Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

It was several hours and seven uncontrollable fits of laughter later that we ended up on the end of the long wooden dock at the end of Duval Street. When you laugh that long and that hard with somebody it gives you a feeling that you’ve known them a long time, and we were struggling to figure out what to do about this new-old friendship.

A kind of funny tact came over us. Neither one of us wanted to say anything that would break the illusion. So we leaned on the rail side by side, talking of things that didn’t matter, listening for what was behind them.

She liked dogs. But she found it impossible to turn down a cat. She thought there was nothing on American TV that wasn’t bad for you, except wrestling. She loved wrestling, because for her it was like a great theatre where Good battled Evil and myths were worked out.

She had also become passionate about American peanut butter, but she thought of it as a dessert item.

Pretty soon I became aware that the bars were closing all around us and the loud music had been silent for a while. And suddenly we were in the middle of that awkward moment that comes at the end of an evening when you know it has to end but you don’t want it to and the way it’s going to end hasn’t been worked out yet.

As I walked her home it still wasn’t worked out. She lived in Old Town, in an alley off Eaton, in a guest cottage attached to one of the big old houses. She shared it with two Polish women who worked as maids at one of the hotels.

“Thank you for most interesting evening,” she said in her wonderful accent, standing at the door of the small green house.

“Maybe we could have another one some time,” I said.

She looked at me for a very long time and I found myself moving closer a little at a time. Just before my face touched her she said, “Perhaps,” very softly, and slid away into her house.

I watched the outside of the door for a while, but it didn’t tell me anything, so I walked home.

Chapter Ten

The last time I’d been to a demonstration I’d been in uniform, standing in front of the Iranian consulate in L.A. I’d been to a couple more before that, all of them as a cop. So Nicky’s little get-together was a brand new experience for me.

I don’t mind the idea of standing in the street and waving a sign while you chant cute rhymes, but I’d always looked on it as either work or a kind of spectator sport.

So it still isn’t clear to me how I ended up in front of the Key West Court House carrying a sign that said GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR WHITE MASSES and shouting, “Haitians Are Humans.” The shouting part was sort of halfhearted on my part; in fact, really only when Anna was looking.

I say it wasn’t clear how I ended up there, but of course it was. I was there because I thought Anna would be there. No matter how stupid I felt doing it, the thought of seeing her again made stupid seem like a good idea.

Of course I had a lot to tell myself on the subject. I still wasn’t over Nancy. And getting interested in someone else so soon was shallow, not like me, the mark of a butt-head.

But no matter what I told myself, I managed to work it around to where I should just go take a look at her and prove it to myself that I wasn’t really all that interested in her. And I somehow even made that justify going to Nicky’s demonstration.

And when I got there and she saw me and her face lit up, I would have gone into a snake pit to protest venom.

Bad news. I was shallow.

And so for the next couple of hours I stood around watching her profile and trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. I didn’t come up with anything, and anyway I was distracted thinking about what was so right with her.

At the climax of the rally, Nicky stood in front of the nearly fifteen people and gave a speech. He said that he wasn’t born here, and he knew some of them weren’t born here, and that was part of what made the country such a great place. He managed to imply that it had been a pretty smart thing for the U.S. to let in somebody like him, so they should listen up when he said Haitians should be allowed to enter the country.

Everybody yelled and waved their signs. I saw a couple of people taking pictures, but since one of them was holding a little girl by the hand and the other was in the middle of a cluster of Japanese tourists, I figured the only media exposure Nicky was going to get was going to be in a slide show in Osaka.

The most you could say we accomplished with all that marching in circles was that I decided Anna’s profile was not actually perfect: her chin was just a little too strong. Realizing that made me feel a lot better, like I could be objective now. Thinking in a really objective way, I decided I preferred strong chins.

When we broke up I walked Anna down to Mallory Square and watched her evening show. She got a good crowd. I kept an eye on the bucket she used to collect money. I stood beside a fat guy, from New Jersey by his accent, who thought he was funny enough to compete with Anna’s act. I convinced him he was wrong without disturbing her, and his finger probably wasn’t actually broken.

Afterwards we walked again. I bought her a piece of fish at a restaurant and we walked some more. We ended up outside her door again at around midnight. She was gone inside before I could even think about going beyond her smile.

The pattern held for the next few days. I got to know the outside of Anna’s door really well. And I thought I was getting to know her, too, from our long talks, but it’s easy to be wrong about that.

I am only a human being. I try to be better than average at it, but there are parts of the job that are bigger than all of us. When two human beings of different genders spend a lot of time together and want to spend more time together, a certain question comes up. In this case, as far as I was concerned, the only question was, “How soon?”

I appreciated the fact that Anna came from a different culture. I respected her right to make a decision, whatever it might be. And if she didn’t make it soon I was going to pop a seam.

After a few more nights when nothing changed, I walked Anna home after her show. She seemed moody, withdrawn and tense. When we got to her door, she turned where she usually said good night and stared at me for a long moment. Then she launched herself at me. Her lips were all over my face and her hands fluttered all over me. Her breath came hard and fast and it took me a few fast heartbeats to realize that it wasn’t passion.

I tried to step back, disengage, but she clung to me with a furious strength, pressing her cold face into the hollow of my neck and shoulder.