Mile Zero (32 page)

Justo was locked lip to lip in a dance of life and death with someone who, in Justo’s schoolboy days, would have elicited sneers and jeers as a
cundango
,
par go
,
amanerado
,
parquela
,
loca
,
mariquita
,
partido
,
pajaro
, or
pato
, a blatant excuse of a man to be beaten and bullied because of his desire for other men. Justo’s lack of respect for Fan-Tan had nothing to do with the man’s following the insatiable witch stick between his legs, relentlessly plumbing a flow of fresh encounters. It had to do with Fan-Tan’s public cuckolding of Renoir, a subject Justo considered himself a recent authority on, one that rendered him a victim of his own contempt. Renoir was revered on the island as a white-suited pillar of society, he carried the sophisticated certainty of a man at peaceful odds with himself. Like Justo, Renoir’s roots clung to the coral core of the island’s history, he too believed in the accommodating system of weights and balances governing the island’s daily doings. Beyond this belief Renoir perceived an existence on the island incapable of being understood solely in the lifetime of one human heart. What could be observed through the pinprick eye of Renoir’s alert soul was that ghosts of pirates and wreckers had never vacated their island roost, still stalked the narrow streets, haunted bars, their tattoos glowing in time’s dark vault. Renoir’s finely tuned inner ear was forever cocked to hear distant swords and knives rattle, links of gold chain clank, ship planks groan. Deep in his piratical heart Renoir perceived Key West as an outlaw island of men, a Dodge City perched on the edge of the Gulf Stream, where men tolerated women the way sailors always tolerated them, in port, as diversions. Women are never at sea with men, never, that is the rule, the law inscribed in the bible of all ancient mariners, the one true lyric sung by every son of a sailor at sea, that a woman aboard ship will bring bad luck. For mariners, death is preferable to bad luck. Key West was an island at sea, an anchored ship of love pirates and dream wreckers, riding out tides of inescapable fate. If women were to mix with men, the devil lurking under the island rock would breathe a wind of doom to fill the sails of modern times with death and destruction. Renoir believed this, believed it as fervently as his father, Isaac, believed the
opposite, seeking his salvation in the cradle of womanhood. Renoir was no simple supplicant at Apollo’s white altar, he was a man among men who had forged a philosophy from the primal credo of the sea. Renoir lived and loved by that philosophy, flew the flag of his sexual politics at high mast, no matter how stormy the port.

“Floyd’s alive!” Renoir shouted into Justo’s ear. “Good God, Floyd’s alive! Look, his chest is moving!”

Justo’s kiss of life was being returned. A gurgle of breath escaped from Floyd’s lungs into Justo’s mouth. Angelica pumped the heart harder. Justo pulled away from Floyd’s lips, pushed the flaccid eyelids open. Floyd’s irises were startled with recognition of fear for what might have been.

“Give him a couple more hard pumps,” Justo prompted Angelica. “Okay, that’s it. You were great.”

Angelica was able to look at Justo for the first time, her breathing heavy, exhausted. “We brought the mother back.”

“You
brought the mother back.” Justo grinned as he stood, stretching a pain out at the back of his knees.

“God, Floyd!” Tears of relief flowed from Renoir onto the face cradled between his hands. “Oh God, honey, don’t ever try that again.” Renoir bent his face close to the quivering gray lips. “Never never again, please. I’ll take care of you. I won’t abandon you, promise … promise.”

“I’m going to call an ambulance.” Justo tried to reassure Renoir. “Floyd should be X-rayed, his spine might have been injured.”

“No!” Renoir turned painful eyes up to Justo. “No hospitals. I can take care of him.”

“That’s not the point, he’s—”

“Stay out of it!” The pain in Renoir’s eyes turned coldly defiant.

“Look, it’s the law. I wouldn’t be doing my job if—”

“Your job’s got nothing to do with it!” Renoir’s voice exploded in a screaming ache. “What do you know about it? Nothing! I can take care of him! Don’t think I can’t!”

Justo reached a hand down to help Angelica up. “Guess we better leave.” He felt a tightness in his chest. The emotion pouring from Renoir embarrassed him, it was as if he were witnessing an excruciating confession of love and cry for forgiveness. What was to forgive was not for Justo to know. What Justo did know was these two men should be left alone in this private moment of recaptured life. Justo slipped his arm around Angelica’s waist as she stood. He did not care if
anyone saw this gesture of affection in the full glare of a new morning. He walked slowly with Angelica around the crescent of beach. “Where’d you learn to pump heart like that? Had no idea you knew CPR.”

“You work in a bar, you have to know it. Never can tell when some drunk is going to choke on his martini olive.” Angelica leaned her body close to Justo; an intimacy had been shared between them this morning, far different from the one either originally had in mind. They were now bound together in a way stolen moments beneath sheets could never achieve. “Do you want to come home with me?”

Justo laughed nervously. “Somehow I don’t feel very romantic.” He rubbed his lips with the back of his hand.

“I didn’t mean for what we had in mind before.” Angelica looked at Justo with surprise. “I meant only for a cup of coffee or something. Feels weird. Just don’t want to be alone, that’s all.”

Justo did not like himself for what he was about to do. He knew all through the early morning he was headed for a wetting, now it had taken place, he was not going to go home with Angelica. He tried to change the subject. “Feels weird to me too. How did you end up with those guys out there?”

“I was driving slow to see if you were still following, thought maybe you had tricked me and weren’t coming. When I was passing the compound, there Renoir was, waving.”

“Wonder why he didn’t wake someone up in the guesthouse, or use their phone?”

“Panicked, I guess. Sometimes people do the opposite of what makes sense when they get in a tight situation.” Angelica stopped and slipped from the protective grasp of Justo’s arm around her waist. “Just like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you coming home with me or not?”

Justo was caught in his own trap. Angelica was right, he was going to choose the coward’s exit. “Another time.” He leaned and kissed her.

“Okay.” Angelica laughed, reaching up to smooth his cheek with knowing fingers. “Another time.”

Justo walked with her in silence along the beach, the sexual connection between them broken, replaced by something more substantial. In front of the high wall of the compound he watched Angelica drive away into the dying sunrise. His thoughts went across
the island to Rosella rising from another night alone. He was indeed a very hungry man. He thought of his daughters shaking off troubled teenage dreams. He was a husband and father. He walked to the phone booth on the street corner and dialed the chalked number he memorized hours before in the Wreck Room. Justo had not wanted to do it this way, did not want Zobop to know he was on his trail of dead goats and cemetery poetry. The phone rang twelve times. Justo was about to hang up when he heard the click of reception followed by long silence. Suddenly Justo recognized the number he dialed. The rum-soaked syllables coursing through telephone wires were hesitant but unmistakable. Justo hung up. A Green Sailor looks north? The last voice on the island Justo expected to be on the other end of the line was that of St. Cloud.

S
OMEWHERE
along the way I lost the way and Lila became very fleshy, attractive to the bone, a seductive spice flowing in my veins.” As his words slipped into late afternoon humidity St. Cloud kept an eye on the scorpion slithering down the yellow pine of the bedroom wall, its anchor-shaped tail poking nervously at the air. “She’s more than a spice. I’m a hopeless junkie.”

“Junkies are made, not born,” Isaac wheezed. “Junkies mother their own monkeys and pack them around on their backs for the world’s applause at self-destruction. You’re no self-made junkie, you’re a born fool, big difference.” Isaac rolled his head on the pillow and joined St. Cloud’s tracking of the scorpion’s progress. “Anyway, the whole world loves a lover, and you’re the second biggest fool for love alive after me. Don’t understand your problem, other than it’s been man’s problem with woman since Eve sucked the worm out of the apple before offering it to Adam. No man has ever been handed more than an apple riddled with empty worm holes. You won’t be the last to find out an apple a day won’t keep the devil away. Peach nectar is not a bad tit to suck.” A tiny gurgle riding a laugh came from Isaac’s throat. “I’ll be fucking angels soon.” Isaac turned from the scorpion and winked. “What do you think of that? Feathered strumpets and golden trumpets for eternity, what a way to be dead.”

“Think I’ve gone around the bend.” St. Cloud spoke instinctively, without taking Isaac’s offered exit of humor. St. Cloud was not going to quit at what he had come to say, at what he was trying to get at. He felt like a man trying to commit suicide, calling a friend in a fit
of crying drunkenness, pleading to talk, to be walked in friendship back to reality.

“Just what
are
you trying to say?”

“Think somebody’s trying to kill me.”

“Haaahrumph!” Isaac snorted and turned back to the scorpion’s descent. “You deserve to be shot, damn fool, nothing but a pitiful love bandit. None of us deserve to live, so what? You going to smash this scorpion or let him bite us on the ass?”

“Let him bite us, we both don’t have long to live anyway. I’m telling you, Isaac, I might be killed. Just want you to know why, that’s all. Not that it’s any big deal, just wanted you to know because I thought you’d appreciate the reason. I’m sure it’s got to do with my loving Lila. Some kind of crazy Romeo and Juliet thing and I’m playing both parts, but she’s the deep off-stage shadow in the play. Something hidden within Lila I can’t get to, a danger there which doesn’t want to be unearthed. I’d kill for Lila. Justo says I already have, myself, because I’m losing my mind like this, killing off my common sense. Still got sense enough to know someone’s out to off me. I’m not talking the usual cocaine paranoia down here. I’m talking someone desperate to get me.”

“Tropical witchery is more like it, son. This girl’s sucked the sense out of your head and left you with balls for brains. Why in hell would anyone want to kill you? Don’t watch yourself the girl’s going to do the obvious, like they all do sooner or later, leave. Then you’ll end up pathetic as batty old Count Cosel, jerking off every night into a pile of cottonballs. Young women in the tropics come and go, you know that. They come and they go, but they don’t grow. They just go. Get ready for it. That’s the real death you’ve got to face, the exit of your Southern muse.”

“Did I tell you earlier, I keep hearing strange music?”

“Hahrumph!” Isaac’s bony chest heaved in a gasp of disparaging air. “None of us deserve to live. Wonder we don’t melt in our baths as Picasso once said. Let me tell you about one of the dumb things I did when I crossed the great forty-year-old divide. Took my easel out of the studio, away from all the models, up to the mountains, got myself prepared in the darkness, peered from behind the easel out at the edge of the world, eager as a boy awaiting his first erection. Was going to paint that sunrise quick as a snapshot, eternal as mc–squared equals the banging dawn of creation, make a painting in the new world between instinct and intellect, dismantle all color theories,
prove rainbows were only God pissing on earth. Was going to get that rainbow in a bottle, freeze it in time, pin it like a butterfly to the wall. Thought I could do that. Thought I’d learned enough at my advanced age to
un-teach
myself. There I was, poised on the moment. The canvas before me, brush in hand, wet palette of oils at my side. First light leaked from the heavens, birds broke song, sky cluttered a thousand colors in my eye. Awed and amazed I turned to stone. Broad daylight crawled over me, intense glare after color, empty canvas staring back at me.” Isaac’s words stopped, his bony chest swelling with another exasperating heave.

The scorpion was almost to the baseboard of the bedroom wall. “You didn’t get it?”

“Course not, no fool can, or maybe only a fool can and I’m a failed fool. We know it’s all abstraction, apparition. When you see a sunrise painting you are witnessing the pitiful subjectivity of the lousy artist fool enough to try and paint it. It’s all illusory illumination, pure falsehood of light. The light’s not important, it’s the darkness preceding it, defines it, that place before there is life. That place defines this place.” The scorpion touched the floor. “Do you get it, son?”

“Yeah. Now I know why you only paint women.”

“No!”
Isaac pushed his thin body higher on the stack of pillows. “That’s not the point. The point is to try and paint your way out of the dark cave before creation, to constantly reinvent yourself. The point is, St. Cloud, if you want to go back to darkness I’m not going to try and stop you. Not going to hand out an intellectual argument as to why you shouldn’t. Go ahead and travel back to darkness, smug as a wrong-way fetus, but don’t moon around about getting killed over some Southern yam pie. You’re too smart for self-pity and I’m too old for bullshit.”