Stiltsville: A Novel (3 page)

I closed my eyes. It was his concern, the throaty pitch of it, that moved me to answer, even before I could manage to get myself off the ledge. “Here,” I said. Then louder, “I’m here.”

He appeared beside the water tower, leaning out beyond the back of the house. His mouth was tight. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Looking around.”

He glanced south, toward Soldier’s Key, then down at the water. “We wouldn’t want to lose track of you out here.”

“I wouldn’t want that either.”

The irritation slipped from his face. He looked around again, then stepped onto the ledge beside me. I edged over to give him room, and we stood with our backs to the wall, our arms at our sides. “Are you contemplating fate and the universe?” he said, not unkindly.

I smiled. I didn’t want to seem overly serious. “I like it here.”

“You’re welcome anytime.”

I wanted to say something about having felt like a different person all day, but I didn’t know what I meant or how he would respond, so I stayed quiet. He said, “My father was boating back from Bimini once, and he ran out of gas right out there.” He pointed. “He radioed the Coast Guard and told them he was ten miles northwest of the lighthouse, then his radio gave out. They didn’t find him for hours. By the time they did, it was night. He asked what had taken them so long and they said they’d been searching for him on the north side of Miami Beach. Then they’d realized he’d given his position wrong—the lighthouse was ten miles northwest of him, not the other way around. I look out there and I think, how could he make that mistake?”

I followed his stare into the thick blue distance, bare of markers or guides. It would take an enormous act of faith, I thought, to trust the jittery needle of a compass. “I can see how a person might get confused,” I said.

I don’t think Dennis meant to kiss me. He was leaning in to hear me, and when I turned our noses and cheeks met and—this amazes me still—neither of us backed away. Our mouths were uncertain. We kissed without embracing. We kept our eyes open. We could feel even then that we were at the beginning of something, I think—something that might go on and on before it ended. After, we faced each other.

“We could go skiing, if you want, before dinner,” he said. He reached toward my face. His fingers found my earlobe.

“I haven’t skied since college, and then it was in a lake.”

“It’ll come back to you.”

I could feel the warmth from his body and I could smell his clean, sun-soaked smell.

“If we’re going to go we should go,” he said, “or we’ll miss the daylight.”

I nodded. He stepped from the ledge onto the bottom floor of the house, then reached for my hand and pulled me over the gap. I walked ahead of him up the stairs, and as we went he kept one hand on the small of my back, the gentlest suggestion of a rudder.

T
he sun was easing toward the horizon by the time we headed off. We took Dennis’s father’s boat because it was more powerful and because, Dennis said, the hull of Marse’s boat was painted blue, which was bad luck. This was mariner lore: the sea might confuse the boat with itself and drag it down. I stood by while Marse affixed a towline and Dennis started the engine and Kyle handled the lines. The channel was dark and choppy and wide. Marse handed me a lumpy orange life vest and I tightened it at the chest and waist, but Dennis loosened it again. His knuckles brushed my stomach through the swimsuit. “It won’t come off,” he said, “but you don’t want it too tight.”

Our kiss rose in my gut. “I’m ready,” I said, and because the lie was so obvious, we both laughed. He went to the console and put the boat in gear. I stumbled when the boat moved. When I regained my balance, I noticed Marse watching me.

We agreed that Kyle would ski first, then I would ski, then Marse. Kyle rose on skis as if from land, as if the baton were a sturdy hand. I recollected all I knew about waterskiing: Treat the water like a chair. Bend your knees. Let the towline pull you up. Lean back. Relax. Kyle skipped over the waves, and the boat rounded the mouth of the channel and returned, passing the stilt house, before he fell. I don’t think he fell, actually—he threw his skis to the side and skidded, sending up white spray, then let go of the line. When we reached him, Marse asked if he wanted to go again, but he said he was wiped out. He climbed into the boat and took a beer from the cooler.

Dennis gathered the skis from the water—they were wooden, with a yellow stripe painted down the center of each. “Kyle will be your lookout,” he said to me. “He won’t take his eyes off you.”

“I’m an ace lookout,” said Kyle. He’d wrapped himself in a towel.

“Just don’t leave me there,” I said to Dennis. “When I fall, come right back.”

“I will,” Dennis said.

I slid into the water, avoiding the stilled propellers. I struggled with each ski, then stretched my legs in front of me, drifting from the boat. The water cupped and jostled me; I tipped and righted. Dennis gave me a thumbs-up and I returned it awkwardly, and then the line spun out and I started to rise. Halfway up, I shifted and wobbled, and then I was hunched with my elbows over my knees. I straightened as much as I could without losing my balance. Kyle stood at the stern, watching me. Beneath my skis, the water whitened with friction and speed. The boat’s wake, like the crease of an open book, stretched between the engine and my skis. We sped by one stilt house, then another. Kyle clapped for me and pumped a fist in the air. I tried to turn my grimace into a smile. Marse moved to stand beside Dennis, leaning toward him to be heard over the engine.

The sky was working up to dusk, the light so clear that I could make out the shoreline along Key Biscayne. Dennis’s back was a landscape of swells and shadows. Marse had a hand on his arm. She was talking and he was nodding. I took one hand from the baton and sliced it through the air in front of my neck: I quit. Kyle turned to tell Dennis, and I let go. I skidded and started to sink. Dennis waited a few seconds before turning—maybe the channel was too narrow, or there was another boat—and as I waited, I closed my eyes and tasted the salt on my lips. There were dune-shaped ripples on every wave: ripples on waves on tidal swells. I felt like a very small piece of a very large puzzle.

The sound of the engine grew louder, then shifted as Dennis put the boat into neutral. I opened my eyes. Dennis leaned over the gunwale. He pulled my skis out of the water and reached for me. Marse was suited up by the time I was back in the boat. She dove in, and Dennis fed a ski into the water. I went to hand her the other one, but he stopped me. “She’s going to slalom,” he said.

“Wow,” I said.

“You were good.”

“I almost fell getting up.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Let’s go,” said Marse. “Start out faster this time.”

“You’re her lookout,” said Dennis to me.

She skied beautifully. The way her body responded to each wave, her rubbery maneuvers, reminded me of a child on a trampoline. Her body held no resistance, no fear. We neared a stilt house and I alerted Dennis, but he just nodded and stayed the course. He was so intent that his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. I watched him for a moment, and when I looked back at Marse, she wasn’t there. “Stop!” I said.

Dennis slowed the boat before looking around, which gave me a moment to search the water for Marse’s orange life vest. I found her a ways back, in the dead center of the channel. Sit up, I thought. Show yourself. Dennis started his turn. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I looked away.”

“You can’t look away,” he said.

I pointed at Marse until he spotted her. Beyond her, a speedboat with a high red hull cruised toward us. “Hurry up,” I said.

“I can’t,” said Dennis. “We’ll fly right by her.”

When we were close, Marse waved, rising from the water, and as she did, the red boat adjusted its course by a degree or two, and there were twenty yards of water between Marse and the red boat when it passed her. Dennis and the captain exchanged gestures of greeting. We were supposed to be flying a flag—I know this now—to convey to other boaters that we had a skier in the water. It was the kind of rule that most boaters ignored, which made me frantic: it’s a terrific idea, that flag.

“Were you planning to leave me here?” said Marse. She spat water.

Dennis cut the engine. The boat’s shadow swallowed Marse, and I noticed how dark it had become. Orange sunset soaked into the horizon. “Sorry about that,” said Dennis.

Marse held up her ski and I pulled it into the boat. Dennis reached to give her a hand, but she was unfastening her life vest. “You go on,” she said. “I’m going to swim.”

The stilt house was about three hundred yards away. I had no idea how far a person could swim. “No way,” said Dennis.

Marse handed the life vest up to me and, not thinking, I took it, but Dennis snatched it from me and threw it down to her. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “Get in the boat.”

“Don’t be such a bore,” said Marse. She kicked away from us, leaving the life vest behind. Kyle pulled it out of the water. Dennis started the engine and maneuvered until we were puttering along beside her. Her stroke was fast and smooth. She raised her face from the water. “Go away,” she shouted.

Kyle stood beside me at the gunwale. “Marse,” he called, “I’m hungry. Get in the boat.”

To Kyle, I said, “This is my fault.”

“Not really,” he said, but I saw in his expression that he didn’t wholly trust me. Marse’s stroke had started to falter. The tide was probably coming in, canceling her efforts. She could have swum all night just to keep the stilt house in sight.

“Dennis,” I said. I thought he should have been doing something.

“She’ll get tired,” he said.

“She won’t,” said Kyle. When Marse tilted her head to breathe between strokes, her face was very red. Quietly, Kyle said to me, “Tell her you’re sorry.”

I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Marse,” I called, “I’m a lousy lookout—”

“Not that,” Kyle said.

I wondered if Kyle was particularly astute, or if I had been—if Dennis and I had been—particularly transparent. And I wondered how I’d gotten myself into this situation. Less than forty-eight hours from now, I thought, I’ll be back in Atlanta, thinking that I kissed a boy I barely knew and hurt a girl who’d been nice to me. “Marse,” I called again, “I’m going home tomorrow.” She slowed, then treaded water. “I’m going home tomorrow,” I said again, “but if you drown, I’ll have to stick around.”

The tactic was plain; it embarrassed us both. “Big deal,” she said.

“Get in the boat,” said Dennis.

Marse looked away, toward Miami, then ahead at the stilt house, blue with evening. When finally she swam to the boat, her stroke had returned and her breathing was even. She sat at the prow without drying herself off, and Kyle sat beside her. They passed a beer back and forth and I watched them from the stern, holding my towel with both arms around my chest, clutching the solid, loyal edges of myself.

D
ennis’s father, Grady, had built his family’s stilt house in 1945, when Dennis was just two years old. The idea came from a local fisherman named “Crawfish” Eddie Walker, who constructed a shack in shallow water in Biscayne Bay and became legendary for the fresh chowder he sold to passing boaters. Grady had friends who followed Eddie’s lead. By the time Grady secured the funds and manpower to build his own shack, several more had sprouted, including a men’s club called the Quarterdeck. By 1960, Stiltsville comprised twenty-seven shacks, but then the Quarterdeck burned in a fire and hurricane Donna leveled all but six of the other buildings. Many of the squatters, including Grady, rebuilt, and the new houses were cottage-style, larger and sturdier, designed to withstand all but the most devastating squall. Then in 1965, responding to complaints from Key Biscayne residents who claimed that Stiltsville ruined their ocean view, the state of Florida issued private leases for plots of submerged land. After hurricane Betsy hit that year, fourteen houses were left standing, and the state stopped issuing new leases and banned commercial ventures altogether. Grady was, by this point, Stiltsville’s semi-official mayor—he kept the paperwork up-to-date and mediated grievances between stilt house owners and the state, or between owners and each other.

Dennis was twenty-six years old when I met him, same as me. He’d lived in Miami all his life, as I’d lived in the Atlanta area all of mine. After graduating from college, he’d worked for a sailing company that hauled tourists on sunset cruises. He’d lived briefly with a girl named Peggy on a yawl moored at Dinner Key marina, but she’d grown weary of the waterlogged life and moved to Boca Raton to become a travel agent. He’d missed her for a long time. He’d quit his job and spent six months in Spain with his high school friend Paul, touring and living on fried fish from street vendors. Then he’d returned to Miami to attend law school, and moved into a small apartment on Miami Beach. He liked school but wasn’t crazy about the prospect of being a lawyer; he hoped an affection for law would come with the diploma. He knew Marse was after him and he liked her and considered having sex with her, but the thought of what would happen afterward made him feel unkind. He spent at least one weekend a month alone at the stilt house. On land, he studied in diners and took long drives at night, often ending up in the lounge of the Key Largo airport, where they served the best conch fritters in the state. Sometimes he thought about buying a house in Coconut Grove or Coral Gables—he couldn’t imagine living anywhere except South Florida—but he made no promises to himself. He liked his small beachfront apartment. He kept his bicycle unchained on the balcony and walked barefoot to the corner store. Once a week, he paid an upstairs neighbor five dollars to give him an hour-long Spanish lesson.