Suki Sperakis did a couple of interviews then retreated to her old hexagonal turret room, the site of her chaste, confused recuperation. But she and Aaron hid out there together now. With their arms around each other, they watched the bright lights play on the underside of the banyan leaves that tickled the railings of the widow's walk.
Then the lights were turned off, the media packed up and left, and things got relatively quiet.
But Key West, in certain ways, was changed. With the T-shirt shops instantly defunct, there would be a sudden glut of retail space on Duval Street, and rents would plummet accordingly. Local artisans could once again move in. There could be painters' co-ops and handmade sandals, tiny stores that would sell fedoras woven from palm fronds and brightly colored wooden fish. Much of what was offered would be pure kitsch—but authentic, local kitsch—and a hard-core local like Suki could take pleasure and vindication at the change.
Which didn't mean, however, that the new Duval Street would hold a place for her, or that surviving the Russians and bringing them down had solved the more mundane questions of what she would do for her living, how she would spend her time. She wouldn't go back to selling ads. She no longer fantasized about being a reporter; her brush with the media had cured her of that.
"So what will you do?" Aaron asked her some days later, as they sat in the unromantic kitchen, drinking coffee. Sam, fixed up with a brand new hearing aid, sipped tea.
"Oh, I don't know," said Suki, perhaps a little coyly. She looked up at the rack of outsize pots and pans, then through the doorway to the courtyard, with its shimmering pool and lounge chairs empty of guests. "Dreams are contagious," she said. "You once told me that, remember?"
Aaron looked at her unlikely eyes, then down into his cup.
"This place could really turn around," she said. "With all the work you've done, the free publicity ... Will you let me be here with you, help?"
They were kissing when the silver service bell rang out from the front desk counter.
Sam Katz, very glad to see them kissing, started standing up to answer it.
"Sit, Pop," Suki said. She put her hands on his shoulders and went off to charm the guests.
Astronauts; football teams. Everyone invited went.
Still, some weeks later, when the weird case had been reviewed, and Fred and Pineapple were summoned to the White House, they hemmed and hawed about it.
"They're using us," said Fred.
"Using you for what?" asked Aaron.
"A coup for the homeless they're calling it," Fred said. "We're not homeless. We live in a hot dog."
"Ya go," Piney put in, "it's like saying y'approve, like everything is peachy."
"But Piney," Suki argued, "face it, you're a hero."
He could not quite squelch a smile that stretched his slot of a mouth. "Don't mean I approve," he argued back.
In the end, of course, they went. Aaron bought them shoes. Bert lent them shirts. Fred's was white-on-white, Piney's a navy blue silk; no one noticed that the monograms matched each other but not the wearers' names. Four men from the Secret Service came to pick them up, blinked behind their Ray-Bans at the fiberglass wiener squooshed down into its yellow roll.
Piney liked Washington more than he expected to. The Mall was nice and open. A lot of the buildings he recognized from postage stamps or dollar bills. The cherry blossoms were just getting ready to come out, and he liked it that people got excited. Key West was always in flower; no one bit their nails to see a bloom.
The White House itself he hated.
Big as it was, it was suffocating, as houses always were to him. Rugs to trip over, things that could break. Bullying hallways that pushed you one way or the other, walls that blocked the view. Ceilings that seemed to hover annoyingly like giant hat brims just above your eyes.
He couldn't wait to get out of there, and even while inside, his thoughts were other places, less confining places. He thought of mangroves, of green clouds out beyond the reef. He thought of airplanes etching lines between the stars, lizards basking on warming rocks as time passed and the sun got higher in the sky. And that started him speculating: Did lizards have a sense of time as a separate thing from cold and warm?
He was still trying to puzzle that one out as the line of people moved along and he found himself standing opposite the president of the United States.
The president's hand was hot from shaking so many others, but his eyes had a twinkle and his voice was mellow and sincere as he thanked Piney for his extraordinary service to the nation.
The words washed over Piney, whose mind had flown beyond the curtained windows to sample other things. "Mr. President," he said, "ya know what I sometimes wonder about? ..."