Dexter Is Dead (Dexter 8)

Of course, not everyone was keeping their so-called sister waiting, and very few of the other drivers shared my newfound enthusiasm for creeping along like this. Most of them, in fact, seemed to take against it somewhat, and very few were hesitant about sharing their feelings with the other drivers who were clearly making them go so slow simply by being in front of them. There was a great deal of horn blasting, middle finger raising, and even good old-fashioned fist shaking. All standard fare, but done with real enthusiasm and passion, and therefore a pleasure to behold. I didn’t join in; I simply observed, taking a quiet civic pride in watching my fellow citizens interact with each other in such a genuine and meaningful way.

Just before NW 10th, we slowed even more, which was very gratifying. When I had inched forward enough, I could see that a Jaguar convertible had plowed into a van loaded with seafood. There was an impressive array of dents, broken glass, and twisted bumpers, considering that they couldn’t have been moving very fast when they collided. But the impact had caused the van’s back doors to spring open, and a wonderful variety of fresh and succulent seafood had slid across the Jaguar’s hood and filled the car’s beautiful leather interior. Luckily for all concerned, it looked like most of the fish would stay fresh, since a massive amount of ice had gone with it.

A nicely coiffed woman still sat in the Jaguar’s passenger seat, screaming hysterically, up to her shoulders in fish and ice. The driver was nose-to-nose with two men from the van, and the words they were exchanging did not seem to be the kind that lead to lasting friendship. And because this was, after all, Miami, three young men and one woman, from three different cars, had left their vehicles to gather up the spilled fish and take it home for dinner.

This delightful accident delayed me quite nicely, and it was nearly eight o’clock when I arrived at Deborah’s little house in Coral Gables. It was a modest home, and since my ex-sister had neither the interest nor the patience for gardening, it was somewhat overgrown. There was an assortment of fruit trees that had spilled their crop all over the yard unnoticed, and a crumbling coral rock wall around the place. Her car was in the short driveway, and I parked behind it and got out.

And strangely…I hesitated. I found that I was a little reluctant to face her, to have my nose rubbed one more time in her dislike and contempt for me, which, it should be repeated, was totally undeserved. But it stung anyway. I didn’t like seeing her look at me the way she had when she visited me in jail. Like I was some kind of loathsome contagious affliction, something smeared onto her shoes, perhaps a great and disgusting glob of raccoon feces.

Standing beside my car, I stared at her front door. I knew it didn’t matter what she thought of me—and yet, somehow, it did. It was astonishing, but apparently I still wanted her to like me. She never would, ever again, if she ever had in the first place. She’d made that quite clear, and feelings as strong as she’d shown do not change. So why didn’t I simply saunter up to the door and get this unpleasant business over with? Why should I dither and mope because I didn’t want to face her sneers?

No reason at all. I would do it, and get on with my life—get on with saving my life, in fact, which was enormously more important than any of Deborah’s mean-spirited snits.

So I leaned against the car and did nothing. A car drove by slowly, a dark blue SUV of some kind, probably a Jeep. Hard to be sure—it was one of the new kind, the ones that look like station wagons, and they all look the same. It didn’t matter. I looked up at the sky. Most of it still seemed to be there. That didn’t matter much, either. I looked at the front door of the house again. If Debs peeked out, she would see me here, loitering indecisively, and she might think I was hesitating because of timidity. She might think I actually gave a rodent’s rectum what she thought of me, which was silly. I didn’t care. Not at all. I could go knock on the door anytime I wanted to.

Once again, as seemed to be the case so often in my life, my stomach finally settled things; it growled, reminding me that life goes on, and even more so with a good dinner. And so, rather than risking the wrath of my digestive system, which was much more relevant than the wrath of my nonsister, I straightened up, clutched the custody papers firmly in my left hand, and moseyed up to the door.

Deborah answered in person on the first knock. She looked at me with such a hard, stony face that she must have set the expression in place well before now, so it would be properly congealed when I saw it. She said nothing at all, letting her face do all the talking. Behind her, I could see a dim purple glow from her living room, and hear the sounds of a cartoon show. I recognized one of the voices—it was the only show Cody and Astor could agree on watching, and it involved a platypus, as I recalled.

The kids must be in there, all four of them together, Deb’s son, Nicholas, and my very own Lily Anne, as well as Cody and Astor. I craned my neck slightly to see if I could catch a glimpse, and Deborah immediately pulled the door shut around her, so only her neck and head stuck out and I could no longer see in at all.

I shrugged. If she was that determined to be unpleasant, so be it. And so I saw no need for pleasantries. “I assume you got my message,” I said curtly.

She stared a moment longer, and then without any change in expression, she simply held out her hand.

It took me a moment to realize that she was not offering to shake my hand, but I figured it out at last and gave her the custody papers. She took them, stared at me a few seconds longer, and then, before I could even frame a properly scathing farewell, she shut the door firmly in my face.

Well, if nothing else, the papers were delivered. At least I could scratch one thing off my to-do list. And I supposed I could cross the entire bunch of them off my Christmas card list, as well. I doubted that I would ever again really wish Debs a merry anything, and she would certainly make sure that all four kids remained uncontaminated by my toxic presence. I had watched how she behaved with her boy, Nicholas, and although I would not quite call her a helicopter mom, she would certainly be very aggressive about protecting them from all dreadful forms of mental and psychic pollution, like drugs, violence, and Dexter.

Well, she was in for a little bit of a surprise, at least as far as Cody and Astor were concerned. She thought of them as battered waifs, poor little orphans of the storm, sweet and innocent children who had suffered a series of terrible shocks. She would discover soon enough that they were nothing of the kind; Cody and Astor were undeveloped Dexters. The terrible physical, mental, and psychic abuse they had taken from their bio dad had left them just as empty of empathy and human feeling as I was. And they had not had the Harry Course of Miracles to properly channel the impulses that were already slipping up behind them from the Dark Backseat and gently but firmly trying to take the controls and drive them down the Dark Hig

hway. When these impulses began to take over, as they absolutely must from time to time, Deborah would begin to realize that she was nurturing a viper in her bosom. I almost wished I could be there to see her face when she found out she had changelings in her nest. I had a feeling that the discovery might alter her perspective just a wee little bit.

It brought me a small glow of much-needed comfort, even when I realized that she would blame the whole thing on me. That didn’t matter at all; I was already dead to her, and I could not conceivably get any deader.

So be it. I was never meant to be a father. Another chapter in the Great Book of Me was finished. Time to close the book and move on. No kids, no sister, and no regrets.

I turned away and went back to my rental car.

—

In Miami, many people eat rather late each night. It is part of the city’s cultural heritage, a proud Old World tradition, brought to our shores by our Hispanic brethren. It is not unheard-of to eat dinner at ten o’clock, and certainly nine o’clock is common. But tonight, at a mere eight o’clock, Dexter was simply not in touch with his Cuban side, and he was becoming ever so slightly rapacious. I drove away from Deborah’s crumbling, child-infested cottage and began my search for something appropriate to eat.

There were so many choices, even within a two- or three-mile radius. The possibilities were nearly overwhelming; Chinese or Chinese nouveau; Cuban, of course; Spanish classical or tapas; Thai; at least three varieties of French; ribs and barbecue—truly, that was only scratching the surface. And the beauty of it was that I could go to any of them and eat my fill of My City’s Great Bounty, delectable viands from every land and every body of water on the globe. My mouth began to water. Freedom is truly a wonderful thing.

I very nearly chose Thai—there was a very good place not too far away, just off Miracle Mile. But at the last minute, I had the thought—and I am quite sure it is Politically Incorrect—that Thailand was much too close to Japan, and I’d had sushi for lunch. I turned left instead of right, and headed over to Pepino’s, a cozy Mexican place in Coconut Grove.

Coconut Grove has always moved at a slower pace than the rest of Miami, and so it was no surprise to me that it was apparently still rush hour on Main Highway. The only difference was that most of the rush was centered around finding a parking place. Unfortunately, all the legal spaces were taken. But I was sure I could find one that was nearly legal. I grew up here, and I had a few tricks that latecomers to the Grove didn’t know.

I drove down a side street about half a mile from the restaurant. Fifty yards down, I turned into a dark alley that cut between two boutiques. There was a large Dumpster, overflowing with trash, and just beyond it, unlit and invisible to any meter maids with prying eyes, I parked my car.

But apparently there was at least one other Grove native having a night on the town, because as I walked out of the alley feeling just a little smug, another car turned down the alley and went past me, no doubt looking for a place to park. It was another one of those station wagon–style SUVs, dark blue. There were certainly a lot of them on the roads lately. I wondered why. After all, real station wagons were available, and cheaper. Why buy something nearly identical that costs more, just to get the all-wheel drive? There were no muddy mountain roads here, and no treacherous icy highways. What did that leave? Did all these people really spend their weekends racing through mud in the Everglades?

By the time I had hiked back to the restaurant, I was nearly hallucinating enchiladas. The last two blocks had been true torture, as the scent of cumin, hot sauce, and tacos seemed to be everywhere. But I made it safely, without collapsing into a puddle of drool.

Pepino’s was a small place, but it had a little bar with four plush stools, and the one at the end was empty. I sat and quickly found out why the seat was available; every time anyone went into or out of the kitchen, or the restroom, I had to move, and for a large tray filled with steaming food, I actually had to stand up and skitter along the wall like a cockroach when the lights come on. But my food arrived quickly, and it was good, and in a very short time I was full and happy once more.

The walk back to my car after dinner was far more of a contented saunter than the famished stagger my hunger had forced me into on the way in. And the car was right where I’d left it, too. Life can be so easy when the Universe is feeling cooperative, can’t it?