Pages from a Cold Island (8 page)

“
When you walked through the door,
”
he said,
“
it hit me like a shovel full of shit in the face that
Florida
was my home and has been for a quarter of a fucking century!
”

He sighed. To keep returning to Babylon, he said, and a past that had ceased to exist the day he
’
d left it in 1946 was sheer fatuousness and for the first time he could hardly wait to board the plane
“
home
”
to Florida.

“
When I saw you, it hit me like
that
,
”
he repeated. For emphasis he snapped his fingers, startlingly.

Well, now! I turned to him. When I looked into his large dark eyes they were lambent and moist with the appeal that I share with him this long overdue revelation. He was a tall, trim and very muscular-looking guy with a full head of straight, well-barbered black hair; almost d
isarmingly ex
quisite of feature, one was sure that in youth he had been pretty but time and sun had done their work giving him a striking masculinity. He was definitely Latin. Although he wore clean and oiled work s
hoes, finely pressed khaki trou
sers, lightweight blue zipper jacket, and appeared poised to mount the throne of a diesel-powered bulldozer and move mountains of earth, there
was something so inflexibly cor
rect about his dress, there was in his exquisitely manicured nails and a kind of atrophy in what had obviously once been very powerful hands, a suggestion that it
’
d been a long time since he
’
d done anything but lease his equipment. An exemplary guy, he bought me another double and for a long time we talked about the nontourist Florida from May through October. We agreed that one learns to live with the dazzling sun and the oppressive heat, remarked how little one needs in the way of clothing and never feels imprisoned in the cumbersome attire of northerners, said that if one
’
s palate were up to it he could live forever, sans funds, on dolphin, pompano, snapper, snook, and crawfish; delighted in the memory of the first long chilling draught of beer following an afternoon of fishing or swimming; and most of all, with something like fluttering hearts, recalled the easy lethargic pace of the native Floridian.

“
A pace,
”
he said, wagging his head in wonder,
“
a guy can live with.
”
He was silent a moment. Abruptly he wafted his blue-jacketed arm to include the customers of the entire bar.
“
Look at these jokers!
”
he cried.
“
Eleven o
’
clock in the morning! You call this living?
”

“
Sure don
’
t.
”

With the drinks he was growing heavy and inward with nostalgia. When from his wallet he suddenly showed colored Polaroid prints of his snow-white stucco ranch house, his flagstone-patioed blue pool overlooking the green sea of the Gulf, and his thirty-foot, teak-decked Chris-Craft moored at a wooden dock on a canal which ran just north of his well-manicured yard, I said,
“
The heavy equipment busi
ness must be booming.
”

This disarmed him.
“
Huh. You know, I hadn
’
t thought about it but it wasn
’
t the way it looks from these pictures. I bought the property in
‘
46 for nothin
’
. Then I built—well, just a house; then additions as the kids came; then the pool when they were big enough not to drown; then when I
’
d educated them and could afford it, I bought the Chris-Craft. I built the house, the pool and the docks myself. Yeah, I hadn
’
t thought of it but I suppose the joint is worth a shitload on today
’
s market.
”
He sighed. He studied the prints.
“
I love it, fuck if I don
’
t. Though there
’
s way too much room now that the kids are gone. You keep the rooms thinkin
’
there
’
ll be big reunions and stuff like that at the holidays. And there are for a year, two. Then they go.
”

Now he produced prints of his progeny and with a tortured fondness studied these, shuffling and reshuffling them like a deck of cards. His oldest son was an engineer in Vancouver, his youngest an ensign in the Gulf of Tonkin, and his
“
baby
”
daughter Lucia was studying for a master
’
s in language arts in Florence, Italy.
“
I send her to Syracuse University and she ends up in Florence.
‘
Why Florence?
’
I cry, already thinking how much dough it
’
s gonna cost me. She knows the old man is mush in her hands, she turns on the charm, she says,
‘
Cause, Daddy,
’“
—he imitates her affected lisp for me—
’“
F
lorence is part of Syracuse Uni
versity.
’
Cha ever hear such bullshit?
”

“
I think she
’
s telling the truth,
”
I said.
“
I don
’
t know how tenuous the connection is, but I c
ome from near Syra
cuse and I know I
’
ve heard before there
’
s some connection between the university and some school in Florence, some exchange program or other.
”

“
Connection, smonnection!
”
he cried. What he deemed his foolish generosity as a father was causing him proud pain.
“
She
’
s probably over there banging some greaser, will come home eight months with bambino, and expect me to set the Guinea up in a pizza palace.
”

Certain he was Italian, I was as always nonplused that ethnic groups could so comically demean themselves and yet wouldn
’
t allow it from outsiders.

“
I don
’
t mean to be impertinent but I took you for Italian.
”

“
Of course I
’
m a wop! Venetian. My grandfather was a custodian at the medical university at Padua. It was either the same thing for my father, or America. He chose America. I
’
m first-generation, my kids second, and I haven
’
t worked since the day I was discharged in
‘
46 so some stupid broad of a daughter can bring home some ginzo and start all over again. Why can
’
t she marry a guy named—
”
He paused. He was working himself into a state. He said,
“
Come si chiama
?
”

I laughed.
“
Exley
,
Fred.
”

He was knocking himself out, this guy was.
“
Why can
’
t she marry a guy named Exley?
”
For my amusement and edification he sorrowfully pursed his lips and theatrically brought himself to the brink of feigned tears, woefully shaking his head.

“
If she married
this guy
named Exley, it
’
d cost you more than a pizzeria. That
’
s how spoiled
americani
are. I
’
d want a joint called Casa Lucia sitting among euc
a
lyptus trees on a bluff overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, with nothing but imported Chiantis and a penthouse apartment above the restaurant. If she brings home her greaser, as you call him, he can sleep on an army cot in the pizzeria—you can tell him he
’
s guarding the ovens—and he
’
ll still think he
’
s got it knocked up. Wait
’
ll he and Lucia present you with a couple of grandsons, take him deep-sea fishing in the Gulf, and give him a little help falling overboard. When he cries for help you can stand in the bows playing the thick-skulled Calabrese—you won
’
t be Venetian after all—say
ing,
‘
Scusa, scusa, non capisco italiano. Non capisco
.
’
”

Abruptly I was standing there in the bows, leadened and stricken with a heavy stupidity, shaking my head no and over and over again repeating
non capisco
, and as that luckless and fantazised son-in-law—and poor maligned Lucia! if she was banging anyone, for all we knew she was banging an Oxford man named Winston—went down for the third time I gave him a tentative, limp-wristed wave of farewell.

This guy and I laughed like hell, uproariously, and so goofy drunk was I that for the rest of our conversation I slipped in and out of the giggles.

Twice I
’
d asked him where he was from in Florida, and twice he
’
d evaded answering by saying only
“
the west coast.
”
The west coast of Florida is eight hundred miles long. Now I demanded,
“
Where
on the west coast?
”

He smiled sheepishly.
“
Can
’
t say. Don
’
t even ask me. I can
’
t tell anybody with a straight face.
”

“
Try.
”

He mumbled something I didn
’
t catch.

“
What
’
s that?
”
I was insistent.

“
Panacea
”
he snapped.
“
Panacea! I ain
’
t shittin
’
yuh!
”

Wide-eyed with mirth, I said,
“
P-A-N-A-C-E-A?
”

“
Panacea,
”
he repeated glumly.
“
Ain
’
t that awful? Ain
’
t that the height of fuckin
’
pretension?
”
He groaned. He shuffled his feet in a silly little soft-shoe. In mock horror he furiously encased his cheeks with the palms of his hands, a
mamma mia
thing. Again we laughed uproariously.

Then it was time for him to catch his plane and we shook hands very enthusiastically. With his free hand he reached across to me and in the warmly intimate Italian way squeezed the humerus muscles of my right arm just below the shoulder. So I did the same to him. He told me to look him up when I got back to Florida.

“
At Panacea!
”

We laughed again.

He said,
“
Goddam, good fellow, I enjoyed it, really enjoyed it. And you know something? I
’
m goin
’
home.
Home, Exley, home
.
”

Then it was
“
take care
”
and
“
ciao
”
and
“
luck, man, luck
”
and
“
andante presto
”
and
“
You
’
ll be okay
”
and
“
buono
fortune
”
and
“
seein
’
you
”
and
“
arrivederci
.
”

And what I had heard that day on the Sony in the cabin of my friend
’
s Hatteras, spoken in the mellifluous tones of Mr. Cronkite, the news that forced my head to the table, released in me this awesome pent-up grief, that had me paraphrasing Nabokov
’
s Pnin and over and over dumbly repeating
he won
’
t haf nofing left
, was that the hurricane called Agnes, which afterward would wreak such havoc as it flowed northward and spent itself through the Carolinas, Virginia, into Pennsylvania and New York, had entered the republic from the Gulf of Mexico. It
’
s point of entry and the place that had taken the full brunt of its winds had the improbable name of Panacea.