Surface Tension Read online

  He pushed open the door and stepped into the dark room, but before he turned on the lights, I saw his teeth flash in a grin.

  I’d only been inside his apartment once before, but I remembered the decor. It was a strange combination of tacky Florida transient and refined tastes. It had been a furnished apartment when he rented it, but it was now personalized with B.J.’s eclectic collection of personal belongings. On the chipped and dented gray terrazzo floors rested a thin blue-and-white hand-tied Oriental rug. The kitchenette consisted of a single-burner propane camp stove next to the sink on what had once been the suite’s minibar. A huge brown-and-white Samoan tapa cloth adorned one wall, while the remaining walls were covered with books neatly arranged in stacks of wooden orange crates. A small collection of exquisite jade and brass Buddha figurines was arranged atop one of the crates.

  When he’d finished eating, B.J. washed up his plate, and I scraped the last of the shrimp fried rice out of the carton onto my fork. I refuse to eat Chinese food on a plate. It just doesn’t taste the same, and besides, it gets cold. I walked to the sink, gave him my fork, and dropped the empty white box into the trash.

  He hung the terry dish towel on a cabinet door handle and handed me a cup of strong black tea. He had left the front door open, and through the screen I could hear the pounding surf on the beach half a block away. The air smelled tangy. I didn’t need to see it to know that the high-water mark was piled with dark seaweed, pushed ashore by the north swells.

  Padding in his bare feet to the low table in the center of the room, he sat cross-legged on the floor and began to read the newspaper. A small transistor radio tuned to NPR played soft Brazilian jazz. B.J.’s hair, pulled tight against his scalp, shone in the light from the rice paper globe overhead. He looked so completely relaxed. I imagined that he would have done exactly the same things whether or not I was there. It was pretty decent of him to give me plenty of breathing room.

  I looked up at the blue-and-green surfboard on a rack high on the wall. I had first met B.J. when I was still with the beach patrol. I knew quite a few surfers then. My brother Pit had been one. Several of the guys told me that B.J. was good enough to compete as a pro but that he would never do it. They said surfing was a spiritual thing to him.

  Silently I mouthed the names on some of the books in the crates against the wall: Plato, Ezra Pound, Edmund Spenser, Krishnamurti, Mark Twain, Immanuel Kant. I didn’t know them all, but I knew of enough of them to know that I didn’t want to go up against him in a game of Jeopardy. There were both hardcovers and paperbacks, and most of them looked old and well thumbed.

  He was still engrossed in his paper. I’d meant it when I said I didn’t want to put him out. I sat down on the tropical-print futon folded up against the wall, nearly spilling my tea in the process. How could he sit so still? Granted, he was extremely limber from practicing aikido most of his life, but even so, I found his state of total relaxation unnerving sometimes. I studied the way he had his legs crossed. He had a lot less hair on his inner thighs. It was amazing that he managed to keep his back so straight. Setting my teacup down on the floor, I tried to pull my left foot up on top of my right thigh. My knee made a loud popping noise, and something along the back of my leg hurt like hell. B.J. didn’t even look up. I guessed he was still giving me that breathing room. But on the other hand, it would be nice to be noticed.

  Almost as though he had heard my thoughts, he lifted his head and looked at me. Our eyes locked for several seconds before he spoke. I felt as though he were seeing things in me that even I didn’t know existed. As a child, I was always afraid that other people possessed the ability to read my mind—not really read, exactly, more like listen in on the constant banter in my brain. The idea terrified me. Then they would really know what silly things I thought about, and I wouldn’t be able to fool the world anymore.

  For the first time, I noticed there were tiny flecks of gold in B.J.’s brown eyes, and yet I felt I had always known that.

  “Have you read today’s paper?” He nodded at the pages spread out before him.

  I forced my eyes down to the print. “No.” I could make out the name Top Ten in the headline.

  “They don’t seem to hold out much hope for Neal.” He turned back to the front page. “Listen to this. ‘The Top Ten’s hired skipper, Neal Garrett, was aboard when the vessel left harbor Thursday morning, March eighteenth. According to police reports, he was not aboard at the time the vessel was found adrift. In addition, there were large quantities of blood on deck that could not have come from Krix, the female victim. The officer in charge of the case, Detective Victor Collazo, surmised that a third party was aboard the Top Ten and may have killed both members of her crew. Police are searching offshore for any sign of Garrett. They did indicate that chances of his surviving decrease the longer he remains missing.’ ”

  B.J. stood up and carried the paper over to the futon. He sat down next to me and spread the newsprint across both our laps.

  “And look at this,” he said. “ ‘Although he would not reveal any possible motives, Collazo did say the police have several suspects under investigation.’ ” B.J. grinned. “I guess they’re talking about you, huh?”

  I leaned back against the flowered futon and closed my eyes. I had to shut some of it out. Too many things were happening at once. Collazo was probably really pissed and even more suspicious since I hadn’t gone to give my statement that day.

  The air seemed to swirl with the sweet coconut smell of B.J.’s skin, and I felt the feathery tickle where the hairs on his legs brushed against my thighs. Part of me was wondering what it would feel like to reach out and touch those legs, and then I felt ashamed for thinking about sex when he was telling me that Neal, the last man I had slept with, was possibly dead.

  Neal dead? I refused to believe it, but my only proof was the fact that he had robbed me of my life’s savings and then rather viciously trashed my home. If my version of what happened these past couple of days was true, it also looked like he was a killer as well as a thief. What had happened out there? The girl had the gun. Had he killed her in self-defense?

  “There wasn’t that much blood on the deck . . . I saw it. I could smell the blood in the wheelhouse. I never knew what blood smelled like before.”

  “Seychelle, I think you need some rest.”

  “But see, even if it was his blood, he could still be alive, and I don’t know which is worse, thinking that he’s dead, or believing that this guy, this guy I’d really loved . . . could do that to that girl.” I shivered suddenly and saw the hairs on my forearms lifting off the flesh. “Am I that bad a judge of character, B.J., that I was in love with a murderer?” I rubbed my hands hard across the skin on my forearms. “He’s out there, B.J., I know he is. He probably doesn’t know where to turn.... Maybe, if guys like those creeps Ely and I met tonight are after him, he wants to stay ‘dead,’ to disappear. You know, living with Neal had become impossible. God knows, there were a few times I swore I’d like to kill him myself. Don’t tell Collazo that. But even after we’d split up, after it had gotten real ugly between us, I’d always felt he would be there for me if I needed him.” B.J.’s eyes seemed to draw the words out of me. No matter how much I wanted to stop talking and forget, each time I looked at B.J., I began again. “It’s like he’s two people, B.J. On one hand, he’s this gentle, wonderful man who’s funny and fun and a great sailor but sometimes there is this jet of anger that spurts out of him like one of those cheap fireworks. It scared me, but I never stopped caring for him. You can’t just turn that off. It was enough, though, to make me know I had to leave him. That was the hardest thing. I’d hear all the gossip about him and that girl down at the Downtowner. I mean, I was the one who pushed him away, the one who wanted it over, so why did it hurt so damn much to think of him with somebody else?” I asked the question of the walls, afraid to look at B.J., afraid of what was welling up inside. “Now, no matter which way this turns out, I’m afraid I’ve lost him, an
d living in a world without him in it would hurt even more.”

  I tried rolling my eyes up, looking at the ceiling so the tears wouldn’t spill out and give me away, but I had to blink finally and my eyes overflowed.

  “Seychelle, you’re tired, you—”

  “No, no, it’s not that, it’s just . . .” Just what? I didn’t even know myself, only that I was suddenly overcome with such a profound sadness, I couldn’t control my sobs. B.J. wrapped his arms around me, but all I was aware of for what seemed like hours was the wet T-shirt fabric pressing against my face and the gut-wrenching sobs that racked my body. I was snorting and gulping and hiccuping, trying to get air as I released this huge black ball of emotion that I didn’t even know had been inside me.

  Finally, I peeled my face off B.J.’s soaked shirt and took a couple of swipes at my eyes. I had felt so warm leaning against his body; as long as I’d known him, he had radiated heat as though he glowed with a perpetual sunburn.

  “It’s a good thing I don’t wear any makeup or I would have made a worse mess of that shirt.” I pushed the fabric around a little on his chest. I suddenly felt intensely aware of a familiar achy squeeze between my legs.

  He pushed some stray hairs back from my face and just looked at me without saying a word. No wonder every woman goes nuts over this guy, I thought. And I’d always been so convinced I’d never be one of them.

  “I guess I’ve looked better huh?”

  He smiled. “Yeah.”

  Oh, thanks, I thought. That’s what I get for being friends, buddies with the guy. Instead of romance, I get honesty. What truly aroused woman wants that?

  Then with his fingers he lightly traced the features on my face, his feathery touch gliding over my nose, eyebrows, cheeks, and lips. Our eyes remained locked, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a playful smile. When his touch reached my neck and slid down, then back up to my hairline, I couldn’t suppress the shudder.

  And then he kissed me. It was no just-between-buddies kiss on the cheek. It was one of those you-don’t-even-remember-what-planet-you’re-on kisses.

  Suddenly, a high-pitched yowl filled my ears and claws dug into the back of my head and neck. I cried out and swatted with my right arm at the thing that was attacking me. My hand struck soft fur, and then claws raked the back of my hand.

  “Savai’i,” B.J. said softly, “stop that, you silly cat.” He stood and lifted the animal off my back. She immediately started purring in his arms.

  I cradled my right hand. Three long lines oozed red. B.J. stroked the top of the cat’s head.

  “Silly cat? That’s it? Aren’t you even going to throw her out of the house or anything?” I held out my hand for him to see. “She attacked me, B.J.”

  He laughed softly. “You can’t blame a cat for being a cat. We’d better get some antibiotic cream on that.”

  “But she . . .” I knew I was being unreasonable, but it made me mad as hell that he was stroking the cat’s head instead of mine.

  B.J. dropped Savai’i to the ground outside the front door, closed and latched the screen door, and turned to me. “Relax, Seychelle, she’s just a cat. You’re tired.” He disappeared into the bathroom, and I could hear him rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. He came out a few moments later with a small white tube.

  I knew I was blowing this out of proportion, but a part of me had been afraid. He rubbed the cream into the back of my hand. He was smiling, probably even laughing at me, but I refused to meet his eyes.

  He went into the back bedroom and came out with a pile of linens. “Do you want some help pulling out the futon?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Good night.” He disappeared into his bedroom and closed the door. I heard him moving around in there, then he went into the bathroom, and I could hear him brushing his teeth, humming to himself.

  I didn’t pull out the futon and make up the bed until it had grown quiet back there. I turned out the light and undressed, wearing only panties as I slipped between the cool sheets. I felt hot and lifted my hair so my neck could press against the smooth pillow. The curtainless window faced north into the little courtyard. Between two Australian pines, I could see a three-quarter moon already angling toward the western sky. I was exhausted, but I felt I’d never fall asleep. Every nerve in my body felt like it had OD’d on No-Doz. The surf sounds pounded and hissed outside the screen door, and I wondered for a while if that was what it sounded like to an unborn child floating in her mother’s womb. Boom. Sshh. Boom. Sshh.

  I listened, trying to hear something, any kind of sound, from B.J.’s room. I fell asleep, finally, still listening.

  IX

  When I opened my eyes, the bedroom door was open and the apartment felt empty. From the angle of the sunlight, I judged I’d slept past eight. I got up and pulled on my clothes. Then I realized the surfboard was missing. I wandered out to look for B.J.

  I expected the sunlight to be bright, and I was prepared to squint, but the sight of the Sands Motel in daylight was not something I could have prepared for. Apparently, since my last visit, the owner had decided to paint the place. It looked like he’d chosen his color scheme from a canvas in a Little Haiti art gallery. The walls were bright pink, the eaves and the plaster sea horses orange, and the balcony banisters around the sundeck turquoise. The rest of the concrete, the picnic tables, and the piles of coral rock around the empty planters had been left natural gray, mottled with black mildew spots.

  The breeze was light out of the east and the sky nearly cloudless. The walk from the Shiftless Sands to the beach was less than a block, past the other motel and efficiency apartment rentals with names like the Oceanside Hideaway and California Dream Inn. None of them was nearly as tacky as the Sands, and their parking lots were filled with traveling cars. The narrow asphalt lane deadended at the beach, and a vacant lot filled with tangled sea grape trees was echoing with the competing songs of mockingbirds, green parrots, and finches.

  When I reached the sand, it was easy to pick out B.J. in the handful of surfers sitting on their boards, floating over the smaller swells, waiting for the perfect wave. His sleek but muscled brown body and black hair stood out among the slight and slender blond boys. He was the only one without a rash guard or wet suit, even in the March water that most Floridians found quite chilly. The other surfers seemed to watch him, taking their cues from him. When he started to paddle, selecting a certain wave, the others followed, trusting his judgment, but keeping out of his way.

  I walked down to the water’s edge, arriving just as B.J. kicked out, abandoning his wave to the sharp shore break, and he waved at me. I nodded in return, then turned south, heading toward the Dania pier. I hadn’t exercised in days, and my leg muscles felt tight and resistant when I started to jog. I sucked the sea air deep into my lungs and tried to flush out all the accumulated stress and craziness of the last couple of days.

  I needed some time to think. Especially about B.J. Something about the status of our friendship had changed last night. I wasn’t sure I liked the change, but it was irrevocable.

  He was fresh out of the shower and the surfboard was back in its rack when I returned to the apartment. “Would you like some tea, something to eat?”

  I shook my head.

  “Feel free to shower if you want.”

  “No, I’ve got to get back and clean up my place. I’ll shower at home. I’ve got a job at eleven.”

  “I can take you right now if you want.”

  I didn’t understand why, but I felt like being as uncooperative and disagreeable as I could.

  “I think that would be best.”

  We didn’t talk in his truck at all. I felt him looking at me several times. I was afraid to return his glances, afraid he would see something in my eyes to let him know that I was just like all those other girls who lusted after him. I didn’t want to join the ranks of B.J.’s exgirlfriends. What had made me think that I could have something different with him? It was about a fifteen-minu
te drive to Bahia Cabana, where I had left Lightnin’, but in that silence it seemed much longer.

  We pulled up alongside my Jeep. “Oh great.” There was a ticket tucked under the windshield wiper.

  “Things could be worse,” B.J. said.

  “Yeah, right.” I climbed out of the El Camino and leaned back in through the open passenger window. Bouncing the palm of my hand against the side of the El Camino’s window frame, I said, “Thanks, man,” and turned away. From the corner of my eye, I watched the truck pull out onto A1A.

  Me and B.J.? I had to put it out of my mind. There was no way that could ever work out.

  On my way home, I stopped off at my favorite breakfast spot, a drive-through gourmet coffee place, and ordered an onion bagel and a big café con leche. I drove to a little park overlooking the river and ate my breakfast in the Jeep. It was a hot morning for March, and the coffee brought a mist of sweat to my upper lip. The usual Saturday morning parade of pleasure boats putt-putted down the river carrying throngs of white, lotion-smeared bodies from the western edges of the county. Many folks who lived out in the suburbs spent their whole lives inside their air-conditioned homes on treeless landfill lots. There were places out there where Red used to take us back when we were kids, places where we could launch

  our old Sears aluminum skiff along the side of the road and pole our way through the sawgrass, fishing for bass. Those places don’t exist anymore, the land’s changed so much. Bulldozers and truckloads of fill have made driveways where folks now park their boats so they can drive fifteen miles east on weekends and launch their boats at one of the ramps along the river.

  Back at the cottage, Abaco greeted me like I had been gone weeks. She had a doghouse on the grounds of the Larsen place, but usually I let her inside for the night. After a thorough belly rub, I opened the door to the mess, determined not to be discouraged. Nothing had changed. I scooped up some dry dog food from the torn bag on the floor, put it in Abaco’s dish outside, and filled her water bowl.