Sunburn(42)

After a while she noticed that a police car had been cruising past again and again, pausing a moment in front of her each time. Now she met the eye of the cop on the passenger side, and the bleak condescension in his gaze made her realize something galling. My God, she thought, they think I'm a whore.

The mute accusation made her mad and also made her feel ridiculous, pathetic, lonely and exposed as a lighthouse on a single rock. A tourist with no one to talk to and nowhere to go. A woman ditched by her date, an easy object of false pity and true scorn. It was after ten and she was furious.

The alcohol was wearing off, it left in its wake a groggy edginess, a grouchiness as from an interrupted nap. Where the hell was he? She opened her purse. She had no credit cards and about a hundred dollars in mad money. If ever there was a time for mad money, this was it—but what would her lousy hundred bucks do for her? It wouldn't get her to New York; in this neighborhood it wouldn't even get her a hotel room. Besides, if Gino came back and couldn't find her, what then?

Frustration made her face flush hot, she wished to her soul she had never met Gino Delgatto.

The wish made her feel guilty. There was something murderous in it, some impulse not just to escape the boyfriend but to undo him, erase him, blot him out. She made amends for the evil thought by letting herself realize she was worried.

By eleven she was very worried and by midnight she was panicked. Gino did dangerous things with dangerous people. She knew that. She didn't let herself think about it very much, but she knew it.

By 1 a.m. the procession on Ocean Drive was just beginning to slacken, the crowd at Bar Toscano just starting to thin. Debbi wandered back across the street, sat down at a table near the rail, and ordered a double cappuccino. She nursed it unharassed till four; then the place closed up and she went back to her bench.

An exhausted numbness had set in against the sinister sparseness of the predawn hours. Homeless people drifted by with shopping carts stacked up with tin cans, beach toys, shoes; furtive men, their blank eyes on the sidewalk, stole glances at her breasts before slipping off to the shrubbery to masturbate. Debbi was afraid to sleep but now and then she briefly dozed—her nodding head would trip a trigger in her neck and she would jerk herself awake. Around six, day began to break. The sky floated free of the black ocean; the palms, heavy with night, showed their slack outlines against the faint horizon. A hazy orange sun came up from out beyond the Gulf Stream.

At exactly seven Debbi went to a pay phone, took from her purse a piece of notepaper from the Flagler House, and dialed the only person she could think to call in Florida.

Sandra reached out blindly toward her night table and picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"

"I hope I didn't wake you."

"Debbi?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

Sandra tried to rouse herself, came up on an elbow. Joey gave a little grunt and seemed to will himself back to sleep. Soft light filtered through the thin bedroom curtains. "Where are you?"

Debbi paused a moment because she could feel her throat clamping shut and the tears simmering behind her itchy eyes. She bit her lip, swallowed hard, but still her voice caught when she said, "Miami Beach."

"Lemme change phones," said Sandra. She slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen.

When she returned ten minutes later, she was carrying coffee mugs. Joey was awake. He'd propped himself on pillows and put on his blue-lensed sunglasses to ease the shock of the early light. "Who was 'at?" he asked.

Sandra sat down near her husband and stroked his hair before she answered. "Debbi. Gino dropped her off in South Beach yesterday and didn't come back to get her."

Joey reached for his coffee but didn't drink, just held the mug in front of him and looked past the rising steam at the window. He knew his brother was a shit with women, but the knot in his gut was telling him that Debbi's stranding meant something else entirely. Guys who lived like Gino—they had to believe that some rogue saint was looking out for them, deflecting bullets, bending enemies' knives. At the same time, somewhere at the bottom of their brains, they had to know that they were diddling death, heading crotch first toward the buzz saw.

"Where'd he go?" asked Joey. "Who'd he see?"

"She doesn't seem to know," said Sandra. "She was rambling. She's very tired and very scared."

Joey pulled a deep breath in, pushed it out, sipped some coffee. "The old man," he said. "Jesus." He shook his head and let it go at that.

"I told her to get a cab and come down here," said Sandra.

Joey just nodded.

"Look," said his wife, "why don't we try to keep it to ourselves for now, give it some time. Maybe he'll turn up, maybe he'll call."