Free The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig Page A

closes the knife and pockets it.
    “I could eat,” she says, then walks past him out onto the patio.

FIFTEEN
    DISEASEBURGER IN PARADISE
    Outside: the heady, narcotic smell of shrimp and planked fish on a small charcoal grill. Steve goes on a hunt for plates, doesn’t seem to know where he keeps them. He tells her he has a new maid – “Cuban girl, skin like café con leche , just pretty as the sunset, but she always rearranges my stuff and it’s like a scavenger hunt trying to figure out where.”
    Miriam sits at the patio table. A dock extends out over the bay water like a red carpet to the deep blue oblivion.
    The moon hangs fat in the sky like it might give birth to a litter of baby moons, and maybe some stars, and a swirl of galaxies, too.
    Something bites her arm. A mosquito, she assumes, though she can’t see it in the torchlight.
    She swats at it as Steve puts a plate in front of her. Alongside, a drink. A pink drink. She scowls at it. “Strawberry daiquiri,” he says, obviously obsessed with the damn things, and she sniffs at it and pushes it away – too cloying, too strawberry, too pink. She’s thinking of just asking for the bottle of rum when something bites her arm again. Twice. Then a third time.
    “Ow, sonofab–” Swat swat swat . She pulls her hand back and expects to see little greasy skeeter-stains, but no such luck.
    “No-see-ums.”
    “No-who-nows?”
    “Little gnats. Fast little stinkers. Zip in, take a bite, then they take off again with your blood still in their mouths. Here.” He takes a long-neck lighter and lights a citronella candle. The chemical citrus stink fills the air. Whatever appetite she had is suddenly gone – her guts are already cinched up in stubborn knots and she’s not sure why.
    She pushes the plate away.
    “Not hungry?” he asks.
    “I’m fine.”
    He pokes at a shrimp, then pushes his own plate away.
    “Pretty night.”
    “I’m not sleeping with you.”
    “Didn’t say you were. Didn’t we already cover–”
    “What is this, anyway? Dinner and drinks on a moonlight patio overlooking the water? Maybe this is a real panty-dropper for the girls you hang with, but I don’t know you and I’m starting to think it’s creepy.”
    Now he’s looking a little irritated. “I just figured you drove a helluva long way and you could use a meal. I had to eat. No reason not to fix two plates. Jeez, you’re an edgy broad.”
    “Maybe it’s that you’re calling me broad .”
    “It’s just a–” He sighs. “It’s just an expression, an old word. Damn, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. You’re wound too tight. Like a– a– well, like a thing that’s wound too tight.”
    “Nice metaphor, Hemingway.”
    “Cripes, you’re meaner than my mama.”
    She scowls. Narrows her eyes. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”
    “You know, living down here it’s like… you gotta learn to let things go. Set ’em down on the water and give them to the wind to take out to sea. We’re all about the good times here in the Keys. Take some of the money from tonight and do a little snorkeling. Fish off a bridge. Or just lie around not doing a damn thing except reading books and smoking cigarettes.”
    “I’m not the ‘chillax’ type of girl.”
    A wind comes off the water. The torch-fire ripples and whispers.
    “What type of girl are you?”
    “The type with regrets.”
    “We all have regrets.”
    She smirks. “Not like me, dude.”
    She finally grabs at the daiquiri, figuring, well, if it’s poisoned or roofied or he pissed in it then that’s just a thing she’s going to have to deal with. She bangs it back. It’s sweet. Too sweet. Berry and sugar and citrus. Underneath all the diabetes, though, waits a swift horse-kick of rum. Boom. It runs through her like a ripple of blue flame across a puddle of gasoline.
    Her teeth crush ice. Crunch crunch crunch .
    She sets the empty glass down.
    “You can really put ‘em away,” he says.
    “It’s a skill. I’m a champ.” She