Tropical Depression (31 page)

When the wet heat of summer started kicking in, Key West seemed to drift farther out from the familiar mainland, became ever more an island. Ziggy Maxx had lived here six years now, and he'd noticed the same thing every year: less happened in the summer, but what happened was more strange.

Another tourist caught his eye. Ziggy's glance slid off the face like it was a label in the no-frills aisle, fixed instead on the jerky slogan on the tourist's T-Shirt: WILL WORK FOR SEX.

The tourist said, "Lemme get a Virgin Heat."

Ziggy stifled a grimace. Of all the idiot drinks he hated to make, Virgin Heats were among the ones he hated most. Fussy, sticky, labor-intensive. Substitutes for conversation, they drew people's attention away from each other and toward the bottles and the bartender. The building of a cocktail like a Virgin Heat sent people groping for their cameras.

And sure enough, as Ziggy was setting up the pony glass and reaching for the Sambuca, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the man with the sunburned head was readying his videocam. Ziggy flinched, turned a few degrees. He poured the thick liqueur, then felt more than saw that the camera was sliding off his manufactured face to focus on his busy hands. An artsy shot, the barkeep thought, with something like relief. Another jerk who'd seen too many movies.

Ziggy made the drink. He made it with riffs and flourishes it never dawned on him were his alone.

Although he wore a short-sleeved shirt, he began by flicking his wrists as if shooting back a pair of cuffs. When he inverted the teaspoon to float the Chartreuse on the 'Buca, he extended a pinky in a gesture that was incongruously dainty, given the furry knuckle and the broad and close-cropped fingernail. Grasping the bottle in his right hand, he let his index finger float free; mangled long ago from an ill-thrown punch, that bent and puffy digit refused to parallel the others. He didn't bring the bottle directly to the glass, he banked and looped it in, like a plane approaching an airport. Slowly, with the pomp of mastery, he poured a layer of purple cassis over yellow Chartreuse, green creme de menthe over purple cassis. He topped the gross rainbow with a membrane of grenadine, then delicately laid in a cherry that sank with a portentous slowness, carrying with it a streaky red lascivious rain.

He slid the drink across the bar to the tourist who had ordered it. "Five dollars, please," he said.

He took cash, glanced around. The videocam had been switched off, for the moment everyone was happy.

A light breeze shook the bougainvillea on its trellis, the papery flowers rattled dryly. A woman, a nice woman probably, from Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, fumbled in a big purse for a cigarette. She didn't have a match, she looked at Ziggy. Damp inside his faded shirt at the beginning of that season when things got only damper and only stranger, he snapped his lighter and cupped his hands and lit her up. She smiled, then blew twin streams of exhaust through her nose. If she was out to misbehave, and if she could stay awake till closing time, and if she didn't get a better offer in the meanwhile, maybe she would misbehave with him.