Darker Than Amber [antikvár]

We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.They came to a yelping stop overhead, out of sight, dumped her over the bridge rail and took off.It was a hot Monday night in June. With moon. It was past midnight and just past the tide change. A billion bugs were vectoring in on us as the wind began to die.It seemed to be a very final way of busting up a romance.I was sitting there under the bridge in a skiff with my friend Meyer. We were under the end of the bridge nearest the town of Marathon, and it is the first highway bridge beyond Marathon on your way to Key West - if you are idiot enough to want to go to Key West.My bachelor houseboat. The Busted Flush, was tied up at Thompson's Marina in Marathon. It had been there since Saturday afternoon. After I got in I phoned Meyer at Bahia Mar in Lauderdale, where he lives aboard his cabin cruiser. I'd been gone a little longer than I'd planned, and I had one small errand for him to do, and one small apology for him to make for me. I said that in return, if he wanted to come on down to Marathon by bus, I could put him into a good snook hole at the right time of year, tide and moon, and then he could come on back to Bahia Mar with me aboard the Flush, and we'd get in late Wednesday afternoon, probably - not that it mattered.Meyer is the best of company, because he knows when talk is better than silence, and he tries to do more than his share of all the less interesting chores.Until I asked him to join me, and heard him say yes, I had thought I wanted to be completely alone for a few days.I'd just finished spending ten days aboard the Flush with an old friend named Virginia, known as Vidge. She had come rocketing down from Atlanta, in wretched shape emotionally, trying to find out who she used to be before three years of a sour marriage had turned her into somebody she didn't even like anymore. In the old days she'd never been skyrockets - justI .