Women Drinking Benedictine (13 page)

“Of course after this storm, it'll be second fiddle, but I can probably make some cash.”

They were on the beach, at a fabulously expensive restaurant. Marco chewed his pâté slowly. He wanted the meal to last. He sipped some wine. The busboy put two more pats of butter on the overflowing butter dish.

“But where I'd really like to go is Colombia,” she said and smiled at Marco. “Do you have any interest in going to Colombia?”

“Colombia?”

“Drug wars make great photo opportunities,” the woman said. “But I won't go to South America by myself. Women aren't safe there alone. Why don't you come with me?”

“How would we get there?” Marco asked. But he had already made more money in the past three days than he had the rest of the year. He could actually afford a ticket to Colombia.

“Credit-card it,” the woman said. “We'll make back what we spend going there like that.” She snapped her finger and the waiter, thinking she wanted something, came to the table. When he saw that they were not finished with their meal, that the water glasses were full, that the butter dish had just been replenished, he asked the woman what she needed.

“I need for him to say yes.” The woman was staring at Marco.

The waiter must have thought it was a marriage proposal. When Marco nodded yes—yes he would go to Colombia with this woman—he had been carrying a valid passport around with him since he was a sophomore in high school and had never been out of the country, it was time to leave Miami, it was time to do something—the waiter offered them his congratulations and best wishes.

Doug's accounting firm got progressively busier after the hurricane hit. The first week was quiet as people assessed their problems. The next week they were swamped. Everyone in Miami was having money problems—financial situations, as the firm called them—and the whole city needed accountants. Doug went to the airport one afternoon to pick up a client who was coming in from Washington, D.C. The man was an important, busy client, and Doug's firm thought it was a good idea to meet people like this as soon as they landed. Discussion of the problems got under way immediately, and by the time clients got to the office, they would be ready to sign the appropriate form. A time-saving method, yet one that didn't make clients feel they were being cheated.

Doug thought the man was coming in on the 12:20 from Dulles, but when he called his secretary to confirm, she told him the client had missed that flight and would be on the next one. It was scheduled to arrive at two o'clock. With not enough time to go back to the office, Doug went to have lunch. The nearby bars and restaurants were filled, so he walked all the way to С terminal and took the elevator up to the Sheraton. The hostess seated him near the window, and he had a cup of chicken soup and watched the planes taxi out to the runways. He was exhausted. Before his club sandwich arrived, he was asleep.

He woke up a few minutes later. He lifted his eyes and saw a woman in a dark-blue uniform standing in front of him. His head was still heavy with sleep. He asked her for a cup of coffee.

She laughed and pointed to the gold wings on her lapel. She worked for an airline company. It took him a few minutes to recognize Marco's ex-girlfriend.

Doug stood up and was immediately dizzy as the blood rushed to his head. She held him steady and he began to apologize.

“Looks like living in a national disaster area has been hard on you,” she teased.

“I've just been so busy,” Doug apologized.

“Don't you sleep at home anymore?”

“I don't have a home anymore.” Doug wanted to explain what it was like to live in a hotel room every night. He had picked a great place on the beach, a hotel that delivered room-service meals twenty-four hours a day—except most nights he was so tired he couldn't do anything but watch television and listen to the sounds of people partying in the beachfront cafes.

Marco's ex-girlfriend sat down and ate both halves of his club sandwich. She asked after Marco, and Doug told her that he hardly ever saw him anymore. He was busy with storm photographs.

She was flying the Miami-Pittsburgh route about three times a month. It put her in Miami for a few days at a time. She had tickets to the relief concert that night on Miami Beach—Phil Collins, Sting, and Gloria Esteban—proceeds would go to help the people whose lives had been devastated by the storm.

“Do you have any interest in going?” she asked. “It doesn't start until eight. Maybe that's too late for you?”

Doug smiled. He had always liked Marco's ex-girlfriend. She was smart, witty, and very, very sarcastic.

Marybeth's brother introduced her to a man who lived in the resort town all year. He was an ornithologist who made his money working for the Audubon Society collecting and recording data of rare or strange sightings. He was the one people called when they saw a pack of bald eagles or a white-tailed hawk south of the Mason-Dixon line. He recorded it and, if he judged it worthy, would send it to the national headquarters, where it would get published in the quarterly report of the Audubon Society. He was very interested in Marybeth and asked her about the bird population down south.

“Pelicans,” Marybeth said. “Seagulls.”

“I imagined you'd have a lot more color,” he told her. “Birds reflect their environment, you know.”

They were walking on the beach. The day was warm, but the water was still ice-cold, so they stayed up away from the tides. The parties were winding down, and Marybeth was beginning to worry about what would happen after Labor Day.

“Have you ever heard about people having webbed feet?” Marybeth suddenly turned to her neighbor. He was a small man. She could feel him looking at her all the time, and she found that she didn't mind his intense gaze.

“It's a sign of superior intelligence,” he told her, and she stared at him inquisitively to see if he was joking. As always, he seemed to be perfectly serious.

“Why?” he said. “Do you know someone who has webbed appendages?”

Marybeth was wearing tennis shoes, and she wiggled her toes and felt the wet rubber sole. “I used to,” she said, and took the man's hand. She found him strange but attentive. He was the only single man in the small resort town, and she liked the fact that he liked her.

Doug hadn't been to his old condominium in several weeks. Most of his things were moved out—he still had boxes in the storage area, but nothing he needed. He drove out one afternoon—the guard at the causeway tollbooth waved him through with barely a glance. There had been some building on Key Biscayne, but most of the island was quiet—the nightclubs and hotels had all closed down. Doug was surprised to see the same National Guardsman standing outside his complex. He was asleep—his head thrown back against the illuminated stone griffin—snoring loudly. Doug called out “Hey” at least five times before waking him.

“Sorry,” the guy said and stood slowly.

“Kind of dull out here?” Doug asked. The palm trees that had been knocked down during the storm had not been removed. Light-green foliage covered their long trunks like moss.

“Deadly,” the guy said. “I don't know why they bother with this post. Nothing happens. Nothing's going to happen.”

“Yeah,” Doug agreed, though he did not believe this. He looked to the ocean. Something silvery was washing in with the tide. It looked like it might be a manatee, and he kept watching as it moved closer to the shoreline. The turbulent waters had scared most of the marine life away, and fishermen were complaining that almost everything had moved into calmer areas north of Miami. Everything, that is, except the manatees, who clung to the seawall.

What rolled onto the beach was a garbage can. A silver alley can that had probably been floating in the bay since the day of the storm.

“I feel like I'm going to be standing here staring into space for the rest of my life,” the guy said and then groaned, as if this thought caused him great pain.

Doug did not agree with this at all. “Just wait,” he warned the guy. “Just you wait and see.” The last year had made him a firm believer in change. Given some time and enough destruction, Doug knew that almost anything could happen.

 

W
HICH MEANS THAT WE ARE
forty miles south of Erie, Pennsylvania, one hundred miles east of Cleveland, Ohio, and only about sixty feet from the bar where we are going to find Claire a new boyfriend. A minute ago Pete was driving us there, but now he and Evan are pushing a station wagon into the gas station. The owner of the car is the woman who runs the American Red Cross Society in Meadville. She knew she was low on gas, but tried to make it to the Boron station, the only place open on a Sunday here in this town of 20,000.

Claire sits quietly in the front seat watching them struggle up the incline that rises just before the gas pumps.

“Wouldn't it be easier if they just brought a gallon of gasoline to the car?” I ask. The heat vents blow out stale air and I sit back to avoid the draft.

“The guy who runs the station won't keep gas cans,” Claire says. “He's afraid people would steal them.” Claire knows most everything about everybody in Meadville.

“That's a pretty big car,” I say, though I'm really thinking that it's a stupid thing to run out of gas.

Claire turns around to face me. “Did Pete tell you he was going to break up with me?”

I shake my head.

“Did he say anything to Evan?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Would Evan tell you that kind of thing?” Claire is wearing makeup, the works—light brown eye shadow and rose lip liner. I want to tell her that she looks pretty, because she does. But she would think I was just having a pity party for her and would tell me it's not right to feel sorry for her.

“I don't know,” I say. Evan and I have only been dating for two months, and there's a lot I don't know about him.

“I mean, does he usually tell you things that Pete tells him?” Claire has a slight overbite—as if she has too many teeth in her mouth—which makes her whistle certain words. Sometimes I find myself imitating her.

But just at that minute, I can't think of what Evan and I talk about. Mostly we do things to keep ourselves busy. We go for long drives into the Pennsylvania countryside and buy things at the Amish markets we don't need and will never use. We drive fifty minutes to play pool at a roadside bar and eat microwaved chicken wings and cheddar cheese french fries cooked in vinegar. We spend time in Erie, in Cleveland, in Pittsbutgh, so we can remember that we are not from this small town, but are only working here. We try to convince ourselves that the teaching jobs we have at this small Methodist college are only temporary. We tell ourselves that we will not be doing this forever and we try to ignore the fact that we are beginning to act small-town.

But it's true. We are starting to act like the people in Mead-ville. Why else would I get so excited when I see yard sale signs? Why else would Evan go on a weeklong fishing trip with some locals when he's never fed a line before? And why else would Pete agree that it was his duty to find Claire a new boyfriend if he was going to break up with her? Why would someone not influenced by this small-town life promise he'd spend a whole day looking for his replacement? Pete says it's like some sort of drug got into his system, clouding his better judgment and making him do all kinds of things he wouldn't normally do.

Claire is from Meadville. I watch her as she looks out at the streets. Gray and dull, it has been raining since the start of the weekend. I try to imagine what Claire sees as she stares at this place that she has always called her home. Her family was old oil money—some of the original settlers who first discovered the stuff. They still live in the mansion on the hill overlooking the now-closed railroad station. At one time it must have reflected the opulence of this boomtown, but any glory has long ago faded. There is not even a memory of it.

“I wish he had told me sooner,” Claire complains. “It's almost summer. I don't want to spend the summer without a boyfriend.”

I agree with her, though I do not quite understand the significance of seasonal dating. Pete told me he's not really sure why he's breaking up with Claire. It has to do with everything, but mostly it has to do with the fact that he no longer enjoys spending time with her. And judging by the way she's acting right now—bossy and bitchy—I can see why he's not happy with their relationship.

“We better find someone today,” Claire says. “I mean it.”

And she does mean it. That's why we've agreed to spend the afternoon searching. She wants us all to give 100 percent in this search. Meadville's not that big a town, but there is a high concentration of bars. Or, as Claire calls them, places where potential prospects are at large.

Evan and Pete return, and the car instantly smells of their wet clothes and their perspiration. Evan gets in the backseat and apologizes as he brushes up next to me. I tell him I don't mind. There's something relaxing about our relationship. We don't have much to fight about—there's nothing to get stressed out about in Meadville. We have told each other that we love each other, but I think it's a given that we would not be going out together if the choice of mates were multiplied.

Pete starts the car. “Now we're ready,” he says. “Where to?” He asks as if we have not spent two hours at the diner deciding on the order of bars we'd be frequenting. Claire has them listed on a napkin.

“I told you,” Claire snaps. “We're going to Otter's first.”

“That's right. On to Otter's.” Pete toots the horn. A man on the street corner stares.

I see that Pete is struggling to start the day on a festive note, so I slide forward into the stale drafts of air and join the conversation.

“Which one is Otter's?” I ask Claire. The bar is only a block away, but I want to get the conversation rolling.