Authors: James Grippando
Black Horizon (3 page)
Marsha shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”
The manager was still smiling. “I understand, ma’am. Please enjoy a complimentary cocktail from our award-winning mixologist, and let’s all stay in touch on this. I’ll certainly let you know if anything changes. Have a very pleasant afternoon on Big Palm Island.”
He started away. Marsha grabbed her husband by the arm and followed. Jack could still hear her hammering away for a refund as they walked all the way to the other side of the swimming pool, and the badgering persisted as they continued down the walkway and disappeared behind a leafy stand of bamboo.
The Texan looked at Jack and said, “That lady’s right, you know.”
“Right about what, exactly?”
“You didn’t actually believe that NOAA-scientist bullshit, did you?”
“I was hoping the resort isn’t just making it up.”
The Texan chuckled. “Listen, pardner. The only kernel of truth is that this tar ball’s got nothin’ to do with the spill. But don’t believe for one second that the slick ain’t headed this way.”
“How do you know that?”
He leaned closer, elbow on the bar top, narrowing his eyes. “I made a killin’ in this business, son. Got friends all over the world with a keen eye on Cuba’s North Basin. Those impact projections in that government report were based on the first exploratory wells drilled by a Spanish company called Repsol. Those were just fifty-five miles from Key West, but they turned up dry. So the Chinese, Russians, and Venezuelans moved farther west. Folks breathed a sigh of relief because the new drill site wasn’t so close to Key West and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. But moving farther west actually put the Keys and the Florida coast more at risk.”
He had Andie’s attention, too. “How can that be?” she asked.
“It’s a lot like the NOAA’s hurricane prediction cone. If you move the eye of the storm—in this case, the source of the spill—fifty miles, or even twenty-five miles, to the west, it means a huge change in the impact area.”
Over the years, Jack had seen enough hurricane predictions and the “cone of danger” to understand. “That makes sense.”
“’Course it makes sense,” said the Texan, “’cuz it’s true. My advice is to pack your bags and
git
. Unless you like the smell of petroleum blowing through your bungalow.”
“Are you leaving?” asked Jack.
“Yup.” He leaned even closer so that only Jack could hear, his eyes cutting toward his escort. “Which is just as well. Even with Viagra, a man needs a break every now and then. Get the picture, pardner?”
“I so wish I didn’t,” said Jack.
The Texan slapped Jack on the back, wished him luck, and led his escort away by the hand. Jack and Andie sat alone at the tiki bar with CNN. The bartender was rubbing the bar top furiously, trying to remove the black stain left by the “unrelated” tar ball. It wasn’t coming off.
Andie breathed a heavy sigh and said, “This certainly puts a little rain on a bride’s wedding day in perspective.”
“We’ll be all right,” said Jack. “That guy’s a blowhard.”
“Thirty-seven years in the oil industry. Mr.
Exxon Valdez
seems to know what he’s talking about.”
“Maybe,” said Jack. “I’ll give Marsha the pit bull a few more minutes to chew on the manager’s leg. Then I’ll pay him a visit and get to the bottom of that NOAA report.”
“I really don’t know who to believe.”
Jack glanced up at the television. “Spill Coverage” on CNN had moved to the next phase. The president of the International Drillers Association was in the hot seat.
“I think we’re in for a lot of that,” said Jack.
J
ack woke to the sound of honking geese.
He was half-awake, anyway. The room was still dark, and the windows were black as midnight in the Florida Keys, far from the glow of city lights. It was Monday morning, and he wasn’t sure if an actual flock of geese had wrested him from sleep or if he was simply a slave to his internal alarm clock and workday habit.
He listened for it again, but the honking had stopped, and it must have been a dream. All Sunday night, the television news coverage had focused on the potential environmental impact of the Cuban spill, the screen flashing with images of past oil disasters and sludge-covered birds on despoiled beaches. Even with no sound, cable news was a poor choice for a lovemaking night-light. Jack settled his head into the pillow and slowly drifted back toward sleep.
Honk, honk.
He jackknifed in the bed, cursing those damn geese.
Geese? In the middle Keys? No way.
He reached for Andie, but her half of the mattress was empty. “Andie?”
Honk.
The noise was coming from the bathroom. Jack slid out of the bed and crossed the dark suite slowly, mindful of his toes and the hidden posts that seemed to jump out of nowhere in hotel rooms. He approached the crack of light beneath the closed bathroom door and tapped lightly. “Are you okay in there?”
“No,” she said, breathless. “This has been going on since five a.m.”
The first flock of geese.
He tried the doorknob, but it was locked. “Andie, let me in.”
“I’m okay. Go back to sleep.”
The honking gave way to something more guttural, a retching noise worthy of Ferris Bueller and his famous day off. “You don’t sound okay.”
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
Jack stepped back, not so sure. He thought of the grilled dolphin Andie had eaten for dinner last night. “Fresh as fresh can be,” the waiter had told them. Maybe fresh enough to contain petroleum from the spill.
We need to get out of this place.
Jack sat at the foot of the bed, found the remote that was buried deep in the twisted down comforter, and switched on the TV. The same story dominated every channel. Jack stopped surfing to catch the tail end of an interview in progress with a retired rear admiral from the Coast Guard.
“. . . is releasing at least as many barrels per hour as the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010,” he said, “and there is no bilateral treaty between the United States and Cuba to coordinate a response. That’s a recipe for disaster on top of disaster. Cuba has no deepwater submarines, no capability to deal with a spill of this magnitude. U.S. containment equipment, technology, chemical dispersants, and expert personnel are literally on the sidelines. They cannot focus on the spill where the need is greatest—at the faucet. U.S. ships cannot even get close enough to drill relief wells.”
More honking from the bathroom. Jack hit the
MUTE
button. “Andie?”
“I’m okay,” she said in a voice that faded.
Jack left the television on
MUTE
, but the image on the screen spoke for itself. It seemed counterintuitive, but Jack was strangely reminded of the aerial photographs of the islands in Biscayne Bay that the pop artist Cristo had famously wrapped in pink fabric in the 1980s. These satellite views were the antithesis of art—ugly black blobs floating on beautiful blue seas in the Florida Straits. Comparisons were already being made to the worst spills in the history of exploratory drilling. It made Jack feel like a bridezilla to consider anything less than the big global view of the disaster, but he could apologize to the world later. Keeping one eye on an oil slick was no way to spend a honeymoon.
“Andie, we’re checking out today.”
She didn’t answer, but he’d said it loud enough to be heard. He grabbed their suitcases from the closet and started emptying dresser drawers. They’d packed light, and he moved quickly, so it didn’t take long. It felt like the high-speed rewind of that cute joke his grandmother had told at the reception in honor of the newlyweds, about the first thing that honeymooners do when they get to their hotel room: “Open their drawers and put their things together.”
Jack zipped up the suitcases and put them on the bed. The bathroom door opened. Andie’s feet shuffled across the marble tile, but they didn’t take her far. She leaned against the door frame, exhausted. She was wearing the resort’s terry-cloth robe, but somewhere in the dash from the bed to the bathroom she’d lost one of the matching slippers. Her hair was up in a chip clip. The color was gone from her face.
Jack caught himself before telling his new bride how she looked. “Do you feel like you’re getting better or worse?” he asked.
“It comes in waves.”
“I bet it was that dolphin you ate last night,” said Jack.
“It’s not food poisoning,” she said.
“I just heard on the news that fifty thousand barrels a day could be flowing from that spill. Commercial fishermen in the Keys go all the way out to the edge of Cuban waters if they have to. Yesterday morning’s catch could have easily been contaminated.”
“Jack, it’s not the fish.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I had a hunch yesterday, so I asked the concierge to make a run to the drugstore and get me a kit.”
“A kit?”
She dug into her pocket and showed him the blue test stick. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
W
ow, I’m gonna be a dad.”
It was about the tenth time Jack had uttered words to that effect since leaving Big Palm Island. They were in Jack’s convertible, driving north toward the mainland on U.S. 1 with the top down. Andie looked much better. The sunshine and fresh air were working wonders on her morning sickness—for the moment, anyway.
“I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Of course I’m happy,” said Jack. “Only one little concern.”
“What?”
“How do I tell Abuela I didn’t marry a virgin?”
“By my calculation you’ve got almost eight months to figure that out.”
Jack had intended it as a joke, but the more he thought about it, the more he hoped that his grandmother simply wouldn’t do the math.
The narrow highway stretched for miles before them. Not a building was in sight, the tropical sun glistening on clear and shallow waters on either side, the gulf to the west, the Atlantic to the east. The entirety of the aptly named Overseas Highway ran from Miami to Key West. It made driving seem like
the
way to get there, but at certain isolated segments along the way it was easy to imagine that Henry Flagler had just built the bridges and laid the railroad tracks that had originally connected the Keys, only to be blown away in the hurricane of 1935. The Seven Mile Bridge was particularly breathtaking, a concrete ribbon at odds with nature that somehow managed to maintain harmony with the surrounding natural beauty. For miles, the only sign of civilization was the traffic. Jack noted that virtually all of it was against them—heading south, toward Key West and the biggest news story on the planet. About every third vehicle was a satellite van.
“When should we alert the media?” Jack asked.
“What?”
Andie didn’t get the joke, but Jack subscribed to the shotgun theory of humor, so rather than explain, he just moved on and hoped that the next pellet would hit the mark. “When can we start telling people you’re pregnant?”
“Let’s wait until I see a doctor.”
“That makes sense. Let’s go.”
“You mean now?”
“Yeah. Tell her we decided on Jamaica as Plan B for our honeymoon and we need a doctor’s okay to fly on an airplane.”
“Pregnant women fly all the way up to the eighth month. I don’t need a doctor’s approval.”
Jack thought about it, then realized that he’d seen many an expectant mother on airplanes. “I guess that’s right. But maybe you shouldn’t be visiting a foreign country.”
“Jack, if you’re going to be one of those neurotic pregnant husbands, I’m going to head off into the woods, pop out this baby on my own, and call you when she heads off to college.”
“How do you know our baby’s a girl?”
“I don’t. Could be a boy.”
“Or twins.”
“Do you have twins in your family?” she asked.
“No. But you might. You’ve said yourself that knowing who your birth parents are doesn’t mean knowing the whole family history. A set of twins somewhere along the genealogical line strikes me as something that an adopted child might not know about.”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“Or triplets.”
“Jack, the woods are looking really good to this she-wolf right now.”
“Sorry.”
Andie’s cell rang, and Jack focused on the road as she took the call. The traffic ahead was stopped, so he braked to cut his speed.
“Jack, please.” She was still on the phone, but apparently even the slightest motion in the car was more than her morning sickness could take.
“Sorry,” said Jack. A long line of cars ahead of them was at a dead stop. It seemed odd that northbound traffic would be backed up, unless the authorities had road-blocked the entrance to the Keys, forcing southbound vehicles to turn around and head back toward Miami.
“Jack,
really
,” said Andie.
He had barely touched the brake. He put the car in neutral and tried coasting to a stop. At least fifty cars were lined up ahead of them, and it was exactly as Jack had suspected. Florida Highway Patrol was shutting down the lower Keys and Key West. The only people getting through the roadblock were the media vans, cleanup convoys, and, presumably, residents. It was enough to erase any of Jack’s lingering questions about leaving Big Palm Island. The last thing any sane ob-gyn would recommend was a beach vacation less than ninety miles from an oil spill. And even if those tar balls on the beach were “unrelated” to the spill, and even if the fresh dolphin filet wasn’t contaminated, the hotel manager’s comparison of the Gulf Stream to a “conveyor belt” was hardly soothing. Jack’s house sat right alongside the road, so to speak, just another fifty miles to the north. His recollection was that it had taken almost three months to cap the Deepwater Horizon spill, and that was with the best equipment and most highly trained response teams in the world. Who knew how long it would take the Cubans to get this one under control? Fifty thousand barrels a day had to go somewhere.
“I need you to take me to Tamiami Airport,” said Andie.
