“I don’t want to know!” Mary Bliss shouted, clamping her hands over her ears again.
“You asked,” Katharine said, shrugging. “Come on, let’s go try out that fiesta breakfast. I’m starved.”
“Won’t that look bad? If we’re seen together?” Mary Bliss asked. Not that she could eat. Her stomach was doing flip-flops. Even the Metamucil was upsetting it.
“You’re right,” Katharine said reluctantly. “Want me to bring you something? Huevos rancheros, something like that?”
Mary Bliss clutched her abdomen and groaned.
“Never mind,” Katharine said. “Coke and soda crackers, right?”
“Right.”
At nine-thirty Mary Bliss got dressed. Bathing suit, a white cotton cover-up, and sandals. She put her gear in a canvas tote bag. At nine thirty-five there was a knock on the connecting door.
“About damn time,” Mary Bliss said, unlocking and opening it.
“Huh?” Dinky Davis stood in the doorway, shirtless, his hairy paunch flopping over the waistband of a pair of gaudy yellow-and-orange flowered print surfer shorts. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses, his rattail was tucked up under a broad-brimmed straw planter’s hat, and he wore a pair of bright-blue scuba flippers on his feet.
“Good Lord!” Mary Bliss exclaimed, clapping her hand over her mouth as soon as the words popped out.
Dinky yawned and scratched his chest. “Hey. You seen Jezebel? She was supposed to bring me another beer.”
“Another? It’s not even ten o’clock. How many have you had already?” Mary Bliss heard the shrillness in her own voice, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Just the two,” Dinky said, stepping into her room and looking around. “You got a problem with that?”
Actually, she did have a problem with it. She had a problem with having this strange man in her hotel room—her bedroom, if it came right down to it.
She glanced down at her watch. “We pick up the boat in fifteen minutes. Where the hell is she?”
Dinky scratched his crotch lovingly. “She’ll be back.”
Mary Bliss blushed and looked away. “We’ll have to do something about your clothes.”
“Like what?” he asked. “Jezebel said we were supposed to look like we’re going scuba diving.”
“That’s right,” Mary Bliss said. “You’re supposed to look like my husband. But you’re dressed all wrong. Parker would never wear a pair of shorts like that.”
“No problem,” Dinky said. He reached down and yanked the drawstring on the flowered trunks. They slid down around his ankles and he tried to step out of them, but the flippers got caught up in the trunks and he stumbled and sprawled out on the tile floor.
“Fuck!” Dinky muttered.
“Hello!” Katharine said brightly, stepping through the open connecting doors. She looked down at Dinky, bare-assed, tangled up in the flowered trunks on Mary Bliss’s bedroom floor, and back at Mary Bliss, who could not take her eyes off Dinky.
“I see you two have met,” Katharine said, handing Mary Bliss a bottle of Coke and a package of crackers.
“I see what you mean,” Mary Bliss said, nodding toward Dinky, who had extricated himself from the trunks by removing the flippers.
“She doesn’t like my pants,” Dinky said, standing up again. He planted a noisy kiss on Katharine’s cheek. “Hey. Where’s my beer?”
“It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that Parker wouldn’t wear anything like that,” Mary Bliss said hastily, from the bathroom where she had fled.
“She’s got a point there,” Katharine told Dinky, tossing him a towel. “Sorry. No more beer. It’s show time.”
“Fuck,” Dinky said. He wrapped the towel loosely around his waist.
Mary Bliss went to her suitcase and handed Dinky the stack of clothes she’d packed back in Atlanta.
“Here,” she said. “Put these on.”
Dinky let go of the towel and it slid to the floor. He held up first a pair of pink-and-white striped seersucker Brooks Brothers swim trunks, and then a pink Polo golf shirt. “You’re kiddin’, right?”
“She’s serious,” Katharine said. “As a heart attack. Now get dressed.”
“Jezebel? Could you come in here for a minute?” Mary Bliss was hiding in the bathroom again.
She slammed the door shut behind Katharine and locked it for good measure.
“We’ve got to call it off. This is not going to work,” Mary Bliss whispered, her voice fierce. “Did you see him out there? There’s something bad wrong with that man.”
“Of course there’s something wrong with him,” Katharine said, laughing. “He’s got a dinky little wee-wee. I told you that already.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mary Bliss said. “He’s definitely drunk. And possibly stoned. He can’t even put on a pair of pants right. And he looks nothing like Parker McGowan. We can’t go through with this. We’ll get caught and I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life. And Erin will end up in some foster home…”
“Calm down,” Katharine said. “Middle-aged white women from Fair Oaks do not go to prison. Everything will be fine. You just stay right here and drink your Coke and eat your soda crackers. And when I call, you come look. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
Mary Bliss put the lid down on the commode, sat down as she was told to, and took a deep breath and a sip of Coke. She took a tentative bite of cracker and tried to think positive thoughts.
“All right,” Katharine called finally.
Mary Bliss opened the door.
“Ta-da!” Katharine said, clapping her hands and pointing at Dinky. “Meet the new Parker McGowan.”
“Not bad,” Mary Bliss said, circling Dinky. “Not bad at all.”
The former Dinky Davis had been transformed. There was no sign of the drunken, nude lout who had sprawled on the floor of this room only minutes earlier. In his place stood a somewhat nattily attired Atlanta businessman, ready for a day of Mexican water sports. On his head he wore a white panama hat with a green Master’s golf tournament hatband. The pink shirt was stretched a little tightly over the belly, but it was neatly tucked into the pink-and-white-striped shorts. On his feet he wore a pair of new-looking Topsiders. The expensive mirrored sunglasses reflected the surprise in Mary Bliss’s eyes.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, circling him again. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think…”
“Never mind,” Katharine said. “It’s five after ten. Get out of here. The boat should be down at the dock.”
She gave Dinky a stern look. “You know the plan—right?”
He scratched his crotch and tried to look bored. “Right. My motor-bike is hidden down the beach. I swim in to shore, ditch the clothes, meet you back in town tonight, pick up the rest of my money.”
“What about the scuba gear?” Katharine prompted.
“Oh yeah. I was gonna say about that. I leave a flipper and my mask and air hose in the water.”
“And forget we ever met,” Mary Bliss prompted.
“After I get my money,” Dinky said.