Chapter 17

Alcohol is sex without rapture. It takes you to the edge of all your desires—and leaves you there, dripping with heat and struggling to breathe. It is both soaring anticipation and hollow disappointment. It is consistent on both fronts.

Chase, the sunset bartender at the Vanderbilt Reef Motel, was putting the finishing touches on a rumrunner, crowning the rim of his magnum opus with pineapple and orange slices. Men in button-down shirts and thick watches and thin, well-dressed women with erect postures circumscribed the bar. I ordered a Jameson on the rocks and scooted my stool back so I could cross my legs. It was hot, and I prayed for a breeze.

I kept expecting something to stir within—a ghost to pay me a visit or a tsunami of feelings to awaken my emotionally deadened soul—but I was numb. The Vanderbilt Reef Motel was just another beachfront motel. Maybe our life is not the great continuum we think it is but, rather, separate frames of a film. The pictures of holidays and traditions do nothing more than fuse together random events and create the illusion of fluidity.

I took a sip of liquid foreplay. But it was just whiskey and not the sacred answer I always hoped it would be.

Chase had a trimmed beard and buzzed gray hair. He moved quickly while preparing drinks and then relaxed when presenting them to his patrons. I pitched him a few easy questions about the hotel and his tenure there. He talked with both hands on the bar, as if he were steadying himself. When he learned that I’d been there as a child, he said, “You can share some memories with Eve. She’s been nesting here for at least that long—probably longer.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to Eve, Adam, or Jack Shit that evening. The whiskey was quickly taking me inside, where something new was brewing: I didn’t want to just kill the man who had abducted my sister. He would need to suffer, to offer me an empty prayer for a quick death, to know it was me who was sucking his life away.

“She works here?” I asked Chase, keeping my eye on the prize.

“No, sir,” he replied, bending over to wash a glass. “She’s a club member. They’re local people who pay dues to use the property. All the motels and hotels do it, but we jumped on that wagon early.”

“Any chance of Eve coming by the next day or so?”

“She’s here right now. She has a glass of wine around the fire and watches the sunset nearly every night. I wait on her myself.”

“You cover the fire pit?”

“Just her.”

I waited for further explanation, but he clammed up.

“She easy to spot?”

He replied to my pressing with a reassuring smile. “Everyone finds Eve.”

I ambled, drink in hand, toward the edge of the boardwalk and onto the sand.

Several gas fire pits were strung out on the beach just beyond the boardwalk. Each had an arrangement of chairs and couches surrounding it. A family of four occupied the center fire pit. The mother and her daughter were tickling their phones with intense concentration, occasionally laughing and exchanging words. The pit to the left was home to two skinny men with fat cigars. The farthest one to the right had a sofa with a couple snuggled together on one end of it.

Three chairs were across from the couple. Eve was in the chair closest to the water. The gulf was flat and placid. Remnants of waves lapped up on the beach like exhausted messengers from a distant land. They died softly, surrendering both their form and purpose to the welcoming sand.

A long-stemmed glass rested on the table to Eve’s left. Her legs were crossed, and her arms extended elegantly along the armrests. She wore a tan sleeveless dress and sandals. The light from the fire flickered on her face, casting shadows where age had started to collapse her skin. I put her somewhere between fifty-five and seventy-five, which is an open swath of life, although with a week of neglect, the upper number would manifest itself. The chair next to her had my name on it.

She was in midsentence, talking to the young couple.

“…and after that, dears?”

“We’re not certain,” the man said. “Where is it you suggest?”

“Louie’s. It’s intimate, and the clam sauce on the spaghetti is second to none.” She turned her head to me. “Greetings.” She nodded and gave a coy smile at the couple. “The Lady and the Tramp are formulating dinner plans. Where did you sail in from?”

“The bar.”

“It is a lovely port, isn’t it?”

“The best. Jake Travis.” I offered her my hand.

“Eve Davidson,” she said with a puff of gusto, as if she were pleasantly surprised to meet someone who presented his name in such a traditional manner early in a conversation.

“And you, Eve?” I said. “What port’s banner do you fly?”

Her eyes were of many colors, and her face was creased with fine wrinkles, as if each one were a story line. Her blond hair was splayed with white and gray, although the color scheme seemed well tended to. She relaxed deep into the cushioned chair and emitted the calmness of someone who was at ease with herself. I envy such people. In a wasted effort, I crossed my legs and tried to mimic her sanguine posture.

“This is my home port,” she said.

“Although you’ve wandered far,” I said.

She considered that. “Is ‘wander’ your best word?”

“Enlighten me.”

“I’m open to suggestions. Wander carries such an anchorless connotation.”

“Sojourn?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But in the old sense.”

Snuggle Girl peeped in from her corner of the couch. “I read once that we’re all tourists, even in our homeland.”

“There you have it,” Eve concurred.

“You come here often?” I asked, eager to learn if Eve had been around during the time of my sister’s abduction.

“Nearly every night, when I’m home.”

“You’re not a guest.” I knew she wasn’t, but I threw out the observation to prod her into talking about herself.

“She’s a tourist,” Snuggles added before Eve could answer.

“I’m a member of the ocean club,” Eve said. She swept her hand over the fire pit and beach. Her open palm was suspended toward the darkening waters of the Gulf of Mexico. “This…is my parlor.”

“And a majestic one,” I observed. “I’m not advocating this, but at two stories, I’m surprised the wrecking ball hasn’t found it. It’s surrounded by—”

“Florida ugly,” Eve interrupted me. “That’s what smothers this ensconced jewel. Concrete pillars blocking the sun. People piled on top of one another, their sheltered dreams having taken them south and then high into the air. At dinner, they all tumble down the elevators, pile into their German and Japanese cars, choke the roads, and pay exorbitant sums of money for mediocre California wines and fresh Florida grouper that’s farm-raised in Panama. This motel is the pearl within that crusty shell.”

“To paradise,” I said and raised my glass.

“I’ve never been to California,” Snuggles said.

“To our paradise,” Eve said, keeping her eyes on me.

Her glass was nearly empty, so I asked, “May I get you another drink?”

She landed a warm smile. “Why, thank you. But, no, Chase will take care of me. He knows my pace. I rely on him to make sure I don’t outdistance myself.”

The young couple excused themselves after thanking Eve for the dinner recommendation. After they left, I asked Eve if she would mind if I lit a cigar.

“Only if I can suck on it.”

Things took off pretty fast after that. I didn’t want her to know of my personal connection, so I told her I was doing an article on missing persons and heard that the Matilda case had recently been solved.

She took a drag from my cigar and handed it back to me. “It’s a shame those things are bad for you. I’ve done a lot of things they say are bad, and I haven’t regretted a single one. I’ve done some good things too, I suppose, but in the end, I find such things boring and hardly worth the memory.”

“Were you an ocean-club member during those years?”

“What years?” she said flatly.

She was toying with me, but I didn’t know why. “During the Matilda case.”

“What publication do you write for?”

“Freelance.”

She studied me for a minute. “You blew it at the opening,” she said.

I hadn’t given her credit for such a good memory. Her eyes of many colors narrowed, and now they were eyes of many emotions—sadness, pity, even fear—but that might have been the alcohol, for why would she fear me? She brought the wineglass up to her lips but kept her gaze hard on me.

“Travis, right?”

“Guilty.”

“Tell me, have you talked to anyone else from that day?”

“No.”

My answer seemed to relieve her. Her eyes died on the flame. A sea breeze flicked a few renegade strands of her hair.

“Look over your shoulder,” she said. “See the diving board? There used to be a cabana there. It had a solid wood roof, with grass tacked on it for authenticity. We’d just gotten back from two weeks on the other side of the pond. I was sitting there, reading the British edition of Vogue. It was a hideous cover. Christy Turlington swathed in a ghoulish combination of purple and blue and red and yellow—it just made no sense at all—and then those ridiculous shoulder pads mounted on her. It was as if women’s fashion was turning into the bastard child of a football player and an impressionist’s color palette.

“My palms were greasy, as I’d just put sunscreen on before taking a walk on the beach, but then I decided to read a little more. I remember that day. That magazine. Those shoulder pads. I remember all that because I remember you, Jake Travis. And I remember your sister.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

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