Off the Chart. James Hall

coffee?’

      He turned to Anne and she shook her head.

      ‘Just the check, please,’ Daniel said.

      The waitress gave Anne a look, then turned and headed for the register.

      ‘I want you to come with me, Anne. Try it out. If it doesn’t work, if there’s anything at all you don’t like, I’ll bring you back here immediately. No questions, no hesitations.’

      ‘You can’t be serious, Daniel. Three weeks together, and you expect me to become a pirate? A criminal?’

      ‘I’m very serious. I’ve never been more serious.’

      One of Daniel’s crew had come down the dock and was standing near the patio railing. Daniel looked over and the man touched a finger to his watch.

      Anne watched the family at the nearby table. The mother was feeding the toddler from a jar, the father reading a newspaper.

      Anne Bonny Joy had never needed any man. She’d worked hard to assemble her world, her routine, every austere second under her control. That feeling in her gut was real, yes, this new hum resonating in her bones, but if she waited long enough, the rumble would pass. She knew it would.

      ‘It’s okay,’ Daniel said. ‘I can understand your caution.’

      Anne Bonny swung back to him. Her pulse was roaring.

      ‘You’re not going to say you love me, fall on your knees, plead?’

      ‘Would it make any difference?’

      ‘Hell, no,’ she said.

      ‘You already know I love you.’

      Anne knew it all right. For whatever it was worth.

      ‘If it doesn’t work for you, I’ll give up the life,’ Daniel said. ‘Take a job.’

      ‘Oh, yeah. Go straight. Sure, Daniel.’

      ‘If that’s what it takes for us to be together,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.’

      ‘You should’ve warned me, prepared me a little. You throw me into this cold. Men waiting out on the dock. The boat running. What did you expect?’

      ‘I had hoped we would have more time. I could tell you in a more relaxed way.’

      ‘And why didn’t you?’

      ‘The device in our room.’

      ‘What? The law’s closing in. We’re about to be arrested?’

      ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe we have the luxury of time.’

      ‘But you bring your boat right here. You’re not worried?’

      ‘The boat’s clean. If they had enough to arrest me, it would’ve happened by now.’

      ‘You couldn’t work nine to five, Daniel. You’d hate it. And before long you’d start resenting the hell out of me for forcing you into it, and oh boy, what fun we’d have then.’

      ‘People change,’ Daniel said. ‘I know I could do it, Anne. If that’s what you truly want.’

      Daniel’s eyes were quiet and exposed, nothing shifty, no attempt to turn up the volume, radiate charm. Glossy blue with those calm depths. At ease in his skin. In their weeks together he had shown her nothing but a steadfast courtesy, a gentility approaching shyness. Just that one flare-up of jealousy about Thorn. Even when both of them were dizzy with lust, Daniel was still reserved, dignified. An honorable man, an outlaw.

      Then again, she had little trust in her judgment. Bad training, corrupted genes, a flawed vision. Long ago she’d banished herself to solitary confinement, lived out the sentence she believed was her due.

      She watched the waitress returning to the table carrying the check in a padded leather folder. The woman was in her sixties. She wore no rings, and the creases in her face hadn’t come from smiling. She padded toward them carefully, as if walking a tightwire of exhaustion.

      At the nearby table the toddler flung his plastic drinking cup in the air, and it rolled across the patio. Daniel pushed back his chair and went over and retrieved the cup and took it back to the young family. The father set the newspaper aside and nodded his thanks. Daniel said a few words to the couple, and they laughed, then he returned to the table.

      ‘I’ll take that when you’re ready,’ the waitress said.

      ‘We’re ready now.’ Daniel counted out the bills, leaving her a tip that would have been sufficient for a dinner of twelve. The waitress stared at the cash and Daniel said, ‘Thank you for taking such good care of us.’

      The woman gave Anne another look, then left.

      ‘I barely know you,’ Anne said.

      ‘You know more about me than anyone has ever known. This isn’t easy for me, either, Anne. But it’s right. I know that much. It’s real.’

      ‘And I’m supposed to step aboard that ship and just go riding off? Leave everything behind.’

      Anne watched the waitress refilling saltshakers.

      ‘If you don’t feel the same way I’m feeling, Anne, you should stay here. I’ll respect your decision either way.’

      The man from Daniel’s crew came onto the patio and walked over to the table. He had a narrow face and an olive complexion and was wearing a white shirt and khakis and his sunglasses hung from a leather strap around his neck. He carried what looked like a small radio. He nodded at Anne.

      ‘Weather’s deteriorating in the straits,’ he said. ‘We got maybe till tonight before things kick up out there. It’ll be rough after that.’

      ‘Thanks, Sal. I’ll be there in a second.’

      Sal nodded again at Anne and left.

      ‘This has been wonderful,’ Daniel said. He took her hand again. ‘Like nothing I’ve ever known.’

      ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me some goddamn good-bye.’

      She turned her eyes from his and watched the waves shatter against the beach. A musky, sexual scent rode the briny mist that drifted to the patio. Seaweed, crabs, barnacles exposed to the sun – as if the surface of the ocean had been peeled back to divulge all the sensory richness below.

      The truth was, Anne had felt an axis shift inside her. It happened days ago. Maybe it had even begun to tilt that first moment she’d seen Daniel at the Lorelei. She’d been denying it. Pretending he was simply another man she’d admitted to her bed. But that was a lie. He’d changed her, awakened appetites and aspirations she’d stifled until now. A dangerous man. A pirate.

      ‘All right, goddamn it.’ Anne Bonny heard the words rise from her throat unbidden. A voice more certain than her own. ‘But let’s get one thing absolutely straight, Mr Buccaneer.’

      ‘Yes?’ Daniel said.

      She reached out for his hand and gripped it hard.

      ‘I won’t be some goddamn scullery maid for a bunch of scurvy dogs.’

      Daniel’s mouth relaxed into a smile. And the sun was never brighter.

      ‘Marbled godwit,’ Janey said.

      ‘Where?’ Sugarman lifted his binoculars.

      ‘Eleven o’clock, two hundred yards.’

      Sugar swung to the left and caught only a flash of the bird. The godwit made a wide arc to the west to avoid some tourist strapped into a parasail.

      ‘Yeah, yeah. Good eyes, Janey. Good eyes. Or was that a curlew?’

      ‘It’s a godwit, Daddy. The bill’s too straight for a curlew.’

      Janey