A Second Chance in Paradise

by Winton, Tom

  I said “Thirty-four fifty,” but was thinking, That’s weird. She took my word for it. That would never happen back in New York.

  Punching keys on an ancient NCR, she casually said, “Hope you’re not heading for Key West.”

  “As a matter of fact I am. Why? What’s up?” In my dog-tired condition, I had no room for bad news.

  “You got reservations?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Heard before on the radio that every motel from Key West clear up to Key Largo is full up.” Then, in a motherly fashion far too mature for her years, the girl said, “You know this is Memorial Day weekend, don’t you?”

  “Yes I do. So?” I came back, shrugging my shoulders.

  “On any of the big holidays, you can’t get a room nowhere ’round here without advance notice.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “No rooms anywhere?”

  “A lot of places are booked a whole year in advance.”

  “Fantastic. That’s just wonderful,” I said, my tone weary, defeated. “I’ve been on the road three days now. I’m burnt out. Now I’ll have to sleep in my freaking van? Shit, what’s next?”

  “That’ll be $41.92 please,” she said.

  With a road-grimy hand, I extracted a wad of bills from the front pocket of my jeans. I peeled off three new twenties from the final withdrawal I’d made from Long Island Savings and Loan – twenty-two hundred dollars – that’s all there had been.

  The girl flashed a look at me, counted the change into my hand, and looked up at me again. I managed a hint of a smile then headed for the door.

  “Wait a sec,” her voice suddenly came from behind me. “I can ask Pa Bell if he’d be willing to rent you Mr. Doyle’s trailer. He doesn’t usually rent short term, but who knows.”

  “Who’s Pa Bell? And where’s this trailer?”

  “Oh, Pa’s a great old guy. He owns this here store, the bar next door, and the trailer park – the only things on the whole key. Yeah, there’s a little bitty park behind this here building, back in the woods a ways. The sign out front of the parking lot says so, but you can’t see it. Pa ain’t trimmed the hibiscuses in so long they’ve damn near covered the whole thing up. I love them pretty red flowers, and there’s a mama Mockingbird nesting in there too. She’s got two young’uns so there’s no way Pa’d trim it down now. Besides, even when you could see that old sign, most folks didn’t stop here anyway, not with Key West only 20 minutes down the road.”

  “Well ... if you don’t mind, maybe you could ask him, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “Never hurts to ask, I always say. C’mon, he’s next door.”

  As we walked to “Barnacle Bell’s Bar,” I noticed that the girl was barefoot and had a small, red rose tattooed above her left ankle. Glancing at her angelic face alongside me, her features put me to mind of a teenage Sally Fields; cute smile, dimples and all. She was cute as a button. Even the slightly-chipped tooth I’d noticed inside the store didn’t take all that much away from her.

  Coming in from the hot Florida sun, the dark, cave-like barroom was refreshingly cool. A window-mounted air conditioner whirred as two ceiling fans overhead circulated slowly – Casa Blanca style. There was nobody sitting on any of the dozen or so stools or at the three tables. It had the feel of a place that was just about to open. A few life rings, each with different faded names of boats or ships, hung on the dark wooden walls along with a scattering of fishing rods. Like the vacationers who sometimes stopped into “Barnacle Bell’s” I had no way of knowing the planked walls once formed the deck of a Peruvian schooner. There were photographs scattered on the walls here and there, mostly black and whites from the 50’s and 60’s of successful anglers with phenomenal catches. Baseball great Ted Williams was in one of them. He was holding a thirteen-ound bonefish and standing alongside him was his guide. Though I had no way of knowing it at the time, the man to Williams’s left was a very young, and obviously very able, Pa Bell.

  Behind the circular bar a tall, solidly-built old man was mopping the Cuban tile floor with what smelled like pine disinfectant. His white brows arched high above two eyes the color of sea water. The deep creases in his forehead attested to his living eighty-two years beneath Florida’s unforgiving sun. Studying me as he spoke, he said, “What’s up Sissy?” Pa Bell was not one to waste words. He only spoke when he had something to say and then he never rushed into it. He had that slow, easy way of a blue-blooded Conch.

  “Pa, this here’s, um ... um ... ” Sissy stuttered, looking up at me.

  “Sonny, Sonny Raines. Glad to meet you,” I said, extending my hand over the mahogany bar.

  The old sea captain looked directly into my eyes as he slowly took my offering into his own calloused hand. Feeling slightly intimidated as his sausage-like fingers encompassed my hand, I couldn’t help but notice the tattooed anchor and “USN” beneath the white hair on his forearm. Like the sign on the front of his building, the image and letters had lost much of their clarity.

  “He needs a place to stay, Pa. Everything is filled up already.” Sissy said.

  “Hmmm ... how long for?”

  “Probably just till Monday or Tuesday,” I said, “by then I think I’ll be able to get something in Key West. That’s where I’m headed.”

  Pa took a long swallow from a can of Busch that was sitting on the bar and after that a hit from a Lucky Strike that had been smoldering in a glass ashtray. With all that out of the way he said, “I’ll rent ya Doyle’s Airstream, twenty-five a night. Sissy, take him back to see it. I’ll keep an eye on the store.”

  Desperate for a place to stay, without even seeing it, I reached in my pocket and said, “I’ll pay you now, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “No son,” Pa said, “you ain’t stayed yet, so you don’t owe me nothin’.” Then he began filling a stainless bar cooler with cans of Bud. With his head bowed now, the back of his wide neck put me to mind of the dried and cracked red Georgia clay I’d seen alongside the highway the day before.

  Once we were outside again, Sissy climbed into the van with me to show the way to the trailer. With a trail of hot, white dust rising behind us, we drove past the hibiscus-shrouded sign and turned down an unpaved road alongside the store. A few hundred yards back through slash pines and saw palmettos she directed me to turn right. A moment later the trees opened into a clearing and an aging, yet homey little trailer park appeared. About a dozen single-wide mobile homes and travel trailers sat side by side each other in a half-moon configuration. Although the aluminum dwellings were decades old, they were all neat and tidy, and each of them allowed their occupants an unobstructed, million-dollar view. Just steps from their doors there was a narrow strip of beach bordering acres and acres of shallow, gin-clear tropical water. Farther out, beyond the tidal flats, the deep aquamarine waters of Wreckers Channel flowed gently with the slackening tide.

  Taking this all in from beneath a canopy of tall coconut palms, I couldn’t help feeling like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.

  “Wow,” I said to Sissy, “look at all these coconuts lying around here. Are they diseased or something?”

  “Diseased?” Sissy said, scrunching up her face, yanking her chin in, “What the heck are you talking about – diseased?”

  “Oh! Sorry, nothing! I didn’t mean the place is diseased or anything like that. It’s absolutely gorgeous here. This is unbelievable. It’s just that back in New York anything of any value that isn’t tied down disappears in no time. If this was back there, those coconuts would have been scoffed up as soon as they hit the sand.”

  A moment later Sissy directed me to pull alongside one of the trailers, and I obeyed. Looking through the van’s windows while rolling to a stop, I couldn’t get over how much the travel trailer’s bare metal exterior, with its rounded corners, resembled the fuselage of a small airplane.

  When we entered the narrow, unlocked doorway the heat only intensified and the odor
of dampness and mildew invaded my nostrils. But the place was clean. And there was a window- mounted air-conditioner that I turned on immediately. The compressor may have kicked over grudgingly, but once it did she was humming like a soothing song and spewing cool refreshing air.

  Trying not to appear overzealous about the bargain-basement price, I quickly told Sissy that everything looked fine and that I wanted to rent it.

  That seemed to make her happy and as she left with a smile, the teenager said, “My real name is Vanessa, but everyone here on the Key calls me Sissy.”

  “Is it okay if I call you Sissy, too?” I asked, trying to come across as seriously as I could.

  I could tell she liked hearing me say her name, even if I hadn’t called her Vanessa.

  “Sure. That’ll be just fine!”

  After I thanked her and said goodbye, I watched through a window as she trotted and skipped back toward the store, seemingly unaffected by the heat.

  Instinctively, I locked the door before dragging myself directly to the shower. The pressure was low, the water hard and warm, but to me it felt heavenly. After luxuriating for quite some time, I dried off, took two steps down the trailer’s tiny hallway, one more into the bedroom and plopped right onto the mattress. Lying there on my back, clean and content, I drank the no-longer-cold Gatorade and smoked a cigarette. I was tired, but I had finally managed to leave New York, and the long drive was all but over. I just laid there for a while, enjoying exciting thoughts about finally being in Florida and what the future might hold.

  But then things changed. That bright feeling of contentment was suddenly overshadowed by something else. Looking up at the unfamiliar low ceiling above, I now felt misplaced. Painful memories of that morning – my last birthday, started rolling through my psyche, shrouding my newfound sense of hope and optimism.

  Rolling to my side, watching the green frond of a saw palmetto scratching away at a window the size of a porthole, I thought, God ... why can’t I get over this? Will I ever get over it? I go a few days thinking it’s getting easier then, poof, I’m hurting all over again – just as bad as I was in the very beginning. I wonder what Wendy’s doing right doing now. How she feels at night when she goes to bed alone. Oh, no ... she’s probably still seeing that bastard Silverman. She’s probably going to bed with ... oh man, put that out of your mind right now. You don’t want to even think about ....

  I went on and on like that until the huge Florida sun melted like hot red lava into the Gulf of Mexico. After that, exhaustion mercifully set in and I fell into a long, deep sleep.

  Chapter 4

  On my first morning in the Keys, I awoke at dawn’s first light. Certainly the incessant hum of the air-conditioner had something to do with it as did a rogue cricket that was holed up somewhere inside the trailer. Feeling much better than I did when closing my eyes the night before, I slid into yesterday’s jeans and barefooted it outside.

  Listening to the unfamiliar quiet, I stood on the small dewy lawn surveying things again. Maybe thirty yards from where I stood, the flat surface of Wreckers Channel mirrored the early morning’s pink blushing sky. Way out near the middle, a large tarpon rolled, exposing its thick, silvery body and slapping the water’s surface with its broad tail before disappearing back into the depths. I was ecstatic spotting the awesome fish. I couldn’t wait to do battle with one of those so-called “silver kings.” I’d read in outdoor magazines how once hooked, they sometimes spend more time jumping out of the water then they do in it. Another tarpon surfaced then, a smaller one, making its own light as the new sun reflected off its armor of silver dollar scales. To the right, out past the US 1 bridge on the eastern side of the island, a white sport fishing boat – a cabin job, slowly made its way out into the Atlantic. There was no way I could have known the boat was named “The Island Belle” and that Buster; Pa Bell’s son, was at the helm.

  With a fair amount of renewed excitement, I stepped over to the van and started unloading it. First I pulled out the two, green suitcases I’d had since my stint with the Air Force twenty years earlier. I hadn’t used them much since my discharge because real vacations had always been an unattainable luxury to me and Wendy. For most of those years, the luggage sat in a corner of our garage.

  Next I unloaded my arsenal of fishing outfits, carefully watching the rod tips as I carried them into the trailer. I had everything from ultra-lights to monster-taming winches which, when filled properly, held close to half a mile of heavy line. I was obsessed with fishing and always loved how its calming effect could transform in a flash to heart-pounding, adrenaline pumping excitement. Fishing was as unpredictable as my mood swings. It could both thrill you and disappoint you when a trophy fish hurls its body out of the water, displaying all its magnificence; only to snap the line with one mighty shake of its head. Yes, fishing was one of the two joys I’d never tired of. Unfortunately, the other joy had tired of me.

  Hands in my pockets, I took a few steps toward the shoreline. It felt good to walk again, to stretch my legs after being crammed in the van for so long. Like the trailer I was staying in, the one next door was shaded by dense palms. It sat at the very end of the semicircular formation and was the closest to the water’s edge. There was a light on inside, and the delicious aroma of freshly-brewed coffee wafted from its open windows. The single-wide mobile home had a screened porch on the side, and there was a faded-blue VW Bug, probably older than my van, parked next to it. I had just glanced at the sandy tracks its tires had worn in the sparse grass when I heard the porch door swing open. Quickly rolling my eyes to the right I saw a woman step outside. She was absolutely stunning.

  High-waisted and slender she had on a lightweight denim shirt knotted beneath her breasts, white denim shorts, and no shoes. Smiling now she said in a low voice, as if whispering a secret and being careful not to wake anyone, “Hey, I’ll bet you could use some coffee.”

  I stopped in my tracks, took a quick glance around and said, “Well, I ah ... sure! Why not? I’d really like that, if it isn’t any trouble.”

  Approaching her now I said, “By the way, what exactly does someone who could use some coffee look like? I mean, are there telltale signs?” My response seemed kind of weak as it left my tongue, but it was the best I could muster under the circumstances. This beautiful woman had taken me completely off guard.

  She let out a low giggle; then said, “There are no telltale signs, but this island isn’t the Big Apple and news travels fast. Sissy told me last night that you arrived in the afternoon and rented Mr. Doyle’s trailer next door. Come on in.”

  And I did. We went into the porch and the totally-unpretentious woman extended her right hand saying, “Julie, Julie Albright, how do you do?” She smiled again, and close as I was I saw two rows of the straightest, whitest teeth I’d ever seen. I picked up her offering and gently shook it a time or two. Not normally “a hand man,” I still couldn’t help but notice the one I was holding was elegant. Her fingers were long, feminine fingers with perfectly manicured nails. But that didn’t surprise me. Even dressed down the way she was, everything about her was graceful.

  I managed to say, “I’m Sonny Raines, nice to meet you.” But it wasn’t easy. Her deep brown, sensuous eyes, ever so sleek at the corners, simply took me hostage. And even though I’d never met this woman she somehow seemed familiar. It was uncanny.

  “Well, Sonny Raines,” she said now, glancing up at the clear morning sky, “is it going to be sunny today or will it rain?”

  “Verrry funny! You picked right up on that. Obviously you’ve had some coffee already. It’s Sonny with and o and there’s an e near the end of Raines. Believe me, when I was a kid I took more than my share of ribbing about that.”

  “I’m just kidding, Sonny. Have a seat and I’ll bring out the coffee. How do you take it?”

  “Just a little cream is fine.”

  “You bet! Have a seat. I’ll be right out.”

  I lowered myself into one of the two rattan swivel rockers
on the porch and looked out toward the placid waters of Wreckers Channel again. Two huge birds, almost as tall as full grown men, fascinated me as they strutted side by side along the beach. But that only lasted a moment or two. Soon the sound of a spoon clinking in cups brought my attention back to the woman inside the trailer – this Julie Albright. I couldn’t get over how striking she was, even without makeup on. When we had talked a minute earlier, I’d actually seen my own reflection in her long, lustrous black hair, and the way it hung from a perfect part atop her head, sixties style, it only accentuating the gorgeous features in her delicate face. As for her skin, wow, slightly tanned and flawless it was drawn tightly over well-toned limbs.

  When she came out with two cups of steaming hot coffee and put them on the lobster trap/table between the chairs, I noticed a green aluminum ashtray sitting there. I asked her, “Do you mind if I smoke?” She only waved me off and smiled. I took a cigarette out, lit it, and she sat down.

  Looking out at my van parked just beyond her VW, she then said, “Looking at all those Love Bugs smeared all over your grill it’s obvious you just got down here.”

  “Yup, like Sissy told you, I just arrived yesterday. I was headed for Key West, but they said on the radio there were no rooms available – with the holiday weekend and all.”

  I took a sip of the strong coffee, and she said, “More and more people are coming down every year. How long are you planning to stay?”

  “I’m not sure yet, maybe permanently, maybe not. It depends on how things go. I’ve got to see if I can find work and get situated.”

  I then saw Julie take a quick glance my left hand. After that she raised her eyes to my face, appraising it for the second time. Feeling self-conscious, I caught myself fidgeting in my chair like a nervous schoolboy. I straightened up in my chair a bit then took another sip of coffee.