Coasters. Gerald Duff

turned to head toward the Chevrolet.

      “We’re sure glad we ran into you, buddy,” Leo said, setting the ice chest into the rear of the Cherokee. “Wasn’t for your thirty-five dollar contribution we couldn’t have gone out and caught all these fish.”

      “It was sure worth it,” Waylon said, touching his forefinger to the bill of his hot-pink cap in salute. “It was my pleasure, friend, believe me.”

6

      On his way back to Port Arthur, up from the Gulf, Waylon drove the posted speed limit, adjusting his sun visor to allow him enough shade to be able to snatch glimpses of the sun setting in the west as cars, trucks, and pickups pounded by him. Two good-sized grouper, gutted and packed in ice, were riding in the floorboard in a donated styrofoam cooler not damaged enough to leak too much, and the breeze off the marshes coming into the car was not so hot he had to roll the windows up. The only lack he felt was that of a drink at the end of the day, and that would be cured as soon as he reached Charlie McPhee’s house on Helena.

      He turned on the radio just at the beginning of a song about margaritas and shrimp boils, and he hummed along to the tune, remembering every other line or two, so that by the end he finished singing aloud right along with the artist word for word. “Hell, I know,” he warbled, “it’s my own damn fault.”

      Would this Marsue Butler woman be worth the trouble, he wondered, if he did decide to call the number on his new pink hat some morning in the middle of a work week? She was probably a little dangerous, and that possibility had its charm, he had to admit. Nothing wrong with being scared a little.

      He could imagine the scenario. The call, the conversation, the meeting for lunch at some little fern bar in Beaumont, across a small table with the martini for him and the white wine for her. She’d be wearing something tight, her eye makeup just a shade this side of heavy, her hair puffed up and worked on by a dryer and a teasing comb.

      “Let me see,” Waylon said out loud to the bank of pink and orange and red clouds low on the western horizon. “Do you ever feel like things in your life are going along too much in the same old patterns? Like you’re locked in, stuck in the regular, predictable path here in the middle of where you live? Do you feel, I don’t know, restless?”

      She’d have a lot to say about old Leo, too, he imagined. She would have figured him out a long time ago, this man she had let herself end up married to. Sweet to her, of course. Protective and predictable. Always there for her. In a way. In a way. That would be the problem with old Leo, really. He was eternally just there, easy to count on and ready to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted to do it. Solid.

      “What I find lacking,” Waylon said to the setting sun in its progress toward the other side of the world, rehearsing a line for Marsue, “is, I don’t know . . . .” He paused for effect for a moment and then delivered the rest of her statement. “An element of surprise. I need to be made to think that there’s a possibility of the new, the unexpected, in my life.” The brakelights on the car just ahead came on, and Waylon slowed in response.

      “The unanticipated,” he went on, “the sudden, a, a. . . .” The car ahead sped up and began pulling away, and Waylon let the space between the vehicles grow wider.

      “What I’m talking here, in a word, is strange prick,” he said, ending Marsue’s dialogue for her and pushing the Chevrolet on toward home.

      When he arrived, three cars were in the driveway, his father’s two and a Toyota he didn’t recognize, and the lights were on in the house in every room he could see from the curb. Walking through the garage to take the styrofoam cooler to the backyard and empty the melted ice off the grouper, Waylon could see through the door to the kitchen that his father was working away at something on the counter.

      “I’m home,” he yelled, “and I got something to show you.”

      By the time he got the slurry of ice and bloody water emptied and the fish laid back down in the cooler, he could hear the high-pitched whine of a blender coming from the kitchen and he knew what was occupying Charlie McPhee’s attention on the counter. He’s really getting into the culinary, Waylon thought. Next thing he’ll be whipping up a full meal, including meat and vegetables, maybe even a beverage and silverware on the table.

      Holding the cooler to one side to be sure none of the remaining water would drip through the widening crack at the bottom, Waylon opened the door to the kitchen and stepped inside. Charlie McPhee was pouring a creamy concoction from the blender into a glass next to one already filled nearly to the top.

      “Want to see my surprise?’ Waylon said and then saw a silver-haired woman sitting poised on the edge of a kitchen chair as she watched with her lips slightly parted and her chin thrust forward to monitor Charlie’s operations with the blender.

      “Do be careful, love,” she said, a thing Waylon’s mother had never called his father as far as he knew, but maybe it was just British and meant nothing. “We’ll want every drop.”

      “You want to see mine?” Charlie said, setting the blender down and picking up the two glasses of pink froth and ice. “Waylon, this lady is Mrs. Hazel Boles, and Hazel, that good-looking young fellow in the door is my little boy.”

      “Don’t say little,” Waylon said. “I’m still growing.”

      “I do detect the resemblance,” the woman said, turning just her head toward Waylon and maintaining her posture otherwise. “He has the nose and something of you about the eyes and brow.”

      “Why, hello, Mrs. Boles,” Waylon said. “I’d offer to shake hands, but I’ve got fish juice all over mine.”

      “Is that fresh?” Charlie said, presenting Hazel with one of the glasses. “What kind is it?”

      “Grouper,” Waylon said. “And like the TV ad says, it slept in the Gulf last night. In fact, it took a nap there this morning.”

      “Where’d you get fresh grouper?” Charlie said, walking over to peer into the cooler. “Your ice box is busted on this near side.”

      “At the getting place. I caught it,” Waylon said. “Twenty miles out from Sabine Pass on a charter boat. What’re you folks drinking?”

      “Piña coladas,” Charlie said in a proud tone. “It’s a tropical drink I read about on a rum label. You make it in a blender.”

      “I trust it’s not too strong,” Hazel said and lifted her glass for a sip at the drink. “To the contrary. There’s a lovely sweet taste to it.”

      “The kind that’ll sneak up on you,” Waylon said and headed with the grouper for the sink. “Like a velvet hammer to the head.”

      “Oh, I hope not,” Hazel said, taking a bigger sip which left a thin line of white across her upper lip. “I do always dread the settling up the morning after.”

      Waylon found a relatively sharp knife in the drawer next to the sink and lifted the two fish out of the cooler and began looking for a cutting board. “See the eyes on this grouper, Dad,” he said and held up the larger of the two for inspection. “Clear as glass.”

      “Is that a good sign, I hope?” Hazel asked and gestured toward Charlie with her free hand. “A serviette, please, love.”

      “Means they’re fresh,” Charlie said and fetched two paper napkins from a cabinet to Hazel. “Cloudy eyes means they’re old.”

      “Always a telltale sign,” Hazel said, dabbing at her lips with one of the napkins. “Fish, fowl, or human, I’m afraid. Do fix a drink for your son.”

      “I’ll just have a beer later,” Waylon said, beginning to work on the first grouper. “I want to get these babies on the grill first.”

      “Are we invited to dinner then?” Hazel asked, nearing the bottom of her second