Bound for the Outer Banks Read online

  Ella looked up at Phoenix and said quickly, “Can you make that a Diet Coke?”

  “Diet Coke it is,” answered Phoenix. To Ella, Phoenix appeared to be a late forties, early fifties - bleached hair but forgot the toner - kind of lady. Her untoned hair did, however, match the Waffle House yellow perfectly. She kind of had that “rode hard and put up wet” look that BeBe used to refer to. Phoenix’s skin was very tan but not in an olive complexion type of way. It was more of a “my skin is calling up its last reservoir of melanin at an alarming rate induced by my two trips a day to the tanning bed” kind of way. The starburst of lines extending from the perimeter of her lips indicated that Waffle House must offer a lot of smoking breaks.

  BeBe used to warn Ella about smoking. “Not only will it kill you Missy, but it will make you look like you just ate a lemon for the rest of your life.” Ella always seemed to be under the impression that BeBe thought the latter was more detrimental than the whole lung cancer, death factor.

  When Ella aka Belle received her Diet Coke she was overcome with curiosity with regard to her waitress’s unique name. She envisioned the regal mythological bird that never died, but instead rose from its own ashes, reborn in grand fashion. As Phoenix carefully placed the glass of Diet Coke on the small, square Waffle House napkin, then gently placed a straw next to it, Ella decided to inquire.

  “You have a really unique name. Are you named after the Phoenix in Greek Mythology?” asked Ella.

  Phoenix threw her head back and laughed, “Oh no Hon, I wish it was something fancy like that, but I was conceived in the back of a ’77 Pontiac Phoenix.”

  Ella sat, astonished. Astonished not because of the fact that her waitress had just revealed to her she’d been lustily conceived in a 1970’s era compact car but because Ella had done the math in her head with lightning speed. Even if Phoenix’s mother had conceived her in the car as it was still parked on the new car sales lot before it was legally purchased, she was at least fifteen to twenty years younger than she appeared. Ella made a mental note to use her daily sunscreen more religiously.

  “Well that’s a hoot!” Ella said with wide eyes and a toothy smile.

  BeBe had made sure that Ella could easily socially maneuver between Waffle House staff and New York City elite or at least elite in their own minds, as BeBe would say. “Honey, some of these folks have actually had a little money for almost half a second and already they think their shit doesn’t stink. I know people with money so old it pre dates the birth of this nation and although they’ve got a bank full of money and know how to set a formal table with their hands tied behind their back, they’re not afraid to shoot an armadillo that’s digging up the yard. They’d probably eat it too so the meat wouldn’t go to waste if it wouldn’t give you leprosy.”

  BeBe Barrantine was always tossing out little tidbits of knowledge like that which captivated Ella. She finally stopped looking up every cockamamie sounding BeBe -fied insight when they all turned out to be true. For instance, dining on armadillo cuisine would give you leprosy. Like all the intriguing facts she learned from her mother, it was filed away with the others.

  Ella was startled when Agent Jefferson’s phone rang. He answered it and pressed a finger against his free ear to block out the sound of the juke box that was currently blaring the song “Waffle Doo Wop” thanks to a little curly haired boy whose parents were slipping him quarters to allow them to eat their meals in peace.

  “Hell no, she’s not getting the grill. In fourteen years of marriage she’s never grilled a damn thing. She was always in charge of baked beans and potato salad and I manned the grill. The grill is mine!” Agent Jefferson realized he was raising his voice and said in an angry whisper, “If she is demanding the grill then I’m demanding her monogramming machine. I paid two thousand dollars for that damn thing. She’s a compulsive monogrammer. She even monogrammed the wash rags. Tell her if she gets the grill, I get the Singer!”

  As Agent Jefferson paid his attorney four hundred dollars an hour to complain about his wife’s obsessions with monogramming, nail art, and Juvederm, Ella’s mind began to wander. She looked around the Waffle House and marveled at the consistency of the décor, and the wait staff, and then she marveled at the inconsistency of the clientele. The customers ranged from farmers to ladies lunching with Tory Burch totes and Rebecca Minkoff shoulder bags. The Waffle House appealed to people across the spectrum and why wouldn’t it? Good food fast was its mantra and so far it had certainly never disappointed Ella. Although she had been raised in New York City where there was not a Waffle House to be found, during summers in Biloxi, Waffle House food was a staple for her and BeBe.

  All Waffle Houses contained the same ball-like light fixtures. One way the restaurant was apparently able to maintain such low prices was that they had paid an architect once for one design and used it for every location. The blueprint couldn’t have been expensive either since it consisted of a rectangular, block building with plate glass windows on two sides and the exact same floor plan inside. The booths and the high and low bars were made of a wood paneled laminate. All the chairs and tile were also identical and looked like a 1970 contractor special. Phoenix placed Agent Jefferson’s All Star Special and Ella’s pecan waffle down and said, “Here’s some syrup, honey. Y’all need anything else?” Agent Jefferson looked and shook his head no and winked at Phoenix unable to answer since he still had his cell phone firmly attached to his ear.

  Ella assumed this was not a flirtatious wink but a Southern man’s way of apologizing for rudely being on the phone while a waitress was trying to do her job. Phoenix gave Agent Jefferson a gum smacking smile and whispered, “Enjoy!”

  Phoenix did not look the least perturbed. Ella could only assume that Phoenix had also gathered from the agent’s loud phone conversation that he was getting a divorce and understood the importance of the call.

  BeBe had always told Ella there were three types of people in the world whose behavior you should always forgive, a pregnant woman, a woman with a toddler, and anyone going through a divorce because any of these three things could make a person “as crazy as a Bessie Bug.” Since Ella had never personally experienced any of these things, she took her mother’s word for it. She wondered if getting involved with a man you thought had a lucrative legitimate job, was educated, well-traveled, and treated you like a queen but later turned out to work for an Italian crime clan and instead of taking you on an “extended vacation” as promised had actually kidnapped you for companionship on the run would qualify to make one “as crazy as a Bessie Bug” in BeBe’s eyes.

  Ella figured BeBe would have been proud that she’d left the man she loved and had the nerve to testify against him. “Sweetie, being in love is more addictive than cocaine. There’ve been studies, so people do insane things when they’re in love.

  As usual Ella did not question BeBe. She knew that if she did a little research she’d certainly find a study at a legitimate place like Harvard which measured increases in dopamine levels among cocaine users and people who claimed to have fallen in love recently, and the unfortunate folks “in love” would have registered higher dopamine levels. Apparently cocaine addiction was a lot like love in other ways. In the early stages of cocaine use you get a much better high than after you’ve used for a while. Addicts take more of it to try to get the same effect as when they started. Likewise, after being with a person you’re “in love” with for approximately three months, you don’t get quite as giddy as you did before when he picked you up for dinner or after the first time you picked up his skid marked underwear off the bathroom floor.

  Ella spread the fluffy butter she’d just scooped from the little, round, plastic container across the tiny squares of her waffle. At one point Ella refused to put margarine or butter on anything. She then figured it tasted so much better it was worth the risk. She wavered between eating margarine and butter. She had read studies about how margarine was so much better than butter followed by other studies which said margarine increased heart disease by fifty percent over butter. She surmised that maybe because people assumed margarine was so much healthier than butter they’d just slather every food item with it, forgetting it just had a little less fat than butter, not exactly making it a health food. Ella had also read reports that margarine was one molecule away from plastic. She thought, well we’re like one gene away from a Chimpanzee and that’s a pretty huge difference. Millions of things are one molecule away from millions of other things but the scare tactic brought back the butter business with a vengeance. Dairy farmers must employ a pretty damn good advertising agency, Ella concluded.

  Polishing off bacon, two eggs over medium, two pieces of raisin toast, grits, and a waffle, also known as the Waffle House All Star Special, Agent Jefferson grabbed the lemony yellow ticket and walked up to the register to pay. He took out a government Mastercard and handed it to Phoenix, who, like other waitresses, manned the register as well as waited tables. Ella figured Waffle House stops on government business were impossible until 2006 when Waffle House began accepting credit cards. The company had fought accepting them tooth and nail worrying that the cards would slow down their speedy process. Ironically, these days it took longer for people to dig the cash out of their wallets or purses and have change counted back than to just swipe a credit card.

  Six hours of driving and an additional stop at a Fayetteville, Arkansas Waffle House later and they were crossing the Alligator River. The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was fifteen miles from their destination of Manteo on Roanoke Island. The speed limit through the refuge was thirty miles per hour to protect the local red wolves from ending up as road kill. Ella read as many of the signs through the refuge as she could as they passed by. The refuge was home to black bears, alligators, wading birds, and red wolves. It gave Ella some comfort to think about a New York Italian hit man trying to covertly negotiate a swamp full of water moccasins, bears, and wolves.

  In a small town like Manteo, outside of tourist season, any strange car would be noticed. It was the final week of tourist season so maybe the powers that be at the FBI had actually thought this location through, and it had nothing to do with the fact that this was Blythe Beatty Barrantine’s old stomping ground. Since she was convinced she had never spoken of Manteo to Dante, Ella had relaxed about her new hideout. Dante assumed she was a Mississippi girl through and through who happened to spend every school year the first sixteen years of her life in Brooklyn, New York. She was his “Southern Belle” as he used to refer to her.

  When Dante Vitali first met Ella she was residing in a yellow, coastal bungalow in Biloxi, Mississippi and as far as Dante knew her roots were tied to the great state of Mississippi. Ella had never made him any the wiser. Ella decided it was better if she didn’t go into the soap opera younger years of her mother’s North Carolina upbringing and her harum-scarum existence immediately following. She didn’t want to divulge any of it whatsoever to her new sophisticated lover.

  Approaching her mother’s hometown which she had never visited, Ella could feel the adrenaline making her heart race. She would arrive not as Blythe Beatty’s daughter Eleanor, but Belle Butler, reclusive freelance writer. Freelance writer was the occupation given to her by the FBI along with her porn star sounding name. She agreed that freelance writer was very general and vague and would be appropriate for anyone in protective custody. For instance, topics for a sophisticated woman might include, home and garden, fashion, fundraising, theater, orchestral music, and antiquing. Those for a salt of the earth male could be hunting and fishing, farming, land and forest management, and mechanics. A computer nerd about to expose financial fraud or racketeering might write about gaming, IT issues, computer repair or write technical manuals. With writing as a faux career just about anyone could bullshit their way through a conversation about the phantom job they did for a living which was how southern folks referred to careers. Not “What is your occupation?” or “Where do you work?” It was always, “What do you do for a living?”

  In all the cities Ella had been placed, New Orleans was by far the city where people were the most inquisitive about the new girl on the block. Ella loved living in the familiar city she and BeBe frequented on summer weekends. But she was used to the standard line of questioning from the neighbors and had learned how to abruptly stop it so they wouldn’t get too curious about their cloistered neighbor.

  The New Orleans accent was “Hey Dare!” thick and lazy. Ending consonants were always optional and reaching the tongue to the very front of the mouth to form the “th” digraph was clearly too much effort so the tongue stayed where it was and “th” became interchangeable with the letter “d” as in the infamous “Who Dat?” idiom which originated in New Orleans minstrel shows but as late was a chant for the New Orleans Saints professional football team.

  Ella would answer, “Hello there.” She’d try to keep walking, biking, gardening, or whatever she happened to be doing at that moment, but the folks of The Big Easy were persistent. After a little chit chat the inevitable more personal questions followed.

  “You married?”

  “No,” Ella would answer continuing to look down, hopeful to look uninterested.

  “Awwwwee now, a pretty guhl lak you?”

  “Thank you, but not yet,” she’d answer. Always thanking a person for a compliment just as BeBe had instructed.

  “Whatcha do for a livin’?”

  “I’m a freelance writer.”

  “Whatcha write about?”

  Ella would answer trying to be intentionally vague. “Women’s health mostly.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  At this point Ella would realize that the line of questioning could continue “til the cows came home” as her mother would say. It was time to bring out the big gun.

  “I write about things like vaginal dryness, female condoms, and pelvic pain during sex.”

  “Oh,” was the standard response followed by a reason why the neighbor needed to get back home as soon as possible.

  Agent Jefferson pulled off the side of the road on a gravel covered area beside an old spring where a crumbling concrete picnic table sat. He retrieved Ella’s roadster bike out of the back of the trunk after unhooking several sets of colorful bungee cords. He sat it on the ground then pushed the kickstand in to place. Ella grabbed Old Finnegan out of the backseat. Agent Jefferson said, “Let me get that for you.”

  “Oh, I’ve got it,” replied Ella. She knew that ultimately she’d be responsible for lugging around her own suitcase so she had packed light.

  She lifted “Old Finnegan” across the top of the basket secured to her bicycle’s handlebars. When she first saw the bike she thought it looked exactly like Miss Gulch’s bike from the Wizard of Oz, the mean old spinster who takes Toto away from Dorothy at the beginning of the movie only later to show up again as the Wicked Witch of the West in the Land of Oz. Ella quickly got over this when her bicycle became her only source of transportation and the basket was used to carry her groceries, laundry, garbage, and anything else she had to transport.

  Balancing herself on the bike, Ella hit the kickstand with her heel while she steadied the old suitcase precariously balanced on the basket. Agent Jefferson reached into the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out an envelope with “Belle Butler” scribbled across the front. The envelope would contain her new address, a key to the house, and any special instructions. Inside her new home was always a paid in advance tracfone to contact the authorities with. A second cell phone for her personal use was also always waiting. This particular phone would only function within range of the nearest cell phone tower. She could not contact anyone outside that range nor could anyone contact her who was placed farther than the reach of the closest tower.

  Ella was never delivered to her new city by an agent stationed within that state, hence the nine hour drive from Georgia with Agent Jefferson. No one but the team in D.C. at the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters was to know Ella’s exact location. Using an agent located close enough to drive easily to Ella’s new destination might prove too tempting if his curiosity got the best of him. Also the fact that Ella was an exceptionally beautiful woman didn’t help.

  After Agent Jefferson handed Ella the envelope, she knew he would leave and not look back. He would begin the long drive back to Atlanta and an internal GPS would track him to make sure he did not drive into the town of Manteo where Ella would now be residing. Ella was always dropped off one mile from her destination. It was up to her to scout out the address by merely exploring on her bike or asking locals where her new street was located. She always stopped and asked because keeping the old vintage suitcase securely on the basket for any length of time was not an easy proposition.

  Both of Ella’s feet were placed firmly on the ground as she watched Agent Jefferson execute a perfect three point turn and take off back to Atlanta. Ella took a deep breath and rode towards her new life and her mother’s old one.

  Chapter 6

  After riding her bike approximately half a mile on a two lane road lined by a thick forest of hardwoods and Longleaf Pines, Ella came to a small bridge over a wide stream. Up ahead she could see a lone yellow flashing light at a small intersection. As she approached, a scallop bordered white sign read Manteo left, Nags Head straight, and Wanchese, right. These were all names she was familiar with from when BeBe’s would reminisce about her Outer Banks home.