Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,42

far end of the dock. In the spot where we’d last seen the white package, there was a splash. Something sliced through the water’s surface and submerged: a black fin. A second later, the water was empty and still.

“That was way too big for a nurse shark,” said Paul.

“Just what we need in this channel,” I said. “A great white on cocaine.” At this, what had been pulling at us seemed to snap, and we laughed. Paul went to the boat to get another pair of binoculars, and I went upstairs to make lunch.

That night, we played poker in the living room after supper. It was Marse’s idea—she said it would take her mind off her sunburn. We sat on couch cushions around the coffee table. We drank red wine and talked about Dennis and Marse’s fishing trip—they’d caught three snappers and a grouper, all of which we grilled for supper—and about what Paul and I had seen. The morning’s drama appeared to have reached its conclusion, and we were resigned to never knowing the contents of the package or its intended recipient. Marse suggested we tell the Coast Guard about the shark—wouldn’t people want to know there was a large shark in the bay?—but Paul said maybe it wasn’t as large as it seemed, and Dennis said it probably had gone straight back out to sea, where it came from. There was a lot of conjecture about what drug would most tempt a shark, and what kind of shark it most likely was, black tip or bull or lemon. I wondered if the incident should make me feel less safe in the water, but in the end, I felt it was just something that had happened and would not happen again. I was glad that we would all return to Miami with a story to tell.

We were so far from shore, so far from civilization. There was only the slap of the waves, so steady that the sound disappeared into the atmosphere the way cricket cries do in summertime, leaving human sounds to punctuate the night: laughter, jeers, the sliding of cards and change across the coffee table. Paul won fourteen dollars and I won eight. “What do you say we make a run for it?” said Paul. His eyebrows were thick and dark in the candlelight; the swells of his face cast shadows on the hollows.

“Don’t mind him,” said Marse, slapping his thigh. “Just say, ‘Down, boy,’ and he’ll behave.” She stood and yawned with her arms over her head. We all watched her; the moment expanded. “Bedtime,” she said. I went to help her move the mattresses. When I came into the bedroom, she said, “Maybe we should split up for tonight. Would you mind if we slept on the porch? Or you two could sleep out there and we could take the master?”

Her tone was aloof. I said, “We’ll take the big bedroom, and you take the porch. It’s no problem.”

“Good.” She pulled a mattress from the bed and turned it on its side, then started to drag it across the linoleum toward the doorway. I was in her way, so I moved, and though she looked as if she could use some help, her manner suggested that she did not want any. At the door, she stopped and her shoulders sagged.

“Marse?”

She tipped the mattress over and it landed with a soft thump. “Paul can deal with this,” she said. She left the room and I stood there alone, wanting to pick up the mattress but knowing I shouldn’t. In the few years I’d known her, this was the second time I’d stood in that very room feeling as if I’d stolen something from her. I hadn’t, of course—not really. Not the first time, with Dennis, and not now, with Paul, who I assumed flirted with all of his friends’ wives. Nevertheless, I was astonished to find myself back in this situation. I thought, I’m not even the pretty one. This was not false modesty. In a room full of men, nine out of ten would have chosen Marse over me for a fling or more. She was thinner, with a more fashionable hairstyle and better clothes, and she was more self-confident. For whatever reason—and I don’t deny that it might have been something I was doing, some competitiveness I didn’t want to acknowledge—I’d attracted, twice, men she’d claimed as hers. And I knew that if I wasn’t very, very careful, I would lose her over