Sex in a Sidecar (9 page)

I stomped to the elevator as the doors opened.

Clay, impeccably groomed as if he'd just come from a board meeting, stood before me. His face lit up and his arms came out to embrace me. “Clay,” I screamed as I launched myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. Still holding me in his arms he stepped back and punched the down button. My tears dampened his collar.

The Calusa Indians thought the panthers were magical. Clay was my panther, my magic. Like the Florida Panther, he was elusive, impossible to trap and mysterious. And like the panther, silent and deadly, he could rip the heart out of you and melt away without a sound. Lean and as sleek as any prowling cat, his black eyes mesmerized me, his skin of polished bronze made me ache to touch him. He was strictly top of the social register but his permanent tan and hawk nose said somewhere in his past was a Calusa ancestor who didn't come over on any
Mayflower
.

A half-hour after I clamped onto him we were in a no-tell motel. Actually we were on the floor making a hurricane of our own. When we finally made it from the floor to the bed, I started telling him about being trapped on the island with a murderer. All of the panic returned and I trembled in his arms. “You're safe,” he whispered into my neck.

Ashamed of my fear but still in its grip, I whispered, “I was so scared. And what if the guy that killed Gina comes after me?”

“You don't know for sure that it wasn't an accident.”

“It was no accident and what if he comes for me?”

“Why would he do that?”

I shrugged against him. “Maybe he thinks I know who he is.”

“If there was a murderer, he probably didn't even know you were there. It's over,” Clay said. His tone of voice said the conversation was over as well. His hands were already exploring the length of me.

“It's not over for me. I'm still scared. What if the murderer is someone I know, someone who comes into the Sunset?”

“More likely it was someone stranded out there and trying to steal her car.”

I looked up at him. “You mean a coincidence — someone needed a car to get off the island and killed her to get hers?”

His frown said he got how stupid his idea was but I had to turn the knife a little more; I so seldom win an argument I like to let everyone know I'm winning. “And if he just wanted a lift, why kill her? Even Bernice would have given him a ride off the island, would've given her the chance to make someone's life miserable for a time.”

“Leave it. You're only getting yourself worked up. Forget about it.”

“How can I do that? You didn't see her lying there so don't tell me to forget about it.”

His hands stopped making their interesting circles. “I was the last person to see Gina alive so I'm involved whether I want to be or not.”

He rolled onto his back and said, “If you'd come to Cedar Key, none of this would have happened.” He threw back the covers and got out of bed.

Even the sight of his tight little butt couldn't distract me from my anger. “How can you blame me for getting stuck out there? Okay, I forgot my keys, but other than that, none of this is my fault.”

He jerked the zipper down on his carry-all and took out a toilet kit. “You hung in there at the Sunset 'til the very last second.” He stalked to the bathroom. “What in hell were you thinking about?” The door shut.

I was thinking he would come like a white knight and rescue me but what I hollered at the door as I jumped out of bed was, “Myrna was supposed to hit the panhandle. Remember? Cedar Key was a stupid place to be and you stayed there until the last minute.”

He opened the door and said, “I had to make sure a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of material was safe. You were just pouring drinks.” The door closed.

“Myrna wasn't supposed to come ashore anywhere near Jac. Besides, why didn't you meet me in Orlando like I wanted?”

There was no answer. I went over and pounded on the door, demanding an answer not entrance.

He flung the door open. “You never got to Orlando,” he said. “You let yourself be trapped out on South Beach with a crazy woman.”

“She wasn't crazy.” He started to close the door but I stopped it. “And how was I supposed to prevent that? I didn't have any choice. No keys remember? I had to go with Gina.”

“You should have got rid of the pickup months ago. You don't even like it. You only keep it because it was Jimmy's.”

That was too stupid even for a reply but then what part of this argument wasn't stupid? And when had we stopped just being glad to be alive? The door closed.

“Fine, whatever,” I yelled at the door. “You know best. You always do.” I heard the sound of a razor start up. “I'm going out to get a toothbrush and some clean clothes.”

Then I remembered I had no money and no car. the door opened. He stood there naked, the electric razor in his left hand. “My wallet and keys are in my pants pocket.”

I started to smile. His answering smile put the shopping trip on hold.

Things got rocky as soon as the fun stopped. We went from mad passionate love to mad passionate hate with nothing inbetween and I don't know why or how. We fought about things that happened years before we even knew each other and we fought about things that happened during the hurricane. Clay was normally unflappable, his calmness and dependability in any crisis earned him the reputation of a stand-up guy who could be counted on. I wasn't seeing it. In fact, I never saw it.

There was something about the chemistry between us that turned up the heat a notch in all situations, love, anger or outright silliness.

We were back in bed, the only place we fit together fine, when I asked, “Why do you always seem mad at me?”

He removed his arm from under my head and slid away from me.

I propped myself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Seems to me you hate needing me, loving me.”

He looked startled. He started to speak and then closed his mouth, tossed back the covers and left the bed. I watched him dress, quickly and efficiently, the way he did everything.

“You said right at the beginning you don't like losing control of yourself. Is that what this is about?”

He glanced at me but didn't answer, sitting on the end of the bed to put on his shoes.

“Loving me means everything isn't in your control anymore, doesn't it?”

He picked up the remote. Conversation over.

I called Marley. “How could you let that happen?” she said when I told her my story. “How do you get yourself into such messes?”

“This one wasn't my fault.”

“They never are.” The conversation ended abruptly. We watched the news channel in silence, staring at pictures of destruction while I stole glances at Clay. His profile, lean and hard and uncompromising, never flinched. His stillness makes you aware of Clay, like a rock in a raging river, unmovable and hard to his core.

I wanted to stroke his cheek and kiss along his jaw, wanted to wrap my arms, my legs and my whole body around him. I ached to soften his coldness towards me, to touch him, to taste him, to cry out in the delight of him, but he'd shut me out.

The man's heart was made of Kevlar and nothing could pierce it. Even when I sighed and moved restlessly, he stared straight ahead and ignored me. His toughness must be genetic. Clay's family was among the early settlers in Florida, wrestling hundreds of acres of scrubland from snakes, gators and other hard men out in the Piney woods. Actually, they were the true crackers, Florida cowboys who used whips to move the long-horned cattle through the thick underbrush. Clay's family survived everything that nature could throw at them but it was progress and development that finally brought them to their knees and took away their land. The cancer of expansion spread inland and ate into their holdings, taxing and zoning them out of business.

And so they'd sold out, but Clay's family didn't get real wealthy. Oh no, they just moved farther inland and started again with a smaller spread while the developers and their agents got rich. Seeing the developers make millions off a golf course or a gated community plus strip malls and plazas where his family's long-horned cattle had grazed inspired Clay never to come out on the short end of a deal again and after college he'd set out to win at this new game. The very grit that made his family hang on beyond endurance made him rich.

I met Clay at the Sunset soon after I'd started there, at the height of the Jimmy wars, when I was at the depths of my battered soul. He started coming in every night 'bout four for a couple of hours. I liked his black eyes watching me. He never made a pass or said a thing to tell me he was interested, he just watched.

Clay, Peter and Brian, the three guys who came in every night and shared jokes, troubles and just plain living with me, became part of a running commentary on life that lasted hours, and then days, before it grew into years. We knew pretty much everything a bout one another, or thought we did, and I'd come to count on these guys for a reality check. But mostly it was Clay I waited for every day. When Jimmy took away my sense of self, Clay gave it back to me, and slowly my feelings for him changed.

I told myself he wasn't my type. Judging by Jimmy Travis, my type was drunked up, drugged out and totally beyond control, while Clay was all about control and taking care of business. Where's the fun in that? Definitely not my kind but Mr. Cool turned out to be Mr. Hot as Hell and I couldn't get enough of him. Who knew? When ice melts it can be a whole lot of fun.

But I often wondered if we really had anything in common besides sex. While the honest part of my brain always yelled, “Who the shit cares?” the sensible part said there had to be more if we we re going to have a future together. Oh, where's the fun in sensible? And since when did I start doing sensible?

“Let's go north for a little holiday,” Clay suggested.

I lay in his arms, stroking his lovely smooth skin in the rose glow of the neon light through the thin curtains. “I haven't any clothes.” I settled on his shoulder.

“We can stop in Tampa and pick some up.” His left hand came up to stroke my hair back from my forehead. “Buy some suitcases and just fill them up with whatever pleases you. Shop 'til we drop. It'll be fun. We've never gone on holiday together.” He pressed his lips into my hair.

I pulled away from him. “How can you think of a holiday before we know everything is okay in Jac?”

His jaw hardened. “Fine, we don't need to go on holiday. Let's just go out to the ranch.”

It sounded like just one more attempt to get me out of Jacaranda. He'd been suggesting for months that we move up to Sarasota or out to Independence and his five-hundred-acre ranch. I wasn't sure if he just wanted to get me away from my past and my friends or hide me away where his friends couldn't see me because he was ashamed of me. He wanted us to be anywhere but Jacaranda but it just wasn't for me. There was nothing that could induce me to leave my island.

Come morning, Clay and I started back in fighting big-time. “Let's just go home,” I said at one point, thinking I was changing the subject and smoothing things out. “I want to talk to Styles about Gina and I want to go see the Sunset, make sure it's okay.”

“And what about our place, don't you care if it's been wiped out?”

This took our fight onto a whole new battlefield. It seems Clay thought, “The Sunset is more important to you than being with me.” Not true, but I could understand his point of view. I love that damn bar. I admit it. I'd spent a lot of my life there. It was where my friends hung out. They'd all be floating back to catch up on each other and I wanted to be there when they did.

“I want to take the Mercedes back,” I said, thinking I was changing the subject and making things better.

“Leave it,” Clay ordered.

Now I've never taken real well to being ordered about but I tried. “It'll help the Travises. No need for them to get someone to drive it back when I'm right here.” Don't ask me why I cared. It was kinda like for once in my life I'd like to do things right so they had nothing to complain about even though I knew it was an impossible goal, rather like leaving for the moon in a biplane. You see, there was no right thing. Whatever I did it would automatically be the wrong thing.

“Why do you care?” Clay's voice was full of suspicion.

“Fine,” I said, trying to keep the peace, “leave it sit there. I don't care.”

It was nearly noon, after hours of silence, before the hydro to the island was functioning again and the police were allowing people over the bridge. We headed west. The day was still gray, the rain still fell in a steady drizzle and the wind was still tossing rubbish around but with less determination. None of that mattered. I wanted to be in Jac.

At one spot we had to back up and make a detour around downed hydro lines and once we had to take to the shoulder to avoid the roof of a house squatting on the road. Houses were missing roofs everywhere, the insides left standing open to the elements. Just east of I-75, about seven miles inland, a fourteen-foot aluminum boat lay on its side in the ditch, blown in from the gulf or picked up out of someone's backyard. In an open field a lone steer stood almost to its knees in water. “Why is there only one?” I asked Clay. “You always see cattle together. Do you suppose the others blew away? How weird would that be, just seeing a cow flying by! Or imagine getting hit by a flying cow. That would be one helluva accident report.”

When we got to the north lift bridge, we were stopped by a state trooper in a yellow slicker. He bent over, both hands on the open window and smiled in at us. “Need to see some ID, folks. Only residents are allowed on the island. Everyone else is being turned away.” He took the license Clay offered and looked briefly at it. “Still a danger of looting until everyone is back in their homes.”

Clay asked, “Did many people try to ride it out?”

Rain dripped off the yellow slicker and fell on the license. “A few may have.” He flicked off the moisture and handed Clay his license. “One lady came back after we closed the bridge because she was worried about her boat in a storm surge. Told me it was worth a hundred and fifty thousand and she wanted to be there to let out the lines when the water rose. I asked her how much her life was worth but it seems it wasn't worth as much as the damn boat. I couldn't stop her. Just took down her name so we could notify next of kin if Myrna hit here.”

Clay drove slowly up over the hump-backed bridge. I checked out the light standard for the osprey nest. Not a twig was left.

In Jacaranda the air droned with the sound of multiple chainsaws eating their way through wood. We drove up and down streets, those that weren't impassable with downed trees, saying, “Look,” or more often just, “Oh my God.” One pine tree was whimsically decorated with strips of cream aluminum siding ripped from a house and strung out along the branches like ribbons on a Christmas tree. Pieces of building materials and other debris lay scattered everywhere. On Main the tops of the banyans had been sheered off.

“I want to drive by the Sunset to see everything is okay,” I told Clay.

“Let's go to the Tradewinds.” The Tradewinds is the building where Clay lives. His home is the penthouse there. Oh, excuse me, our home. Clay always corrects me on that, but since I didn't pay for anything and I only brought my clothes with me when I moved in nine months before, it didn't really feel like home, more like I was a visitor waiting for my welcome to wear out.

The elegant apartment, all marble-floored and suede-covered walls, was unscathed. Even a hurricane didn't dare mess with Clay Adams.

I went right to the phone. “Who are you calling?” Clay asked.

“Dr. Travis.”

“Why bother?”

“Dr. Travis might not want Bernice back but he sure as hell will want the Mercedes and I've got the keys in my pocket.”

“He won't come back until the debris is cleared away.” Clay flicked on CNN before adding, “No sane person would.”

“I want to be in Jac. This is my home, Clay.” I left a message for Dr. Travis to call me.

“You don't need to talk to him. I'll just drop the keys off at his office,” Clay said, staring straight ahead at the silent images of the devastation.

“Stop trying to solve all my problems. You're not my father.” The great part about knowing someone so well is you know right where to shove the knife, don't you? An extra ten years over me haunted Clay and he worked out at least three times a week and was a fanatic about his diet, trying to keep the years from showing.

The hydro went out. “Let's go out,” Clay said. “We could walk down if you don't think I'll have a heart attack before we get to the lobby.”

“It's coming back up that would give both of us the heart attack and you know I'm more likely to have one than you. Let's go out on the lanai and wait it out.”

We smoothed things over, but there was a great big lump of something between us that we were staying well away from. Finally, I tried to explain my feelings about Gina. “What if it's like she said and she's just one more woman who dies and no one cares?”

“The police will take care of it.”

“That was the point Gina was trying to make. People are victims of crime all the time and no one is brought to justice. There's just way too many criminals and not enough cops.” “Forget about Gina. It's over,” he said again.

But it wasn't. Far from it. That's what Clay didn't understand. For me it was just beginning.