Tropical Depression Page 19

  Franny thought it better not to answer, just looked across the green water to the featureless low islands that seemed to float a few inches above the surface, weightless, vagrant, resolutely dark in even the most searing sun. She was nestled among the provisions, her head was pillowed by a sack of rice. It was white rice, stripped of its nutrition, and she asked Tommy if it would be safe for Flaco to go sometime to the apartment and retrieve her vitamins. Tommy looked at the boatman and the boatman nodded yes. He knew the Anglos pretty well. He knew that no one would really look at him, he'd be taken for a maintenance man, a gardener.

  They neared Kilicumba, Flaco zigzagged toward it with an airtight logic known only to himself.

  They scraped aground at the kidney-shaped notch in the mangroves, and Tommy Tarpon jumped nimbly overboard, sinking, this time, only to his ankles. He dragged the skiff ashore, then, abruptly, like a man having a religious revelation, he dropped to his knees at the water's edge. In another instant he was rolling in the muck like a hog.

  He rolled on his back, he rolled on his belly, he squirmed like a fetus on either side. When he was finished rolling he picked up big dollops of limestone goo and slapped them on his neck and face and hair. By the time he was done, nothing was left uncoated but his eyeballs and his lips, they stood out weirdly against the khaki mud, he looked a little like Al Jolson.

  Murray and Franny gaped. "Tribal ritual?" she asked.

  "Survival," Tommy said, dripping grainy marl. "Keeps the bugs off. I recommend it."

  Murray said, "Me? I don't think so."

  Franny shyly shook her head.

  But the mosquitos and wakita malti were coming forth to meet them. They swarmed, they buzzed, they dive-bombed necks and ears, flicking out their feeding tubes like switchblades. Franny and Murray shook themselves, slapped themselves, wiped away battalions of blood-bloated insects. In twenty seconds they'd leapt overboard and were wallowing.

  They wiggled, they squirmed, the mucky pleasure of it freed them of the burden of their dignity, sucked tension out of them and made them slaphappy. They were exhausted, giddy with relief and with the fear that still lingered beyond the relief. Now they were breaded like veal cutlets.

  Franny sat cross-legged at the water's edge, drizzling wet sand on her head. "Fancy spa," she said, "people pay big bucks for this."

  Murray opened up his shirt, rubbed muck into his chest hair. He massaged his face with it like it was shaving cream.

  Wordlessly, Flaco started unloading the boat.

  Then he led the way through the underbrush, past the gator holes, toward the clearing with the middens. The trail he'd cut a month before was already overgrown; once again he had to bushwhack. Lizards scampered from rock to rock, toads squirted under their rotten roof of fallen mangrove leaves. Carrying provisions, muck drying on them like a thin crust of cement, Tommy and Franny and Murray trudged along, their eyes on the perilous and shadowed ground in front of them.

  They reached the clearing. The place worked its nameless ancient magic, loss and mystery drugged the air and for a moment there was silence. Afternoon sun lit up the west faces of the pyramids of shells; they had a pearly gleam and gave off a smell of iodine.

  Franny said, "People lived here."

  She said it very softly, the simple words seemed to come out with no breath behind them, as if they hadn't been spoken, but only thought. No one answered. Everyone put down what they were carrying. Flaco left, promising that he'd return tomorrow.

  Tommy looked for a place where the porous limestone rock was not too jagged or too lumpy, and there he laid out blankets. Murray set down the canteens of water, the tin mess kits with their rattling spoons. Franny found a shady place for the fruit and the rice and the bread.

  The activity broke the clearing's spell, and Murray, overtired and disoriented, started rambling. "A Jew going camping, whoever heard of a Jew going camping? Jews go on cruises. Jews go to hotels. Camping, it's like a very Christian thing. The last Jew who camped, I think his name was Moses."

  No one picked up on his patter.

  Tommy said, "I'm going fishing."

  Franny lay down on her blanket. Limestone flakes cracked off her as she shifted toward a position of some comfort. She was asleep almost immediately in the dappled light of late sun through arcing mangroves.

  Murray yawned and lay down near her. He longed to put his arm around her, to cradle her back against his chest, but he did not. He looked at her hair, spiky with dried mud, smelled the salty ground beneath him, and fell into a nap.

  *****

  Frustrated and miffed, Ponte's thugs had taken a certain glee in destroying Murray's car. They knocked out windshields with their gun butts, snapped off the little pig's tail of cellular antenna, slashed tires with long knives produced from socks, used can openers to scrape off long curls of champagne-colored paint.

  That, however, was as much fun as they would have that day. Charlie Ponte sent them on a slow and glary ride back to Key West to stake out the Paradiso.

  "Jesus, Boss," Squeak had piped, "they're not gonna be so stupid to go back there."

  "Ya never know how stupid people are gonna be," said Ponte. "Say they're stupid enough to go there and we're too smart to follow. Who's stupid then, huh?"

  So, sleep-deprived, stale-breathed, itchy in their clothes, the thugs spent many hours in the Lincoln.

  They parked next to the promenade, watched the mute condominium, its windows opening here and there, its curtains meaninglessly blinking. They watched the sun begin its westward dive, leered with envious scorn at the wholesome bikers and joggers and walkers, and at some point Bruno caught himself drowsily staring at the undulating backside of a man as he skated smoothly by. Fearing that Squeak had noticed him watching, he muttered, "Faggot. Hey, did you see the tits on those models?"

  *****

  Murray and Franny woke to the sound of crackling twigs and the flickering light of wood flames in the dusk.

  Tommy was tending a fire, boiling rice. Three mangrove snappers, dappled brown and white, skewered through the gills, were slow-cooking in the fragrant smoke.

  Murray looked at Franny. She had just opened her eyes, her eyeballs looked very big and white against her mask of muck. Frogs were croaking, thwarted bugs buzzed and rattled. Quite close by, there was a furtive splash, an alligator bedding down in a turgid puddle made homey by a coating of slime.

  "Don't say I never take ya anywhere," the Bra King whispered.

  Franny tried to smile but her face was more or less cemented in a neutral look. She blinked. Only now did she feel rested enough, safe enough, to call up the memory of Bruno with his brainless cruelty, Squeak with his raptor hands—to let the vile taste of captivity bubble up inside her and filter out. Her throat closed; her body felt suddenly cold. "Hold me a minute," she said to Murray.

  He sidled toward her on his blanket. They had a very odd embrace, a hug as of two burned cookies. Crumbs fell off them as they moved together, brittle crust caved in when pressed. Murray reached for his ex-wife's hair, stroked the curled stalactites.

  "Dinner's almost ready," Tommy said.

  They dined by last light, their backs against the sloping side of a midden. They had rice on tin plates, fish eaten whole, the leaved flesh nibbled off the backbone. Embers flew from Tommy's fire, wafted away on gentle currents of salt air.

  The warm food made Murray feel talkative and confident. "So, Tommy," he said, "how d'ya want it to be?"

  "Hm?" Tommy was thinking about beer. What harm would there have been in having a couple, just a couple, with the rice and the fish and the fire?

  "Our casino," the Bra King said. "How d'ya picture it?"

  Tommy sucked a fish bone, cocked his head. He didn't answer fast enough, and the Bra King rambled on.

  "I mean, I've seen pictures of some of these Indian bingo joints, and, due respect, they look like shitholes. Airline hangars. School cafeterias, with those long plastic tables. You don't want it to look like that, do ya?"


  Tommy ate rice, stared past the fire to the edge of the clearing where firelight played on mangroves, where somehow, long ago, ancestors whose lives were nearly as foreign to him as the lives of ancient Greeks or Hebrews, had arrested the greedy march of jungle to reserve this small space for themselves.

  "Of course," continued Murray, "if you're going for volume, ya go for volume. But this location, the exoticness, the remoteness, it cries out to be exclusive, upscale. No bingo. No slots. Just the more elegant games. Baccarat. Roulette. A dock for yachts. A mahogany launch, antique, captain in a braided hat, bringing high rollers out from town."

  He paused to nibble fish, pictured green felt and red carpet against the dimming purple of the western sky.

  His ex-wife said, "What a fantasy life."

  The Bra King took this as a compliment. "And you don't know the half of it. Tommy presiding. Me behind the scenes. Women in gowns, men in black tie. A string quartet in the lounge—"

  "A bullet in the brain," said Franny. "Do we have to talk about this right now?"

  "Gotta talk about something," Murray said, though no one else seemed necessarily to think so.

  Franny coaxed flesh off the backbone of her fish. "Then how about we talk about this wonderful place."

  Murray blinked off toward the mangroves, the gator holes, the fetid milky puddles. "What about it?"

  Franny leaned back against the midden. The shells still held the heat of the day, they soothed her neck and shoulders. She looked up, thought she saw a shooting star moving with unnatural slowness through the sky, then realized it was a single egret flying past, a thousand feet above them, its white belly reflecting the glimmer of the flats. "It's beautiful here," she said.

  "Beautiful as a place that never happened," said Tommy Tarpon, who for some reason had been thinking about his lost houseboat with its little fridge, its tilted lawn chairs bolted to the deck, its absurd but comforting attempts at comfort. "Wonderful. Rare. Like no place else. But for the longer haul, I'd take the penthouse any day."

  37

  They tossed on the hard ground all night, they twitched at bugs in their noses and their ears, and in the morning they swam, or tried to.

  By early golden light, they waded out from the notch in the shore, picking their way carefully, looking for firm footing. But the bottom was level as a table, the water grew no deeper as they waded. Their eyes sleepy, they walked out two hundred yards and still it was as shallow and warm as a kiddie pool.

  So they sat down on the bottom and washed as best they could. Yesterday's muck flaked off their clothes like paint chips from a rotten canvas; off of skin, it softened to a murky cloud and swirled away. Ibis flew by overhead; tiny houndfish, fleeing many terrors, skittered past on madly flicking tails.

  It was wonderful, it was rare, and yet ... And yet, in the distance, squat and undetailed, Key West loomed as a monument to ease and pleasure. Murray, his flesh sore, his back complaining, sat there in the knee-deep sea and remembered what civilization was about: Mattresses. Towels. Bars of virgin soap, big and firm as bricks. Gizmos with timers that made coffee before the dull throb of a caffeine headache kicked in.

  They waded back to shore. They wallowed, smeared themselves with muck. Wallowing had already come to seem a normal part of the day's toilette.

  Tommy got a fire going, boiled up some coffee grounds. The resulting beverage tasted mostly like aluminum and smoke. They drank it without milk, with unadorned bread gone dank and soggy, and with each caustic sip and each pasty bite the romance of camping wore thinner.

  "Okay," said Murray, washing down his Prozac with yesterday's stale water. "Let's figure how the hell we're getting outa this."

  "Even here?" said Franny. "Even here you need the pills?"

  "Thank God I remembered them," the Bra King said. He shifted his butt on the stony ground, tried to find a position that didn't hurt. He looked at Tommy. Tommy was sitting cross-legged. He looked comfortable. He probably wasn't, but he looked like he was, and this made Murray grumpy. "How the hell can you sit like that?"

  "S'gonna be a long day," the Indian said gently. "Let's not get cranky."

  "I'd give ten thousand dollars for a bath," said Murray.

  Franny had started nibbling a mango. She nibbled it very carefully, because they had no dental floss out there, a mango string between the teeth could make her life a living hell. "I think we need a plan," she said.

  Very calmly, Tommy said, "We have a plan."

  "We have a plan?" said Murray.

  "I thought of it yesterday when I was fishing. It's very simple. Maybe not that simple. Basically I sign some papers."

  Murray took another swig of coffee, wished he hadn't, grimaced. "I don't want you to sign any papers. The whole idea was getting things to where you didn't have to sign."

  Tommy shrugged. Behind him, morning sun broke free of slabs of cloud clustered low near the horizon, sprayed crisp and grainy light across the clearing.

  Murray said, "Come on, Tommy, we're not looking for a martyr here."

  The Indian shrugged again and said, "I wasn't planning on martyrdom. Character assassination, maybe. Human sacrifice, maybe. Martyrdom, no."

  He put down his tin cup of lukewarm coffee and got up to do a little fishing.

  *****

  Sometime after noon, the three bored and breaded campers heard the faint whine of Flaco's ancient motor in the distance. Halfheartedly shaking off their torpor, they rose and walked lightheaded along the bushwhacked path. From the notch in the shore they watched the little skiff approach, and at some point, through the knife-edged glare, Murray saw a second figure in the boat. The figure was squat and silver-bearded, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a bowtie, and a jacket that, on closer inspection, would prove to be made of tweed. The man's furry knuckles gripped the gunwales nervously, on his face was a look of befuddlement or disbelief.

  The little boat scraped aground. The new arrival stood up gingerly. He gaped at Murray. Murray gaped at him. Then he said, "Oy."

  The Bra King frowned. "I knew you were gonna say that, Max."

  "You look like a savage," said his psychiatrist.

  "Don'tcha say hello to Franny?"

  Lowenstein stared at the muck-coated female with the popping eyes and limestone hair. "Good God, it is Franny."

  "And this is Tommy," Murray said.

  "We talked on the phone," said the sovereign. "I am a savage."

  The shrink was having some trouble with his footing, his feet were wedged between a big water jug and the sack that held bread and fruit and Franny's vitamins. "Murray, what the hell are you doing here?"

  "What the hell are you doing here?" the Bra King countered.

  But before Max Lowenstein could answer, the bugs had found him, he started shucking and swatting, fending and dodging like a tired fighter.

  "This is why we wallow," Franny said. "You really have to."

  "I had a dream," the shrink explained, smacking and flinching. "Anxiety. That prescription, like I shouldn't have given it, something terrible would happen."

  "What's so terrible?" said Murray. He lifted his shoulders, and fissures spread through his coating of mud.

  "So I hopped a plane," Lowenstein went on. "I can't wallow, these are my only clothes."

  'Take 'em off," said Franny.

  The shrink weighed the statement's motivation. But a plague of insects was on him, they landed in a blurred mass on his neck and wrists and forehead, and soon he was sweeping off his jacket, kicking off his loafers, stepping out of his corduroy pants. In striped boxer shorts and an old-fashioned undershirt with shoulder straps, he stepped uncertainly overboard and rolled stoutly in the muck.

  While he was rolling, Flaco explained, "I find him in the lobby. He looking for a Zemelman. He seem hokay. I feel him, you know, for gun, for knife."

  Tommy nodded.

  "I also see big car parked outside," said Flaco. "Two pendejos, mean. I think they maybe not hokay."

  Tommy nodded again,
then he asked Flaco to go to the office of the Key West Sentinel and gather up the reporter Arty Magnus; and to have him contact Bert, the old man with the little dog; and to bring them both to Kilicumba as soon as he could. Flaco asked no questions, made no protests, just handed over the provisions and Max Lowenstein's suit of northern clothes, and poled his little skiff off the bottom.

  Meanwhile the psychiatrist wallowed. He rolled, he shimmied, he reflected on his day. He'd had his crotch patted by an old Spanish fisherman; the wife of a patient had suggested he disrobe. At length he sat in the inches-deep sea, and in his corpulence and his sagacity he looked like Buddha.

  Murray stared at him, said, "Jesus, Max, I'm really touched you came."

  *****

  From a pay phone on the promenade, Bruno called his boss.

  "It's been a day, a night, and most of another fucking day already, and we ain't seen shit," he said.

  Charlie Ponte drummed fingers on his desk. He'd slept in his own bed last night, changed his underwear, what the hell did he care? "Give it more time," he ordered.

  Bruno's nylon socks were crusty, his athlete's foot was driving him insane. "How about we break in, wait for 'em inside?" That way he could wash between his toes at least.

  "Too risky those places," Ponte said. "Alarms, closed circuit. Then ya first got headaches."

  There was a standoff. Bruno shuffled his tormented dogs against the hot sidewalk, looked at women facedown with their tops undone, sunning on the beach.

  Finally Ponte said, "Maybe you'll take over LaRue's place, keep an eye from there."

  The big thug loved that idea. Foot powder. A liquor cabinet. Television. "That gonna be okay with him?"

  "Fuck what's okay with him," said Charlie Ponte. "I'm fed up with that dog turd anyway. Call me back an hour or two, I'll have it all set up."

  38

  "Jesus Christ," said Bert the Shirt, looking at the mud-smeared group in the notch of the shore, "youse look ridiculous."