward Pine Island Sound, the massive 225-horsepower Yamaha rumbling like a Harley Davidson roadster, and touched the throttle forward. There was a rocket sled sense of acceleration as the skiff reared, lifted, and then flattened itself on plane, rising slightly in the water, gaining buoyancy and speed as I trimmed the engine upward. At nearly fifty miles an hour, the blue horizon rushed toward me, and I left the safety of Dinkin’s Bay rolling in my slow, expanding wake.
At Redfish Pass, I cut along South Seas Plantation, waved at Johnny, the resort’s enduring tennis teacher-he was wearing a Santa’s hat, of all things-then exited into the open Gulf and turned parallel the beach.
After that, it was beach all the way: the glitter of mica-bright sand, palm trees leaning in windward strands, high-rise condos in schematic rows, and seaside estates in the shadows of hardwoods, secure behind walls, on their own grounds.
It was Gulf Coast Florida: part tropical idyllic, part Shaker-Heights-by-the-Sea, part theme-park deco.
I love the region and love being on a fast boat alone. I cracked a cold beer, sat back in the swivel seat, and watched the barrier islands slide past-Gasparilla, Manasota Key, Venice, and Siesta Key-sunglasses on, ball cap pulled low, feet up on the console, steering that solid skiff with one bare toe.
Cortez is a village of four thousand or so souls, a settlement of piling houses and gray docks clustered on Sarasota Bay, south of St. Pete and just across the bridge from Bradenton Beach.
Just before 5 P.M., I raised the bridge. I banked east through Longboat Pass, its riverine tide fast beneath my hull, the water tannin-stained, a perfect place for snook or bull sharks on a feed. Ahead was Jewfish Key, a few tin roofs silver in the late sunlight beneath a canopy of palms. The bridge was to the north; Cortez a clutter of buildings and docks to the northeast.
Cortez is among the last of Florida’s old-time fish camps. Among the last, because increasingly stringent fishing laws and bans are gradually squeezing independent fisher families out of business, leaving international factory ships to strip the sea bottom and supply the world’s demand for seafood. An irony of government intervention: By disabling the people it can control, bureaucracy empowers the people and nations it cannot control.
Because the village is built out and isolated on a mangrove peninsula, Cortez has a time-warp feel. The firestorm of development that is strip-mall Florida might have blazed past without noticing the little fish markets and piney-woods houses. Back in the 1930s, the men and women of Cortez wove their own nets, grew peppers and pineapples and mangoes; they wholesaled mullet and stone crabs caught from boats that they had built up from wooden stringers and glassed themselves.
Things hadn’t changed much. But they would.
As I dropped down off plane and began to idle toward the docks, I noted mountains of wooden stone crabs traps stacked behind buildings, curtains of shrimp net strung to cure or dry. The air smelled of creosote, diesel, and exposed barnacles.
Ahead was a two-story warehouse made of white cement, a massive blue fuel-storage tank beside it. The sign over the docks read: A. P. Bell Fish Company.
It was a big commercial operation. Inside would be freezers, perhaps even a blast freezer, and container-sized holdings of every variety of salable sea life. From this small place of debarkation, the wealth of waters adjoining Sarasota Bay would be shipped around the world.
Next to the warehouse was Star Fish Company, a two-story building that was spray-creted white. The sign read: Retail Sales amp; Restaurant. Beer on Tap, so I tied up at the dock and went through the door into the air-conditioned market. Nice little place: snapper, grouper, sea trout, clear-eyed and fresh, lined in the display case on a bed of ice, plus oysters, clams, and shrimp, too. Someone had gone to the trouble to hand paint the tiles that decorated the little room. Behind the counter was a nice-looking woman, her brown hair tied back with a red handkerchief, wearing a white apron that read Don’t Kiss the Cook!
I laughed as I said, “If I promise not to kiss you, can I get something to eat?”
The woman had a nice smile and the sort of country-girl face that reminded me a little of Janet. “Skipper, you got here just in time ’cause I was getting ready to shut down the grill. There’s the menu. What’ll you have?”
I ordered a dozen oysters, raw, the grouper sandwich, and a beer with ice. I took the beer out to the picnic tables beneath the awning and sat there looking at the line of commercial boats moored to the docks. There were bay shrimpers, purse seiners, crab haulers, deep-water shrimpers, and maybe thirty grouper boats. A couple had just gotten in-sea gulls screamed overhead in a cloud while fish were offloaded. A couple of vessels were getting ready to head back to sea-men in stained T-shirts muled boxes of groceries, cigarettes, and beer aboard. Most of the boats, though, were stolid, empty-looking, as they sat motionless on the black water. A few had been decorated for Christmas: lights in the rigging, reindeer and plastic Santas waving from wheelhouse windows.
One by one, I checked the names of the oceangoing boats.
There was no Nan-Shan.
When the woman brought my food, I invited her to have a seat. She hesitated, then did; she sat down gratefully, as if her feet hurt.
Her name was Stella. An old-timey name that matched her old-timey face. I sat there and ate the good, cold oysters and listened to her tell me about Cortez, the kind of place it was. How it’d changed since they tore down the Albion Inn to build the Coast Guard station, and now there were banks and 7-Elevens sprouting up out east on 648. The village people were still holding it together, trying to save what they could and preserve their own dying history.
Stella said, “They want to put something on the Endangered Species list? They ought to put the independent commercial fishermen. Now there’s something darn near extinct.” She paused and looked toward the docks. “That your Maverick skiff, skipper? It sure is a pretty boat.”
I nodded.
“Hope you don’t take no offense. I know you sport anglers got a different view of things.”
I told her no offense taken, then used that as an opening to say, “Truth is, a couple of friends and I are thinking about investing in a commercial boat, maybe let someone run it as a shrimper. That should come close to making the payments, and we can use it occasionally for long trips to the Tortugas, or maybe even Belize. I hear the fishing’s pretty good over there.”
“Sounds like a pretty smart idea, skipper,” she answered affably.
“That’s one reason I’m in the area. Someone told my partner that a shrimper named the Nan-Shan might be on the market. Owned by a guy named Dexter Money. He’s the friend of a friend, I guess. You know where I can find him? Or maybe get a quick look at the boat?”
Her demeanor changed instantly, and so did the expression on her face. It was as if I had just strung together all the foulest words in the language. “The Nan-Shan, ” she said, deadpan. “You say you’re interested in buying the Nan-Shan?”
I said, “Maybe. I haven’t seen her. We’ll be looking at a lot of boats.”
She stood abruptly. “Well, sir, I’m not in the boat-selling business, so I guess I can’t help you.” Her tone was now chilly, formal, and I was no longer “skipper.” I was “sir.”
I held up an index finger, asking her to give me a minute. “Stella, would you please explain something to me. We were getting along great, having a nice conversation, then, suddenly, it’s like I’m poison. Did I say something to offend you?”
“I have no idea what you’re getting at, sir. Is your food okay? I’ve got to get back to work.”
I smiled at her. “Come on, now, somehow I just screwed up. Can’t you give me just a hint about what it was I said?”
She looked at me for a moment, pressed her lips together, thinking. Reluctantly, she said, “Okay, I’m probably being a dope again, but I’ll take a chance. You really do seem like the nice, solid sort, so I’ll risk it. You said you got friends who are friends of Dex Money? Well, mister, you’re keeping the nastiest kind of company, then. And you ain’t got no friends in Cortez if you’re fixing to do business with that kind’a scum. Forgive my French. Or maybe you’re one of the feds after him again, sneaking around trying to get information. Either way, something ain’t right.”
I said softly, “I’ve never met the man, Stella. I meant it when I said I didn’t know where to find him.”
She jerked her head north toward a wooded point on the other side of the bay. “You’ll find him on the far side of Perico Island. He’s got some land there, a couple houses and some docks.”
“I take it you don’t like him. You and the people of Cortez.”
“We don’t claim him, if that’s what you’re asking. Let’s see… it’s Friday night? So at his place tonight he’ll be having dogfights-he raises pit bulls, lets ’em fight ’till their bellies are ripped open. Or snortin’ up coke with his redneck pals, shooting guns. Or that daughter of his, Shanay, she’s only fifteen or sixteen, and the word that describes her, I won’t say. Shanay’s a party girl and she may have her friends over. Which is maybe understandable what with Dex putting her mama in the hospital so many times she finally just run off and disappeared. Do the people of Cortez like Dex Money? No, sir, we do not.”
Her expression became grim when I asked for more detailed information about where the man lived. She said, “Just past Boca del Rio Marina, there’s a mangrove river cuts in. He’s up the river. Got a little boat way, his own docks. You’ll see the warning signs at the mouth. Keep out. Do what you want, you’re a grown man, but if you’re smart, you’ll do what the signs tell you.”
I paid, and took care not to overtip. The woman had described me as solid-looking when, in fact, she was describing what she valued in herself.
I liked her, wished it hadn’t been necessary to lie to her. A woman like this would not react kindly to the slightest suggestion that I was paying her for information.
I got my first look at Dexter Money just after sunset. The soft December light did nothing to soften the man’s features, or his manner. He came swaggering parallel to the docks, shoulders thrown back, belly pushing a black T-shirt away from his skinny hips, sleeves rolled to show his biceps, two bat-eared pit bull dogs trotting along behind, tongues lolling.
His was a territorial display. There was no doubt who the man was, who owned that land.
The guy was gigantic. Closer to seven feet tall than six, he had to weigh more than three hundred pounds, with a shaved, butter-bean head and a florid, alcoholic’s face. As he approached me, his right eye was squinched, a cigarette between his teeth. He carried a green bottle of beer, and there was something else, too: He had a holster clipped to his hip, the butt of a chrome-plated revolver showing. One of the big ones. Maybe a. 357.
“Buddy ruff, you either can’t read or you one dumbass Yankee! You didn’t see them signs at the mouth of the river you just come up?” He had a coarse, curiously high-pitched voice, a fried-okra twang; an accent that was intentionally emphasized to communicate his contempt for me, an outsider.
I’d seen the signs. Saw one at the mouth of the deepwater mangrove cut-No Trespassing! This Means You!-and a second sign just before I rounded the bend at dead idle and saw the two CBS houses through the oaks elevated above the river, an airboat and a couple of ATVs, a junked GTO, another GTO gray with Bondo up on blocks, a bunch of new pickup trucks parked in the shade, dog cages in the back, men with ball caps milling around as country music played, and a hulking, rusted shrimper tied adjacent a machine shop, Nan-Shan in white letters on her stern.
He’d been by the house when he noticed me, a foot or more taller than the other men. He turned, then ambled down the hill to intercept me. Now here he was, Dexter Money, a big man and a bigger disappointment-a disappointment because he was not one of the two men in the satellite photos. I would have recognized him. Did he hire people to run his boats?
I fixed a smile on my face as I turned the bow of my skiff toward the riverbank, Money still walking toward me, the two of us separated by only ten or fifteen yards, as I called to him, “I saw the signs. I thought they meant don’t come ashore. What I’m doing is, I’m scouting for snook spots, won’t harm a thing.” When he didn’t respond immediately, I added, “I didn’t know a person could own a river.”
He stopped at the bank, and his tone was without inflection, his eyes were glassy, drug-bright, fierce: “That’s where you wrong, buddy ruff. This river’s mine -and you just had your last warning.”
I started to reply-“In that case, I’ll…”-but didn’t get a chance to finish because Money pivoted, cocked his arm, and rocketed his beer bottle at me. I ducked as it shattered against the console, glass shards everywhere. Heard him scream, “Get the fuck outta here! Now! ”
I have dealt with enough Dexter Moneys in my life to know there is no point in dealing with them. But I’m not immune to anger, either. I stared at him for a moment before I jammed the throttle forward as if to run my skiff ashore, then spun the wheel hard so that the stern skidded toward him. The hull of the boat dug deep as it turned, plowing a high, waking wall of water that washed over Money and sent his two pit bulls running.
I stopped the boat, engine still idling, and looked over my shoulder. His clothes were soaked, his cigarette smoldering. Christ-he had his revolver drawn but was pointing it at the ground-a man who could snap that quick. “Motherfucker!” he said, his voice trembling. “I have killed men better than you!”
Before I touched the throttle again, planing away, I said in a voice low enough to force him to listen: “Mister, I hope that’s the only thing we have in common.”
I came back that night just after 3 A.M., the graveyard hour, when even the worst of insomniacs are asleep.
To the west, magnified by the horizon’s curvature, the moon was huge, the size of a setting sun, a disc of platelet orange, a scimitar fragment missing in earth shadow. The river reacted to contact with the moon, becoming a lighted corridor in the darkness, its water red.
I shut the engine down far from the mouth of the river and poled my way in, no noise at all, just the creaking of mangroves and water dripping onto reflected stars. A dog barked somewhere. There were owls conversing in the shadows beyond.
That afternoon, I’d argued it back and forth in my head. Stay or not to stay. How important was it that I got aboard the Nan-Shan and had a look around?
Could be pretty important, I decided. Even the most poorly run vessel keeps some kind of log. And if the operators were too sloppy to maintain records, they were usually sufficiently sloppy to leave behind some form of identifying spore aboard.
Yeah, I needed to have a look around.
With my evening free, I considered finding an open stretch of beach and camping. December’s a good time to be outside in Florida, looking up at the stars. But I was feeling sociable and in need of a hot shower, so I ran across the bay to the backside of Anna Maria Island. The Rod amp; Reel Marina was booked full, so I found a slip among the liveaboards at Bradenton Beach Marina and walked two blocks to the Pelican Post Inn. A rental cottage was available: a little place on stilts with knotty pine paneling, kitchen, couch, swivel chair and TV, plus an independent bedroom with a mattress that seemed firm enough. I called Amelia on the chance she was free for the evening, and I got lucky.
“Doc?” she said. “You don’t know how great it is to hear your voice! Damn, am I glad you’re here.”
We met for a drink at the Bridge Tender, then walked to the Gulf side for seafood at the Beach House.
I was touched by the fact that Amelia appeared to have taken special care in the way she dressed for the evening. Black dress and stockings, red hair brushed to a sheen, and makeup, too, a touch of eyeliner, peach gloss lipstick. The first time I’d ever seen her wear makeup.
She seemed surprisingly glad to see me. A lot of warm eye contact, a lot of brief nudges and illustrative touching after we’d greeted each other with a long hug.
At first, I thought the most frustrating part of the evening would be that I couldn’t tell the lady about the satellite photos I’d seen, about why I was there. No one was more deserving than Amelia to know there was a slim chance that Grace, Janet, and Michael might still be alive.
Wrong. There was an entirely unexpected source of frustration. When the relationship between a man and a woman changes, or there is a potential for change, there begins a multilevel variety of communication that is unmistakable but not easily pinpointed. Because there is a risk of embarrassment, the form of communication requires that one meaning must necessarily be concealed by another, more innocent meaning. Some of the exchange is verbal, some physical.
At the Bridge Tender, we sat at a table overlooking the bay. The moon was high and bright, and the lady looked very attractive indeed. Once, she used her index finger to tap the back of my hand before she said to me, “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been dating a couple of different people off and on, and just this week, I made the decision, no more, that’s the end of it. Nice guys, but the attraction isn’t there, and I found myself feeling lonelier when we were together than when I was off by myself. Life’s too short to waste it pretending.”
A little later, she said, “Something happened to me those nights when I was stranded. After being on the tower, I don’t even have patience for my own lies. I’m a healthy, physical woman. I’ve finally admitted that to myself, too-not easy for a single Catholic girl.”
Was there a hidden message there?
At the restaurant, she told the waiter she wanted a half-dozen oysters, but the waiter didn’t hear.
“A dozen, miss?” he asked.
Amelia was looking at me when she replied, “No, a half dozen. I just want sex. I mean… six. ” Laughing at herself as the waiter walked away, her eyes averted now, blushing, too-maybe the first time I’d ever seen an attorney blush-as she dabbed at her face with a napkin and said to me, “My God, talk about Freudian. I’ve got to start getting more exercise, go for a long run. Something. ”
It set up a fun, unspoken sexual tension. When she’d finished her wine, we walked out onto the Bradenton Pier. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when she slipped her arm through mine and then, later, when I placed my hand on her waist as we walked. I could feel the pivot of her hips, the sharp blade of her pelvic bone. There were men fishing, lovers tangled together in the shadows.
Near the end of the pier, we stopped, me looking down into the water, fish moving through the circles of light, her with her head pillowed against my arm. It surprised me when she said, “I don’t want to be obvious here, but there’s something we’ve never talked about.”
I said, “Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s your social status. There used to be little symbols. Wedding bands, bracelets… tattoos.” She chuckled. “Who belongs to who. But now you have to ask. So I’m asking: Do you belong to anyone, Dr. Ford?”
“Nope. Never been married, never been engaged. I have a long list of female friends who are just that-friends. Nothing serious going on right now.”
“Does that include JoAnn and Rhonda from Dinkin’s Bay? I got the impression there was something special between you and… well, frankly, both of them.”
An insightful, perceptive lady. But I said, “No, we’re all three buddies, that’s all.”
“Ah, the independent type, the male rogue.”
I turned to look at her, smiling. “I used to tell myself that, and for a time I believed it. Like you, the thing you said about lying to yourself? I don’t have much patience for my own lies anymore, either. I’ve come to the conclusion that I live alone because I am, at the core, an essentially selfish person. It’s taken a while for me to admit it. My lab, the work I’m doing, it always comes first. All loving, devoted relationships require compromise in terms of how time is shared, and I’m too self-interested to compromise. No woman’s going to put up with that for long, and I don’t blame ’em.”
“My God, and you’re honest, too.”
I thought about the lie I told her, explaining why I happened to be in the Sarasota area-research at Bell Fish Company-and replied, “Just because I’ve lost patience for my own lies doesn’t mean I don’t tell them to others. Nope, I’m not particularly honest, either.”
That seemed to touch her on some deeper level. “I can relate to that, my new friend. One thing I’ve learned is, you can’t pray a lie, which maybe, in a way, makes sinners of us all. So, from one sinner to another, how about I walk you back to your cottage?”
In the darkness of banyan shadow near the motel, Amelia stopped, and I turned her toward me, looking down into her face. Then I kissed her softly, feeling her lips move against mine, feeling her rib cage pressing washboard-like against my stomach. As her hands moved up my sides, her mouth opened, tongue searching, my hands began to move, too.
Open-palmed, exploring with fingertips, I felt body heat radiating through the sheer material of her dress, felt the stricture of latissimus cordage beneath her arms, swimmer’s muscles. Then felt her mouth open very wide, heard her moan softly as my fingers found eraser-hard nipples, her breasts flat over bony sternum. Felt her pull away long enough to whisper, “I hope you don’t like the busty type. If you do, you’re in for a disappointment.”
I found the self-deprecation touching, almost sad. If we men were required to wear sized penis stockings outside our pants, our discussions of women’s breasts would be markedly less frequent and our preferences more vaguely defined.
I wrapped my arms around her hips and lifted her chest high as I whispered my reply: “The way your body feels, I like just fine. There’s less distance between my lips and your heart.” Then I kissed her neck, and each nipple, feeling her swell and arch beneath the black dress, breathing heavier now, making soft sounds.
“Doc… we have a perfectly nice cottage right there. If you keep doing what you’re doing, I’m going to rip those shorts off you. Indecent exposure-the cops’ll arrest us both. Me, an officer of the court.”
Which is when it finally dawned on me that I couldn’t allow this to go any further. I do so many stupid things so often, it should no longer surprise me. Sometime that night, way after midnight, I had to go a’calling on Dex Money’s shrimp boat, the Nan-Shan. If Amelia went upstairs to my bed, there was a good chance she’d stay over. How would I explain a lengthy disappearance?
I lowered her to the ground, held her away from me. “You are one spectacular woman,” I said.
Her voice had an unmistakable huskiness. “I can barely hear you, my heart’s pounding so loud.”
She took my hand and pulled me out of the shadows, into a circle of streetlight, toward the cottage. I hated the way her expression changed when I stopped, refusing to follow her, and I said, “Amelia, let’s… let’s not do this. Not tonight, anyway. Let’s give it some time, date for a while, see what happens. Why risk the friendship?”
She said very slowly, “Give it… some time? You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”
I badly wanted to tell her just that, but couldn’t. “I’m trying to look down the road, anticipate what’s best for the both of us.” Then added lamely, “We really don’t know each other that well, when you think about it,” and I hated myself for sounding so prudish and insipid.
“Uhh-h-h, excuse me.” She laughed, an attempt to mask embarrassment. “I’m looking at you, not believing what I’m hearing, but you do mean it. You really don’t want me to come up to your room. Sorry, Amelia, request for service denied, Amelia. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“No, no, absolutely, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that I don’t want to rush you into something you might regret.”
Her face had gone from flushed, swollen, and sleepy to a pained look of surprise. “What you really mean is, you don’t want to risk doing something you’ll regret. Well, Doc, just for the record… let me put it this way: I want to set you straight about something, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about me. Before I get in my car and drive away, which is what I’m about to do.
“When it comes to men, I’ve never rushed into anything in my life. I don’t go around hopping from bed to bed. This is as close as I’ve ever come in my life to throwing myself at someone, and, believe me, sir, it’s something I’ll never risk again. It’s been nearly a year for me, and it may be another year before I find a man I like enough and trust enough to join in bed. But that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, Dr. Ford, it won’t be you.”
The woman had a temper. I tried to call her back as she walked away. She never turned, never looked, never replied.