Southbound Page 4

  I walked around my empty house sort of aimlessly for a while, waiting for the rain to stop so I could go out and get some dinner. After a couple of weeks out of town, I was definitely in the mood for some of the delicious Cuban food I’d been missing--and which you could get all over town in Key West.

  My phone rang. It was Ben.

  “Hey,” I said, once the line connected.

  “Hey, I assume you’re back at the house, right?”

  I nodded, even though obviously Ben wouldn’t be able to see me. “Yeah, just got in about half an hour ago.”

  “Thought I heard Roscoe losing his mind,” Ben commented. “How was the trip?”

  “Not bad at all,” I said. “Met an interesting girl on the plane down from Charlotte. Here to lay her Grandma to rest.”

  “Sounds more sad than interesting,” Ben pointed out, and I grinned wryly at how apt that was. He wasn’t wrong.

  “She’s interesting,” I told him. “I gave her my number, but I doubt she’ll call—her mind is on her grandmother.”

  “Maybe you’ll run into her on the island,” Ben suggested. “It’s been long enough since…”

  “Maybe,” I said, interrupting him. “I’m not looking for anything other than maybe to help her if she needs it.”

  “Jeannie said if you want to come over and have a beer to decompress, there are some Coronas in the fridge and she picked the lime tree clean this afternoon.”

  I thought about it. “I think I’m just going to get some takeout lechon asado, beans and rice, and maybe a cafecito and call it a night,” I told him finally. “I’m not feeling up to being company tonight.”

  “Well, come over tomorrow, then,” Ben suggested.

  “That’ll work for me,” I agreed.

  “Looking forward to seeing you, man,” Ben told me. “Can’t wait to hear about the new business ventures.”

  I laughed and shook my head. Ben had taken an early semi-retirement at age thirty-five, and ran a business from his house, similar to how I did most of my work. His girlfriend, Jeannie, worked part-time as a tour guide, taking tourists to the “haunted” spots in Key West. They’d been the most welcoming people in the neighborhood when I’d moved in, though most of the people I’d met on the island had been really nice; it was a small town with a cosmopolitan feel, thanks to being a refuge for Cubans, the gay community, and all kinds of social misfits. There were some traditionalists who lived here, old school Southern types, but most of them got along pretty well.

  “Not much to tell at this point,” I said. “But I’ll update you and Jeannie while Roscoe tries to catch a fish.” Ben and Jeannie had a dock in their backyard, which Roscoe loved to stand on and use to attempt to hunt the fish moving around underneath it. Thus far he’d never managed to catch one--but that never seemed to stop him.

  “Have a good one, man,” Ben said, and I returned the thought before ending the call.

  I found Roscoe’s leash and collar and called him out of the yard, into the house. It had finally, finally stopped raining, so it was as good a time as any to get out and grab some food before it decided to start up again. Roscoe and I headed out.

  As I walked, I pushed the thought of Aspen out of my mind--I probably wouldn’t hear from her the whole time she was on the island, and if I ran into her, in spite of how small the town was, it would be lucky. She was, I thought, a woman on a mission: she would be too busy to do anything for at least a few days to even notice anything else about the town. If she did get in touch, I could at least help her have some good times. But until then, I wouldn’t think of her.

  Chapter Six

  Aspen

  I felt like a drowned rat by the time I got to the counter for the rental car company I’d reserved with--I’d followed some bogus directions to go outside, instead of looking around for the interior desks. Fortunately, my luggage was still mostly dry.

  “Wow, you look terrible,” the car rental clerk said, eyeing me up and down.

  “It’s been kind of a long day,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral and friendly as possible. “I have a reservation for a car.”

  “Of course! Do you have the confirmation number?”

  I took out my phone and rattled it off, and when I looked up there was a hand towel dangling off of the edge of the rental car desk, branded with the rental company logo.

  “Thanks,” I said, and the woman nodded absently as she finished typing in the number I’d given her. I mopped my face and patted my body down, which helped things, but my clothes would end up being damp for a while longer--I’d just have to accept it.

  My phone buzzed; the number was from the hotel I’d reserved at. Probably checking to see if I’m headed to them still, I thought. I let it roll over to voicemail so I could focus on getting my car, first.

  “Oh. Oh god,” the bleach-blond woman said, her face falling. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Ms. Blake.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  The woman on the other side of the counter, whose nametag read Jessica, grimaced again. “The car you reserved was supposed to be in earlier today, but someone must have approved a rental extension,” she said. “We are so sorry.”

  “Okay--what does that mean?”

  “We can give you another car for an upcharge,” she suggested.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me that you expect me to pay for you screwing up?”

  “I know--it’s a terrible policy,” she said, cringing. “It’s just that we don’t keep as much inventory at this location because it’s a small airport, not a lot of demand. And the only cars we have available right now are all premium cars.”

  I sighed. “Since it’s your error...not, you know, you personally, but whoever approved the extension, shouldn’t there be some kind of override for the extra charge?”

  “There would be, and the manager would probably know it, but he isn’t here and I don’t have the right code,” she explained.

  I sighed again. It was still pouring outside, and I wanted more than anything to get to the hotel, get out of my wet clothes, and maybe figure out where I would get some dinner.

  “What else can you do?” I crossed my arms over my chest, thinking absently that this was far from the best opening that my trip could have taken. Technically, it started out well, considering the cute guy that chatted you up, the optimistic part of my brain countered. But Gage was long gone--I would have to deal with this on my own.

  “It’s definitely going to be returned tomorrow,” Jessica told me. “What I can offer you is that once it’s turned in, we can get it cleaned and serviced and deliver it to the hotel you’re staying at.”

  I thought about that for a moment. How much would it really matter if I didn’t have a car my first night on the island? It wasn’t like it was huge--and early on, I would probably want to stick close to the hotel anyway. From what I’d read of Grandma’s journals, there were restaurants and coffee shops close by almost no matter where you were on Key West.

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “Anything else you can do for me?”

  She pressed her lips together and thought for a moment. “There’s one code I know, and I can maybe get approval for it when my manager gets in tomorrow morning,” she said. “I can have us pay for your cab to wherever it is you’re going—our company generally has a pickup service, but since the island is so small…”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. I decided to check my voicemail while Jessica organized my transportation to the hotel. Well, on the plus side I won’t have to drive in this storm, I thought as I stepped aside and took out my phone once more to check my voicemail.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Blake,” the message from someone at the hotel said. “Unfortunately, I’m calling with bad news.”

  “Because I need more of that,” I muttered to myself.

  “There was a plumbing incident on the third floor of the building, and about half of the rooms on the second floor were affected. Your room--I’m sad to say--was one of them,
and we’re going to need about a day to get things right.”

  So, after all my planning, I had neither a car nor a hotel room.

  The message went on. “Of course, we’ll be more than happy to refund you for the evening you won’t be with us, and we’re also happy to offer you complimentary room service for the remainder of your stay with us. Please give us a call back to confirm.”

  I closed out the call and turned around to find that Jessica was finishing up ordering my cab.

  “I might need you to cancel that,” I said with a sigh. “Or at least postpone it. Apparently, the hotel I was staying in had some issue, too--so I have nowhere to stay tonight.”

  “I might be able to help you,” Jessica said. “Unofficially, of course. What kind of budget do you have?”

  “It would just be for one night--or at least I hope so,” I said. “I can probably do anything.”

  “I have a friend who runs a motel close to here, the Silver Coconut,” Jessica explained. “I can call her and see if she has a room available.”

  I almost sighed with relief. “That would be amazing, thank you.”

  I sat down and waited for her to make the call, and as Jessica chatted her friend up, I thought again about Gage. He couldn’t have known that everything would go swiftly wrong for me at my arrival, and I considered calling and asking for his help--but he was a stranger. I might think about it if I couldn’t come up with anything on my own, or if Jessica wasn’t able to get me a motel room for the night.

  “Okay, it’s all set up,” Jessica said, hanging up the phone and turning to me. “I’ve got a taxi that should be outside in the next few minutes--you can wait where there’s an overhang--and my friend is holding a room for you at the Silver Coconut Motel, a few blocks away from here. We should be able to drop your rental off there sometime in the morning.”

  Despite a few little issues, everything seemed to be working out.

  “You are amazing, Jessica,” I told her. “If you have some kind of survey you can send me, I would love to sing your praises in it.”

  Jessica laughed. “They’re automatically generated, but hopefully you get one,” she said. She gave me some paperwork for the rental the next day, and I went outside to catch the taxi to my new motel--for that night, if not for the rest of my stay in the Keys.

  The Silver Coconut was at least clean, even if it was slightly run-down looking, and the cab driver carried my bags in for me without making a peep of complaint, so I made sure to tip him ten dollars over his fare.

  The woman at the front desk must have been Jessica’s friend, because as soon as I mentioned my name, her eyes widened slightly and she gave me a sympathetic smile. “I can tell you as a long-time resident of Key West this is not the kind of welcome we would want to give you--but of course, being Key West, these are the kinds of things that inevitably seem to happen around here.”

  “I’m just glad that Jessica was able to help me out so much,” I said.

  “Luckily for you, it isn’t quite season, so we can give you a good rate on the room,” she said. “Sixty-five for the night isn’t too bad, is it?”

  I still had a little less than a hundred thousand dollars to my name, and I’d have two hundred thousand more within a week, from the sale of Grandma’s house.

  “I can afford that,” I told the woman. She checked me in and had her teenage son come downstairs to help me with my luggage, even though I insisted I didn’t need the help.

  “Don’t tip him,” the woman told me firmly. “He works here for his allowance, and this week he isn’t allowed any tips because I caught him smoking with friends.”

  I promised that I wouldn’t tip the boy, who looked a little sullen at the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to get extra cash from me, and followed him to an old, creaky elevator.

  By the next morning I was kind of glad that I was only staying at the motel for one night. While the place was clean, the people in the next room spent most of the night having loud--and from the sounds of it, fairly odd and inventive--sex, and when I went down to get a drink from the vending machine, I encountered a bachelor party made up of gay men; while they were respectful, they definitely looked a little wild and rowdy, covered in drag makeup and wearing bras over their clothes.

  Then I dug in to my breakfast, chomping on bacon, sipping my mimosa. An old song came on over the stereo system--something from the sixties, but not a major hit--and the melody or lyrics triggered a memory. There was something familiar-seeming about this place, even though I had clearly never been to the restaurant before. I opened up my purse and found my grandma’s journal from her first trip to Key West, then opened it up and skimmed the pages.

  I smiled to myself. Grandma had eaten at Pepe’s for much the same reasons I had, during her first trip to the island. It was the same place--there was a sign that proudly proclaimed it had been open since 1909. I was already beginning to follow in her footsteps. Smiling to myself, I put the journal away so I wouldn’t risk spilling anything on it, then finished up my breakfast.

  A fresh group of people were heading in to get tables before breakfast would stop being served as I was leaving, and as I walked out toward my car I spotted a familiar face: Gage. My heart gave a little jump and I must have been feeling extra nostalgic from Grandma’s journal, thinking about fate and kismet, before I shut those thoughts down. It wasn’t like the island was all that big, and anyway, this place had been here since 1909. It was probably pretty popular with the locals, too.

  “Aspen! Small world,” Gage said when his gaze landed on me.

  I smiled at him; he looked even better in the bright, late-morning sun than he had on the plane. He was dressed in jeans and a work shirt, his hair just as tousled-looking as before. He looked put-together and casual all at the same time, and I wondered what he thought of me in my skirt and blouse.

  “Yeah,” I said as we approached each other. “I thought I’d get a bit to eat, and it turns out my grandma ate here during her first trip to the Keys, too.”

  “I see you got your car,” Gage said, nodding to my rental.

  “This morning,” I informed him. “And I’m finally going to check in at my hotel in a couple of hours--they had to take care of some kind of plumbing issue last night, so I stayed at a different motel.”

  “Well, if you have time to kill, I could give you a quick tour of the island,” Gage said.

  I shook my head. “Nah, you’re just getting here, and obviously you were planning on having something to eat,” I pointed out. “I kind of like to wander on my own anyway, at least when I first arrive somewhere.”

  He gave me a slightly lingering look and then nodded his agreement. “Just remember: I’m available if you need any help with anything.”

  A woman at one of the tables called, “Gage! I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  Gage looked in that direction and aimed an absent wave at whoever it had been.

  “I’ll come say hello in a minute, Carla,” he said over his shoulder, then looked at me intently. “Seriously, though, if you need anything at all. Key West can get a bit pricey--and a bit weird--if you haven’t been here before and don’t know where to go.”

  “I’ll definitely get in touch if I get out of my depth,” I promised him.

  Someone else called out a greeting to Gage. He seemed to be pretty well-known and well-liked, even if the town wasn’t exactly big to begin with.

  “I’ll let you go on your way, then,” Gage said. “What’d you end up having?” He gestured to the restaurant.

  “Eggs Benedict, a mimosa, and some coffee,” I replied.

  Gage grinned. “I think I’ll have the same,” he said. “Been a while since I had a good eggs Benny.”

  I smiled and then we parted ways, and I had to admit that I was pretty sure I would contact him at some point during my stay on the island. Even if I wasn’t looking for anything from a guy, he seemed to be a good guy, and I could probably not do much better for finding some of the m
ore obscure places in Grandma’s journals than asking a local.

  I got into my car and decided to wander the island before going to the hotel to check in.

  Chapter Seven

  Gage

  Once Aspen left to explore the island, I went into Pepe’s to get some breakfast before they started serving lunch. It had been a while since I had thought about women--at least, since I’d thought about them the way I could feel myself thinking about Aspen. I’d been too focused on other things.

  “Gage, when did you get back?” Carla asked as I went into the restaurant. She stood at the counter, wiping up a pile of spilled salt.

  “Just got in last night,” I told her, looking around for my usual spot. It wasn’t empty yet, but I was okay with waiting for a bit.

  “How’s the wheeling-dealing going?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “The same, I guess.”

  “Buying up more of this island?”

  I chuckled a bit. “I don’t own much of it.”

  “Yet,” Carla said with a raise of her eyebrows.

  I got my normal spot and sat down with the menu, in spite of the fact that I fully intended to have exactly what Aspen had ordered--except with a bloody mary instead of a mimosa. It seemed appropriate. I told Carla my order and settled in with my news app to review everything going on in the world. When Carla brought my order, I ate and thought about what else I had to do that day. I generally didn’t plan anything too intensive for the day after I would arrive back home, but I did have a meeting to get to after breakfast.

  I finished up and left a healthy tip, then killed a little more time reading the news before I headed out to my meeting. It was on the other end of the island, but that only took about twenty minutes--I was still right on time.

  “Looking good, Gage,” Scott said as I walked up to his office. It was small, classic Old Florida style, painted in colors out of a popsicle stand with jalousie windows.

  “Feeling good,” I told him, shaking the hand he offered me. We went into his office together, and he offered me a bottle of water, which I took.