Florida Straits

by SKLA

  But by three a.m. he was all slept out. His eyes popped open, and the moonlight filtering through the curtains was more than bright enough to guide him to the stove to put up coffee. He pulled on his bathrobe and took a cup out by the pool.

  The night was just barely cool enough for the coffee to steam. Overhead, the palm fronds rustled dryly; the sound was almost like brushes on a snare drum. The closed flowers had lost their individual perfumes and gave off a generic sweetness like that of wet paper. Joey sipped from his mug and thought about the last time he'd been out by the pool at three a.m. It was only ten weeks or so ago. His prospects had been zero and a sense of failure was keeping him awake as stubbornly as a toothache. He'd had no job and he was running out of money. Sandra was getting fed up and the one person he could talk to was a resurrected mafioso who talked to his neurotic dog. He was trying to concoct a way to pull a living out of Florida, and all he could think of was baby alligators, suntan lotion, pencil sharpeners in the shape of oranges.

  He shook his head and laughed softly into the night. From baby alligators and pencil sharpeners to real estate and emeralds. O.K., Joey admitted, he wasn't home free yet, not every last piece was in place. Still, at three a.m., everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, and Joey indulged in the rare pleasure of paying himself a compliment. It was an unusual compliment for Joey in that it was not bullshit, it was not bragging, it was not meant to impress anybody. He took a sip of his coffee, put his head back against the hard webbing of the lounge, and basked in the belief that, for a kid from the neighborhood, he wasn't doing too bad down here in Florida.

  — 38 —

  At 8:55 a.m., which felt to Joey like the middle of the afternoon, he walked into the Parrot Beach sales office, wearing his pink shirt, his by now broken-in khaki shorts, and his confident watchband that told the world he frowned on flash. When Zack Davidson showed up a few minutes later, Joey handed him nine hundred and seventy-three dollars in cash. It was what was left from Gino's thousand after the rowboat and the nautical chart had been paid for.

  For Zack, however, nine a.m. was not afternoon, it was first thing in the morning. His sandy hair was still damp from the shower, he hadn't even had his second cup of coffee, and he glanced down at the wad of bills as if they were a face that looked familiar, but only somewhat. "What's this about?"

  "The little motor?" Joey said.

  Zack tilted his head expectantly. Yes, he knew the little motor.

  "I lost it."

  Zack sat down in his desk chair and drummed his fingers on the blotter. He had a fair amount of experience with outboard engines. Many things went wrong with them. Their spark plugs got gummed up. Their water pumps crapped out. Their propellers fell off, their starter ropes came away in your hand, their shifters jammed so you could only go backward. Outboards were a plague, an affliction. But how did you lose one?

  "You lost it," he said, plucking a dark thread from the sleeve of his pink shirt. It was not a question. He just needed to hear it in his own voice.

  Joey nodded.

  "I don't imagine you wanna tell me how it happened."

  Joey shook his head. "Sometime maybe. Zack, I don't know what they cost. If that isn't enough ..."

  Zack waved away the offer. Nine hundred and seventy-three dollars was in fact more than the old motor was worth, less than a new one would cost— in that gray area where insurance adjusters quibble and gentlemen do not. "You get done what you needed to do?"

  "Yeah, I did," said Joey, and though he hadn't meant to smile so soon after telling Zack of the loss of the motor, he couldn't help it.

  Zack slipped into sales manager mode. It was something he could comfortably do while half asleep. "So the cockin' around is over? You're gonna get out there now and sell some goddamn real estate?"

  "Bet your ass. Tons. But Zack, listen, Sandra and me, we'd like you and Claire to come over for dinner on Saturday night. Can ya do that?"

  Zack hesitated just an instant, and Joey felt suddenly shy. A strange and basic thing, the courting stage of friendship. The offers of alliance and the gestures of warmth got passed back and forth like wampum. "Pretty sure we can," Zack said. He hoped it didn't sound like he was reserving himself an out. "Sounds real nice."

  "Florida," said Joey. "Sounds like Florida. Grilling steaks. Eating outside with shorts on. How sweet it is, huh, Zack?"

  Zack rubbed his reddish eyebrows, and Joey headed out, pausing for a second to contemplate the Parrot Beach scale model with its Saran Wrap pool and miniature residents on beach chairs. Boating, barbecues, company—his life was getting to where it could almost fit right in with that ideal of ease under sunny skies and Plexiglas.

  —

  At around eleven, with two commissions in the bag, Joey took a break and called Perretti's luncheonette on Astoria Boulevard in Queens. He could picture the old maroon phone booth at the back of the green-painted store, with the pebbled metal walls that were always cold to the touch and the accordion door that always fooled you about whether you should push or pull. Joey asked for Sal Giordano, but his buddy wasn't there. He said he would call back in a couple of hours, and if Sal came in, he should leave a number and a time he could be reached. This meant that Sal would organize his afternoon around getting down Northern Boulevard or over the Gowanus Bridge in a timely fashion, before rush hour if possible, and hoping that when he got there, his public telephone had not had its coin box chiseled out by a crack addict or its metal- sheathed wires yanked apart by an aggravated patron who had lost his quarter.

  When Joey called back at two he was given a number where Sal could be reached at four, and when he called at four Sal picked up almost before the phone had rung. The first thing Joey heard sounded like the screaming whine of jet engines close enough to blow your hat off. "So Sal," he screamed, "you're at the Airline Diner?"

  "Nah," Sal shouted. "Outside the Midtown Tunnel. That's buses. Airline Diner, some dumb fuck in a U- Haul backed up and crushed the booth. How the hell are you, man?"

  "Good," yelled Joey, "real good. How are things up there?"

  "Quiet," hollered Sal. "Makin' a living. With Gino gone, ya know, it's pretty much business as usual."

  "Well," Joey hollered back, "Gino ain't gone no more. This is why I'm calling, Sal. He should be in New York by now."

  There was a pause, and Joey heard a truck laboring through its gears as it lumbered out of the tollbooth and started up the incline on the Queens side of the tunnel, the Empire State Building in its sideview mirrors. "He's back?" Sal shouted, and Joey had the feeling that maybe he was a little bit surprised that Gino was still alive. "What's with Ponte? What's with the stones?"

  Joey was speaking from the far end of the lunch counter near the Parrot Beach office, the place where short-order cooks with shaved heads whipped up mango smoothies for young women in undershirts to suck through straws. This was not New York, where you couldn't even talk on your own phone for fear of being listened in on. This was Key West, where you could scream about gangsters and emeralds in a public place and no one bothered to turn around. "The stones are innee ocean," he shouted. "And Ponte, well, I'm like tryin' to work out a way to smooth things over with him."

  "You?"

  "Whaddya sound so fucking surprised for, Sal? Ya sound like my goddamn brother."

  Sal waited for an ambulance to go careening past. "Hey, Joey man, don't get touchy. I didn't know you were involved, is all."

  "Well, I am. Didn't wanna be, but there it is. But Sal, here's the thing. Right now I'm playing for some time. Ponte's goons, I don't think they know it yet that Gino slipped 'em. If they find out before I get things organized—"

  Some jerk burned rubber coming out of the toll booth, and Sal Giordano interrupted through the screech. "Joey, whoa, I don't like the sounda this. I don't like you fucking with these guys."

  "Sal, man, who's fucking? I'm just tryin' to straighten things out. You worry too much."

  Sal considered this. He was a street guy from New York
; of course he worried. "O.K., Joey, maybe you're right, maybe I do. But maybe you worry too little. Warm weather, sunshine—maybe it's makin' you calmer than is good for you."

  Joey yanked his mind away from that possibility like a hand from a hot stove. "Sal, listen, right now there's nothin' I can do but what I'm doin'. So do me a favor. If Gino's dumb enough to show his face up there, tell him to hide it again. Can ya do that for me?"

  "Sure, kid, sure." Joey didn't like the flat way he said it.

  "And if he starts tellin' ya how brave and clever he was down here, don't believe a fucking word."

  Sal laughed over the roar of an ancient Pontiac without a muffler. "I haven't for years," he screamed.

  "Well, you're smarter than I am, Sal. Me, I only caught on inna last coupla weeks. How's my old man doing?"

  There was a pause, and Joey could picture Sal shrugging, the way some of the flesh of his thick neck crinkled up and almost touched his earlobes. "Doin' O.K. He's under some strain, but hey, he's used to that."

  "Tell him I said hello."

  "O.K."

  "Ya know, Sal, I been thinking. The way I left without seeing him, that was wrong. It was, like, small. You can tell him I said that if you want to. Or I'll talk to him myself one a these days."

  Joey's friend said nothing. A cement mixer came galumphing into Queens. At the Key West lunch counter, a cook dropped a scoopful of shrimp salad into the hollow of an avocado.

  "And what about you, Sal?" Joey resumed. "When you gonna get your pale ass down here?"

  "One a these days," Sal said. It was that flat tone again, the tone that neighborhood guys used with people they couldn't protect, and Joey tried not to notice that it scared him.

  "Those sunglasses ya gave me, Sal, I wear 'em every day."

  "Every day?" shouted Sal. He sounded skeptical. "How' bout when it rains?"

  "It don't, Sal. This is what I'm tellin' ya. It's fucking unbelievable down here."

  — 39 —

  Saturday evening was particularly warm, with a yellow sky smeared with wisps of unmoving purple cloud. Steve the naked landlord, his ashtrays and his beers in front of him, his shriveled genitals nested under the cliff of his belly, lingered especially late in the pool. He was standing there bare-assed when Zack and Claire arrived, and Joey had no choice but to introduce him.

  "Hi, Steve," Zack said. "Whatcha reading?"

  Steve turned the damp paperback over and looked at the cover to remind himself. The cover showed a large city breaking in half. "Earthquake," he said. "Los Angeles." Then he smiled.

  Joey steered his guests toward a big bowl of raw vegetables on the outdoor table, and as he did so he studied Claire. Claire did not look like Joey expected. She was pretty enough, with tightly curled brown hair and hazel eyes, but she didn't have Zack's knack of looking just so without seeming to be trying. She appeared to be the type for whom blouses would not stay tucked in, for whom tabs on zippers would not lie flat. When she dressed up, the effort showed, kind of like a painting that had looked better as a sketch.

  She plunged a celery stalk into a bowl of dip, and Joey watched with interest because he'd voted against the vegetables. "Sandra," he'd said, "isn't it a little much? I mean, we're gonna have that gigantic salad and all."

  "Joey," she'd said, "women like that stuff. Just pour the drinks, grill the steaks, and let me plan the rest, O.K.?"

  He'd shrugged. Giving a dinner party, like having a job, like reading a nautical chart, had its own rules, its own logic. If women liked raw vegetables on top of raw salad on top of cooked broccoli on top of melon balls for dessert, so be it.

  Sandra had also lobbied for some dishes and some silverware that matched.

  "It's a waste, Sandra. We're moving soon."

  That was the first she'd heard about moving, and Joey let it slip as casually as if he'd said he was going out to gas up the car. Sandra didn't believe it, and besides, she hadn't had time to make it a discussion just then. "So we'll take them with us," she said. Practical, precise, and forward-looking as always, she added, "I'll save the boxes."

  Again Joey had shrugged, and Sandra bought a set of plain white plates and some stainless with blue plastic handles. The matching stuff did make the table look better. Joey had to admit it.

  Now he was asking Zack and Claire what they wanted to drink. They both said wine, and Joey wondered why he'd bothered buying all those different-shaped bottles of liquor.

  When Bert the Shirt arrived, the two couples were sitting on the edges of lounge chairs, Claire with her feet dangling in the pool. The sky had faded, the palm fronds were drooping limp as flags. From halfway down the gravel path, Bert was motioning to Joey that he shouldn't bother getting up.

  He looked splendid, Bert did. His white hair was combed back tight, and aside from the nicotine-bronze tinge in it, there was almost, in the dimming light, a suggestion of pink. His shirt was the purplish black of ripe olives, with bone buttons and pale blue piping the same color as the monogram. He held his chihuahua in the crook of his arm, and gave a stately little nod of his head when Joey introduced him.

  Claire, a lover of all small animals, reached up to pet the pooch. "What a cute little dog," she said.

  "He's not cute," said Bert the Shirt. "He looks ridiculous, he's a hypochondriac, and he's got a lousy—"

  "Don Giovanni?" came a caressing voice from the far side of the pool. "He's very cute." The voice was Claude's. He and Peter had just emerged from their cottage. It was Dress-Up Night at Cheeks, and the bartenders wore lame. Peter's was silver, Claude's was gold.

  "Oh, hi, fellas," said Bert. "Youse look terrific." Then he turned his attention back to Claire and back to the subject of the chihuahua. "This dog," he said, "this dog is the bane a my life, a stone around my neck. Joey, I tell ya the latest about this dog? The latest aggravation? Dog needs sunglasses."

  "Come on," said Joey.

  "Yeah," said Bert. He held the chihuahua forward like a loaf of bread. "His eyes heah? The whaddyacallit, the pupils, they don't close right. See all that black? That shouldn't be. The light shoots straight inta his brain. He needs shades, I'm tellin' ya."

  "Maybe a visor?" offered Zack.

  Bert shrugged. "What the hell, I just keep him dim places. He don't like the heat anyway. Heat like dehydrates him, gives him kidney stones. The way he whimpers when he passes one ..." Bert shuddered. "But hey, enough about the stupid dog. Joey, you gonna gimme a glassa wine or what?"

  Joey stalled an extra few seconds getting the Shirt his drink. He wasn't used to parties, to so many people at once, so much to figure out. It made him a little dizzy.

  When he came back, he noticed something different about Sandra. She was smiling a more thorough smile than he usually saw. Her green eyes crinkled at the corners, it was like enjoyment was seeping in everywhere. It seemed to Joey that she had never looked prettier or happier. She had friends, vegetables, plates that matched; the man she loved was not off doing something shady or dangerous; she was at ease.

  Joey studied. He wanted to see how people acted at a dinner party, what they talked about, if there was a code for what you did or didn't say. The women talked about the bank, about some new system for closing out the cash count at the end of the day. Zack asked Bert about the Paradiso; he was interested in the real estate angle.

  There was a sound of cascading water as Steve the naked landlord got out of the pool. People tried not to notice the flash of crotch before he wrapped his towel around him and said goodnight. Joey went inside to fetch more drinks.

  When he returned, Bert was holding forth about the old days in New York. "Fifty-second Street," he was saying. "The jazz clubs. Beautiful. Three, four inna morning you could walk downa street. There was no drugs, no crime. It was perfectly safe."

  As if conjured up by the mention of music, Luke the reggae player at that moment stepped out of his front door. He'd put his hair in dreadlocks, and his guitar was strapped across his back. Lucy the beautiful Fed followed him out.
She'd done her eyes up big and looked like Cleopatra.

  After they had passed, Claire said, "Jeez, you guys live, like, an interesting lifestyle here."

  Joey hadn't thought about it quite that way before, but now that she mentioned it, he supposed they did. Very Key West. Extremely Key West. Feeling proud, he got up and lit the gas grill, then took a moment to look at the first star that had popped through the deepening sky. He filled glasses one more time, then went to the kitchen for the mountain of steaks.

  Zack Davidson, who knew the protocol of cookouts, joined him at the grill. It was part of a guest's responsibility, part of the ceremony, this manly convocation around the fire and the meat. "This is nice," Zack said, with a small but enveloping gesture that took in the compound, the weather, the heavens.

  Joey nodded. "Nice we're getting together outsida work."

  "Away from Duval Street. The fucking zoo."

  Joey stabbed a filet mignon, slapped it onto the grill, then realized, a beat later than a more practiced host would have, that he now had the opportunity he was waiting for, the opening that the whole evening had been set up to afford. It was strange, he reflected. He used to imagine that crime was easy and legitimate enterprise was hard. But just the opposite was true, because the whole world was set up to thwart the one and lubricate the other. Joey used to have to slip twenties, sometimes hundreds, to limping cross-eyed numbers runners from Catholic school to set up meetings that might advance his criminal career; but here in the legit world such meetings simply happened, around the barbecue, around the table, even, no doubt, around urinals at the office.

  "Zack," he said, above the companionable crackle of burning fat, "I wantcha to know I really appreciate the way ya hung in there with me when I had, ya know, this personal bullshit that needed taking care of."

  Zack waved the gratitude away, but Joey continued without a pause.

  "And I remember you promised that you'd let me make it up to ya."