Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel Read Free Book Online Page A

right.”
    â€œWe’ll be fine.”
    â€œMaybe this isn’t a great idea.”
    â€œMaybe not. We’ll give it a shot.”
    â€œI haven’t seen him since they were married,” she said. “Really married, you know—dinner parties and that sort of thing. He was polite enough but didn’t smile. I talked with him once about a bridge he’d designed or engineered or I don’t know what, somewhere up the turnpike.” She smacked the car roof lightly. “Off you go, anyway.”
    At the bait and tackle shop, I handed the list to the man behind the counter, who looked surprised not at its existence, but at mine. He ignored Frankie, who stood close at my side. He said, “I was wondering when he’d run out of lures.” The man—his name tag said BILL —had skin that looked carved from rough, wet stone. He didn’t smile, but when he loaded the contents of the list into a bag, he said, “Tell Charlie we miss him out on the flats.” He delivered this line without meeting my eyes, in a way that conveyed he’d said it many times before, without much hope of ever seeing Charlie on the flats again.
    At the knitting store, several women sat in a huddle of armchairs, their hands working mechanically and their heads tipped, like a colony of birds. Frankie went to inspect a wall of cubbies filled with brightly dyed yarns heaped in soft figure-eights.
    Don’t touch , I signed. I didn’t have to sign, but in public I found myself doing it without thinking, for no other reason than to keep him company.
    He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his shorts emphatically, to make a point.
    One of the knitting women met me at the counter. When I handed her the list, she appraised me over cat-eye glasses. “Where’s the other guy?” she said.
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” I said.
    She looked back at the list, frowning. “More pea soup angora already? How’s that possible?”
    I didn’t answer.
    â€œI’m out of the medium-weight cactus flower. I’ll have it next time.” She started to hand back the list, then stopped and looked at me again. She had pink, gently sagging cheeks and a silver stripe in her black hair. “I find it interesting, this list.” Her tone was confidential. “Sometimes more of one thing, less of another.”
    â€œI saw it for the first time this morning,” I said.
    After I paid, Frankie and I walked to the print shop, one block away in a different strip mall. We passed a small, crowded diner, outside of which men and women in suits smoked cigarettes and chatted, waiting for a table. Inside, people sat shoulder to shoulder on benches at stainless steel tables. A few doors down, the print shop was bookended by empty storefronts with FOR LEASE signs in the windows. I was struck by Miami’s easy relationship with contradiction, economic upswing and downturn jumbled together. In other cities, there seemed to be ways to predict which homes would sell, which restaurants would close. Maybe there were Miamians who could predict these things, but whenever I hazarded a guess, I was wrong.
    Even after walking only a block, the air-conditioning was a relief. Frankie’s hair was too long for this weather. Dark, leafy chunks were pasted to his forehead, and his cheeks were bright pink. He peered over the counter at the maze of industrial printers being manned by gum-smacking teenagers, their faces glowing with each pass of the developer under the glass.
    Mr. Henry Gale was in the back. I asked for him, and the man who emerged was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a voluminous dark beard that covered most of his face—an un-Floridian beard, was my thought. He wore a short-sleeved plaid button-down and long shorts with a surfeit of many-size pockets, an oatmeal-colored waist apron, and leather sandals. This man, with his ruddy cheeks and easy stroll, was clearly not a