Chapter 42 Mickey #3
“Stormy asked to go. He texted me ten minutes ago and said ‘can I go check on Benji?’ He didn’t say ‘should I’ or ‘do you think I should.’ He said ‘can I?’ That’s Stormy asking for permission to do something he’s already decided to do.
I’ve learned to recognize the difference.
When Stormy asks ‘should I,’ he wants my input.
When Stormy asks ‘can I?’ the decision is already made. ”
“Oh, Jesus,” I say. “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”
Five minutes later I see Stormy walking down the beach toward the towels with careful steps like the sand is a surface that can’t be trusted. He reaches them. Benji glances up and I can see the surprise on his face. Then he jumps up and hugs Stormy, a full hug, arms around him.
They stand there and talk. Stormy’s body language is stiff, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted.
Benji’s hands are moving. The conversation lasts five minutes.
Then Stormy turns and walks back toward the building.
His head is down and his steps are quicker than before.
He disappears into the building. We watch and wait for him to come upstairs and tell us what’s going on.
“Wonder what’s taking so long?” Tex asks. He’s leaning forward in the armchair now, the pork rinds forgotten.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s been inside long enough. Maybe I should text him.”
“Give him a minute,” I say. “He’ll be up in a second.”
Then we see Stormy walking back out on the beach. He’s changed clothes and now he’s wearing pink swim trunks.
Tex leans forward in the armchair. “That’s weird,” he says.
“Those are his pink trunks. The ones he almost drowned in when he got caught in the rip current. I thought he threw those away.” He shakes his head.
“I’ve been trying to get him back in the water for a year.
Begging, bribing, standing in the surf holding out my hand to him.
He won’t go past his ankles for me. He’s still too scared. ”
Stormy walks across the sand. Benji sees him coming.
He jumps up from the towel, runs toward him and throws his arms around him again.
Dante watches from the towel but doesn’t get up.
Then Benji runs into the water. He’s waist-deep, laughing, waving Stormy in.
Dante is still on the towel. He pours himself more rosé and leans back on his elbows to watch.
Stormy stands at the edge of the surf. The water touches his feet and he doesn’t move back. He stands there for a long time. Benji doesn’t reach for him. Then Stormy walks in.
One step at a time, the water rising from his ankles to his shins to his knees to his waist, until he’s standing next to Benji in the Gulf of Mexico in the pink trunks he almost drowned in.
Benji doesn’t grab his hand. Benji just grins at him and then lightly splashes water at his chest. Stormy flinches and then splashes back laughing.
I look at Tex. His eyes are wet. The pork rind bag is being crushed in his fist and he doesn’t know he’s doing it.
“Hey, Tex?”
He doesn’t turn from the window.
“Who’s laughing now, huh?”
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. Fast, like he’s ashamed of getting emotional over Stormy being brave.
“Not a word, Mickey.”
“I’ve sat through an hour of David Attenborough commentary. An hour of pork rinds and nature documentaries. And now you’re crying into the jalapeno bag because Stormy’s in the water?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Your face is wet.”
“It’s the humidity.”
“Your face was dry when you were making fun of me.”
“That’s because your situation was funny.
My situation is not funny. My situation involves Stormy in the water for the first time in a year.
And he’s being playful. He’s laughing and playing with a new friend.
Stormy never got to play when he was kid.
There was no playing going on in Stormy’s life.
And now I’m watching it happen from a window and I can’t be down there and—” He stops. He looks at me. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“So, this is what it feels like,” he says.
“This is exactly what it feels like.”
He sits back in the armchair. He looks at the crushed pork rind bag in his fist, opens it and a crumble of jalapeno dust falls on his jeans.
“Mickey, I owe you an apology for the last two hours.”
“You owe me several apologies. But we can start with one.”
Dante sets down the rosé, stands up from the towel, and walks into the water. Benji and Stormy are laughing. Dante is floating on his back nearby in those swim shorts. They’re on my beach being exactly who they are.
“So, what are we going to do about Dante?” I ask.
“What do you mean by ‘we’? I don’t need to do anything about Dante.”
“He’s in our inner circle now. Dante comes with Benji. That’s the package. You don’t get one without the other eventually showing up.”
Tex scratches his beard. “In that case, I don’t know what we do about Dante.
Because as we both know, there is absolutely nobody on the Florida Panhandle who can go head-to-head with that man.
He is in a whole different league. He’s operating on a level that this coast has never seen.
I don’t even know what category to put him in.
My categories are biker, tourist, regular, and trouble.
Dante is none of those things. Dante is a new category that I haven’t built a shelf for yet. ”
“You’re right and that’s the issue.”
“Look at him down there though,” Tex says, nodding toward the water.
“He just walked in like he’d been invited.
Didn’t make a fuss. Didn’t crowd Stormy.
Just showed up and fit.” He’s quiet for a second.
“Most people don’t know how to be around Stormy.
They try too hard or they don’t try at all.
That one just walked in the water and stood there. ”
“Benji’s like that too.”
“Yeah. But he’s had time to get used to Benji.
” He looks at the crushed pork rind bag.
“I should be nothing but happy about all of it. And I am. But there’s a small, stupid part of me that wanted to be the one who got him in that water.
That’s not Stormy’s problem. That’s mine.
Storm is having fun. He needs more of that in his life. ”
Benji and Dante start packing the towels and the cooler. Stormy has already peeled off toward the building. Dante carries the cooler toward the parking lot. Benji hangs back and doesn’t follow.
He turns and looks up at my window. He stands there for five seconds, looking straight at the glass that he can’t see through but knows I’m behind. Then he picks up the last towel, shakes off the sand, and walks away.
Tex leaves for the bar. He squeezes my shoulder on the way to the elevator.
“Go tonight and fix this,” he says. “Don’t wait for morning. Don’t wait for his phone to turn on. Don’t wait for permission. Find out where he’s staying and go knock on the door.”
“His phone is off. Dante won’t tell me where he is.”
“Then figure it out. You’re a cop. You figure things out for a living. This is the most important case you’ve ever worked and the evidence is a man in coral trunks who just drove away. Do your job. Investigate.”
The doors close and he’s gone.
I take the elevator down. The bar is opening. Sheila is behind the taps. Stormy is at the end of the bar, hair still damp, back in his regular clothes, restocking glasses how he does every evening.
I wheel up beside him. “Stormy.”
He turns. His face is calm but his eyes are doing the quick Stormy scan, reading the room in two seconds.
“What did Benji say?”
“He said nobody puts Benji in a corner,” Stormy says. “I’m not sure what he meant by that. And he said that you’re ashamed of him.” He pauses. “He said a lot of other things but that was the most important.”
Nobody puts Benji in a corner.
Stormy turns back to the glasses. He reaches for a pint glass, polishes it, sets it on the rack. He’s done. The information has been delivered and Stormy is finished. Then he stops and his hand rests on the glass. He turns back around.
“Oh,” he says. “And he said to tell you he should’ve left the first time Sheila asked him to.”
He walks away through the kitchen door and he’s gone. Stormy has no idea he just gutted me.
The first time Sheila asked him to leave was when the four men were getting rowdy, looking Benji’s way and he refused to leave.
He’s saying that everything since that moment — the hospital, the cream, the whole thing between us — was a mistake.
I need to talk to Benji. Maybe he’ll take my call now. I pick up my phone. I don’t call Dante. Dante already told me no once and he doesn’t change his mind.
I call Benji. It goes to voicemail. His voice, bright and fast, from a version of him that isn’t hurting. “Hey, it’s Benji! Leave me something interesting or don’t bother. Bye!”
I don’t leave a message. What I need to say doesn’t fit in a voicemail.
Instead, I sit at the bar and wait for morning. Not the way I waited last night. This time I’m working a case. And when I find him, I’m not going to say the right thing. I’m going to do the right thing.
Words got me here. Words won’t get me out.