Vaguely she felt the grit of the road against her scalp, saw a narrow swath of stars between the ranks of mangrove. The last time she smelled air it was scented with salt and seashells.
PART
TWO
Chapter 13
Aaron Katz arrived at Lucia's at ten of eight and was shown to a so-so table in the middle of the room.
He took the seat that faced the door, ordered a bottle of Barolo, and did the things that people do when they are waiting in a restaurant, alone. He took more time than was necessary to unfold his napkin. He fiddled with his silverware and read the menu several times. He fended off the feeling that people were looking at him, and when he'd finished his first glass of wine and his date hadn't yet arrived, he tried to check his watch without anybody seeing.
At 8:25 he got up to use the men's room and the phone. There was no answer at Suki's house and he didn't leave a message. He expected she would be sitting at the table, harried and apologetic, when he returned to it. She wasn't.
He reclaimed his napkin, nibbled bread. He sipped more Barolo. He had no reason to be worried for Suki, and in the absence of worry, annoyance and self-mockery set in. It had been a long time since he'd been stood up; then again, it had been a while since he'd had a date. But why would Suki fail to show? She'd offered him her number, kissed him on the cheek—was this all some screwed-up game she invented as she went along? Was she, like a lot of people in this town, just plain nuts?
Aaron lived with that theory for half a glass of wine, took a hollow solace from it. Stood up by a crazy woman, just as well. But finally he rejected the notion. He'd seen just enough of Suki to understand that if she was crazy, her craziness wouldn't take the form of failing to appear, but of appearing too wholeheartedly. A hell-bent candor, an in-your-face there-ness—if the woman was nuts, that's what her nuttiness was made of.
So why hadn't she arrived? Aaron began to worry after all, but only faintly. Key West was a safe place, a loony but a gentle place, a place where people survived their errors. Not a place where awful things happened.
At a quarter of nine the waiter came over, stood at Aaron's side. He tried to be kind, offered a smile he hoped didn't come across as patronizing. He said, "Perhaps you'd like to go ahead and order."
Aaron tried to smile back. He'd read the menu half a dozen times but now remembered nothing on it. "Just bring me," he said, "a plate of macaroni."
At the Eclipse Saloon around that time, Fred had eaten his burger and his fries and slaw, had washed them down with quite a few beers, and was at that stage in his race to bankruptcy when he had to pay close attention to just how many damp dollars he still had on the bar. It was better for his fragile standing in the place if he cut himself off as the last of the money was going, rather than making the barkeep do it for him.
So he was looking down, counting, concentrating, lifting the bent edges of soggy singles to make sure they weren't stuck together, when a voice above him said, "Hello there, sport"
Fred looked up, saw a guy who looked familiar, in the way that people in bars often looked like other people one had met in bars. Except that this guy's eyes looked like they'd been stained with some image of catastrophe, and he had thin lines of dried blood on one cheek. His shirt was torn on the side and his tight jeans were abraded at the knees and mottled with fine gray dust. He said to Fred, "You once bought me a beer, remember?"
Slowly it was coming back to Fred. Some evening a week, ten days ago. Pissed-off guy with a funny name. Drank a Bud and hardly talked. Fred said, "Looks like you need one even worse tonight." He gestured toward the soggy bills. "But you're outa luck, my money's about gone."
The seat next to Fred was vacant, but Lazslo didn't sit, just leaned in a little closer. "Tonight," he said, "I'm here to do something for you. Come to the john with me a minute."
Fred narrowed his eyes. The guy didn't look like a queer but not all queers did. He said, "No offense, pal, but go fuck yourself."
Lazslo fell back then leaned in again, his catastrophic eyes were pulsing. "Hey," he said, "it's nothing like that. You crazy? It's business. Wanna make a thousand dollars?"
The amount, heady and all but inconceivable, captured Fred's imagination. His reaction had less to do with greed than awe. He'd never had a thousand dollars in his life. He glanced quickly around the Eclipse's U-shaped bar, wondered if a thousand dollar bills would be enough to pave the whole entire thing.
Lazslo let the thought settle in a moment, then, limping slightly, moved off toward the men's room.
Fred sucked down some beer, allowed a discreet interval to pass, and followed.