Welcome to Paradise Page 4

  "Tell ya what," he said, his lips glistening with butter. "We'll finish breakfast, skip the A.M. workout, see the town. How's that? Pick up the dog, check out the beach, do a little shopping. Whaddya say?"

  Katy picked at the edges of her mango muffin. "Fine," she blandly said. Mornings were not her best time. Her raven hair, brittle from the dyeing, stood up here and there in random curlicues. With only smears of faded makeup, her eyes looked rather small and waifish. Her breasts felt heavy in the morning; they pulled down on her collarbones and reminded her that she was twenty- nine, and being kept in only so-so fashion by a terminally married man who, no doubt, would dump her fairly soon, by which time she'd be thirty, thirty-one, and what then?

  Maybe Big Al was reading her mind. Maybe just trying to regain lost ground. He reached out gently and held her chin. His hand was small and surprisingly soft, the heel of it like a pillow. His touch could on occasion be infuriatingly tender. He said, "Come on. You're beautiful. Ya know that?"

  She blinked. She could have cried. Instead she tried to smile, and when that didn't quite work out, she made a playful and ferocious face and bit his hand, the pillowy part between the wrist and thumb. Selfish bastard. Selfish bastard who could also sometimes be a charming bastard.

  Big Al squirmed and pretended to wince as she nibbled on his hand, her small teeth leaving shallow dents in his flesh. It almost hurt; it did hurt, in a way that got him going, and he began to calculate just how much hell there'd be to pay if he took back his offer to skip the A.M. workout.

  *

  Alan Tuschman also woke up early.

  He'd managed to slip beneath his light blanket, though not to get out of last night's clothes. Now he smelled damp earth and chlorine, and gradually remembered where he was. He opened his eyes to see his slowly turning ceiling fan, palm shadows flickering against his raw wood walls, greenish women with greenish breasts staring down at him with no great curiosity.

  He stretched, his long hands and feet overreaching the confines of the bed. The dog licked his face. She wanted walking. He got up, washed, and went outside.

  From behind its thatch enclosure, the pool pump softly hummed. Otherwise the courtyard of Paradise was quiet. Dew was shrinking back on enormous leaves as the sun climbed higher in the sky. A large woman sat lotus-style on a towel near the hot tub. Her eyes were closed and she didn't have a shirt on. She inhaled deeply and raised her arms, displaying furry armpits.

  Across the way, the breakfast buffet was just being set up. Al caught a whiff of coffee and realized he was famished. He went over to investigate. There were thimble muffins and miniature croissants curled up like unripe fetuses and dainty little ramekins of fruit cup. It was all very cute but it didn't look like breakfast. Not to Al, who was used to Jersey diners. Danish big as hubcaps. Omelets the size of shoes. Home fries bleeding paprika, piled to the very edges of the plate.

  He decided to go out to eat. He went back to his bungalow to grab his car keys. Then, with Fifi in the lead, he rounded the pool, trod the gravel path, and exited the gate to the parking area.

  He took no special notice of the old hippie nodding out behind a buttonwood hedge across the street—the red bandanna wrapped around the long and stringy hair, the small, round Trotsky glasses worn far down on the nose. It was Sid the Squid, of course. He hadn't been able to sleep. Too excited. Hungry, like every artist, for a reaction to his efforts.

  So he'd left Chop snoring in the mildewed motel room that they shared, and strolled to Paradise at dawn. Now he struggled not to fidget as Big Al approached the violated, sunstruck Lexus. Moisture pooled beneath Sid's tongue; he swallowed and his Adam's apple shuttled up and down.

  Al Tuschman, tunelessly whistling, used his remote to unlock the driver's-side door. He'd reached out for the handle before he realized anything was wrong. Then he froze and squinted, disbelieving, through the windshield.

  Sunshine was skidding across the sweep of glass, making it half mirror. Sky was reflected, and the restless crowns of palms; but light also penetrated, and what Al Tuschman saw behind the glare mocked all understanding. Calamari. Stale, dry calamari, spoiled to a sickly mottled gray, glued in wavy patterns to the leased leather of his seats. Scallops of scum marked the places where dead tentacles had shrunk back in the tropic heat. The black dots of eyestalks stood out creepily against the tasteful taupe.

  Across the street, Squid Berman squirmed and swallowed, trying not to wet his pants or let out a whoop of glee.

  Al Tuschman opened the car door. Fifi, by long habit, jumped up toward the seat, then seemed somehow to reverse field, midair, and pulled away, whimpering, to the limit of her leash. She'd smelled a stink that seemed to be the vapor of death itself. Ocean turned to ammoniac poison. Nourishment corrupted to putrescent goo.

  Al Tuschman sucked in a tiny sniff that brought tears to his eyes. He stopped breathing. Yet some compulsion, some need for confirmation, led him to reach out a thick finger to touch the calamari. The tubes felt stiff and starchy, like undercooked lasagna. The tentacles were dank and crusty and bore a disgusting resemblance to something secretly discovered in one's nose.

  Al closed the door, wiped his eyes, turned in a different direction to inhale.

  Across the street, Squid Berman rejoiced and waited for the inevitable explosion, the operatic tantrum. In his world, men had magnificent and primal tempers that gave rise to absurd and highly entertaining displays. When something bad happened to them, they screamed, cursed, turned red, kicked walls, punched doors, swore revenge, and railed at heaven. It was great to watch.

  But Al Tuschman did none of these things.

  He didn't have much of a temper. Not anymore, having spent so much adrenaline on the ballfields of his youth. Besides, innocent, clear of conscience, he had no reason to suspect malice. So he wasn't thinking about revenge; as his mind gradually cleared, he began instead to think about insurance. What was the deductible on calamari? What if he needed a whole new interior? He rubbed his chin, wondered how he'd schmooze the lease people on this one. He shuffled his feet in the gravel. As if it mattered, he pulled out the remote and locked the car again.

  Squid Berman watched him from behind the buttonwood, and his disappointment at the absence of a show turned moment by moment to grudging admiration. He thought: Christ, this guy is really cool. Calculating; patient. Made sense. Tough and cool—that was the combination that brought guys to the top. The hotheads, they went just so far before burning out or making a fatal blunder. . . . Besides, this guy was probably so fucking rich—what was a brand-new Lexus to him?

  Squid retreated behind the hedge, choked back a private embarrassment that his initial ploy had fallen short, that his masterpiece of seafood had elicited barely a grumble from his prey. He was let down but not discouraged. He liked a challenge. Big Al was cool and rich, unflappable? Fine. Sid Berman would find a way to get to him. No problem. He'd just have to get some rest and try a little harder.

  7

  There were times when shopping was about acquiring needed things, and times when it was a desperate search for comforts true or false, and times when it was first and foremost an exercise in spite. The expedition that carried Katy Sansone up and down Duval Street, Big Al and Ripper at her side, was of this final type.

  She wasn't getting what she wanted from this trip. Not at all. She hadn't been on the beach yet, even for a second. She hadn't seen the ocean except for slices of it from the cocktail lounge or through the window of her room as she lay there on her back. It was his trip, his vacation.

  Well, what had she expected? The question mocked her, but she couldn't let it go. How had she imagined it would be? What did she think or hope she might get out of it? The awful truth was that, if she was going to cut through the fibs and poses and excuses and just be deadly honest, what she'd really wanted from this trip was not about beach and not about ocean and not about a suntan.

  It was about romance.

  There, she'd admitted it. Romance. It was ridicul
ous, pathetic, and she knew it was pathetic. Of course she did. She'd wanted to feel special. Ha. With Big Al? Whose idea of romance, maybe, was to light a candle before he poked her. Clink champagne glasses before the porno films came out. Before he washed himself and combed his hair and went back to his fat wife in Bay Ridge. This was romance? This was what people wrote songs about? Katy wished she was either a little smarter or a whole lot dumber. Little smarter, maybe she wouldn't have got herself into such a jerky situation. Dumber, maybe it wouldn't gnaw at her so much. As it was . . .

  As it was, she promenaded up and down Duval Street, shopping with grim and joyless fury. Designer sunglasses that made her look either like a European actress or a total geek. Wraparound skirts whose ease of removal caused Big Al to lick his sloppy lips. A dolphin brooch; fake Spanish coins set into earrings. With each purchase, she looked sideways at her sugar daddy, trying to determine if she'd succeeded yet in annoying him, had managed to spend enough of his money so that he would reveal discomfort, and she could feel that she was somehow winning.

  The strategy failed utterly, as she secretly knew it would. Big Al, swaggering along, flanked by his big-balled rottweiler and his tall young squeeze, got only happier and more puffed up as they shopped. Buying power was a beautiful thing. A potent thing. There was sex in a wad of fifties. Throwing dough at his girlfriend's whims didn't bother him at all. It tightened his grip and therefore made him frisky.

  At some point, with shopping bags chafing against her thin and still-pale legs, Katy understood she was just digging herself in deeper. She got depressed. The sun was high, the fresh part of the morning had been wasted, and what had she accomplished? Got some things that, after Al got bored and dumped her, she'd never want to see again anyway. "I'm ready to go back," she said.

  Big Al, on a spending roll, was surprised. "Already?" he said. "There's nothing else ya want?"

  "Nothing I'm gonna find here," said Katy.

  Big Al blinked up at her; and for some part of a second she thought perhaps he'd understood. Then he said, "Where, then? Miami?"

  "Al," she said, "I'd like to get out of these shoes."

  That, he understood. He shrugged and they headed back toward the Conch House, Ripper's testicles bouncing proudly as they went.

  Alan Tuschman, disgusted, baffled, trudged into the office of Paradise and asked the clerk to call the cops.

  The clerk seemed unsurprised and maybe even pleased that the slightly thuggish-looking salesman was having trouble. Unctuously, he said, "Is something wrong?"

  "Nah," said Al, "just thought I'd say hello."

  This was exactly the sort of Northeast sarcasm the clerk had moved down from suburban Philadelphia to avoid. He averted his gaze and made the call. Al went back outside and leaned against the trunk of his despoiled car. The old hippie across the way was gone.

  A motorcycle cop roared up in about ten minutes. The short-legged officer climbed off the bike like a pug addressing a fire hydrant. He looked at Al accusingly. "What's the problem?"

  Al pointed through the driver's-side window of the Lexus.

  The cop clomped over in his boots and squinted through his Ray-Bans. "What is it?"

  "Calamari. Wanna smell?"

  The cop said no.

  "Crazy, huh?" said Al.

  The cop didn't offer an opinion.

  " Something like this," Al asked, "why would it happen ?"

  The cop scratched his head right through the helmet. Then he began an expert examination of the car. He determined that it was new and pricey and from a Northern state held in universal and profound contempt. "Town like this," he said, "there's a certain amount of vandalism against tourists. Resentment, ya know. Hate."

  Al Tuschman gave a worldly nod. To be resented, detested, mocked, and victimized—why else did anybody take vacation? He said, "Any chance of fingerprints?"

  Sharply, the cop said, "D'ya touch the door handle?"

  He had Al there. He pressed the attack.

  "Anybody mad at ya?"

  "I just got here."

  "Hot climate," said the cop, "it don't take long for people to get mad. Ya look too long at someone's girlfriend's titties? Get talkin' politics with shrimpers?"

  Al had not yet had food or coffee. He was hatching a headache and he wished he was home. He said, "Look, if I could just get a report. For insurance."

  The cop produced a pad, began scrawling. Now he pretended to be helpful. "I was you, I'd call a dealer."

  "Got one here in town?"

  "Fancy car like this, closest one's Miami. Sun, I think it's called." He paused, and Al Tuschman tried to believe he didn't see a quick malevolent flash behind the Ray- Bans. "Towing cost ya six, eight hundred bucks."

  The cop snapped the report from his pad and roared off on his motorbike.

  Al Tuschman stuffed the paper into his pocket, went back into the office, called the dealer in Miami. The towing, as it turned out, would cost a mere 517 bucks. Al left the car key with the desk clerk.

  "Who should I give it to?" the man with the shaved head asked.

  "Anyone that wants it," said Al disgustedly.

  The clerk bit his lip. What a sarcastic guy, he thought, as his big, rough-looking guest pivoted on aching knees and left.

  *

  Back in his mildewed motel room, Chop Parilla was more than half asleep. A sweaty sheet clung to his hairy back; its wrinkles seemed to continue in the thick skin of his stub of neck. Fugitive shafts of light and the dull hum of traffic from the Boulevard were prying him out of the millionth version of his favorite dream—a dream of weightless sex amid the knobs and gauges of a stolen car, never the same car twice.

  In his mind he copped a final feel of the dashboard and kissed the dream good-bye. Then he heard the doorknob rattle and he reached by reflex for the revolver underneath his pillow.

  As the door swung open and a rude wedge of sunshine cut into the room, he came up on an elbow, cocked the hammer of the gun, and drew a bead on a greasy-haired hippie with a red bandanna and stupid-looking little glasses way down on his nose.

  "Hey, don't fuck around. It's me."

  Squid Berman was slurping coffee from one of a pair of Styrofoam cups. He handed the other to Chop, who put the gun down on the nightstand. Squid tore off the bandanna and the wig, polished off his java, and started pacing the narrow alley between the single beds.

  "So how'd it go?" Parilla asked.

  "Went shitty," Squid admitted. "Went weird. The fucker hardly flinched!"

  Chop rubbed the pads of fat beneath his eyes. "I'm not surprised."

  "Whaddya mean, you're not surprised? Bullshit you're not surprised."

  Calmly, Chop said, " Ya don't get the fish market goin' off half-cocked."

  Squid paced faster, pivoted more furiously. "He acted like it was, I don't know, a mosquito bite. Closes the car door. Doesn't even slam it. Rubs his chin. Fuckin' philosophical."

  "Smart," said Chop. "Ya don't just get mad. Ya give it time. Ya get really mad. Ya find out who to hurt. Then ya let it out. That's the smart way to get mad."

  "Watches the dog take a leak," said Squid. "Strolls back to the hotel. Like ho-hum, just another fuckin' morning ... A gorgeous piece a work like what I did, and the fucker barely flinches!"

  Chop sipped coffee, rearranged the damp sheet that lay across his butt. "Ya want I should call Nicky, ask advice?"

  "Don't insult me, Chop."

  "Hey, it's just that Nicky knows 'im better."

  "Not half as good as I'm gonna know 'im by the time I'm through. I'm goin' to school on the sonofabitch. I'm learnin' every minute."

  "And what ya learned so far?" Chop challenged.

  "Possessions, which is money, he don't care about," said Squid. "So what's that leave? His dignity. His person. I'll find a way in, Chop. I'll make 'im nuts."

  "Enough with the pacing, Squid. You're makin' me a little nuts."

  The bandy man kept doing laps. "You'll see. You'll see. Have I ever let ya down before?"


  8

  Al Tuschman surprised himself by not being more upset. Maybe it was just that food and coffee sufficed to make a hungry person happy, brought life back to basics.

  He'd found a good breakfast place down on Duval Street. A courtyard a few steps up from the sidewalk. Outdoors, he could sit with Fifi, and, even better, the place had the kind of stuff that he was used to. God bless the Greeks. They had one recipe for home fries, disseminated it around the globe. Used the same take-out cups in Florida as in Jersey: blue background with a white acropolis, the seam of the cup always slicing through a statue's crotch.

  Comforted by these familiar things, Al felt himself becoming more receptive to the newness parading before him.

  Drag queens who hadn't been to sleep yet. Homeless guys tying up their mildewed bedrolls. Miserable youths with baggy pants, rings through their noses and tattoos on their feet. And the inevitable mismatched couples. Slight men with wide women. Brassy women with mousy men. Here a tall and chesty babe weighed down with shopping bags, on the arm of a grinning short guy who might have been her uncle, leading a rottweiler whose fleeting nearness made Fifi tick her paws against the gravel of the courtyard. The woman met his eye, held it for some fraction of a second. He thought he saw a quick twitch at the corner of her mouth. But she didn't seem to be flirting; more like apologizing for something.

  A funny town, Al decided. He went back to his eggs and tried not to think about his car. Or, if he had to think about it, to find a way to rationalize what the towing and the deductible would cost him. Less than a Florida vacation. So he was still ahead. Sort of. Then again, he wouldn't be on vacation, certainly not on this vacation, if he'd had to pay for it.

  Was that good or bad, he wondered—that he wouldn't take vacation unless he won it? Did it mean he was a workaholic, or just cheap? Was it that he didn't have a lady to take vacation with? Or was he simply the kind of guy who didn't like vacations? And why did that seem somehow shameful to admit?

  He finished his omelet, paid his tab, and rose to leave.