When Sandra saw her first palm tree, she started to laugh. It was all by itself in front of some rest rooms in a turnoff just north of the Florida border, like Georgia was telling the world that it had palm trees too.
"What's so funny?" Joey asked her.
"Tropicana," Sandra said. "It looks like the girl on the orange juice."
South of Jacksonville, they stopped at a Waffle House for sausage and eggs, and Sandra changed into a pair of turquoise shorts and white sandals with flowers on the insteps. Joey rolled up his sleeves, undid the second button of his shirt, and told himself he would never again remove the sunglasses that Sal Giordano had given him as a going-away gift. He loved them. They had dark blue lenses that gave everything the velvety look of the half hour after sunset; the black plastic earpieces slid through his hair with a feeling smooth as sex. At Vero Beach he pulled off onto the shoulder and took the Caddy's top down. This required some wrestling because the frame was rusty and the electric system hadn't worked in years. "January eleventh," Joey said. "Seventy-six degrees. Sandra, did I tell ya this was gonna be great?"
They spent that night south of Miami so they could drive the Keys in daylight. Their motel room had a smell that would always be with them from then on, but which they would hardly ever notice again, it was so much a part of south Florida. The smell was a sort of far-off mildew mixed with salt, mixed with iodine, mixed with oysters choking on mud, mixed with a very fine dust of limestone that was always dissolving in the breeze. Rounding off the aroma was a hint of toasted sawdust, as if the termites cooked the wood as they ate it.
Joey and Sandra made love amid that Florida smell, then they listened for a few minutes to the locusts and the distant traffic, then Sandra started to cry.
"Hey?" said Joey. He touched her shoulder under the damp sheet.
"It's O.K.," she said. "It's O.K." She nuzzled her face into her pillow. "But Joey, aren't you even a little afraid we just won't like it here?"
He raised himself up on an elbow and breathed deeply of the dust, mold, and strange flowers closed up for the night. He'd never really thought about it quite that way. He'd decided he would like it, he didn't have to think about it. He was going someplace warm, to do some business, establish himself, launch an enterprise. The place had to be suitable, but beyond that? Did Al Capone like Chicago? Did Meyer Lansky like Las Vegas?
"It's gonna be fine," he said. "Terrific." He turned over and groped around in the dark to make sure his sunglasses were on the nightstand next to him. Then he fell asleep with just the haziest misgivings barely beginning to scratch at his brain.
—
"Islamorada," Joey said, pointing out the open window of the Cadillac at many millions of dollars' worth of gleaming boats. "That's where the President goes fishing. Also my Uncle Tony. He went fishing there once. Brought back this big stuffed thing, this fish with like a spike kinda nose. But the guy didn't stuff it right. Still smelled like fish. Then it rotted. Right up onna wall. Got all soft and started to drip. Uncle Tony was pissed."
Sandra rubbed sunblock on her pale arms and looked out at the bait shops and the seashell stores. Then she started smearing up her legs, and by the time she looked out the window again, the shops were gone, the palm trees were gone, everything was gone. "Joey," she said, "there's no land there." She grabbed her armrest.
"Ain't that something?" Joey said. "Yup. The Keys. Unbelievable. You ever hear of this guy—what was his name? Flagler. Right. This guy could organize. You see that other bridge over there?"
He pointed to an arc up on trestles that ran parallel to U.S. 1. Pelicans were perching on it, scratching their bellies with their beaks. Black kids were fishing, dropping hand lines into the shallow green water where the Gulf of Mexico met the Florida Straits.
"That was Flagler's railroad. Now get this, Sandra. Guy buys up all this land, dirt cheap 'cause you can't get to it. So he builds a railroad, which makes the land very valuable. He builds hotels, and he charges whatever he likes 'cause he's the only guy who's got 'em. It's like total control, and it's legal. Flagler needs cash, he sells a swamp somewhere for a few million. Oh, it's underwater? The land's onna bottom. Trust me. He puts up dog tracks, amusement parks. This guy had all the leverage. A genius."
Sandra looked over at the railroad trestle. "But Joey, there's big holes in it. I mean, places where it just stops."
And it was true that large stretches of shining water and empty sky could be seen through Henry Flagler's railroad
'Yup. That was the only problem. Hurricanes. Some trains blew inna water and it wasn't fun anymore, I guess. Well, you can't buy off a hurricane. At least this way boats can get through." He adjusted his sunglasses, wiggled the plastic earpieces through his hair.