Mangrove Squeeze(13)

Bert reached a hand below the edge of the bar. Disconcertingly, he seemed to be stroking his groin. "Funny what goes," he said. "Me, ticker's spastic, pecker's finished. But the feet still move and brain's about as good as ever, which probably isn't all that very. How long's your wife been dead?"

"How you know my wife is dead?"

Bert said, "All old men sitting in a bar at four o'clock, unless they're drunks their wife is dead. Mine's been dead twelve years." He continued stroking his crotch. "Company," he went on. "Company is what you need. Company and conversation, keep your mind alert."

"Alert," Sam echoed. He said it wistfully.

"Tell ya what," said Bert. He reached into his top-stitched and monogrammed chest pocket, produced a silver pen, wrote a phone number on a cocktail napkin. "Call me if ya like. We'll have a conversation, play gin rummy. For now I gotta go."

Slowly, stiffly, he began to rise, and Sam saw that he had a tiny ancient chihuahua in his lap. He couldn't help pointing at the creature and saying, "You know, I saw you stroking, I was thinking—"

Bert said, "I saw what you were thinking, and I really didn't give a shit. One good thing about getting old. Ya rub your crotch, who cares? Your crotch don't even care." Still not entirely free of his chair, he held forth the little dog. "This is Don Giovanni. Shake Sam's hand, Giovanni."

The geriatric animal made a monumental effort to lift a scrawny paw. Wanting to save it the trouble, Sam reached down and gently grasped its foreleg. The bones felt more like a bird than a dog. The creature's fur was sparse and faded, its drooping and enormous whiskers insecurely anchored at the scaly edges of a dry and twitching nose. Cataracts whitened both its eyes, milky film cascading over the bulbous and weirdly gleaming irises.

Sam said, "That's the oldest dog I ever saw."

Bert said, "And what are we, spring chickens?"

Erect now, finally, he hugged the dog against his tummy and strolled leisurely away.





Chapter 6


The couple from Michigan, as happened not infrequently, cut short their stay at Mangrove Arms.

Maybe it was the pecan shells that the woman who did the breakfast had neglected to remove from the muffins. Maybe it was the tiny pellets of black rubber that shot inexplicably from the jets of the hot tub. Maybe it was a superstitious fleeing from the broken mirror of the medicine cabinet that had come unstuck from the wall and shattered in their bathroom sink. In any case, the Karrs had booked for six nights but left after three, signing off on their credit card and saying a somewhat embarrassed goodbye before moving on to spend the rest of their vacation at a real hotel.

Their early departure put Aaron in a sulk, and he sat for a while at the front desk, brooding. The sulk was not about money. Aaron had done his projections; he was losing money not much faster than he'd planned for; he could afford to lose considerably more. But it galled and baffled him to be working day in and day out at something that very possibly might fail.

He'd never failed at anything before. School had come easily. Sports had not, but still, with his father's help he'd turned his very mediocre talents into pitching records that still stood at Merrick Junior High. Quick and eager, he'd shined at summer jobs. Wall Street he'd figured out in half a dozen years—the phrases, the logical illogic, the perfect ties. In each arena, he'd defined the challenge, made something of a game of it, and psyched it out. Satisfying.

But what about now? Here was a simple machine—two small wood houses on a shady street in a town that millions of people paid money to visit. Why was he having such a damned tough time getting this machine to fly?

Brooding, turning the problem this way and that, he did not hear skipping footsteps coming up the porch stairs, and he was taken by surprise when Suki Sperakis walked into the office. She took advantage of his inattention, studied him a moment before he raised his eyes. She said, "You're not having your best day." It was not a question.

Aaron looked at her—the rich black hair, the wide violet eyes—and tried to smile. "It shows that much?"

She said, "Jews, Greeks, Italians. All those Mediterraneans, they can't hide their moods worth a damn."

He said, "You're here about the ad?"

"I'm here," she said, "to say I was unfair to you the other day."

"Hey," he said, "forget it. I guess I came on like a pushy jerk."

"No," she said. "You were being very nice. Civilized. A bowl of pasta—civilized. And I just didn't get it. It isn't what I'm used to."

Aaron looked at her. Her hair had been swept back by the momentum of her bike ride, the strands of her throat were tanned and mobile where they vanished under the thin cloth of her blouse. He said, "What are you used to, Suki?"