by Dorsey, Tim
Key West International Airport. International—they used to fly to Havana once upon a time. Propeller plane was the only way in now; local ordinance prevented jet noise from disturbing residents and wildlife.
Stairs flopped down from the side of the plane, and Samantha appeared in the hatch. Two women waited on the edge of the runway outside the Conch Flyer Lounge, grinning, hoisting fruity drinks in toast. Sam almost didn’t recognize Teresa in the lavender dress. She was thin. And blond. Maria looked great, too, despite the fashion error of matching vertical stripes with gila monsters.
A pair of Beechcraft B 100s landed in quick succession, Paige and Rebecca, and suddenly they were all there, piling in an airport shuttle van.
It started two months earlier, a chance occurrence. Samantha Bridges was now an assistant state attorney in Miami, and her youngest daughter had just left for Florida State. She turned the extra bedroom into a home office with a new computer and AOL account.
Sam began fooling around with search engines one Sunday evening. Midnight came and went. She still couldn’t believe her screen. She had plugged in the names as a lark, and it had become a chain reaction of long-distance phone calls. Then they all hung up and hopped back on their computers, five women typing nonstop in the new Books, Booze and Broads chat room. Layoffs, surgeries, relocations to Boston and Belgium, a total of four new marriages that had gone south. Then, full circle, all back in Florida and single again. With one big difference. Empty nests.
“Let’s revive the book club.”
“Have a reunion.”
“What do you want to read?”
“Where?”
“What?”
“The reunion.”
“Slow down!”
“Let’s pick a book and visit where it’s set.”
“Or pick a place and find a book that’s set there.”
“I like the first idea better.”
“They’re the same.”
“No they’re not.”
“Whatever.”
First stop: Key West, Cayo Hueso, The Rock, Island of Bones. Rebecca had recommended the book, passed along by her parents. It was about a bunch of Jimmy Buffett fans on a pilgrimage to the Keys, and they spend the whole trip wasted on frozen drinks until they’re mysteriously murdered one by one. Parrot Droppings, by Ralph Krunkleton. The women liked it so much they had torn through four other Krunkletons before boarding their planes.
The courtesy van pulled up in front of the Heron House on Simonton Street. The women wheeled luggage through the orchid garden and past the mosaic of a big wading bird tiled into the bottom of the swimming pool. They entered their suite through the sundeck, and there was no doubt where they were. Watercolors everywhere. Paintings of tropical plants, bedspreads with tropical fish. Rattan, marble, French doors, stained transoms. They crossed “the fulcrum”—that long-anticipated turning point when you’re traveling to a party town and finally get in your room and drop the suitcases, and it all lifts off your shoulders with a sudden buoyancy. This called for a meeting of the book club. They headed out the door to find one of the taverns in their Krunkleton paperbacks.
The five started north on Duval Street, past the Lost Weekend Liquor Store, into the drinking district. Freaks on the street, squares in the bars. Bars with plastic bulls crashing through walls, parrots and flamingos on the counters, sailfish over the taps, pinball machines in back and pitchmen out front barking about double-jointed strippers upstairs. People who should never limbo doing so, reggae bands joined onstage by bald drunks from Cincinnati, derelicts riding bicycles with iguanas in the baskets and big snakes around their necks, drunk couples necking, transvestites on stilts, dogs wearing sunglasses, college students falling off mopeds and vomiting all over their SEE THE KEYS ON YOUR HANDS AND KNEES T-shirts.
The women came to the end of Duval and headed up a twisting garden path behind the Pier House, through schefflera and hibiscus, onto a boardwalk next to a lagoon where hotel guests were throwing Chicklets to a school of feeding tarpon, then winding back to the patio until they finally stood near a hall tucked under the hotel by the supply rooms and the mops.
“This can’t be it,” said Teresa.
Sam pulled a paperback from her purse and opened to a bookmarked passage. “That must be the door.” She grabbed the handle.
A row of faces along the bar squinted at the silhouettes of five women backlit by bright sunlight. The BBB stood still in the doorway a few seconds—that awkward, territorial moment when newcomers first set foot in a regulars’ bar. They started moving again toward a table in a corner of the tiny room, hanging purses over the backs of chairs.
“So this is the Chart Room,” said Maria, shifting in her seat, straightening panties. She looked around for a waitress.
“I think this is the kind of place where you have to go to the bar,” said Sam, getting up.
Teresa turned her paperback over, scanning blurbs on the back—“…Stunning…” “…Dazzling…” “…Important…”—the kind of terse praise surgically lifted from the bodies of damning reviews. Sam returned with a pitcher of Michelob. They poured, clinked glasses and checked out the interior, mostly bare, except for a pair of nautical charts and a black-and-white photo of an early Key West street scene. But there was all kinds of stuff on the wall behind the bar, overlapping Polaroids of bent patrons making faces and hugging, business cards, newspaper clippings, scribbled-on dollar bills and a handmade sign: TIP BIG.
Maria reached out and touched the plain cinder-block wall. “So this is where Buffett got his start?”
“Right here in this corner,” said Paige, referring to her own paperback. “Arrived with Jerry Jeff Walker. Played six-string for tips while writing his early songs.”
“Wow,” said Rebecca, and they all gazed at the ground under their feet with a sense of reverence usually reserved for mangers.
Teresa stood up. “I’ll get the next pitcher.”
And so it went. Another pitcher. Then another. Then liquor.
“How’d we get so drunk?”
“It’s a fuckin’ mystery,” said Rebecca, slamming a shot glass down on the table.
“Sam, how come you aren’t drinking as much as we are?” asked Teresa.
“Lost its luster. Half the men I prosecute are wife-beating alcoholics.”
“Prosecute? I thought you were a public defender.”
“Was. But I kind of got tired interviewing clients in jail who asked me if I liked to take it in the ass.”
“I can see how that would get tedious,” said Rebecca. Then she asked if any of the others owned an SUV. They said they didn’t and asked why. Rebecca wanted to know if anyone else had a problem with men who liked to pull up at stoplights next to female drivers in taller vehicles so the women have a clear view of them beating off.
“How often does this happen?” asked Maria.
“More like how often doesn’t it happen.” She turned to Paige. “So what kind of work do you usually get as a vet?”
“Patch up cats shot with BB guns and dogs set on fire and pelicans who’ve been thrown fish filled with needles and M-80s.”
“Who would do such things?” said Teresa.
“Obviously the work of women,” said Sam.
“I wouldn’t necessarily go easy on our own kind,” said Maria.
“You’re right,” said Sam. She raised her glass for a toast. “Fuck Dr. Laura.”
“Hear! Hear!”
The alcohol got the best of Maria. “Do you remember…” she said, then stumbled into forbidden territory.
The other four glowered at her. “We never talk about that!” snapped Teresa. The others nodded.
“Excuse the hell out of me.”
They all sighed and sagged.
“Nothing exciting ever happens to us,” said Rebecca.
Teresa suddenly straightened up and got out her organizer. “We should make a list.”
“Of what?”
“Things to do as a group to br
eak out of our ruts. Adventures, risks.” Teresa clicked her pen open. “Okay. New bylaw. Everything that goes on the list we all have to do together. No exceptions.”
“Sounds like disaster,” said Sam.
“The psychology of group behavior. It’ll embolden us to do things we’d never attempt as individuals.”
“That’s how we got suffragettes,” said Rebecca.
“And lynchings,” said Sam.
“I don’t think I want to lynch anyone,” said Maria.
“What about your ex-husbands?”
“New bylaw,” said Teresa. “Those in favor?”
“Aye.” “Aye.” “Aye.” “Aye.” “Nay.”
“What sort of things do we put on the list?” asked Paige.
“Stuff like sky-diving,” said Maria.
Teresa sat poised with pen. “Item number one. Anybody?”
“Sky-diving,” said Rebecca.
“Sky-diving,” Teresa repeated as she wrote. “Number two?”
“Okay, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s lynch my husbands.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“Who’s got ideas, besides Maria, who needs to get in the proper spirit?”
“Get a tattoo.”
“Use a powerful man before he uses you.”
“Watch the New Year’s ball drop in Times Square.”
“Skinny-dip.”
“Shoplift.”
“That’s going too far,” said Sam.
“We’ll give the stolen item right back,” said Teresa. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
“I know,” said Rebecca. “Let’s get arrested at a protest.”
“What kind of protest?”
“Rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails.”
“No, I mean what cause?”
“World peace.”
“Anything else?”
“Let’s meet Ralph Krunkleton.”
“That’s a great idea,” said Teresa. “We’ve read what? Five of his books now?”
Rebecca nodded hard. “He’s our newest favorite author, now. New.”
“You might want to slow down on those shots.”
“Why for?”
Sam grabbed the purse off the back of her chair. “I’m going to the rest room.”
“It’s outside around the corner,” said Paige.
Sam walked down the corridor under the lobby, mumbling to herself; they were her friends and all, but their judgment was stinking up the joint. Sam found the door to the men’s room, stopped and looked around for the women’s. They were usually in pairs; she was hoping this wasn’t one of those places with some artsy unsymmetrical layout. She kept walking. Where was it?
A man came around the corner. She could ask him. As he walked closer, Sam got a better look. Trim, muscular, flowing black hair, tight tennis shirt, solid chin. Rrrrrrrow! This could be two birds with the same stone. She’d ask where the women’s room was, and it would also be a perfectly innocent icebreaker.
The man smiled as he got closer, great teeth.
“Excuse me,” said Sam. “Can you tell me where—”
The man took off running.
“My purse!” Sam broke into a sprint.
People lounging by the pool sat up and turned as the pair raced by the tiki bar, the man glancing over his shoulder, darting down the garden path, crashing through palm branches. He came out in the alley for the service vehicles, climbed up on a Dumpster and jumped over a fence. He ran another few yards, slowed up and turned around to see Sam jump down from the fence. He cursed and took off again. They were soon running along the wharf, past oyster bars and sailboats and antique shops. Sam was twenty yards back, not gaining but not falling off the pace either. They came around a street corner, running up a sidewalk by a multilevel parking deck with fresh graffiti: They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot. The man looked back again. Sam was still there. What was her problem? He ran through the streets of Old Town. Historic wooden cottages, gingerbread trim. He stopped and panted in front of a picket fence with pineapple-shaped holes. He looked back. Finally lost her. No, wait, there she was, coming around the place with the Bahamian shutters. He took a deep breath and charged south on Elizabeth Street, coming to an iron fence too tall to scale. He ran along it until he found an open gate. Ten seconds later, Sam dashed in the gate. They zigzagged through the cemetery, Sam catching glimpses of him between palm trees, above-ground crypts, whitewashed mausoleums and royal poincianas. The man stumbled, chest heaving. Sam cruised at the comfortable aerobic pace of daily after-work runs. The man finally put out his arms as he crashed into a crypt with a cement cherub on top. He turned and braced his back against it and flicked a stiletto knife open. Sam broke stride and stopped a few feet away. The man waved the knife weakly in the air, his back slowly sliding down the side of the crypt until he was in the sitting position, gasping for breath, the knife resting in a hand on the ground that he no longer had the strength to raise.
Sam stepped forward and picked up her purse without interference. She turned and started walking away, the sound of desperate breathing behind her, then a single, barely audible word.
“Cunt.”
Oops.
Sam stopped and stood a few moments with her back to him. The man was beginning to catch his breath and pushed himself to his feet. He picked up the knife. “Yeah, you heard me.”
Sam spun around. She took a half-hop step at the start of her run, like a gymnast beginning a floor exercise, and galloped toward him with measured strides. She hit the brakes three feet away, where she correctly anticipated the knife swing. It lacked energy, and the blade floated by without menace. Before the man could begin the backslash, Sam planted her left foot and cocked her right leg to her flank, the way they taught her at the police academy when they let the prosecutors work out. The man only saw a blur as the side kick punched his lower ribs. Something snapped inside. He flew back against the crypt and went down to stay this time. The show was over, but Sam took the key-chain tear gas out of her purse anyway. She heard gagging and high-pitched screaming as she soaked him down good, for instructional purposes.
When Sam got back to the hotel room, the others were mixing something in the blender, all wearing T-shirts from Captain Tony’s. Paige’s face had been painted by a street artist.
“Where the hell’d you go?” asked Maria.
“We thought you were taking a big dump or something,” said Rebecca. “But we couldn’t find you in the rest room.”
“I went for a walk.”
Teresa threw some more ice in the blender. “You missed all the fun.”
13
The pink Cadillac raced east out of Orlando on the Bee Line Highway.
Unfortunately it was in the westbound lanes.
Serge and Lenny screamed their lungs out as honking, swerving dump trucks and tractor-trailers passed by on both sides. All four of their hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, Serge pulling one way, Lenny the other.
Serge: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Lenny: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The stretch of highway was currently undergoing roadwork, and cement retaining walls on both sides of the highway prevented the Cadillac from escaping down the grassy shoulders. Pickup trucks and Harleys split and passed around them.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
The Cadillac began weaving back and forth across all three lanes of highway, dodging head-on collisions. A minivan came straight at them; the Caddy veered left. Then a PT Cruiser; they swung right.
The construction zone ended and Serge pulled hard on the steering wheel, taking the Eldorado down into the median strip, bounding back up the far side and into the correct lanes. He gave the wheel back to Lenny, who put on his right blinker, slowed and pulled over in the breakdown lane. He and Serge stared at each other, both sheet-white, feeling their hearts pound through their chests like the coyote after the roadrunner almost runs him off a cliff.
“What ha
ppened?” said Lenny, taking shallow breaths.
“How much of it do you remember?”
Lenny shook his head.
“You don’t remember anything?”
He shook his head again.
“It all happened pretty fast…”
Ten minutes earlier.
Lenny stubbed out a joint in the Cadillac’s ashtray. “Are we there yet…hic…?”
“A half hour to the Atlantic Ocean, then we swoop down on the money,” said Serge, holding the global tracker in both hands like he was flying a model airplane. “We have a solid transponder lock now, which means we should be able to pinpoint the briefcase’s signal within a half meter. We’re ‘go’ all the way!”
“What do you plan to do with the money?…hic…Crap. These hiccups won’t go away…hic…Maybe if I smoke another joint and calm down…hic…” Lenny stuck a twistie in his mouth and fired up.
“You know, I actually thought of taking up drugs once,” said Serge.
“I thought you were against getting high…hic…”
“I wouldn’t do it to get high,” said Serge. “I just like the sneaking-around part. You have to gain the confidence of your connection, set up the meeting, make the buy, hide your shit, make preparations whom you’re going to do it with, where, how, all without detection. Sort of like being a secret agent.”
Lenny beamed proudly. “You mean like me?…hic…”
“Afraid not, Condor. It’s just a matter of time before you gift-wrap yourself for the police. You’re the guy who gets caught after triggering a twenty-car pileup on the freeway by simultaneously trying to shotgun a beer and fire up a six-foot Cambodian bamboo peace pipe.”
Serge opened a book.
“What are you reading?…hic…”
Serge showed him the cover of the book. Hypnosis Made Easy. “I got the idea from reading The Stingray Shuffle.”
“The what?”
“This novel by my favorite author. I first picked it up because it had a lot of stuff about Florida. And trains. Lots of trains. But it also had a bunch of hypnosis stuff, so I decided to research further.”