Mangrove Squeeze(45)

"Swear," said Aaron.

Stiffly, Piney rose up from the ground. "I wish I knew what I should do."

"She's okay?" said Aaron, still kneeling on the cool ground. "You know that she's okay?"

Piney probed his eyes. At last he said, "She's okay, sort of. Follow me. I hope I'm doing right."





"Oh, Christ," said Suki, "I look like hell."

Though the truth was that, in the dim and flickering light of three candles spread around the hot dog, she didn't look like much of anything. It could vaguely be seen that the fabric of her dress was puckered where it had been ripped and sewn. The swelling in her cheek was softened by the dimness, and the discolorations on her throat were the same deep greenish lavender as the rest of the shadows.

Aaron said, "Pineapple told me what happened. God Almighty."

Suki shook her head. "Lazslo. You hated his guts from the first time I mentioned him. Good judge of character."

Aaron said, "I was jealous, that's all. You've spoken to the cops?"

Suki looked away, blew air between her lips. "Don't know why I bothered. Their theory is I got attacked, my attacker got unlucky. By coincidence. The rest is my imagination."

"Bozo cops are on the take," said Fred. He was perched atop the propane fridge, and the under-lighting from the candles gave his face the smudges and furrows of a miner's face.

"Possible," said Suki. "Or maybe just your basic Key West blindness. Big things only happen from Miami north. Down here we're puny even in our criminals."

Aaron rubbed his chin. He hadn't got around to shaving that day and the sound of beard filled the small space of the hot dog. He said, "So what'll you do?"

Suki didn't have a good answer so she changed the subject. "Hey, I never apologized for standing you up ... I stood you up and you looked for me. I can't believe it."

"Why not?"

She looked at Aaron but then went back to the question before. "I guess I'll hide," she said. "Till I figure something out."

Aaron glanced around the wiener. "Hide here?"

"Here or sneak out of town and go back to Jersey. And that, I'd just as soon get strangled."

Pineapple was leaning against the pronged rotisserie. He said, "You stay right here as long as you want."

Suki shot back, "Not if it means you guys sleep outside."

Aaron pressed his lips together, twined and untwined his fingers. Life was a matter of holding back or plunging in. It was like that at each and every moment, but there were only rare occasions when the choice came quite so clear. He looked at Suki from under his eyebrows and finally he said, "I've got a whole empty guest house."

It took Suki a moment to realize what was being offered. She bit her lip, the upper one. She said, "I couldn't do that."

Aaron stood there in the candlelight, still tasting the words in his mouth. The words were dangerous and tasted salty.

"It's your business," Suki said, "your livelihood."

Aaron could not hold back a squirt of nervous laughter. "Believe me, it bears only very faint resemblance to a business."

"Thank you but forget about it, there's no way."

"Electricity. Hot showers."

Suki gazed off through the service window, gave in to a brief fantasy of endless suds cascading over her skin, a warm stream drumming on the tense place at the top of her spine. But then her aching throat clamped down, a thwarted sigh squeezed through it. "Aaron," she said, "it's not about hot showers. Don't you understand? They want me dead. I'm trouble."

"I do understand," he said, and meant it, though the truth was that the understanding, like a blood-red stain on cotton, was seeping into him only gradually.

They locked eyes and then she looked away. "I'm staying here. I have friends here."

Aaron did not take time to think about his customers' reaction to shoeless vagrants wandering the premises. He said, "Your friends could visit ... Besides—I'm not a friend?"

Suki started to smile but then it was erased. "What you are, Aaron ... I don't know what you are, and to tell the truth it sort of scares me."

Aaron drank that in but didn't answer.

Suki said, "It isn't fair to pull you into this."

Aaron had been hearing his own voice bouncing off the hot dog's fiber walls. "Sounds to me," he said, "like I'm asking to be pulled in."

Suki lifted her gaze toward him. Her irises had candles in them, and her face was a puzzle of bruise and shadow. She said, "Aaron, like your old man says, you are a mensch. But no, I'm staying here."





Chapter 22


Aaron chose the route along the ocean and drove home very slowly.