Page 1 of Enemies in Earnest

ChapterOne

Why woulda woman name a bar Temperance? Anyone who speaks with Acacia Ashley for more than two seconds will have zero doubt in their mind that she is probably part alien. No one human could possess that much intelligence.

Acacia Ashley happened to own Temperance, the bar. The very bar I drove past at least four times a day, carting the spring breakers, the midlife crisis cruisers, and thereliving my glory daysbrocationers. What do all of my clients have in common? They’re paying me, the proprietor of theThree Sheets Charters,for a two-hour trip around the Keys. I ply them with cheap drinks, tell them quippy jokes, and provide dull fodder. So dull that I have to fight against rolling my eyes every time I point to the vapid sign that says “Southernmost point in the U.S.” or make the same dippy joke about Santa making a right instead of a left at the equator and deciding to vacation right here in Candy Cane Key.

I hated myself a little more every day for selling out to be a drink slinger and a cheesy joke teller. Sure the money was good. Hell, the money was fucking fantastic. But there had to be more to my existence than twice daily out-and-backs with a bunch of marathon drinkers that I prayed didn’t retch over the side of my ship. Especially in front of Acacia’s precious bar, lest we re-enactthe incident.

I think we finally reached a point over the course of the last five years that maybe she was starting to move past it. Back to my original point though. Naming one’s barTemperanceseems a bit contradictory. The literal definition of temperance is abstinence from drink. It isn’t even funnily ironic. It’s just strange.

Also, who decides to build a bar on a piece of land surrounded by inlets? Living in the Keys was enough of a hurricane risk already, but then putting abarin a place that was sure to be affected by any kind of swells whether from strong tides or bad weather? Especially someone as neurotic as her. I swear she’d shut up her storm shutters and start battening down the hatches if a gust of windsoundedlike it was going to bring trouble.

“This drink tastes watered down.” Some glory-day-livingbroin a Hawaiian shirt brought his Mai Tai to where I stood navigating through the inlet.

“Given it is ninety-two degrees today with probably eighty percent humidity, my guess is your ice melted. Just stir it a bit. You’ll be fine.”

It was just her and some old guy who sat on a stool at the bar. Despite the aforementioned humidity, she wore her long, licorice colored hair down. It practically touched the bow of her sundress while she moved back and forth along the open-air side of her bar.

She had taste. That I would give her. The bar was veryold Havanain a way I wouldn’t expect an American who’d never stepped foot in Cuba to understand.

Her patron said something that she found funny. She threw her head back and laughed in what appeared to be a completely genuine way. That was the reason it happened. I’d become so caught up in watching the two of them interact. It was a phenomenon I never witnessed. Whenever I was around, she spit nails, huffed, and generally was one of the orneriest people I ever came in contact with.

Navigating the inlets took finesse. The water was choppy, and the surges from the tide could topple a smaller boat, especially if they weren’t experienced. If I had been paying better attention to the idiots on the water,maybeit could have been avoided. Some wanna be Captain Ahab out on the high seas with a boat that screamedovercompensating for something.

The“Oh shit! Watch out!”and various other exclamations of surprise from my clients didn’t register in enough time for me to get out of his way. I heard the sickeningclunkandcrunchof my boat getting shredded as his monstrosity shoved us into the reef that surrounded Acacia’s property. It was a stretch of water I had to traverse every day given my dock was located further down the inlet. I could navigate that passage with my eyes closed.

“I hate when that thousand-year-old coral grows seemingly overnight,” she called out from where she washed glasses at her sink. “Stuff kind of jumps out at you, huh?”

“Remind me to never call you as an eyewitness to anything.” I pulled out a chair at the closest table and flopped into it. “Since you clearly missed the gigantic fucking boat that crashed into the side of my ship andpushedme into your coral, sweetheart.”

After dealing with the Coast Guard, ensuring no one needed medical treatment,thank god, and getting a ferry to collect the bachelor party and return them to the dock, the last thing I wanted to deal with was her smart assed comments.

“Would it be too much trouble to ask you for a glass of water? Or maybe if you’re feeling generous, some iced tea?”

“Tourists.” The bearded man seated at the bar huffed into his glass.

Tourists, indeed. The world’s most unfortunate double-edged sword. The drivers of our economy in good old Candy Cane Key, and also the cause of never-ending headaches. I was also pretty certain that he, too, fell into that category.

I’ve lived in Florida all my life. I’ve owned too many boats to count and sailed the seas since before I had a driver’s license. While the jarring, overwhelming Christmas spirit of Candy Cane Key was a bit much for my own personal preferences, my mom had no one else but me, and she’d always dreamed of retiring there.

Was it weird that a forty-two-year-old man lived in a duplex with his mom? Probably. But since Dad passed, knowing I could hear her fall, or any number of emergencies, through the wall, made me feel better about her keeping her autonomy.

“Not to rub salt in the wound,” Acacia approached with a basket of peanuts and a glass of sweet tea, that smarmy little tilt to her eyebrow. “But that cigarette boat was a bit hard to miss. What with the sound of a roaring jet plane of an engine and the massive tidal wave of a wake it produces.”

The cold condensation on the glass did little to soothe my grated nerves. Even holding it to my forehead didn’t help any. I refused her bait. Even if she dangled her poison from an irresistible iridescent lure.

“Thanks for the tea.” I sucked it down in three obnoxious gulps. “But I’ll take poking and uncomfortable rocks, and the heat of the midday sun to whatever version of hospitality you’re slinging.”

I threw down a twenty just to spite her and headed back toward my wreckage of a boat to wait for the hauler to arrive. I guess I was wrong. Forgiveness wasn’t part of Acacia’s vocabulary. I would have thought after five years we’d be past it, but apparently not.

ChapterTwo

Edwin Wheeler wasthe bane of my existence. Theincidentnotwithstanding. Even before then he’d been about as enjoyable as a 90s pop song on never-ending repeat. For the past nearly ten years, I’d had to bear witness to his over-the-top theatrics four times a day as he toot-tooted his boat past my bar, packed to the gills with party types that preferred their libations shot from water guns into their gaping maws.

“That wasn’t just salt you rubbed into that wound.” My customer, Dr. Asher Krane, pulled me out of my musings. “You yanked open that wound and poured Borax into it.”

Dr. Asher Krane. Not Asher. Not Dr. Krane. When he introduced himself, it was alwaysDr. Asher Krane. As if the world knew who he was. I did, unfortunately. He’d been my regular patron every day for the last three years. I knew his whole life story. He’d retired from Dartmouth a few years back and decided to live out the rest of his days ala Hemingway. Less the profuse abuse of alcohol.

“If you knew our history, Krane, you would forgive the Borax.”

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