Teresa was the brain, Phi Beta Kappa, insanely organized with cross-indexed filing systems and a gravity-well memory. She used big words.
The women quickly discovered they had several things in common. Number one, assholes in their pasts. Number two, a surplus of guts. Not man guts, where you charge a pillbox, dive in a raging river or punch a biker outside the Do Drop In. This was woman guts. Quietly enduring when there is no acceptable alternative but to endure.
Third thing in common: They loved to make chili, which they did every Friday, seven sharp. The weekly cook-off was the best thing they could have done. Being a single mom at a major football university was the formula for clinical depression, like being in prison with a view of Bourbon Street. Marking time until the next get-together made it all seem a little less hopeless.
The fourth thing in common, however, that was the primary reason these five particular women bonded so tightly. They agreed never to talk about it. Ever.
After a month of chili Fridays, the book club was born of necessity. They loved reading, but there was no time with the kids, not even for literature classes, which forced them to pool notes.
“Who knows what
“Man wants to kill fish. Fish kills man. Lots of details about boats.”
“The rich are mean.”
“White people are mean.”
“The British are mean.”
“The future is scary and weird.”
“Junkies are scary and weird.”
“We should be in Paris.”
The remaining semesters dragged out like a stretch for robbery, but they all somehow managed to stumble through to graduation, where they hugged and took a hundred snapshots and swore they’d always stay in touch and promptly lost contact for twenty-five years.
3
The Sunshine State has a mind-bending concentration of “cash-only” businesses. These aren’t your shade-tree auto detailers or flea market kiosks selling houseplants and nunchuks. These involve amounts of currency that require luggage.
On a day near the end of 1997, there were two thousand seven hundred and sixty-three cash-crammed briefcases floating around the shallow-grave landscape of Florida. Some were under the seats of limousines, some were underwater in ditched airplanes, some were handcuffed to South American couriers flying up to buy Lotto tickets, some were clutched to the chests of perspiring men in street clothes sprinting down the beach, ducking bullets.
One briefcase was different from the others. Really superstitious people said it was cursed, just because everyone who ever touched it wasn’t breathing anymore. Whatever you believed, it was still filled with five million dollars.
The briefcase, a silver Halliburton, now sat between two patio loungers next to a motel pool in Cocoa Beach. A pair of men lay on their backs and sipped drinks from coconuts.
Paul and Jethro had plenty of money in the briefcase but not a valid credit card between them. Which meant no reputable inn would give them a room, so they paid cash through a slot in inch-thick Plexiglas at the Orbit Motel.
The old Honduran night manager had made change without ambition. The motel office contained an empty water cooler and the smell of burnt coffee but no coffeemaker; two molded plastic chairs, one with a puddle of something and the other holding a sleeping man in a plain T-shirt who cursed as he dreamed. On the wall a framed poster of a kitten dangling from a tree branch. “Hang in there.”
Paul fidgeted as he waited for his change. He straightened a stack of travel guides with space shuttles on the cover. He fiddled with a display of business cards for taxi companies, Chinese restaurants, bail bondsmen, someone who called himself “The King of Wings,” and a fishing guide named Skip.
Paul took his change and leaned toward the slot. “Can we get a wake-up call for eight?”
“I’ll get the concierge right on it,” said the manager, not looking up from his
Paul held one of the travel guides up to the Plexiglas. “Are these free?”
“Knock yourself out.”
