The ghostwriter swiveled toward Vincente. "Isn't this what I've been saying? Yeah, it is."
A small sly smile crept almost imperceptibly across the old man's face. He reached slowly forward for his glass. "Then you should bring Debbi up there sometime," he said. He swirled his wine, looked in turn at the young woman and the young man, tilted the glass ever so slightly in what might have been a benediction. "You're the one should show 'er, Ahty."
34
It felt late when the ghostwriter climbed somewhat unsteadily onto his old fat-tire bike and pedaled home.
A pocked half-moon was just topping the black and softly rustling trees; away from the tourist haunts downtown, hardly anyone was out, hardly any traffic stirred. The air smelled of iodine and limestone; it was just barely cooler than skin, and Arty savored the feel of it as he weaved among the skulking cats, the stray dogs sleeping against the tires of parked cars.
He skirted the cemetery, its whitewashed crypts stacked up like ghastly file drawers. He bounced down side streets whose old cobblestones were patched here and there with dollops of tar; his spiral notebook and ninety-nine-cent pen clattered in his wire basket. He dodged fallen trash cans knocked over by raccoons and bums. At length he pulled into the cul-de-sac of Nassau Lane, locked his bike to a skinny Christmas palm, then yawned and walked a little drunkenly to his cottage.
The screen on the outer door was torn; a corner of it hung down next to the knob. Arty made nothing of this. It had been slightly ripped before; probably a cat climbed on it. Cats sometimes did.
Nor was the writer particularly concerned to find the inside door unlocked. He thought he'd locked it, but he couldn't quite be sure; he was careless about such things. Hell, when he'd first come to Key West, no one locked their doors.
He stepped into the dark living room and didn't bother turning on a light. After six years his feet knew where to go. His steps creaked slightly on the warped boards of the wooden floor. He dropped his notebook on the ratty table that served him as a desk and continued on to the bedroom.
His hand waved blindly in the still air, found the hanging cord that pulled the switch. He blinked against the rudely sudden glare of yellow light. It was a moment before he saw that the top of his dresser had been swept clean: change, lamp, newspapers, books, scattered on the floor. The drawers were all thrown open; shirtsleeves and pants legs dangled down like the limp limbs of unstrung puppets. His mattress had been lifted, felt under, dropped back crooked.
The awareness that he'd been burglarized bypassed his woozy brain and went first to his readier spine. His body juiced itself and was instantly sober. Muscles twitched, short hairs stood like quills at the nape of his neck, on the backs of his hands. The rage of violation merged with the terror that the intruder perhaps still lurked.
Absurdly, standing there in bright light in the middle of the room, Arty now tried to be stealthy.
He slunk to the bathroom doorway, reached a hand around to the switch plate, waited breathlessly while the blue fluorescents hummed and pinged to life. But the bathroom was empty—there was no quailing burglar to confront or perhaps be murdered by. The medicine cabinet had been flung open, its mirrored door bent back on rusty hinges, its meager contents tossed into the sink.
He breathed deeply, tasted salt and iron at the roots of his teeth, felt his heart hammering against his ribs. He swallowed through a clamped-down throat, then moved again toward the living room, propelled by an ancient necessity that went chest-to-chest with fear and could not back down: the necessity to reclaim his place.
He stepped over the scuffed threshold, turned on a light, scanned the corners of the room. Attuned now, he thought he smelled contamination, yet the chamber, for the most part, was weirdly undisturbed. He looked around at the obvious things to be stolen, and because they were all there he didn't notice anything was gone. The small television still stood in the corner, its screen dusty, its top covered in unread magazines. The vintage stereo was unharassed on the bookshelf. The small computer on the table did not seem to have been moved.
He went to check his tiny kitchen. Dirty dishes were still piled in the sink. The cabinets had been thrown open, some canisters knocked over, but damage was slight; not even his small stash of liquor had been taken. He poured himself a glass of bourbon.
Standing in the living room again, he felt a need to touch things. He ran a hand along the back of the old rattan sofa, let his nails click over the woody strands that held it together. Affectionately he slapped the lumpy pillows. He fought against the depression that comes in on the rancid wake of helpless indignation. Like every survivor of every misfortune short of death, he told himself it could have been worse.