Epilogue

i.

The middle-aged lawyer pulls his expensive sports car into his garage in the posh Boston suburb where he lives and wearily clicks the remote to close the door behind him. He extricates himself from the low-slung seat, thinking yet again that it would be less stressful to his aching joints if he abandoned this symbol of youth for a more comfortable sedan. But he looks back at the car admiringly and knows he isn’t quite ready for such a drastic step.

“Hi, honey,” his wife greets him as he walks into the kitchen where she’s busy with food. She kisses him welcome. “Long day?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Long enough. Another day of making the rich richer. And us a little richer, too, I guess. Anyhow, the joys of legal practice.”

“Dinner in about half an hour,” she tells him. “Want me to fix you a martini?” She pronounces it “martin-eye” out of habit, it’s a private joke they’ve long shared.

“Thanks, Julie,” he says. “One would be nice. I’m going to go peer at whatever passes for news tonight, bring it there?”

He shrugs off his overcoat, hanging it in the closet as he passes, and heads for what the builder called the “family room.” There’ll be no “family” about it tonight, he knows, both of their children are off at the costly colleges he’s been able to afford them. Just he and Julie will be home this evening.

He’s switched on the television and tuned in the national newscast as she brings him the drink. She begins to chat about events of her day and he turns his attention to her with the TV still playing in the background. He begins to respond to her comments when he abruptly stops and jerks his eyes back to the screen.

“Sweetie?” she says questioningly. He waves her quiet brusquely, adding a shushing noise. She watches the newscast but can find nothing of significant interest. But she waits patiently until it shifts to a commercial.

“Sorry, sugar,” he apologizes to her. “That was— Look, I have a couple of things to do. Can dinner wait a little?”

“Of course, it’s steak and I haven’t started...” She trails off; he’s already clicked the television off, stood and begun moving to the nearby desk with the computer on it. Puzzled, she watches a little as he brings the machine to life and starts to make purposeful keystrokes. After a moment or two she shrugs and walks back toward the kitchen to make the necessary adjustments.

She’s still there, now beginning preparation of a pie she’d previously decided to postpone until the next evening, when she hears him on the telephone. He’s asking for someone, she ­doesn’t catch who it is, and giving his own name. Curious, she moves back toward the family room.

ii.

In Hawaii the research director of the Kamehameha Institute for Cetacean Studies stops in the hallway as she hears her name called. She walks with a cane, the souvenir of hip replacement surgery several years ago, though she uses it little, mostly brandishing it at subordinates to emphasize her orders or administer remonstrations. Indeed, that’s largely why she keeps it, though she still leans on it if she has to stand for long periods.

“Telephone,” she’s told by the girl who called her.

“Who is it?” she asks routinely.

“He says his name is Vreelander,” the girl says dubiously. “Like the method.”

“Vreelander?” she responds, startled. Can it be?

“That’s what he said. He says it’s urgent.”

She’s still not sure. She moves back to her desk and picks up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Maggie, that you?” comes the voice on the other end of the line, different yet still familiar.

“My God! Jason!” she exclaims.

“The very one.”

“A voice from the past,” she says. “How long has it been?”

“Long,” he replies laconically. “But it may not be the only one. Voice from the past, I mean.”

“Jason, it’s so good to hear from you, how have you—?” She stops, his words register at last. “What was that?”

“Mag, do you still not watch the news?” he asks obliquely.

“No, whatever for?”

“I figured. It’s why I called and told your secretary or whatever it was urgent. Had to look you up on the Internet to find you. You know you’re famous? Anyway, enough to warrant a hell of a lot of entries on the search engines.”

“Fame,” she scoffs. “I suppose I’ve had my fifteen minutes. But what about the news?”

“Well, at the end when it’s a slow day they usually toss in something fairly trivial. Something off-beat, leave you with a giggle or a wow or something, take the edge off all the bad shit they’ve been hammering you with the rest of the time.”

“And?”

“Tonight it was a dolphin,” he tells her. “Bottlenose, down in the Keys. Coming up to boats and piers.”

“They do that occasionally,” she says, recalling. “Like the ones Minacou and Kitik brought in, don’t you remember? They hung around for years, literally, long after you’d gone back, because they were getting fed. Morris made a—”

“They don’t often do that and start talking English and asking for Maggie,” he interrupts her.

She says nothing; she’s in shock.

“Maggie, did you hear me?” he asks. “That’s why it made the news. Dolphin that talks and even seems to be calling for somebody by name. Everybody knows dolphins can make words these days, it’s part of all the shows now, but they thought it was cute that one was doing it in the wild. Lots of humorous speculation about one escaping from a show. But I—”

“Is it possible?” she whispers in wonder. “Jason, it’s been thirty-five years!”

“About that. I don’t know, you tell me, how long do they live?”

“As much as forty years or more in the wild,” she reflects aloud. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible, she was very young. But after so long?”

“It couldn’t be another one, could it?” he asks. “I know you kept on—”

“No,” she cuts him off. “I never got another one to really talk to me, still haven’t. Most of what I’ve been able to do is using their own speech, piggybacking off what I learned from Minacou. They’ll parrot words and even sometimes use them in context, but intelligent conversation ... I finally gave up on bottlenose and decided to try spinners, it’s the native species out here, but it’s been the same. They all do a kind of common thread, you know...” She winds down, her head in turmoil. “But if it’s Minacou...” She trails off.

“It didn’t seem likely, but I thought you ought to know. Babe,” he says.

She laughs. “You remembered!”

“All my life nobody else has ever called me ‘babe,’ before or since,” he tells her. “I had to get that in.”

“And you did,” she smiles. “But babe, I’ll give it right back, I’ve got to go. I have plane reservations to make.”

“You’re going?” he asks in surprise. “Now?”

“As fast as I can get there,” she says. “If it really is— How can I leave her stranded? The news takes days on this kind of thing, and she must have been asking about me forever. I should have been there.”

“What, waiting all these years on the off-chance?” he asks mockingly. “Give me a break.”

“But I need to go as fast as I can,” she continues. “I’ll beg off here. Look, give me a phone number, I’ll call you when I’m there whether I find her or not.” He complies and she makes a quick note on a handy paper scrap that she stuffs immediately into her purse.

“Mag, one more thing?” he says. “If it’s really her, would you, uh, ask her about Kitik?”

“Of course,” she says. “I’ll call you.”

iii.

In Massachusetts Julie stands in the family room doorway as her husband returns the phone receiver to its cradle.

“Honey,” she says uncertainly, “would you like me to call you ‘babe’ sometimes?”

He bursts into laughter. “Eavesdropper,” he chides playfully. “No, love, what you call me is just fine. That was an old friend, I was teasing her.”

“And who is Kitik?” she asks.

“Now that one is a long story,” he says. “Really long. May I hold it for now? I’m starving.” He walks over to kiss her; the kiss grows strong.

“Dinner soon, oh great master,” she tells him, dropping a mock curtsy. “And dessert too, if you’ll give me a couple of minutes to finish my pie.”

“Pie,” he repeats with relish. “Tell me how I can help,” he says, walking with her toward the kitchen.

iv.

In Miami Maggie waits impatiently as the car-rental agent fumbles with his computer. He twice misspells her name before typing it in correctly. In due course a contract is produced, keys are presented, and she walks to the courtesy bus waiting area, cane in one hand and trailing a wheeled suitcase behind her with the other.

The drive down is tedious, and she’s impatient. She’s relieved when Lake Surprise suddenly appears, as its name suggests, on her right. In fact, as she knows quite well, it isn’t a lake at all, it’s a salt-water inlet off the Gulf of Florida, but it has the appearance of a lake from the highway, it does indeed come into view abruptly as the road runs, and she’s always regarded it as the sign of her true entry into the Keys. She’s tired from the overnight flight, on which she slept only fitfully, and knows that her reflexes, already slowed by age, will be slower yet from fatigue; she wills herself not to speed.

Because the news story seemed to emanate from a marina she remembers well that’s where she heads. It’s noon when she finally pulls into its parking lot, where she’s able to take a space being vacated by family of obvious tourists—a category into which she, too, now falls, she recognizes. The lot is full, and she sees a cluster of people near the end of one of the finger piers.

She has no time for them. On the plane she decided her best course would be to hire one of the charter fishing boats to take her along the coast for her search. She stops at the first one she sees with someone aboard and asks if it’s available.

“Little late today, lady,” says the leathery man, looking at her with a curious expression. She’s scarcely dressed for fishing in the somewhat rumpled slacks and shirt that she hasn’t bothered to change after her landing. “And I don’t have a mate. We usually start fishing pretty early in the ay-em. Book you for tomorrow?”

“I don’t want to fish, and you won’t need a mate,” she says crisply. “I want you to take me out to look for that dolphin that was in the news.”

He shakes his head in apparent annoyance. “You don’t have to go out for that, lady,” he tells her. He points to the crowded finger pier. “That’s what they’re all here for. It’s right down there, or it was a little while ago.”

Her face blooms in a smile of delight. She takes several steps before she remembers to turn and express her appreciation, but he’s already returned his attention to the fishing tackle he was working on when she arrived. “Thank you,” she calls anyway and resumes her rapid progress.

The crowd blocks her path as she nears the end of the pier. “Excuse me please, let me through,” she says, waggling her cane imperiously as she pushes her way along. Several people give her annoyed looks but she pays little attention and finally reaches the second rank where she can peer between those in front of her. The water seems empty.

“Excuse me,” she says again to the man ahead of her.

He turns, irritated. “Jeez, lady, don’t be so pushy,” he says. “Anyhow, you’re too late, I think it’s gone now.”

“This is the one who’s asking for Maggie?” she demands.

“Yeah, weird, huh?”

“Let me get past you please,” she says. He gives way and she kneels uncomfortably on the planking and reaches over to slap the edge of the pier. “Minacou!” she calls as loudly as she can. “Minacou!”

For a minute there’s nothing as the people around her look at her strangely and draw back a little. She ignores them, slaps the pier again and repeats her call, her voice cracking slightly with strain.

Then, perhaps a hundred yards away, a single dolphin leaps from the water. It’s a far cry from the magnificent jumps she remembers but it’s still impressively high. There are oohs and aahs from the clustered people around her.

Maggie calls another time, not so loudly now, and then squirms awkwardly into a sitting position, her legs dangling off the end of the pier. She looks up through unashamed tears at the crowd by her. “I’m Maggie, by the way,” she explains.

“And this,” she continues, her voice breaking emotionally as she recognizes the dolphin’s still familiar snout poking up from the water at her feet, “is my very dear friend Minacou.” She reaches up blindly to the man she displaced, handing up her purse and cane. “Here, hold these,” she orders, and pushes herself unhesitatingly off the pier to plunge feet first into the water below.

v.

“Yes, it’s Minacou,” she says into her cell phone. She’s sitting on a bench a few yards away from the wharves letting the sun finish drying her after her impromptu dip. “Jason, I can’t thank you enough for calling me, she told me she was nearly ready to give up.”

“My God,” comes his voice softly. “How is she?”

“Hell, how are we all?” she asks rhetorically. “A lot older, a good deal creakier, a few scars here and there from the wear of time, but all in all she’s pretty good. When she heard me calling she did one of her joy jumps, and it’s nothing like it used to be but it’s still astonishing.”

“Why did she come looking?”

Maggie swallows to clear the lump from her throat. “She told me she thinks it’s getting near her time. She says shadow is heavy in her now, if you remember. She wants to spend the rest of whatever she has left ... well, with me. More or less the way it was, except that of course I won’t pen her up.”

“Wow,” he breathes. “What are you going to do?”

“Stay. What else? She’s the oldest friend I have, who’s still alive, anyhow.”

“Not quite the oldest,” he reminds her.

“Well, OK, you were a few weeks earlier, but you know what I mean.”

“Sure. But what about Hawaii, I mean, don’t you have a job out there?”

“They can handle things without me. They’ll have to, I just quit. Or I will as soon as I get them on the phone. They won’t like it, but if I suddenly dropped dead they wouldn’t have any notice either so they can just treat it that way. Some of them will be happy to see me go, I know they get pretty tired of me hammering them about sticking to the Vreelander Method—”

“The what?“ he interrupts her.

“I told you,” she says. “I know I did. Training them your way, only carrots and no sticks, building a relationship. The way you did with Kitik when you thought he was Toby. I’ve enforced it every place I’ve been since and it’s worked a treat. Don’t you remember me telling you I was going to name it for you?”

“Well, yeah,” he says in a flabbergasted tone. “But I never really took that seriously.”

She laughs. “The receptionist at Kamehameha thought you were putting her on when you gave her your name. I should have told her.”

“But about Kitik? Did you ask her?”

Her face falls, though he can’t see it. “Oh, babe, I’m so sorry.”

“Shit.” His voice is soft. “When?”

“You know they don’t really do time. She says a while back, I think maybe a few months. One minute he was swimming with her, the next he was gone. Probably heart attack, they have them just like we do. It’s why she decided to come to me, there wasn’t anything else left for her, you know how close they were.”

“Yes.” She can hear him choking back tears. “Maggie, I’m going to have to call you back, give me your cell number.”

She does. “Don’t call until tomorrow, OK? I’m beat. Going to find a place and get a long night. And Jason, I’m very sorry,” she finishes gently.

vi.

He places the phone gently back in its cradle. Tears are streaming down his cheeks, dropping onto the paper where he’s written her number. He sees that and leans back in the desk chair where he took the call and shakes his head miserably.

Julie, who was surprised and pleased when he told her he was taking the afternoon off, gazes on in concern. Hesitantly she walks over to offer him comfort, touching his head lightly. He grasps her and buries his face between her breasts; for a moment he’s sobbing openly. She holds him.

He inhales deeply and pulls away, shaking his head again, but sharply now, to clear it.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she asks.

He looks up at her. “I just— Maggie told me one of my oldest and best friends died.”

“Jay, that’s awful!” she exclaims in sympathy. “Who was it, do I know him?”

“It’s part of the story I never got around to telling you last night,” he says.

“Want to talk about it now?”

“You know, I think I do,” he says. “I’ve never said anything to you about it before, because ... well, look, frankly some of it’s a little hard to believe. A lot hard. I didn’t want you to think I’d gone over the edge or something. But now that she’s back— Anyhow, it goes on for a while, is this a good time?”

She looks at him lovingly. “Tell me,” she invites.

“Let’s go sit over there.” He motions to the leather couch across the room and takes her hand as they walk to it and sit. He keeps her hand in his as he begins. “It goes back to when I took all that time off from school and went down to Florida, you remember I told you...”

vii.

Maggie has pulled out of the marina to look for a motel. She’s going to meet Minacou again the next morning and she needs rest. She’ll have to find someplace more permanent soon, where she can be with the dolphin quietly without onlookers crowding around as they did today, but even though it’s still afternoon she knows that will have to await another day.

Less than a mile down the road she sees the motel where she’d spent so many hours all those years ago. It’s run badly to seed, but a neon “vacancy” sign is lit outside, the “c” and the second “a” flickering badly. She’s about to pass it by in search of something less shabby when an idea strikes her and she hastily turns the wheel, crossing lanes just in front of a northbound driver who honks his horn at her in irritation.

The parking lot holds only a few cars, and there are empty spaces directly by the entrance. She nevertheless pulls down several spots to where she used to park so many years ago, and heads in.

Inside the lobby, instead of moving to the desk she goes directly to where the sliding glass doors opened onto the apron area and the lagoon. They’re still there, although two are cracked and held together with tape. She unlatches one and pulls it hard; it’s stuck but gives way grudgingly to her repeated tugs, enough that she can pass.

The boardwalk planking, she sees, is rotted through in several places. She finds a point where the wood seems solid and ventures carefully across. The concrete of the apron is mildewed and cracked, coated liberally with loose marl. But beyond the lagoon looks much as it did, although only the rusted debris of the fencing remains across the entrance. The sea-wall, she’s pleased to see, is in good repair and continues to protect against ocean storms.

Behind her the desk clerk has emerged from her cubby. “Ma’am, those doors are supposed to be locked. It’s not safe out there, you’ll have to come back in. Can I help you?” She’s speaking loudly. Maggie turns and sees she’s a youngish girl, somewhere in her early twenties.

“Perhaps you can,” she says, walking back. “Who owns this place?”

“I’m the evening manager,” the girl tells her, pulling the sliding glass back into place and firmly re-sealing the latch. “What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me who’s the owner,” she says briskly. “And where I can find him. Or her.”

“Is there a problem?” The girl is now anxious.

“No, dear,” Maggie tells her. “The owner? Is it a secret?” she prompts after still more hesitation.

“No, ma’am,” says the girl, growing annoyed at her persistence. “It’s Mr. Gymkanous.”

“And he is where?”

“In the back,” the girl says in exasperation. “But I can—”

“No, dear, you can’t,” Maggie cuts her off. “Will you tell him someone wants to speak to him, please?”

She waves her cane in emphasis; she’d retrieved both it and her purse, contents thankfully intact, after she’d finally found a ladder amid the fairly helpless hubbub on the pier and climbed back to dry land.

The girl turns on her heel and goes back behind the desk and through a doorway that Maggie remembers leads to the office area. She has no idea what the girl says, but presently a short, paunchy man emerges with her and walks over to Maggie.

“I am Gymkanous,” he says in sharply accented English. “What I can do for you?”

“You own this?” She gestures around her.

“Me, yes, me and wife.”

She’s not polite. “I was here many years ago,” she says. “It was not like”—she waves her cane disdainfully—”this. Why have you allowed it to deteriorate this way?”

He laughs shortly. “You want spend hundreds thousands dollars make better?” he asks scornfully.

It’s been a magical day. She’s found Minacou on her very first stop without any of the effort and time she’d expected, Minacou is in good health ... why not push her luck?

“Yes,” she tells him. “I think I might.”

viii.

She’s aware of how she looks ... and smells. Her dip into the harbor has left her hair in strings, her clothes looking foul, and she reeks of a pungent mixture of dead fish, rotted kelp and diesel fuel. It’s still not 5:00, she gives him the New York number of her stockbroker and he calls it hastily. She gives him another phone number in Hawaii; with time to spare, this time he verifies it before calling. While he’s phoning she checks in quickly so she can shower and change clothes.

When she returns he’s confirmed her references. He ushers her with newfound respect into the restaurant. She’s hungry, but when her order arrives she can barely stomach it.

“This,” she says tartly, “will really not do. This used to be one of the best restaurants in the Keys. That’s one of the first priorities, to bring it back.”

It isn’t a difficult negotiation. He telephones his wife, his co-owner, and she arrives quickly; it seems they live nearby. She’s as dumpy as he, and as accented, but somehow she and Maggie reach an immediate rapport. They’re talking as sisters within minutes.

The Gymkanous’ story is strikingly similar to Morris’ so long ago—the motel offered at a bargain price, dreams of condo development, the let-down when environmental restrictions, now more stringent than ever, barred new construction, the recognition that the only chance of not losing their stake lay in operating it as a motel. But unlike Morris the Gymkanous had no money behind them, they’d put almost everything they had into the purchase. They were scrambling to stay afloat but unable to afford anything beyond routine maintenance, and not even all of that. They could see the day coming when even the bargain-shopping tourists would shun them and they’d be forced to close.

She gulps a little when they give her their estimates of the cost of refurbishing the motel. But a quick mental inventory of her holdings tells her she can handle it—with not a lot to spare, she thinks, but what else is it for?

Her terms are simple and, she tells the couple, non-negotiable. She’ll need a room, she intends to live at the motel. She’ll want to eat in the restaurant “after you improve the food, which I hope will happen very soon,” she says. And she’s to have complete control of the lagoon area. In exchange she’ll finance the entire rehab, accepting a silent partnership with a minority stake.

“Why you do this?” asks Gymkanous, clearly baffled.

“It’s a long story,” she says. “But basically it’s simply that a friend and I wish to retire here and live in this place, Mr. Gymkanous.”

“Please,” he says, “we be partners, you call me Gus. My wife Sophie.”

“And I’m Margaret. Or Maggie, if you like.”

He nods, but his wife is goggling at her. “The dolphin!” she bursts out. “On news, and I see at marina. It really talk, say search for Maggie. You?”

“Yes,” Maggie answers with a smile. “Her name is Minacou. You’ll meet her, she’ll be living in the lagoon, she’s the friend I mentioned.”

“You have friend that is fish?” asks Gus incredulously.

Maggie starts to correct him wearily, but Sophie beats her to the punch. “Not fish,” she tells her husband. “Dolphin is animal, water animal. Like seal, otter, whale. News say.”

“That’s right,” Maggie says. “Dolphins are mammals. Please don’t call her a fish. Or especially a ‘fishy,’” she adds, remembering. “Once is enough.”

Gus looks at her thoughtfully. “Is old story about this place, I hear when I buy.”

“We buy,” his wife corrects him.

“We buy,” he agrees. “Story is long ago dolphins were here, make shows for people. You know about this?”

“Yes, I do. It’s quite true, I’ll tell you another day. It won’t be the same now, no shows, just one dolphin living in the lagoon. I’ll be spending a lot of my time with her. Which brings me to a point.” She reaches into her purse and extracts her checkbook. After glancing at the register to verify her balance she writes out a check for well into five figures and hands it to Gus.

“This will get us started,” she says. “We’ll need to get some legal papers drawn up, and I’ll have to cash in some investments, but I want to move right along. Tomorrow morning I have an, uh, appointment, but I’ll be back by noon. I don’t know whether you can get someone here that quickly, but as soon as you can I’ll want to talk to a contractor about repairs out there.” She gestures. “It’s dreadful.”

He follows her hand with his eyes and makes a grimace of embarrassment. “I make phone call,” he promises.

“And please find someone who can cook,” she says. “A chef if you can. Pay what you have to, I’ll cover it, and promise whoever it is that the place is going to be fixed up. But get someone now, this”—she points to the half-full plate still before her—”is swill, and I don’t want to have to go out for meals. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes?” he says. Things are moving very fast indeed.

“I need a freezer out there. There used to be a utility room—”

“Still is,” he tells her. “Storage now.”

“You’ll need to clear it, anyway enough for the freezer and to give me access. And call someone about getting some frozen fish delivered. Mullet, whatever they use as baitfish now. Start with an order for fifty pounds, I don’t know how much she eats these days, we’ll adjust as we go. Try to get that for tomorrow, too, if you can.”

She looks at their wide eyes and smiles reassuringly. “I know it’s all been a little surprising for you, but this is really happening,” she says gently. “That check should make you feel better. Please have it verified with the bank tomorrow morning so you know it’s good, and then take care of the things I asked. Now you’ll have to forgive me but I really must sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She gets up and walks away, now leaning fairly heavily on the cane for support.

Behind her husband and wife look at each other uncertainly. “Do you think this is real?” he asks, shifting to their native Greek.

She shrugs. “Do what she tells you,” she says in the same language. “Make sure the check is good. If it is I’ll take it to the bank myself. And then”—another shrug—”I guess we do the things she said.”

ix.

“Maggie, moving fast is one thing, but this is ridiculous!” Jason exclaims. He’s waited until late afternoon to call and she’s already got things in motion. The freezer was delivered an hour earlier and it’s installed and stocked with the first delivery of fish. The contractor will arrive the next morning to discuss the apron and boardwalk. The restaurant food has already improved sharply; Sophie, it seems, is an excellent cook and has taken over the kitchen temporar­ily.

And Minacou lazes comfortably in the lagoon.

“Are you really sure—?” he continues.

“I’m sure, Jason,” she says. “It feels right, to come back here where it all started. Full circle. It is right. I called Kamehameha a little while ago to tell them I won’t be back. My, were they pissed off. They’ll get over it.”

“But Maggie, I know it’s not really my business, but how can you afford all this?” She’s told him what she’s done, and when he insisted she even gave him the rough estimates she’d heard from Gus and Sophie the day before. “I sure don’t remember you being rolling in it.”

“It’s been kind of a while,” she reminds him. “They’ve kept paying me more and more money over the years, and I just don’t spend a lot of it, I have what I need and my work takes up my time and energy. It’s just been mounding up. Once I sell a few things I’ll have enough, and I’m buying something with it that’s really important to me.”

“Huh,” he says. He pauses a moment. “Look, don’t go selling everything just yet. I’d, well, I’d like to come down this weekend, is that OK?”

“How nice! Of course it’s OK, don’t be silly, I’d love to see you again after, what, thirty years? More? And Minacou will be thrilled.”