Sunburn(60)

He took his drink into the bedroom, sat down on his bed, and thought about the botched and pointless break-in. Clearly, it had been the clumsy work of some pathetic drooling kid strung out on crack. Needlessly, the thief had torn the screen; with quaking hands he'd picked the easy lock. He'd gone straight for the medicine chest, found nothing more potent than Tylenol and Rolaids. He'd scoured the bedroom for cash and jewelry; Arty owned no jewelry and kept no cash at home. Maybe the thief was too lazy to carry out the electronic stuff; maybe by then he'd forgotten why he'd come.

Arty sipped bourbon, weighed the question of calling the police. He knew what to expect from the police, and he decided not to call. The garish roof lights of their cars would only make the ugly business seem yet more sordid. They wouldn't find the intruder, and their failure would only add another drop of bile to the world's supply of futile rage.

He stood up and started to undress. He felt soiled, he wanted a shower. He stood under the random spray of his cheap clogged showerhead until the hot water was all gone, begging his galvanized sinews to relax.

But he was still edgy when he switched off the light and climbed into bed. He tossed and turned, heard sounds that scared him, was assailed by bloody thoughts of some nameless and impossible revenge. He flipped his pillow, took deep breaths. He searched for some serene and decent thought that would sweep away the filth, would soothe him toward sleep, and to his surprise the thought that came was an image of Debbi shrugging, the slightly goofy, all-involving way her eyebrows paralleled her lifted shoulders, the way her bright eyes opened wide as hungry, trusting mouths to taste her life.

———

In the morning, a mug of coffee in his hand, Arty was crossing his living room when he realized what had been stolen.

It seemed crazy, it made no sense to him at all. It was so ludicrous that his very first reaction was to laugh out loud, though a bleak sound at the tail end of the laugh reminded him it wasn't funny in the least. Why would anybody want his cheap old spiral notebooks? Their covers were stained with outlines of forgotten coffee cups and bourbon glasses. Their pages were fat and wavy with years of spills and dampness. And what was written inside them was both largely illegible and patently worthless—of that Arty had no doubt. His random jottings, sophomoric raves and rambles, his juvenilia. A hundred false starts and not one goddam conclusion.

He stood over the ratty table where the notebooks had been stacked, looked straight down at the bare place they used to occupy, and the longer he looked the less he believed they were really gone. He squatted down, looked under and behind the table.

Nothing. He stood again. As if to confirm the testimony of his eyes, he moved his fingers to where the notebooks used to be. He touched the empty spot, and an unexpected flash of the purest grief, the most perfect, senseless, and irreparable loss, sliced through him and closed his throat. His young ramblings, his solitary jottings, his no doubt embarrassing attempts at learning how to think and feel in written words—in some ridiculous way he would have ached less if he believed his notebooks might be of any earthly use to anyone.

He wasn't crying but his eyes itched. He rubbed them, carried his coffee to the kitchen, left the half-filled mug sitting on the counter. It was time to go to work, and today, uncharacteristically, he was glad to have a job to go to. He wanted to leave the cottage, close the ravaged door, turn his back on the hurt place and not think about it for a while.





35


Duval Street was a grouchy place at 9 a.m.

It seemed tired, sullen, blinky, weighed down by a collective hangover. Yawning retailers grudgingly unlocked their stores, mustering their sarcasm for another day of dealing with the tourists. Drunks and cross-dressers who hadn't made it home the night before wandered aimlessly, stupidly, still looking for the party. The occasional wholesome couple from Michigan, Ohio, Canada strolled in plaid shorts, in futile hope of a genuine local place to get some breakfast.

Arty rode his old fat-tire bike down the middle of the street, tracing out the border of early yellow sunshine that lit up one sidewalk but not yet the other. He was quite close to the office of the Key West Sentinel before he noticed the two police cars parked in front. It very vaguely registered that maybe he was less surprised to see them than he might have been.

He quickly locked the bicycle, went through the door between the T-shirt shops, and climbed the narrow smelly flight of stairs. Just inside the Sentinel's frosted door, Clint Topping, the unflappable editor in chief, was leaning against the high reception counter, talking to a semicircle of cops, two in uniform, one in a suit.

" 'Course people get mad at the paper," he was saying. "Politicians. Developers. Guys written up in the blotter for soliciting hand jobs. Everybody's mad at the paper, but they don't come trash the office."