Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (27 page)

He disappeared outside and they heard him climbing up onto the deck.

“Do you realize that he is the best-looking guy on planet earth?” Diana said under her breath. “I mean, I’m not alone in this, am I? He’s like…He’s prettier than any of the three of us. It’s not natural.”

“Like a perfect specimen,” Marquez said dreamily. “This simple, beautiful child of nature, with this beautiful face, and this beautiful body, and just like…perfect. Uncomplicated and perfect.”

Summer realized she was bridling at their reactions. Not that it would mean anything to Diver. “He isn’t interested in girls,” Summer whispered. “They disturb his
wa
.”

“His
wa
?” Marquez said.

“His
wa
. His inner peace,” Diana translated, much to Summer’s surprise.

“See what I mean?” Marquez said. “Simple. Uncomplicated. No problems. The perfect guy. Of course, he’s going to have to get over this thing about girls. Probably he just hasn’t met the right one. What he needs is someone as calm and simple and accepting as he is. Like me.”

Summer and Diana both laughed.

“So? I could change,” Marquez said, laughing along.

“Oh. No. A terrible thought just occurred to me,” Summer said.

“What?”

“We’re going to leave Diver here, sitting around in nothing but a towel. Seth is coming over to pick me up. We have to be back before that meeting takes place.”

“You had to trust Seth with Lianne, right?” Marquez suggested. “Maybe it’s time to see how trusting Seth is. And if he can trust you with Diver…” She bit her lip and made a suggestive little movement. “I suppose you have dibs on him, right?” Marquez demanded.

“If she does, then I have dibs on Seth,” Diana said. She laughed a little too loudly.

“Dibs?” Summer echoed.

“Dibs. You know, like he’s yours or whatever.”

“You mean like as a
guy
?” Summer said, incredulous. And what had Diana meant about Seth?

“No, as a pony,” Marquez said. “What are you, getting stupid? Of course as a
guy.
I mean, are you going to scratch my eyes out if I happen to, you know, become Mrs. Diver?”

Summer realized she was surprised by the question. She had reacted to Diver a little that way, maybe, right at first. But since then, it hadn’t occurred to her. She didn’t really think of Diver as a
guy
in the way that Seth was a guy.

“You’re taking an awful long time to answer a simple question,” Marquez said. “I’m only asking because it would be really excellent to be able to accidentally run into J.T. and Lianne when I was with Diver.”

“Sure,” Summer said. “I mean, of course, I don’t mind. But don’t just treat Diver like he’s some toy.”

“Of course not,” Marquez said. “Now, let’s get him some clothes and dress him up like a Ken doll.”

In addition, Diana bought herself a large over-the-shoulder bag decorated with gaudy glass beads that everyone agreed was hideous and completely unlike anything Diana would ever be seen carrying in public.

Loaded down with their many gifts, they arrived back at the stilt house to find Seth calmly waiting for Summer. Diver was nowhere in sight. Seth explained that he had given Diver an old pair of extra trunks that he kept in his truck and Diver had taken off.

Marquez then threatened to hurt Seth very badly.

The marina was downtown, not far from the Crab ’n’ Conch. It was a small forest of masts: the tall, elegant masts of sailboats, the stubbier masts of powerboats. Several dozen white-and-blue-hulled boats were arrayed in tight little rows, connected by low wooden piers and adorned here and there with striped awnings, limp flags, flashes of chrome, and deeper tones of weathered teakwood.

The largest boats were out at the ends of the piers, huge wallowing palaces with uniformed crewmen performing maintenance while tanned women lounged in deck chairs drinking daiquiris. Marquez had stopped at her house to change clothes and try to think up some plausible excuse as to why she should be hanging around the marina. She never went to the marina. The marina was headquarters of the tourists she had to wait on at the restaurant.

She had not yet come up with an excuse. She’d tried out several, all starting with, “Why, Diver, what a surprise to run into
you
here. I was just on my way to…”

And that’s as far as the excuses went. I was just on my way to…

Just on my way to see if you’d like to hang out with me or whatever, because basically I’m trying to get J.T. out of my mind permanently and you seem like just the guy who could make me forget that jerk forever.

“Excellent plan,” Marquez muttered under her breath. “Just tell Diver all that and he’ll run away, screaming for help.”

As it turned out, she had a difficult time finding Diver in the cluttered maze of boats. She had no trouble attracting the attention of several other guys, since she had dressed in a way designed to get attention. But she breezed by them with an air of confident disdain, and they left her alone.

She had reached the end of the main pier and was enjoying a little shade cast by a monstrous cabin cruiser when she heard voices. Feminine voices. She shielded her eyes and saw two women, sun-glassed, tanned, liposuctioned, wearing gold-lace sandals and similar black one-piece bathing suits.

They didn’t notice her. They were looking in the other direction and talking in low voices.

“Something’s different about him,” one said.

“Nothing’s different. He’s still adorable.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t. I’m just saying, something has changed. I think maybe it’s the bathing suit.”

“Maybe I’ll call him over. We could get him to swab the decks or something.”

Marquez had a pretty good idea who they were talking about. And when she went out to the end of the pier she could see Diver, standing up in a tiny dinghy, carefully applying paint to a beautiful, antique sailboat.

She was about to call to him, but then she had a better idea.

Marquez kicked off her sandals and dived into the water. She was halfway to him by the time she surfaced. She took a deep breath and went under again, swimming hard until she could see the little dinghy bobbing overhead.

She surfaced in the narrow space between the dinghy and the side of the sailboat. She spit out a mouthful of seawater, smoothed back her hair, and smiled. “Hi.”

He stopped with his paintbrush in midair. “Oh. Hi.”

It wasn’t exactly giddy enthusiasm she saw on his face.

“I know you, right?” he said.

That nearly wiped the smile off Marquez’s face. “Yes, I’m Marquez. You know, Summer’s friend.” Oh, great. She had to introduce herself as “Summer’s friend.” Obviously, she’d made a huge impression on him.

“Yeah,” he said. He glanced around, looking a bit like a trapped animal.

“Give me a hand,” Marquez ordered.

“A hand?”

“Help me up,” she said. She stuck a hand up to him.

With reluctance he didn’t even try to hide, he took her hand and helped heave her into the dinghy. “Careful, I have paint here. This man who owns the boat is in kind of a hurry.”

Marquez sat in the stern of the dinghy and wondered if she wasn’t totally wasting her time. She knew perfectly well that she was an attractive girl. An attractive girl wearing a small bathing suit
ought
to have gotten some reaction from Diver—other than the vaguely queasy look he had.

“You’re painting the boat, huh?” she said.

“Just this part. See, where it got scraped against a piling.”

“Maybe I could help,” Marquez said with sudden inspiration. “You know, I paint a lot.”

“You do?”

A faint flicker of interest.

“Yes. Some people think I’m a pretty good artist,” Marquez said.

“Huh.”

“Do you have an extra brush?”

“There.” He pointed.

He still looked queasy and ill at ease, but he moved over a little to make room for her to take a brush, dip it, and begin to paint, feathering her edge into his.

“You know, we bought you some clothes. Summer and Diana and me.”

“Thanks. This guy let me have this suit, though, so I’m set. This guy named Seth. He’s Summer’s boyfriend, right?”

What an interesting question, Marquez thought. Why exactly was he asking that? Was Diver interested in Summer? Oh, that would really be a major drag. “Yes, I guess so,” Marquez said.

Well, it is the truth—kind of,
she told herself. And if it wasn’t the complete truth right now, it probably would be soon.

“Huh,” Diver commented, a word that told Marquez nothing.

“No doubt you wish I was Summer,” Marquez said snippily.

“Why should I? She doesn’t paint, does she?”

“Maybe you prefer blondes,” Marquez said.

“No, I like dark hair, too,” he said.

Marquez told herself not to push it any further, but she never listened to her own advice. “Blue eyes? Is that it? Thighs? You like skinny thighs?”

Diver rested his brush on the lip of the paint can. “I like all kinds of girls,” he said seriously. “I just don’t do anything about it because they disturb my
wa.
I mean, I guess I’d rather just have a peaceful life.”

“Uh-huh. So, do
I
disturb your
wa
?”

“Yes, very much,” he said.

“Excellent,” Marquez said, beaming with self-satisfaction. For the next thirty minutes, much to Marquez’s frustration, Diver said not a word. She decided she should not force herself on him, so she remained silent, too. After all, she admired his strangeness, so she shouldn’t be annoyed by it.

When they’d finished painting he looked at her, quickly looked away, and said, “Thanks. I can give you some of the money the guy is paying me.”

“No, no,” Marquez said with a laugh. “I didn’t do it for money.”

“Oh. Why did you do it?”

Good question, Marquez realized. Her bathing suit now had two speckles of white paint. And she had learned exactly nothing new about Diver.

“Like I said, I enjoy painting,” she said.

“Cool.”

“Um, in fact, I’d really…I mean, it would be cool if you would come over and take a look at my paintings. At my house, I mean.” Marquez held her breath. This would be the point at which he would live out the meaning of his name and dive over the side of the boat, never to return.

“I guess I could,” he said.

Marquez was delighted. And surprised. “Let’s go, then,” she said. Show him her paintings. Maybe they could share a little snack. Then, with any luck at all, she could begin to convince him that it wasn’t such a bad thing to have your
wa
disturbed.

“This is my tree,” Marquez said with a flourish of her hand. “See. The roots go out across the floor, then the trunk goes all the way up the wall, and the branches and leaves spread out across the ceiling.”

Diver tilted back his head to take it all in. He nodded solemnly.

Marquez was a bit nonplussed by his reaction. The tree was her best thing. She pointed out several other features of her walls. “That’s the moon, of course, and the sun.” Yeah, like he wouldn’t recognize the moon or the sun. “The moon and the stars are painted with fluorescent colors, so that way, when you turn off the lights at night, they keep glowing for a while. Want to see?”

She flipped off the lights, plunging the room into almost total darkness. The sprinkling of stars on the ceiling glowed an eerie white. Then she turned the lights back on.

Diver seemed to guess that some response was being called for. “Cool,” he said. He turned and focused on the graffiti names that intertwined with the many other small paintings. He pointed to a patch of pure white. “What’s this?”

Marquez sighed. Perfect. He’d focused on the one thing she really did not want to discuss. “That’s just something I wanted to cover over,” she said.

“A name?”

“Yes, a name. Some guy’s name.” J.T., to be exact. She had covered it with three coats of white. And still she had the feeling she could make out the letters beneath.

“Did he die?”

“Die? No. Why would he be dead?”

“You erased him.”

“Look, it’s just some guy I didn’t want to remember anymore.”

Diver nodded. He remained focused with singular intensity on the painted-out J.T.

“I think it’s good to remember things,” Diver said softly.

“Some things yes, some things no,” Marquez said impatiently.

“I don’t think you can choose that way. I think you either remember stuff or you don’t. It’s not like you can just erase things. I mean, not deliberately, anyway.”

Marquez had the distinct sense that Diver was telling her something important, but at the same time she was feeling harassed and annoyed. She had Diver right here in her room, and all they could talk about was J.T. Or the lack of J.T.

“Diver, J.T. is just my ex-boyfriend, okay? Things got strange between us, or at least
he
got strange, and now that’s over.”

He nodded. Then he smiled impishly. “I guess I should be careful not to get strange, huh?”

Now what exactly did that mean? “You want to listen to some music?” Marquez asked. No answer. He had moved on now, reading each name on her wall as if he was trying to memorize them.

Marquez chose a CD and hit Play. The music was danceable without being too loud. The plan was to see if Diver liked to dance. So far he had failed one of her tests of a worthy human being—he had not exactly been enthusiastic about her painting. But if he could dance, he might make up for that.

Marquez let the music seep through her, let it touch the control buttons in her mind that started her body swaying in time to the rhythm.

“I don’t see Summer,” Diver said.

“I’ll put her up soon,” Marquez said. “I haven’t decided on the letters or the color yet. I’m thinking gold and blue.”

Diver actually smiled. “Yes, gold and blue. Those are her colors.”

“And what colors am I?” Marquez asked playfully.

Diver looked at her thoughtfully, concentrating, as if she had asked him a perfectly serious question. “You’re like sunrise or sunset. Red and yellow and orange, fading into purple. Bright, intense colors. If they lasted too long they’d be overwhelming and make everything else look pale. So they just appear for a short time and then fade away, and you’re wondering if they were even real. And then they reappear, but never for so long that you get tired of them. Just a short glimpse, and that’s all you need.”

Marquez swallowed hard. Okay, she was willing to forgive his lack of interest in her walls. She stepped closer. He did not run away.

He did not become any less attractive up close.

“Um, would you like to dance?” she asked him.

“I don’t dance very much,” he said.

That was it. He’d failed both her tests. Too bad she just didn’t care.

“Can I ask you something, Diver?”

“If you want.”

“Is Diver your real name?”

His crystal-clear eyes seemed to cloud over. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” Marquez said, smiling.

“Never, mind. I guess either way, I’m me,” he said simply. “I have to go.”

“What are you talking about?” Marquez demanded. “You just got here. And don’t start talking about your
wa
again.”

He laughed self-deprecatingly. “Okay, I won’t. But I still have to go.”

Marquez threw up her hands. “What is it with me and guys? Do you know why I brought you here?”

“To show me your painting?”

“No, no, no. Because you were supposed to become interested in me. You were going to really like my paintings, and then we would maybe dance, and then, I figured unless I have totally lost it, you’d kiss me and I’d kiss you, and I’d tell you it was something I’d been wanting to do ever since I saw you.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly the telephone began to ring.

Diver stepped closer, and then, without warning, kissed Marquez lightly on the lips.

He drew back. “Did that make you happy?” he asked.

Marquez just groaned.

“I have to go now,” Diver said for the third time.