Tropical Depression

by Laurence Shames

  "Yes!" hissed Murray in a kind of Pyrrhic transport. "I want you to! Get a good lawyer, tell him how I took advantage of you just because you took your bra off in my office and wagged your bubbies in my face. Grab all you can. The house, it's yours. I never wanna see it again. Goo'bye."

  He hung up, stared with wonder at the silent telephone, as if the instrument, and not himself, had done the talking. Truth. Flat-out, in-your-face directness—what a wild and intoxicating mystery. Where did it come from, this reckless truth, what was it made of?

  He sprang up from the sofa, took a spin out to the balcony. When he got there the sun was just emerging from behind a small and fluffy cloud. The ocean twinkled, clean heat returned to the world, and absurdly, the Bra King took this as an omen. He scratched his head with gusto, was on top of things once more. He went back to the striped sofa, which was already taking on the potent feel of headquarters.

  He called his office in the garment district of Manhattan, got his friend and number-two man, Leslie Kantor, on the line.

  "Murray," Kantor said, "you okay? Taffy called last night. You didn't go home, you didn't come in—"

  "I started to come in," the Bra King interrupted. "But the day got off to a really shitty start, so I said fuck it and retired."

  "Excuse me?"

  In the distance, very soft, the sound of swatted tennis balls.

  "Retired, Les. Resigned. Quit. I'm in Key West. Palm trees. Coconuts."

  The line went silent save for the faint scream of tearing paper. Murray had known Les Kantor for a lot of years, knew him like a book. He knew Les had retrieved his pack of Tums from his left-hand trousers pocket and was trimming down the wrapper with a perfect thumbnail. "Coconuts," he murmured at last.

  "Coconuts, Les. And I'm divorcing Taffy."

  "Murray, you spoken with Max?"

  Max Lowenstein was Murray's psychiatrist.

  "He's next on my list," the Bra King said.

  "Maybe he should be first on your list."

  An affectionate singsong came into Murray's voice. "Les. Les. You're beautiful, bubbala. So reasonable. So level-headed. This is why I feel perfectly at peace leaving you to run things."

  "I don't wanna run things. Murray, you don't just walk away like that. Milan's coming up. The big promotion with Bloomie's—"

  "I don't care."

  "You have to care," said Kantor.

  "This is where you're wrong," said Murray. "It's where I was wrong till yesterday."

  More Tums went into Leslie Kantor's mouth, the Bra King heard them clatter softly against his high-priced teeth. Then the partner said, "So Murray, what'll you do down there?"

  Not until the question was asked did the Bra King realize he had no idea what he would do. He knew where he would do, and that was as far as he'd gotten. "I guess for awhile I'll do nothing."

  "I've known you a long time," said his friend. "You're incapable of doing nothing."

  Murray couldn't deny it. His only response was to chew a fingernail.

  "Go fishing," Kantor suggested.

  "Fishing?"

  "It's as close as you can come to doing nothing and still be doing something."

  "Les, I've never gone fishing in my life."

  "All the better. You'll have something new to learn."

  "Great," said the Bra King, "a fifty-three-year-old shmegeggi with a hook in his eye."

  "Try it. It's very soothing. And Murray, hey, what about the ads?"

  On the striped sofa in his penthouse living room, Murray Zemelman gave a little smile. He could not deny that he still liked the idea of wearing the Bra King crown, sashaying like Bert Parks among the ranks of pouting shiksas in their push-em-ups. "The ads," he said, "we'll see. If my public demands it, maybe I'll still do the ads."

  "Good. You'll go fishing, you'll do the ads, when you're ready, you'll come back. In the meantime, talk to Max. Soon. Please, Murray."

  "Okay, okay," the Bra King said. "I'm calling him right now."

  3

  Just then, some twenty feet from the southernmost point in the continental United States, a man named Tommy Tarpon, still agitated from a conversation earlier that morning, was setting up his seashells, which were displayed on a homemade plywood cart that he towed behind his ancient bicycle. His wares arranged, he sat down on a blue plastic milk crate, his back against the fence that cordoned off U.S. Navy property. Sunlight glared off the ocean, but Tommy was shaded by an enormous banyan tree whose unearthly dangling roots were lifting up the sidewalk. He sat there and waited for customers.

  Some minutes later, he pretended not to watch as an oldish tourist with a green visor and red knees approached the cart of shells and nonchalantly slipped two fingers into the sun-warmed opalescent orifice of a queen helmet.

  "That's how you can tell when they're sexually mature," said Tommy, when the tourist was in there two knuckles deep. "When the labium gets pink and thick like that."

  Caught, the man with red knees quickly swept his hand behind his back. Tommy had seen it again and again. Women always held the shells up to their ear to hear the ocean; men always wanted to finger them, first thing. The old tourist moved to change the subject. "Is it local?"

  "You bet it's local," Tommy said. "Gathered by Indians near Cape Sable."

  "Is that so? How much ya want for it?"

  "Seven dollars."

  The tourist took some time to think it over. He peered at the flat ocean, glanced at a knot of Asians photographing each other in front of the marker that said havana-90 miles. "You a Seminole?" he said at last.

  Tommy crossed his arms against his chest, put on a very Indian expression, said nothing.

  "I'll give ya six bucks," said the tourist.

  Tommy tugged lightly at the fringes of his chamois vest. "Eight," he said.

  "You just said seven."

  "Have it your way. Seven."

  The tourist beamed. Now he was having fun. Haggling with a real live Indian. "Clever," he said.

  Tommy smiled pleasantly, finished the thought for him. "For a Redskin. Seven bucks."

  The tourist hesitated. A new concern had seized him. Did he really want a big heavy fragile seashell? He had a drive to Fort Lauderdale and four days in Orlando before flying home to Michigan. Carry a shell all that way only to get back home and find it chipped? "I'll think about it."

  "Big decision," Tommy said, and he scratched his back against the Navy fence as the tourist wandered off on pink and scrawny legs.

  *****

  Murray had meant to call his shrink right then, but somehow he didn't do it.

  He was seized by a sudden urge to go for a walk instead, smell the chlorine in the pool. Besides, by now he could no longer hide it from himself that his high spirits were extremely fragile, less a part of him than an overlay, a cheery suit of clothes that could at any moment detach itself and walk away without him. Max Lowenstein—sober, probing Max—would discover that in about ten seconds. And Murray was not so eager to have it pointed out.

  So he swept off his tie, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his rumpled shirt, and rode the elevator downstairs to the pool.

  He walked the perimeter of the courtyard, brushed past red and pink hibiscus in big clay pots. He watched a fat man sink an eight-footer on the putting green. Along the row of lounges, he saw slender fellows lying side by side in tiny bathing suits, women facedown with their tops undone, dollops of bosom swelling at their sides.

  Murray smiled at everyone as he floated past, now and then somebody briefly smiled back. But no one smiled first, everyone seemed too absorbed in paperbacks or backgammon or cancerous communion with the sun, and by the time Murray completed his circuit, he was feeling isolated, apprehensive. His steps got heavy, it was like the instant when an airplane drops its flaps and you understand abruptly that gravity has been there all the while. For a long moment he stood still, couldn't decide which way to move his feet. He choked down panic, told himself this was not depression socking in again, just an un
derstandable fatigue, a temporary winding down that, after all, was part of arriving someplace new.

  Then he heard a soft gruff voice behind him. "First day here?"

  He turned to see an old man sitting in the shade of a metal umbrella that was painted like a daisy. He was wearing a canary yellow linen shirt with topaz-colored placket and collar; oddly, he seemed to have a moth-eaten muff in his lap. Then the muff lifted up its knobby head and revealed itself to be an ancient pale chihuahua, with drooping whiskers and a scaly nose and milky eyes.

  Murray said, "How could you tell?"

  "For starters, ya got pants on," the old man said. "And you're curious. I seen the way ya look at people."

  Murray, a little guilty, cleared his throat.

  "Place like this," the old man went on, "what happens is people stop being curious. Too much coming and going. Transients. People decide, hey, this guy's only here a week, why bother gettin' to know 'im? The year-rounders, they figure these seasonal people, they dump us inna summer, why bother makin' friends? But my question, where d'ya draw the line? Everybody dumps everybody when they die, so this means ya don't bother makin' friends wit' nobody? Siddown."

  For a second Murray was paralyzed by thankfulness. To have someone to sit with, this was no small thing. He coaxed his feet toward a metal chair, felt the heat of it against his butt, took a moment to study his companion. The old man's face was long and thin, his eyes were crinkly but clear and bright as marbles, he had neatly combed white hair that flashed with glints of pink and bronze.

  "Bert's the name," the old man said, holding out a gnarled and spotted hand. "Bert d'Ambrosia."

  "Murray Zemelman."

  "New Yawka, right?"

  "How'd ya know?"

  "The shoes. Beautiful loafers like that, Italian I bet, you'd only find 'em New Yawk or California. And California, excuse me for sayin' this, ya'd look a little fitter."

  "Very observant," Murray said.

  "Hell else I got ta do? So Murray, y'on vacation?"

  The Bra King didn't answer right away. He scratched his head. He opened his mouth. He giggled, not with mirth but freedom. He was in a transient place where there was not the slightest reason not to tell the simple naked truth. "Actually," he blurted, "I left my wife and quit my business yesterday."

  Unruffled, the old man stroked his chihuahua. The chihuahua blinked and wheezed, short white dog hairs fluttered onto Bert's Bermuda shorts. "Ah, so you're havin' a whaddyacallit, a midlife crisis."

  Murray waved that idea away. "Nah, I had that one already. That's when I left my first wife. Bought a sports car. Got tennis elbow shifting. It was stupid anyway. Leaving the wife, I mean. Really stupid. But this is something different. This one, I don't think it has a name."

  Water surged along the edges of the pool, made a sound like a cat lapping milk. Bert pursed his lips and nodded. "Good. I don't like it the way everything, they give it a name, it's like it isn't yours no more. Some things, okay, I guess they gotta have a name. Haht attack. Diabetes. But stuff inside ya head? I don't see where alla that, it has to have a name."

  For this Murray had no comeback, so he just looked out at the palms and the sky. The sun was getting higher, and Bert moved his chair a few inches to keep his napping dog out of the sun. Then he said, "Ya play poker, gin rummy, anything like that?"

  Murray nodded that he did. Bert gestured toward a screened gazebo set back from the pool. Even empty it seemed to ring with the easy congeniality of card games, seemed fragrant with the oily richness of potato chips.

  "We need a hand sometime, I'll let ya know," said Bert, and Murray nearly panted with the hope of things to do. "What apartment y'in?"

  The Bra King pointed at the West Building and said, without false modesty, "The penthouse."

  "Whaddya know," said Bert. "Guy who plays sometimes has the East Penthouse. Politician. LaRue's his name."

  "Ah," said Murray, "I went into his place by accident this morning. Got kicked out by a geek in a hair net after being called an asshole by a screaming Indian."

  The old man calmly stroked his dog. "Feather or dot?"

  "Hm?" said Murray. "Ya know. Indian. American Indian. Native American, whatever they like to be called these days."

  "In costume?"

  "Costume?"

  "Yeah. Ya know, Tonto vest, ponytail?"

  'Yeah," said Murray. "That's him."

  "That's Tommy," said Bert. "Sells shells. Makes himself look like an Indian for the tourists."

  "Now I'm confused," said Murray. "Are you saying the man's an Indian or are you saying the man is not an Indian?"

  "He's an Indian," said Bert. "I'm sayin' he's an Indian. But I'm sayin' he makes himself more like an Indian than an Indian really is, because this is the way the stupid tourists want an Indian ta look. Capeesh? I wonder what he was doin' at LaRue's."

  "I'm surprised you don't know," said Murray.

  "Why should I know?"

  "You seem to know everything else."

  "I know what I see," said Bert. "I know what people tell me. More'n this, I don't know." He put the ghostly chihuahua on the table, where it did a stiff-legged pirouette, its paws clicking dryly on the metal surface. Then he labored upward from his chair. "You'll excuse me, Murray, I gotta go upstairs and give the stupid dog a pill."

  Slow but straight, he walked away. Murray closed his eyes a moment and listened to the watery and rustly sounds of Florida.

  4

  As the Bra King was trudging back up to the West Penthouse, the curtains of the East Penthouse were being tightly drawn against the high and candid midday light. The young man called Pascal—senator Barney LaRue's houseboy, secretary, and masseur—out of his kimono now and clad in purple harem pants, was dusting chairs, mixing drinks, squaring papers on his patron's desk, doing all the little things that make a meeting work.

  The senator was receiving a visitor, a large contributor to his campaigns, but one whose name would never appear on donor lists and whose support, for the good of all concerned, would forever be disclaimed.

  "Charlie," he was saying to this visitor, in his lush unhurried voice. "I'm looking out for your interests. Never doubt I'm doing that."

  They were sitting in his study. Recessed fixtures threw a soft glow that mostly lit up photos of Barney LaRue shaking hands with people more famous than himself—visiting dignitaries, movie stars. In every picture his blandly handsome face—too-neat silver hair, small and somewhat pointy nose, deep-set pale blue eyes—was locked in the same relentless smile, the small teeth uniform as mah-jongg tiles.

  His guest sipped slowly from a glass of bourbon. "Did I say anything about doubting you, Bahney? Ya got a guilty conscience, wha? All I said, I said a fucking hundred grand has gone from me ta you and so far I've seen dick on my investment."

  The politician leaned suavely forward on well-tanned elbows. "But Charlie, that's how investments are. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't."

  "Mine pay off," the visitor said. He was a small man with squeezed-together features and sacs the color of liver beneath his eyes. He wore a silver jacket with a zipper, the kind of jacket race-car drivers wear.

  "Charlie," said the senator, touching rum to his lips. "I promised you I'd work night and day for that bill. I never promised it would pass. And it won't pass. Sad but true. I've twisted arms, I've traded favors. They won't do it. Political reality. The churches. The tracks. This crazy coalition. Casino gambling—it isn't going to happen, Charlie."

  The guest turned in his chair, addressed a massive presence that hovered a discreet distance away. Charlie Ponte did not go anyplace alone, and today his chaperone was a guy named Bruno, who had a pitted face and a frame like something for industrial use. "All that money," the boss said to his goon, "and these gutless bastards can't even pass a fucking bill."

  Bruno frowned, shook his head, twirled a big globe like he might here and there punch in a continent.

  Surly now, slow-burning, Ponte turned back to his host.
"So you're telling me I'm fucked on that. Zat the end'a the story? You get a hundred grand and I get a lecture on politics?"

  LaRue lifted up his silver eyebrows, spoke with the desperate and mendacious cheer of a salesman who didn't have what you wanted but was confident that you could be persuaded you wanted something else. "I have another idea for you. I've been working on it, free of charge."

  "You're a whore, Bahney. You don't do nothin' free a charge."

  The politician let that pass, leaned back in his chair. "Charlie, you familiar with the Native American Reserved Harvesting Act of 1978?"

  The little mobster just glared at him, brooded about his hundred grand.

  "I opposed it," LaRue went on. "Pansy liberals passed it anyway. It gives the Indians a monopoly on gathering and selling certain kinds of seashells."

  "Fuck I care about seashells?" Ponte said. "Don't waste my—"

  "Charlie, Charlie. Have some vision. This isn't about seashells. It's about prime retail space on Duval Street."

  Ponte listened harder.

  "I believe it would be useful to you to control an enterprise through which certain embarrassing-to-explain earnings might be filtered."

  The mobster cooled a hot hand against his bourbon glass.

  "There's an Indian in town," LaRue went on. "Sells shells on the street. Has for years. I've been explaining to him the advantages of joining forces with a wealthy backer. Opening a store. Maybe a chain of stores. The IRS, the FBI, Charlie—they're not likely to look too hard at the business of a poor downtrodden Indian. They make trouble for him, it's bad PR."

  "And the Indian?" Ponte said. "He wants to do business?"

  The politician pressed his thin lips together. "Not so far," he admitted. "He doesn't seem to trust me."

  "Give 'im that at least."

  "He'll come around," LaRue said confidently. "It just might take some time, some persuading."

  Ponte glanced over at Bruno. Bruno rocked from foot to foot, cracked the joints on fingers thick as pickles.

  "Not that kind of persuading," said LaRue. "Unless, of course, it's necessary. I mean logic. Reason. Having his street-vendor's license yanked."