Surface Tension - Kling Christine - Страница 33

“You didn’t read about it in the papers or see it on TV? That big yacht, the Top Ten, found offshore with a dead girl aboard? That girl was Patty Krix.”

“What? Patty? I did hear something about that, but I never heard the girl’s name.” He shook his head. “Oh, my God ...” He was wearing the same expression that he had worn in the courtyard discussing Elysia. Either Collazo hadn’t asked him about Patty Krix—which, given Collazo’s reputation for thoroughness, was rather surprising—or James Long was getting himself caught in a rather peculiar little lie.

Before the coffee and rum pineapple cheesecake, James had the waiter bring us finger bowls with lemon and warm towels. He scrubbed each and every finger with his towel as I told him about my business, the Gorda, and how I had come to tow the Top Ten. I conveniently skipped over the fact that Neal had been my lover.

“I had no idea I was out with a lady captain,” he said, setting aside his towel with that smile that eclipsed every tiki torch in the room.

Once the Polynesian revue began, conversation became impossible. Okay, it’s touristy and hokey, but hey, I enjoyed it. It was fabulous to watch the men, their hard, oiled bodies undulating to the pounding rhythms. As I watched, I thought about how few opportunities women have to watch men’s bodies. I don’t mean checking out a guy’s butt in tight pants, but rather the chance to stare at and drink in the full curve of his bicep, the rippling of his abdomen, or the deep shadowed groove down his back. It didn’t mean that I wanted to bed them, but they moved in a manner so foreign and yet so familiar the skin swelling over the flexing muscles, that watching them was pure sensual pleasure.

Our table was off to the right of the stage in an intimate, dark corner. As we watched the show, I was intensely aware of the proximity of James’s knee under the table. My head was telling me not to trust him, but all the while that deep animal part of me was reacting to his sexuality, his maleness. His knee brushed against mine, and I felt weak and foolish when I looked up and smiled at him. I forced myself to look away. We had a good view of the opposite side of the stage, where a door led to a backstage entrance. I tried to put some distance between us as I watched a group of dancers leaving the stage.

Suddenly, I was startled to see B.J. standing there among the dancers, staring straight at me. When our eyes met, he smiled and gave a barely perceptible nod, and my stomach, full though it was, suddenly felt like it was doing its own Tahitian dancing. Then he turned, put his arm around the narrow brown shoulders of one of the lovelier women dancers, and vanished into the throng of brightly costumed performers. I glanced at James to see if he’d noticed, but he was concentrating on the other female Tahitian dancers onstage.

What was that all about? I wondered for a moment if I had even seen B.J. In my mind, I again saw his hand touching the girl’s skin, and I shifted in my chair, brushing my knee up hard against James’s and leaving it there. His head turned and his eyes flicked down, then back up with one eyebrow raised. I smiled, and James put his arm around my shoulder. I hoped to hell B.J. was watching.

After the show, I excused myself and walked across the dining room to the ladies’ room. On my way back to the table, I passed by some tall potted palms near the front cash register. A large, dark figure stepped out into my path.

I heard my own gasp over the general din of the dining room before I recognized him.

“B.J.?” I felt a bit sheepish at taking fright so easily, but after the past few days, I’d grown very jumpy.

“Hey, Seychelle.” He smiled. “Don’t you look nice.”

I held my hand to my throat. “God, you scared me. What are you doing here?” I had been genuinely frightened.

“I came by to speak to my uncle Aunu’u. He wants me to help his son with his application for a scholarship to the University of Miami.”

“Here at work?”

“They get an hour or so between sets, and that’s when Vanu does his homework. He’s the fire walker you just saw.”

In my mind I saw him again, the barely clothed young man walking across the hot coals.

“They give athletic scholarships in fire walking now?”

B.J. grinned at me. “No, it’s an academic scholarship. A few Samoans are more than just big muscles, brown skin, and white teeth.”

I realized I had been caught in my own prejudice, and B.J. seemed to think it was funny. I knew what I was about to tell him would take the smile away.

“Collazo, the cop, called me this morning. Have you heard from him?”

“No, I’ve been working on the Chris Craft at Bahia Mar all day, surfed an hour around sunset, then came straight here.”

“Elysia died last night.”

The smile disappeared. “What?”

“They said she was on heroin.”

“Wait a minute.” He shook his head as though trying to clear out his ears. “What did you just say? That’s crazy. We saw her last night.”

“I know. I didn’t believe it at first, either. They found her in the river this morning. And the people at Harbor House are saying she never got home last night, making us look like liars.”

He opened his mouth as though to speak, but instead exhaled with a soft groan. He wrapped his big arms around me and leaned his weight against my body. After last night, I didn’t know what to think about B.J., and I felt awkward.

“How did she ... ?” he half whispered, half moaned into my ear.

I bit my lower lip to control the trembling. “I don’t know. But I will find out.”

“Sey ...” He held me tighter.

“I’ve got to get back,” I said.

B.J.’s body tensed.

I pulled away from him and looked at his face. He was frowning and staring across the room.

“It looks to me like your friend keeps some bad company,” he said, his voice, now deep and strong, completely changed from seconds before.

When I turned to look, I saw a short, powerfully built man leaning over my vacant chair. James was speaking fast and gesturing wildly, the whites of his eyes showing brightly in the darkened dining room. He no longer looked like the calm, sophisticated man I had left at the table. The other man wore a bright, flowered Hawaiian shirt, and from his black hair and broad, flat nose, I guessed he might be one of the dancers from the show. His right hand grasped the back of my chair, and on the back of his hand was a tattoo that from that distance looked like a coiled snake. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place where I had seen him.

“You know him?” I asked B.J.

“Yeah, Cesar Espinosa.” He seemed to spit out the name. “He used to work here for a while as one of the walk-on torchbearers in the show. He’s not Polynesian, he’s Mexican, but he sort of appointed himself as bouncer. He liked to get into it with customers who’d had too much to drink—you know, roughed them up for the fun of it, acted like he owned the place.”

“I take it you don’t like him much.”

“That’s an understatement. There was this girl working here. One of Vanu’s friends. She wasn’t Polynesian either; she was Chinese-Jamaican, an amazing exotic beauty. Her parents owned a convenience store, and her father was shot and killed there. She was only sixteen when she started here, still in high school, a bright, really nice girl, but she started dating Cesar right after her dad died, and she changed—quit school, ran away from home, got into drugs and prostitution. She still used to call Vanu sometimes, told him she wanted out, and then we heard she’d been found dead. They called it an accidental overdose, but Vanu always thought it was intentional, that that had been her way out. Cesar used her and then just threw her aside. She could not take the shame.”