Tropical Depression (5 page)

Murray sprang up from the sofa, sat back down again, crossed his legs, uncrossed them dialed. His pulse was racing. It vaguely dawned on him that his nervousness was absurd, but still, his heart hammered like that of a pimply teenager asking for a date.

His wife picked up on the third ring and said hello.

"Franny. Guess who this is?" He knew it was an asshole way to start a conversation; it was his nervousness that made him do it.

"Murray," she said. She said it like his name was some unserious but bothersome disease, like common diarrhea.

"I'm in Florida, Franny. I'm in Key West."

His wife made no reply. She was standing in her garden, a cordless phone cradled on her shoulder. She'd been working on a watercolor of spiky philodendrons. Now she watched the paint dry in the sun. It was only a so-so picture; Franny knew that and didn't mind. She was an amateur and liked it that way. She'd moved to Florida, in fact, to be an amateur, to wear gauzy cotton smocks and Tahitian-looking head-wraps and flowing colorful dresses with sandals. She ate health food, attended openings and charity events, wrote letters to congressmen, gave money to liberal and environmental causes. She dated sometimes and had taken the occasional suitor to her bed. But she was more or less content alone, painting watercolors, going to stretch class, meeting with her book club to discuss long novels.

"Franny, listen," Murray resumed, "a lot is going on with me, I thought you oughta know. I've quit the business. I've left Taffy."

"What took you so long?"

The Bra King nestled backwards on the sofa, buoyed by pillows and his wife's throaty sarcasm. "I lost some time to a bad depression."

"Half the people I know are on Prozac," Franny said. "It's like the perfect Gulf Coast breakfast: Prozac and prunes."

Murray chortled softly. "Ah," he said. "Same old Franny."

This nettled his ex. "No," she said, "
not
the same old Franny. Franny has changed. Which, if you think about it, Murray, is really kind of funny. I never looked for change. Maybe I should have, but I never felt the need.
You're
the one with the big talk about change, with your midlife crisis, your dopey shiksa. But what did you change, Murray? The person you slept with. That's it. Same work. Same friends. Same attitude. My life, you turn upside down. Your own life, you really didn't have the nerve to change at all."

"So I'm a little slow," said Murray. "I'm changing now."

There was something in the way he said it that surprised his former wife. She paused, then sat down in a garden chair and tried with half-success to coax her voice to a less combative tone. "Well good for you," she said.

Murray kicked his shoes off, lay back with his wife's voice as though with her imperfect and marvelously familiar flesh. "Franny," he said. "You hate me, Franny?"

"I don't think about it very often. Not anymore."

"I do," Murray said. "I think about it all the time. I think about how screwing up our marriage is the dumbest thing I ever did. Dumb. Brainless. Wimpy. Idiotic . . ."

"Splinters," he repeated, and gave his heavy head a shake. "Ya know, what happened with us, Franny, I swear to God not a day goes by I don't kick myself innee ass about it."

His wife didn't answer for a moment, and when she did, her tone was not accusing, wasn't biting, was simply neutral around a core of disappointment. "That's just another of your self-indulgences," she said. "What good does it do?"

Murray thought that over. He exhaled loudly and his high spirits along with half his hopes seemed to fly away on the breath. "No good, I guess. No good at all . . . But Franny, I'm in Florida now, it's practically like we're neighbors. I thought it would be nice if we could see each other sometime."

"I tell you you're wonderful," he rattled on, "you tell me I'm the lowest of the low ... Can I call you, Franny?"

In her garden full of antheria and orchids, the ex-wife bit her lip, hesitated. "Free country," she said at last. "You have the number."

Murray closed his eyes as if to lock the perfect moment in. "You'll talk to me?" he said. "I'll call. I'll talk to you, you'll talk to me, we'll talk. Like human beings talking. Great, Franny. We'll talk again, the way we used to talk. Goo'bye."

He hung up, stood, threw himself backwards, spread-eagled, on the sofa. Bliss! His wife wanted him to call. Okay, she hadn't said so in as many words, but close enough; she wasn't having her number changed, she wasn't seeking an injunction.

Encouraged out of all proportion, he went out onto his balcony, let some of his excess glee seep out in the open air. He looked down at the pool, gave everyone who swam or sunbathed there his silent benediction. He looked around the courtyard, across to the beach, blessed every stone and lounge chair of the state of Florida, the place his wife lived, where he lived now, a patient and forgiving state where lives could be rethought, revised, perhaps even repaired.

By six-thirty his euphoria had drained him, left him wrung out, slaphappy.

He crossed the dusky courtyard, the air druggy with lingering lotions and exhausted flowers crinkling up like figs. The unruffled pool reflected a velvet sky tinged yellow in the west; darkening palms were giving up their last reserves of depth and color before becoming black cutouts for the night.

He entered the gazebo, saw Bert cradling his twitching chihuahua against the lucky shirt he wore for poker. The shirt had black spades and clubs, red hearts and diamonds, splashed on a backdrop of shimmering pearl-gray rayon; the two breast pockets were a pair of aces. "Ah, Murray," the old man said. "Say hello to Doc and Irv."

He gestured toward a tall thin man shaking corn chips into a plastic bowl, and a natty little fellow, pencil mustache, making obsessive stacks of nickels and dimes on the felt-covered table in front of him. Murray nodded, nervous as the first day of school.

"And this," the Shirt went on, "is our most famous neighbor, Senator Barney LaRue."

"State senator," LaRue said modestly. He was pouring a bottle of rum into a big pitcher that held some ice and a splash or two of lime juice, and Murray couldn't help studying him a moment. It's odd, after all, to meet someone about whom you know nothing except that someone else you've met can't stand him. LaRue reminded Murray of a catalog model, blankly handsome, sample size, the guy who sports the Crushable Fedora on page sixteen and the Three-Season Jacket on the back cover. "Gentlemen," the politician said, "who would like a daiquiri?"

They all took plastic tumblers of the cocktail, sipped them, sat down to play. Seven-card stud, quarter and a half, three raise limit. Murray played conservatively at first. This had nothing to do with winning or losing, but with the quietly desperate wish to be invited back. On the fourth hand, he took the pot with jacks and threes. It was like a rookie's first base hit, it initiated him into the game and left him breathless.

He sought to calm himself with a much bigger gulp of his rum than was good for him. He'd never been much of a drinker, even less so since he'd been on Prozac. Now the alcohol squirted through his stripped-bare circuitry, called forth sparks like salt on a wire. The light in the gazebo deepened the darkness beyond, blotted out context, he suddenly felt like he was playing poker in a spaceship. Silent thought became indistinct from audible speech. Coins looked bizarre, arbitrary, silly, like foreign money when you get the first sleepy handful at the airport.

He drank, noticed vaguely that Barney LaRue had three hearts on the table and was betting very strong. A fourth heart fell, and everyone went out. Murray went out too, just to go along, but as he tossed in his cards he was watching the senator's neck, the taut place where the throat meets the jawbone, and the jaw curves up to join the temple. He saw a subtle tinge of pink blossom through the tan and gleam just slightly at the junction with the trim silver sideburn. "He was bluffing," Murray blurted, as the senator raked in the change. "Look the way he gets a little pink there, right by his ear. That's how ya know he's bluffing."

Barney LaRue glared at him, and Murray dimly understood he'd made an enemy. He hadn't meant to, but he dimly decided he didn't care, he didn't like LaRue anyway, he couldn't put his finger on exactly why. Was it because he bluffed, or looked like a catalog model, or was it because there were times in life when you just plain didn't like somebody, and that was that'

Doc gathered cards, shuffled.

Bert, in an oblique apology, said, "Murray's been through a hell of a lot the last few days. Just decided to retire from his business."

"Yeah?" said Doc. He dealt. "What kind of business?"

"Lingerie," said Murray.

"Quarter," said Irv. "Me, I was in furniture. Low-end stuff. We called it borax. I had a saying: It may look like shit to you, but it's my bread and butter."

"Was Doc's bread and butter too," said Bert. "Call."

Doc didn't laugh, he put on a look of professional gravity. "Proctology," he said, "is a recognized medical specialty."

"But what kinda person picks it'" Murray thought aloud. "Call."

"Call your quarter and raise a quarter," said LaRue.

"God bless America," said Bert.

"Nice to hear a patriotic outburst," drawled the politician.

"Amazing country," Bert went on. "So many ways t'end up wit' a wonderful life, a condominium in Florida. One guy looks up asses for a livin', puts together a million bucks in mutual funds. 'Nother guy sells furniture ya wouldn't take the plastic off, he's got a Mercedes and a TV set the size a Cleveland. Me, I got, let's say, a checkered past, and I'm comfortable. Not only that, I'm playin' poker wit' a senator wit' a penthouse, and Murray heah, he's innee exact same penthouse from sellin' girdles."

Murray sipped his daiquiri. The sips went down much easier now, the drink wasn't as strong as he'd thought. "Just bras," he proudly said. "We were the first to specialize that much. It was my wife's idea."

"I'll just call," said Senator LaRue.

"Straight," gloated Irv. "Made it on the last card." He swept in the pot.

Murray rambled on above the clatter of coins. "It was the early seventies. Women were burning their bras, remember? Waving 'em around their heads like rebel flags. The industry was in a tumult. I was just a salesman at the time, never even finished college. My wife was still taking classes at Fashion Institute—"

Irv shuffled the cards. "Same game. Same winner."

Murray swigged his cocktail and kept talking. "The owner of the company was an
alte cocker,
gloomy. He thought it was all over, the brassiere was going the way of the muu-muu, the poodle skirt. My wife, Franny her name was, still is, said, 'Murray, buy the bra division. Make a lowball offer, you'll get it on the cheap.'"

"Queen is high," said Irv.

"A quarter on the queen," said Bert the Shirt. "So ya bought the company?"

"Not right away," said Murray. "Any more daiquiris inna pitcher? I waffled. I was scared. I'd have to borrow, maybe I'd lose everything. I said to Franny, 'What makes you so sure the bra is ever coming back?'"

Barney LaRue looked at his hole cards. "And a quarter," he said. He leaned over and grudgingly freshened Murray's drink.

"She says to me," the newcomer went on, '"lemme put it this way, Murray: You wanna go through life with your little pecker hanging down and flopping all day long? You wanna spend each day vaguely feeling that people are looking at you sideways, checking out the size of it, the shape? No. Politics is politics,' she says, 'but comfort and modesty will win out. The bra is coming back.' So I borrow half a million bucks and buy the bra division. These cocktails are delicious. How ya make these cocktails?"

"With a vengeance," Murray said. "The eighties. What a moment! Dress for success. The executive look. It called for a whole new line. Tits are a science. Lotta people don't realize this. Woman executive goes into a meeting with the board of directors, she can't go in looking like she's gonna take somebody's eye out with her tits. They need a softer look. Not too soft. Too soft, they don't look successful, they look, like, pessimistic. The idea is not to make her flat-chested but not to make her boobies an agenda item either. Jesus Christ, did we move product in the eighties! Whose turn is it to bet?"

"Yours," Irv said dryly.

"I'm in," said Murray. Tossed a quarter.