Continental Drift полностью

He’ll hose down the decks, check the fuel tanks, and when Tyrone has finished filleting the two dozen fish caught by the insurance men from Missouri and has cleaned up the Belinda Blue_, he and Ave will leave Moray Key, heading south by Teatable Key Channel under the bridge, southeasterly to the reef and then west, across open sea toward the Bahamas, Andros Island, Nassau. Bob has asked him why he makes these trips with only Tyrone aboard, and Ave has explained that he is “getting into gambling a little lately.” He wrapped his arm around Bob’s shoulder and added, “Also, pardner, I’m getting to know a lot of the big-time fishermen over there. I’m trying to get a shot on American Sportsman, that TV show. Maybe take Jerry Lewis or Kenny Rogers out for marlin. You got to know the right people for a shot like that. Publicity like that, pal, you’re set for life.”

It makes sense, as do most of Ave’s easy, confident explanations of behavior that, to Bob, is often puzzling. What he, Bob Dubois, does every day of the week — take out in the Belinda Blue whoever will pay him for it, and when there’s no one to pay him for it, hang around the marina waiting for customers, putter around the boat, clean and oil tackle, study and memorize charts, drink beer and gossip with the other idle fishermen — that makes sense. But what Avery Boone does every day of the week — sleep till noon, play with Honduras and her friends, disappear on the Angel Blue with Tyrone every few days for a day and a night and sometimes more — that frequently does not make sense. Not to Bob. A man likes to be able to explain the things in his life that puzzle him, because if he can’t, he may have to accept his wife’s explanations for them, which in this case means that Bob would have to accept Elaine’s often-voiced, worried explanation of Ave’s behavior. “He’s in the drug business, Bob, don’t you realize that? Can’t you see the obvious, for heaven’s sake?”

Bob lifts one hand from the steering wheel and flips a wave at Ave on the terrace above. Ave makes a signal for him to stop, and Bob brakes the car and gets out. The sun is behind Ave’s head, and Bob visors his eyes with the flat of his hand. “What’s up?”

“You have a party this morning?”

“Yeah. Four guys.”

“How was it?”

“Okay. Buncha trout and redfish from out by Twin Key Bank.”

“No bonefish?”

“They wanted stuff they could land. You know.”

“Assholes.”

“Yeah.”

Ave takes a sip from his drink. “We gotta talk soon, Bob,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ve been going out — what — three, four half days a week, maybe a full day now and then?”

“Yeah. Now and then.”

“This time of year, we should be booked solid three weeks in advance, seven days a week.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s the recession, I guess,” Bob says in a low voice. “The fucking Arabs.”

“How’re you making it, buddy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Dollar-wise.”

“Oh, okay,” Bob says. “Fine, actually. Listen, I gotta get home. Ruthie’s been sick.”

“Okay, sure. We’ll talk, though, right?”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll talk,” Bob says, and he slides back into the car, closes the door and slowly drives away, out the sandy, unpaved lane toward the highway, past the piles of steel rods and mesh, cinder blocks, sand and building materials stacked for the second condominium building. The developers from Miami have plans for a half-dozen buildings, forty apartments to a building, and a shopping center, a much improved and enlarged marina and restaurant, a nightclub, a nine-hole golf course, until the entire island has been stripped and laid out, covered over from the bay to the gulf with buildings, pavement and small plots of cropped grass kept fresh and minty green by slowly turning sprinklers.

Bob turns left onto Route 1, crosses the bridge onto Upper Matecumbe, and a few miles down the road, just south of Islamorada, turns right onto a bumpy dirt road not much wider than a path. He drives through clumps of shrubby saw palmetto trees and bitterbrush for a quarter mile, to a clearing near the water, where he parks his car in front of one of three rusting, flaking house trailers situated on cinder blocks in no discernible relation to one another or the landscape. All three trailers have tall, wobbly-looking rooftop television antennas with guy wires staked to the ground. Scattered around the trailers are several rusted car chassis, old tires, tossed-out kitchen appliances, children’s toys and bicycles, a broken picnic table, a dinghy on sawhorses with a huge, ragged hole in it, a baby carriage with three wheels.

When Bob gets out of his car, a mangy German shepherd tied on a short rope to a cinder block under one corner of the trailer across the road stands and barks ferociously. Leaning down, Bob picks up a small chunk of coral rock and tosses it feebly in the direction of the dog, and the animal slinks back to the trailer and crawls underneath it.