The Sound of Many Waters Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a moment. “Why, do different ones do different things?”
    Skip laughed but stopped when he saw from the look on Zane’s face that his son’s question was entirely sarcastic. “You’re too young to think you’ve found the right girl. Trust me, you’ve gotta look around first.”
    Zane literally looked around. The only woman within sight was Heather, a fixture at the Lager-Head Lounge & Live Bait . Three times his age, she always held a glass of Vo d ka-Cranberry and a menthol cigarette in the same hand as if they were one inseparable unit. Hers was the skin of someone who had spent a lifetime broiling in the tropical sun—hence the nickname everyone used behind her back, Leather Heat h er.
    There was probably a time when Leather Heather was considered pretty, but the years had not been kind to her—or, perhaps more appropriately, she had not been kind to her years. Her breasts sagged low and swung like pendulums beneath her dress, most noticeably when she staggered to the bathroom or swayed beside the jukebox. She was the bane of bar conversation and the joke of Karaoke Night, for her voice had lost all semblance of femininity. It was now a gravelly rasp, and her laugh—a rapid-fire wheeze.
    Leather Heather’s favorite song, the one that always drew her to the dance floor, was George Thorogood’s One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer, and she mouthed each word with all the theatrics of a stage actor as she tottered. For extra impact, she sometimes raised her glass over her head whenever the song mentioned a drink, which, of course, it did incessantly. She seemed to be locked in a perpetual party of her own imagining, and, whether she knew it or not, she was always the only person dancing.
    “It don’t bother me none,” Zane once heard her say. “Just ‘cause no one else likes to have fun, it sure as hell don’t mean I cain’t.”
    Only one part of Leather Heather seemed youthful, but frightfully so: her silken blonde hair looked as if it had been pilfered from a 20-year-old. It gleamed bright against her toasted skin, giving the impression that it was a wig, but no one knew for sure, except perhaps for the drunken fishermen she occasionally lured home.
    “I don’t want to look around, Dad.”
    Skip peered up at the dusty fish mounts that lined the walls around the bar. “I’m just sayin, Zane, it’s a big sea out there, and there’s plenty of fish in it. Enjoy your youth, kiddo. I sure wish I had.”
    “If you had, I wouldn’t be here.”
    Skip nodded. “That’s right, but if you really want to know the truth, now that you’re old enough, well, I’ll just say it. You can credit your existence to a keg party and some latex that sat in a hot car for too long. But that’s life for ya, I guess.”
    Zane had always assumed himself the product of an accident and the catalyst for his parents’ hurried wedding, but hearing it said by his own father helped him see the full tackiness of his creation, the inconvenience of his place in their lives. He turned and looked out the window, at the grove of masts in the marina where his fishing boat was moored, at the pelicans lazing on pilings splattered white by their own droppings, at the cumulonimbus storm clouds billowing on the horizon.
    “Zane?” said Skip. But Zane did not want to reveal his tears.
    “Zane!? That is your name, right?” Zane turned and saw Miguel glaring at him, his hair slicked back by the wind. It was a risky habit, but sometimes while driving his boat, the drone of the engines would lull Zane into a daydream or recollection. This had been a particularly emotional one, and he lowered his head to dry his eyes with his forearm while still holding the steering wheel.
    “Get back to earth, boy,” Miguel shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”
    “Problem?” Zane checked his course: still heading north. He checked the fuel gauge: half a tank.
    “Can’t this boat go any faster?” Miguel stomped and the fiberglass rumbled like an