Mangrove Squeeze

by SKLA

  "Iraq?" said Suki. "Libya?"

  He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, slid toward her on the sofa. With difficulty she held her ground.

  She murmured, "What would they want in Libya, Iraq?"

  Weirdly, Lazslo laughed. It was a barking laugh with lust and recklessness and maybe a hint of secret fear in it. "What," he said, "would feed their pathetic fantasies of destroying the West someday? Yes, the wealth has to travel. And you know what? That kind of travel is very, very tiring. So after that, the money needs vacation. Someplace sunny. Relaxing."

  "Weapons, Lazslo? Are you saying bombs?"

  "Someplace easygoing. Full of beautiful women who don't ask so many questions."

  "Lazslo, do they smuggle bombs?"

  He snorted. "Bombs? No one's that crazy ... Spare parts, maybe. Useful ingredients perhaps."

  "Ingredients?... Ingredients?"

  He studied her. Her eyes were wide, her chest was heaving. He chose to see arousal rather than horror. "Enough ingredients to make Chernobyl look like a weenie roast, okay? You have a strange idea of foreplay, Suki."

  "So your uncle," she said. "The shops—"

  Lazslo hushed her with a hand raised like a traffic cop. He leaned very close, arched over her. Heat pulsed off him and his breath was sour with hops and barley. "Mafia excites you," he whispered, "you must be very ready."

  Ready to throw up, she thought.

  "No ... I'm not," she said. At a measured pace intended to reveal no panic, she began to slide away from him along the sofa.

  He groveled after her, put a damp hand on her breast.

  She brushed away his fingers and got her legs unfolded. She smoothed her blouse and started standing up. "I've had a lovely evening, thank you, but now I'm going home."

  Lazslo was watching her rise, enjoying the flex of her butt as she straightened her knees, measuring the weight of her chest as she lifted her shoulders. "You're what?" he said.

  She rounded the coffee table, got the big piece of glass safely between them. "You've been a gracious host," she said. "Delicious dinner."

  Lazslo sat there, tipsy, blinking, watching her recede across the living room, past the kitchen with its undone dishes, moving inexorably toward the door. He felt suddenly foolish with his thighs so far apart, and he was almost too baffled to be angry. His titillation had followed every zig and zag of hers—except that his had been real, and had left him unsatisfied but drained. He rubbed his jaw and, with the thwarted certainty of the foreigner who thought he knew the rules, he said, "An American woman, she comes to your place, she spends the night with you."

  Suki's hand was on the doorknob. She looked back across her shoulder. "Call me un-American," she said. "I hope we'll talk again soon."

  Chapter 11

  Next morning at the Mangrove Arms, Aaron Katz was in such a buoyant mood that not even finding a drowned and bloated fruit rat in the pool skimmer could put a damper on his spirits.

  He vacuumed the pool, scrubbed the line of scum around the edges of the hot tub. He watered the impatiens; plucked a troubling number of yellow leaves from the hibiscus plants.

  He looked in on his father, who was sitting at the front desk with his eyes closed, his yellow Walkman cradled in his hands, his headphones threaded through his silver hair and an expression of untethered ecstasy on his thin-skinned face.

  He checked on the tattooed woman who did the breakfast, who seemed this morning to be trying some odd experiment with giant pancakes.

  The Mangrove Arms was still the Mangrove Arms— badly installed runners still puckered on the stairs, crooked sconces still flicked off and on in accordance with the inscrutable whim of distant switches—but today Aaron was seduced again by the charm, the promise of the place, the very idea of it. It continued eating money, guests were few and happy guests were fewer, and yet it seemed in spite of everything that things were working out. He had a date that evening. His father had a new friend, someone to visit. Life was opening up. Key West, this transient place whose heart was hidden under mounds of promotional brochures and tacky T-shirts and empty bottles, was embracing him.

  Standing in the kitchen amid the sweet carbon smell of sticking pancakes, he poured himself a cup of coffee. He'd had one sip when the house phone rang. He picked it up, said, "Front desk."

  An unhappy and abashed male voice said, "Uh, well, yeah, it's about the toilet."

  Aaron put the coffee down. Undaunted, or daunted only slightly, he started rolling up his sleeves and tried to remember where he'd put the plunger. "I'll be right there," he said.

  On Key Haven the mood was altogether darker.

  The Belorussian housekeeper had unscrewed the false bottoms from the vases, had gotten on her scooter and brought the tapes to Ivan Fyodorovich Cherkassky. Grim- faced, expressionless, perched with a disembodied lightness on one end of his undented sofa, Cherkassky had reviewed them, had listened to the incriminating passages a second time, a third. He'd summoned Gennady Markov to his home and, together, they listened to them yet again.

  "You see?" the thin man said. "You see what comes from being too easy with this boy?"

  Lazslo's uncle said nothing, just looked out the window at the still canal, the silly mint-green house across the way.

  "Reckless," Ivan Fyodorovich hammered on. "Careless. I told you, Gennady. And now this."

  Markov laced together his fat fingers, worked them nervously. "Maybe you make too much of it, Ivan. It was idle boasting, talk to get her clothes—"

  "Stop being stupid," said the scoop-faced man. "Stop making excuses. It does not matter why he said these things. He said them. To this woman. You know what has to happen."

  Markov chewed his knuckles. He tried to think of some other way but he knew there was no other way. Absurdly, it grieved him that Lazslo didn't get to sleep with her before she had to die.

  As if tracking his old comrade's thoughts, Cherkassky took them one step farther. "He must do it himself," he said.

  Markov gripped the arms of his chair as if bracing for a car crash. "No!" he said. "There are others who could—"

  "He made the mess," Cherkassky implacably replied. "He must clean the mess. A lesson every child should learn."

  "Child, yes," said his uncle. "Child, Ivan. This boy is not a killer. To make him do this is big mistake. It will change him. It will coarsen him."

  There was a silence. It was broken by a sudden metallic laugh that didn't quite sound human, a single syllable of mirthless release that carried all the disgust and censure that Ivan Fyodorovich had been keeping mostly to himself for a long time now.

  "Coarsen him?" he said. "The boy could be no coarser! With his beer, his blue jeans, his ignorant erections that he follows sniffing like a barnyard dog. He has no dignity. No responsibility."

  "But Ivan—" protested Markov.

  "He is an animal!" Cherkassky pressed. "Nothing but tubes and appetite. Now he follows the tube between his legs. Older, he'll be a slave to the tube of his gullet. Like you, Gennady. Given time, he'll end up fat and sloppy. Congratoolations, Gennady! You wanted a son, you found one."

  Markov burrowed deep into his chair. He looked like he might start to cry. "Ivan," he said, "I do not see why you attack—"

  "Attack?" said Cherkassky. He hadn't budged from his unrumpled place at the corner of the sofa. Except for that one swift cackle, he'd barely raised his voice and his expression hadn't changed. "I do not attack. I am making clear. Your nephew is worthless."

  "But the stores," said Markov. "The work he—"

  The scoop-faced man ignored him. "And you," he went on. "I cannot call you worthless because for one thing you are very good. Very good to hide behind. Wide. Fat. A fat soft pillow. At home in your big impressing house where the mayor comes for bribes. In this way you are valuable. But only in this way. Remember that, Gennady. And now you will call your nephew and you will tell him he must do this thing today. You understand?"

  Markov stared out the window. The sky was flawl
ess blue. Water twinkled, flowers sprouted everywhere, but he saw only desolation. Control. He'd never had it in the old country, and he didn't have it here. Strong at science, weak at life, he'd always surrendered to being used and fed. His eyes watered with self-pity, smearing the view. Breeze was lifting palm fronds and pressing them back, they looked like panicked arms raised up to protect a face. "I understand," he said.

  "But I have dinner plans tonight," said Suki, cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. She was sitting at her desk at the Island Frigate, confronting invoices and receipts and paper clips, catching up on the boring things she'd been neglecting and that paid her rent.

  "I really want to see you," Lazslo said.

  "That's nice," said Suki. "But it doesn't change my plans."

  He paused, sought to convey great effort, a baring of the soul. "I really liked talking with you last night."

  "Really? I didn't think you did. In fact getting you started was like pulling teeth."

  "Talking about Russia," Lazslo said, "it isn't easy for me. But... But I woke up this morning and felt relieved, cleaned out."

  Suki slapped the stapler, said, "I'm glad the therapy is going well."

  "There's much more I want to tell you."

  "How about tomorrow?"

  "How about a drink this evening?"

  Suki rolled her eyes and sighed. "Lazslo," she said, "you're always trying to hurry things. Haven't you gotten it by now? That doesn't work with me."

  "A drink," he said. "A chat. An hour of your time. I'll pick you up at six."

  Suki bit a pencil, looked at the old school clock on the wall. "Six-thirty. And I absolutely have to be free by eight."

  "Free by eight," repeated Lazslo. "I promise."

  Chapter 12

  Suki locked the door of her apartment, dropped the key into the small bag she carried on her shoulder, and stepped down from her porch. Six-thirty; the early part of dusk.

  The light was soft and shimmering, it seemed to fall in grains of different brightnesses, and the first thing Lazslo noticed as she moved toward his car was that she was trying much harder to look good for whomever she was having dinner with than she had for him last night. Her eyelids were discreetly lined and shadowed faintly blue. She wore pale lipstick whose main effect was to trace out the tantalizing crinkles of her upper lip. Her dress had a funny pattern of apples and pears, and its cloth was of a kind you could almost imagine you were seeing through. When she closed the Caddy's door behind her, the faint draft carried her scent of citrus and vanilla.

  She said a blithe hello that Lazslo found it beyond his strength to answer. Resentment of her dress, its thinness and its ungrudging neckline, clamped his throat. The weight of his mission locked his jaw. Silently he put the car in gear and started driving.

  Suki said, "Jeez. For a guy that wanted to talk..."

  Lazslo turned his head to look at her. His neck didn't seem to pivot easily and ropy veins were standing out below the skin. "It's hard for me," he said. "I told you that."

  Suki swiveled in the cracked white leather seat. "Why?" she said. "It's all so far away, remote. Or is it, Lazslo?"

  He didn't answer. He drove. They came to Petronia Street. He should have turned right, to head downtown. He went straight instead.

  Suki said, "Where are we going?"

  Without looking at her Lazslo said, "I thought we'd go to Egret Key."

  "There isn't time for Egret Key," she said.

  "Fifteen minutes up," he said. "An hour for a drink or two. Fifteen minutes back."

  "Cutting it too close," said Suki.

  Lazslo glanced over at her then. He tried to make his eyes and voice facetious, but what came through was hate. "Very important, this dinner."

  Suki let that pass, said, "Look, let's just go to Raul's."

  But Lazslo had the steering wheel. "Free by eight," he said. "No problem."

  He took a left on Truman and headed out of town. Bayview Park slipped by; they passed the statue of Marti. At Garrison Bight the charter boats were tied up in their slips, the ripples in the water were reflected on their transoms. It was a mild evening but Suki realized suddenly that she was much too warm. It registered for the first time that the Caddy's top was up.

  "Lazslo," she said, "you never put the top up."

  His only answer was to drive a little faster.

  She'd started feeling wrong by now. It wasn't fear, not yet; just the clammy and featureless unease from which fear sometimes bubbled up, a jumpiness such as steals the grace from birds when a storm is on the way. She said, "Lazslo, if all you're gonna do is sulk, maybe you should take me home."

  Lazslo just kept driving.

  * * *

  "How's the omelet, Pop?" said Aaron Katz. "You like it?"

  His father's mouth was full of egg and cheese, he couldn't answer right away. Finally he said, "Perfect. Loose inside. Just the way I like."

  "Great," said Aaron, toweling his hair. He was mostly dry and halfway dressed, bustling around the kitchen in boxer shorts and ancient slippers and just now buttoning his shirt. "So Pop, you'll be okay tonight? You'll be okay?"

  "I'll be okay," said Sam. "It breaks my heart you worry. Stop worrying." He went back to his eggs.

  Aaron said, "Who taught me how to worry, Pop? I learned from a master."

  Sam chewed. "Who? Me? You think I worry? I don't worry. I care. That's different." He swallowed then looked around, a quizzical expression scrunching up his soupy eyes. Something wasn't right, he couldn't put his finger on it. He appraised his glass of juice, his stack of toast. Finally he said, "Aaron, you forgot my tea."

  "Tea," said Aaron. Still drying himself, he moved to the stove where a pot was gently steaming.

  "The whistling kind," said Sam, "it wouldn't happen you forget A brilliant invention, the whistling teapot."

  Aaron dunked a tea bag in the boiling water. "So you'll watch TV, you'll read a magazine. Okay?"

  Sam Katz smeared butter on his toast "It's nice to see you nervous. I think you really like this girl."

  Aaron said, "You always think you know."

  A little smugly, Sam ate toast

  "Besides, who said I'm nervous? I'm just making sure you're set"

  "Making sure I'm set" said Sam, "for that you don't miss buttons on your shirt."

  His son looked down, abashed, at his misaligned shirt-tails, the sure sign of a shlump.

  "And Aaron," Sam went on—then twisted up his face and pointed inscrutably to the corner of his mouth.

  "What, Dad? What?"

  "Go shave again," his father said. "You missed a spot."

  On the silent drive up U.S. 1, Suki watched the pelicans, the way their coasting flight sometimes paralleled the sagging arcs of the power lines. She watched tide streaming under bridges, foam-topped chevrons stretching back from every piling. She watched the first bold stars burn through the darkening sky ahead of them.

  She watched those things to calm herself. It almost worked. By the time they reached their turnoff, eight, ten miles above Key West, she almost believed that nothing was amiss, not really; Lazslo was just a moody guy, a macho kid whose pride was hurt. His sulk would pass, he'd get talkative again. Probably he'd say intriguing things, useful things, maybe even things that would be worth the milky ache that Suki was feeling in her stomach.

  He turned right off the highway. The road that led toward Egret Key was badly paved and narrow. Grasping mangroves blotted out the fading light and the deeper darkness was not soothing. The Caddy's headlamps glared back from waxy leaves, from scarred and ulcered trunks. Frogs and lizards scurried off, their bulbous eyes flashed red.

  Suki swallowed back a sour taste, sought to guide her thoughts to the bar at Egret Key Marina. She'd always liked the place. Funky, friendly, a locals' retreat the tourists hadn't found. She thought about the thatched roof, the mismatched glasses. A drink, an hour, and then she really had to call this whole thing off. She was pushing her luck. It wasn't worth the way she f
elt.

  Lazslo drove. Egret Key was just a speck of land across a stubby causeway, and she tried hard to keep believing they were really going there. The brutish set of Lazslo's jaw, the hard clench of his hands around the steering wheel, made her fear they weren't. Two hundred yards ahead, a hand-hewn sign, propped crookedly in limestone gravel, pointed out the turn. Suki shut her eyes a moment, prayed that she would feel the car begin to slow and veer. She didn't feel it.

  Halfway through the dark and tiny intersection, she said, "You're missing it."

  Lazslo didn't turn and didn't touch the brake. His eyes straight forward, he said, "I don't feel like a drink. Let's just go somewhere and talk."

  Suki struggled with her voice, tried to keep it normal. She told herself she was from Jersey, she could handle this. "I feel like a drink," she said.

  He moved his head just slightly on a neck that seemed mechanical, unoiled. He said, "It's always your way, Suki. Not tonight."

  He drove. The road got bumpier and narrower. The mangroves leaned in closer, squeezed down like a funnel. Suki said, "I don't like this, Lazslo."

  He didn't answer.

  She firmed her voice like she was training a dog. "Take me home."

  His lips pulled back for just an instant in a travesty of a smile. "And not talk about Russia?" he said. "About the Russian Mafia that interests you so much?"

  "I don't care about that anymore. Let's turn around."

  "Don't care?" he said. "After all your hard work pumping me? All your flirting? All your teasing?"

  The paved road ended, gave onto a tunneled byway of coral powder and honeycombed gray rocks that crunched beneath the Caddy's tires and clattered against its groaning undercarriage. Looking back, Suki saw rising swirls of dust infernally shot through with a red gleam from the tail- lights. She was wearing sandals. She worked her toes against their insoles, straining for a solid grip. She wondered if she would have to run away, if she would have a chance to.

  "Don't care?" Lazslo hammered on. "After all your questions, all your stringing me along? ... Crime excites you, Suki. Are you excited now?"