by SKLA
They sat down in the unromantic kitchen, and Suki counted Band-Aids on Aaron's hands. "Only four today," she said.
"Getting better with the hammer." He tried to smile but it didn't quite work. He looked at her. The undaunted gleam was back in her unlikely eyes. Her bruises were healed and her tanned neck flowed down to rosewood shoulders. They were alone and it should have been wonderful, but Aaron was fretful and preoccupied.
Suki, in his house and not his lover, could not help wondering if it was because he regretted inviting her to stay. She sipped some coffee, hid her face behind the cup. "Something wrong?"
"Wrong?" said Aaron. A pathetic evasion. Even in business he'd never got comfortable with fibbing. "Guess I miss my father. Can't help being worried."
Suki wrestled with an impulse. She wanted to put her hand on his. But touch was not a simple thing. Between a man and woman who were not lovers, it could easily go wrong, or go too right; a gift of comfort could seem too bold, a gesture of solace could cross over into awkwardness. She held her coffee mug and the moment slipped away.
Aaron said, "You think it's weird? How close we are?"
"I think it's great," said Suki. "I can't imagine wanting family in my face, but the two of you, I think it's great."
Aaron drank some coffee, glanced at the outsize pots and pans hanging from their racks. "Growing up," he said, "all my friends, their fathers worked too hard. Never around. Or around and exhausted. Everyone felt gypped. I didn't. My father was around. We did things. He taught me stuff."
"My old man taught me stuff too," said Suki. "Pour boiling water on roast beef if people said it was too rare. Check dinner rolls for bite marks before putting them in the next guy's basket... Wha'd he teach you?"
Aaron pushed his lips out, searched for a way to sum up the oblique and scattered and half-learned lessons of a childhood. Finally he said, "He taught me to make the most of what I had."
"Example?"
Aaron pondered, looked out the French doors to the glaring water of the pool. "Pitching."
"Pitching?"
"Pitching. Baseball. I was a skinny kid. Smallish. Weak. But I loved to play. I wanted to pitch. My father said, 'We'll study up.' We watched the little guys, the Whitey Fords, the Bobby Shantzes. So great, watching Whitey Ford with my father's arm around my shoulder. My father said, 'Aha! Mechanics and control! You don't have to be a shtarker—'"
"Shtarker?" Suki said.
"Strong guy. Yiddish." Aaron got up from his chair, measured empty space around himself. He went into an exaggerated slow-motion windup that looked more like martial arts than baseball.
"'Look,' he told me, 'the power, it all comes from the middle. Not the arm. And the pitch—a million miles an hour it doesn't have to be. Location. Pinpoint. That's what we'll work on.'"
Aaron's arm was back now, his shoulders turned as though he were about to chuck a spear. "And we did," he went on. "And I pitched. Little League. Junior High. Was I great? No. Lack of talent takes you just so far. But I had excellent control."
He was just going into his delivery when he saw the misshapen mango muffin on the counter. With hardly a hitch in his motion, he picked it up in battered fingers. Then his arm came forward, pulled by the uncoiling of his middle, and the muffin flew across the room and landed cleanly in the garbage can.
Suki said, "Strike three."
And the telephone rang.
Aaron, slightly abashed at finding himself in the middle of the kitchen with muffin crumbs between his fingers, let it ring another time then moved to answer it. Out of Little-League mode and back in somber adulthood, he said, "Good morning, Mangrove Arms."
There was a brief but ragged silence on the other end, a beat with some clumsy fraction added. Then a male voice echoed, "Mangrove Arms?"
There was something odd about the voice, a stilted precision that Aaron could not place at first. "Yes, Mangrove Arms," he said. "May I help you?"
Again, a pause with jarring syncopation. Then the single careful word: "Hotel?"
A rolling cramp climbed up Aaron's back. His spine was registering the wrongness even as his brain was denying that anything was wrong, claiming only that Key West was a city of misdialed numbers, of people who were lost, of drunken fingers that couldn't find the buttons. But that careful voice—the h had too much breath; the o was too perfectly round. This was someone laboring to hide an accent. Perhaps a Russian accent. Aaron swallowed, turned his too-revealing face away from Suki, urged a steadfast neutrality on his tightening throat. "Hotel, yes. Bed and breakfast. May I help you?"
A final mistimed pause, then he heard a click.
He held the receiver an extra moment then replaced it slowly in the cradle. He put off turning around because he didn't know what he would say to the woman the Russian Mafia was looking for.
When he finally met Suki's eyes, the coffee cup was at her mouth, it made a kind of veil. Looking at her, he felt the thwarted helplessness that turned people reckless, that drove them to acts of flamboyant but unhelpful martyrdom. His father was out there somewhere, blundering through the world; Suki was in here, hidden only by some scraps of hedge and a rotting picket fence; and he, to mask his own anxieties, was clowning, combing through boyhood for clues about what it was to be a man. He was in the prime of life and not devoid of courage. But what did it take to protect another person, to keep somebody safe? Did only freaks of opportunity make heroes, or did heroism call for things he couldn't see because he didn't have them?
He looked at Suki, the surprising dark blue eyes beneath the coarse and wild hair. "Wrong number," was all he said to her.
"Fred," said Piney, "ya know what I sometimes wonder about?"
It was late afternoon and they were wandering through the unearthly no-man's-land that stretched back from their clearing, just north of the airport, where the mangroves were fenced in. It was weird back there in every way. In a jam-packed little town where strangers' beach towels touched at the edges, and visitors piled up three- deep at the bars, here was an expanse where almost no one went. On a tiny island where building lots kept doubling in price, here was a tract the developers didn't bother trying to grab. Certain people might have found it beautiful but for the most part it was ugly. Colorless crumbled coral that passed for soil. Salt puddles ringed with dusty shrubs whose leaves could slice through skin. Greedy gulls shaking dying tadpoles in their beaks.
Piney gave Fred a few seconds to ignore him, then answered his own question. "Air raid drills."
"Air raid drills?" said Fred.
They strolled, skirting puddles. An egret landed, wings whooshing, and for a moment it seemed like they were very far from anywhere; then a gap opened in the mangroves and they could see the airport runway, not three hundred yards beyond.
"Like in grade school," Piney said. "Remember?"
Grade school was the only school that either of them knew, but Fred didn't like to think about it. "Fuckin' school," he said.
"That bell," said Pineapple. "Different from the fire bell. No, not a bell now that I think of it. More like a horn. Trumpet. So loud it was. Made the walls ring. Made your pencils rattle on the desk. Remember?"
They walked. Part of this land was federal, and part was state, and part was city, and no one seemed to care enough to mark down where the bounds were. Bums slept and kids partied sometimes on the bigger chunks of higher land. Rusted cans and broken bottles collected on the edges of those places; underpants and condoms and shreds of torn-up blankets wrapped themselves around the scaly stems of mangrove.
"They took us down the basement," Piney said. "Remember? Down the stairs with that big horn blowing. Kids dragged their hand along the banister, the varnish was worn off. Got colder every step you took."
Fred lit a cigarette. They walked. Off to their right there was a quarter-acre of cracked cement behind a rusted fence, its gate gradually collapsing on corroded hinges. Here and there the cement was raised into little platforms; here and there the earth was hollowed. In 1962,
Nike missiles had been standing on those platforms, their scaffolds anchored in the hollows, their warheads pointed at Havana. In Havana, missiles overseen by Russian scientists had been pointed at Key West.
"Was crowded down the basement," Piney said. "Walls were cinder block with like some rubber paint. Freezing cold, the walls. We all sat down, the floor was cold and gritty. And they told us to put our arms up to protect our heads. Fred, remember how skinny your arms were as a kid?"
Fred didn't answer, just smoked. They skirted puddles, kicked at porous rocks. Ahead, by far the highest land in sight though it wasn't very high, loomed a ragged flat- topped pyramid. It was made of crumbled rock which the years had ground almost into powder. Tufts of coarse gray grass sprouted up through it. Stunted shrubs clung to its flanks.
"You sat there and your butt was cold, and your arms got tired being held up in the air, and you got this milky feeling in your stomach. Remember, Fred?"
Fred picked tobacco off his lip, finally spoke. "Where we goin' with this, Piney?"
They walked close to the pyramid. The pyramid had a doorway and it used to have a door. The door had been sheathed in lead to keep the radiation out. When the bombs from Cuba started falling, people were supposed to go inside this low, small, scrubby pyramid and wait. In 1962 there were lights inside, and drinking water, and cans of tuna fish.
Piney said, "Those drills. They said we did 'em so we'd know just what to do, so we'd feel safe."
He was standing in front of the pyramid's vacant doorway. Slanting sunlight squeezed through a little ways, then stalled. People slept in there sometimes. Trash built up and there were rats.
"Thing is though," Pineapple went on, "they didn't make us feel safe, they made us more scared. That horn. The cold."
Fred flicked his stub of cigarette through the doorway, it glowed against the shadowed ground.
"And they had to know that all along," said Piney. "They were grown-ups. We were kids. They had to know it'd only make us more afraid."
Fred had turned to walk away. Piney stood there at the black entrance to the pyramid.
"They wanted us to be afraid," he said. "You think about it, that's the only explanation. But why would they do that, Fred? Why would they want us to grow up afraid?"
Chapter 37
"Sam," said Bert the Shirt. "About this gay stuff. We really don't have to make it point one of what we say to people."
It was an hour before sunset, and they were sitting on their tile patio. They'd laid in groceries, made up beds. It was a lot for two old men to do and they were happy to sit down. But Sam was not just sitting there. He'd taken the casing off his yellow Walkman, and with a tiny screwdriver meant for fixing glasses, he was fiddling with the guts of it.
A little stung by Bert's comment, even though Bert had said it as gently as he could, he looked up and said, "I thought that was our cover."
"It is, it is," said Bert. "But like, how many people you meet where, right off, first thing they tell you is they're gay? It doesn't sound, like, normal. It should be just, ya know, inna background."
Trying not to whine, Sam said, "I was just rehearsing. Getting into character."
The table at which the two men sat had a mosaic on the top, and Bert's chihuahua was laid out on the tiles like a meat loaf. Bert stroked the dog with one hand, and with the other he patted Sam's wrist. "No harm done, Sam. No harm."
They sat in silence for a while. Bert sipped a beer, Sam went back to his fiddling. He cheered up right away. A good thing about his slippage was that he didn't remember annoyances or slights long enough to sulk or hold a grudge. "Pleasant here," he said.
Bert didn't care for it but held his tongue. Disagreeing, contradicting—it too easily got to be a bad habit with a couple. But, a city guy at heart, Bert liked more activity around him. The Paradiso—people were always jumping in the pool, practicing their putting, playing cards. Here it was all fences, hedges...
Adrift in his own thoughts, it took Bert an instant to respond when Sam grabbed his wrist. "Don't look now," he whispered, "but there's a Russian over there."
"Over where?"
Sam pointed with his eyebrows to the nondescript gray house on the other side of the canal, where, in the shade of an awning at a corner of the patio, a slightly built and crescent-faced man was looking at the water and sipping amber liquid.
Bert stroked his dog, said indulgently, "And what makes you think he's Russian?"
Excitedly Sam whispered, "He's drinking tea from a glass. From a glass he's drinking tea."
Bert looked a little closer. "Okay, so it's a warm day and he's having a nice ice tea."
"Ice tea my eye. Where's the ice, Bert?" Sam demanded. "Show me the ice."
It was a little far away to see an ice cube, but it was true there was no telltale shimmer, no prisms in the tea.
"Hot tea he's having," Sam said. "Hot tea from a glass. Now look at his left hand."
Bert peered across the patio, and over the seawall, and beyond the small canal, and saw their neighbor bring his left hand briefly to his lips.
"Sugar cube," said Sam. "He nibbles sugar, he drinks hot tea. Russian thing. My parents did it. Only a Russian drinks his tea like that."
Bert said, "Whaddya know," then scratched his dog to help himself think. Half-aloud, he said, "So now what—?"
"So now we go and say hello," said Sam, and he began the creaky process of rising from his chair.
Bert held him by the wrist. "We should have a plan at least."
But Sam's brain was on fire. He was thinking; he was helping; he was thrilled. He didn't want to lose momentum. "Come on," he said, "we'll just go introduce ourselves as neighbors. Doesn't look natural we make a big deal out of it."
So the two men rose, and walked to the end of their patio and across a narrow swath of coarse brown lawn to the seawall. Perched on the edge, Sam Katz turned toward the slim figure underneath the awning and shouted a hello.
Ivan Cherkassky looked up briefly from his tea, saw two more silly Americans at the rental house. Old men this time. One with clownish tufts of unkempt hair, the other wearing a loud shirt and holding an absurd and useless dog. He felt the dim irritation that goes with utter lack of interest. But rudeness drew attention so he tried not to be rude. He returned the hello, no encouragement attached.
Bert cleared his throat. "Just moved in, thought we'd introduce ourselves. I'm Bert d'Ambrosia. This is Sam Katz."
"Nice to meet you," said Cherkassky blandly. He didn't offer his own name, didn't get up from his chair, didn't move out of the shade.
There was a pause. Water sloshed very softly against the seawall, the late sun threw a round warmth that seemed to come from nowhere. The Russian decided he had held the strangers' eyes long enough to be polite, and he went back to his tea.
Sam Katz, feverish with thought, pawed the ground, groped for some way, any way, to keep the conversation going.
Finally he blurted, "I'm not supposed to say this, but we're gay. Welcome to America."
Ivan Cherkassky said, "Excuse me?"
"You're Russian, I believe," said Sam.
This was enough to pique Cherkassky's paranoia. Who told them? Why did they care? He said nothing but now he held his neighbors' gaze.
"The tea," said Sam, pointing vaguely. "So, are you finding opportunity here in the United States?"
"Opportunity?" Cherkassky said suspiciously, and he started rising from his chair. "No. Seeking peace and quiet only."
"Come by and have a drink sometime," said Bert the Shirt.
"Sometime perhaps," said the old Soviet, moving toward his house. "Now if you'll excuse me..."
He slipped into his kitchen, disappeared at once into its dimness, and the sliding door slid closed behind him.
Bert and Sam stood there a moment in the diffuse and buttery sunshine, then turned back toward their tiled patio.
On the brief walk across the lawn, Bert said, "Guy makes ya feel 'bout as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl."
"We broke the ice," said Sam, tugging on his Einstein hair.
"All ice, that guy is."
"Important thing, we broke the ice."
Suki Sperakis settled back in her claw-foot bathtub and caught herself wondering when, if ever, she and Aaron would make love.
She soaped her arms, sponged water on the tired muscles of her neck. It was time, it seemed to her. There'd been gazes, meals together, conversations that plunged quite suddenly beneath the skin of the safe and the polite. They'd glimpsed intimacy the way people glimpse stars behind swiftly scudding clouds.
Maybe that was the problem, she reflected, as she scrubbed the tiny webbings at the bases of her fingers, where soil had filtered through the gardening gloves. Maybe too much had already happened, and they'd missed their chance at mutual seduction, because seduction was a dance that strangers did. Circumstance had swept them past that phase, they'd missed it like an exit on the highway, and found themselves a long way down the road. They were friends by now, and friends did not seduce. Friends decided, with their eyes wide open. No teasing and no flinching. An honest yielding to the inevitable. It sounded like the easiest thing in the world. Why did it feel like the hardest?
Stumped, she slid down in the tub to wet her hair. She didn't hear the phone ring on the main line in the kitchen and the office.
Aaron, at the front desk doing paperwork, picked it up, said, "Mangrove Arms."
His adrenaline started coursing before he'd heard a word—as soon as a normal silent beat had passed, and a jarring foreign fraction had begun.
"I am looking for a Mr. Katz," said Tarzan Abramowitz. He'd come up empty the first time through his list of numbers from Lucia's reservation book. He'd reached answering machines, cleaning ladies, gotten numb responses. Now it was early evening and he was trying again.
"This is Aaron Katz."
Out of rhythm, Abramowitz said, "Ah, you are proprietor."
Aaron was itchy at the hairline and his hand was growing damp around the phone. "Who's this calling, please?"
A syncopated pause. Then: "I am looking for a friend. Perhaps she stays there. Suki Sperakis."