Welcome to Paradise (10 page)

Nicky shivered. "Listen, pal—"

"I'm coming home," said Al. "I'm calling
Tony."

Nicky shuffled his stinging feet. Too late he
understood that his ballbusting was utterly misfiring. He should
have made nice, been reassuring. Now he would be shortchanged even
in his brief, false tenure back on top. His voice took on a
wheedling tone that galled him, and he tried to patch things up.
"Al, hey, don't get your bowels in an uproar. I'm just kiddin' with
ya. Everything's fine. I'm just fillin' in. Temporary, like."

In Key West, Big Al Marracotta paced to the
limits of the phone cord and considered. "I'll check that with
Tony, Carlo."

"Yeah, okay, check," said Nicky, his voice
still more conciliatory and chagrined. Bending over just to have a
few more days in charge, pretending.

Al Marracotta hung up in his ear.

Nothing was more bitter than knowing that
you'd lost after thinking that you'd won. Nicky Scotto stared at
the phone a couple seconds, like he was blaming it for how things
went. He slapped his arms for warmth, wiggled toes inside his
squishy shoes, and trudged back through the oily puddles to what
used to be his office.

Nothing stays strange for long. Normal is
what's there.

Al Tuschman sat out by the pool at Paradise
and looked around. Bare-breasted lesbians with boxer shorts and
hairy armpits. Sleek gay men glistening like basted ducks in
Chinatown. The Eurotrash menage a trois with their stacks of
fashion magazines, their ceaseless chattering and giggling. So what
else was new?

Al was getting to feel so blithe that he
seriously considered getting naked. Told himself it wasn't
prudishness that held him back, but concern that his dented and
distended scrotum would appear deformed, grotesque. He promised
himself he'd strip as soon as the tortured sac resumed its
accustomed shape and size.

In the meantime he tanned. At the very least,
he would go home brown and make other people jealous. He lay back
on his lounge and offered up his face. Hot sun scratched at his
hairline and seared right through his eyelids.

It was pleasant for a little while. But Al
was dark to begin with and tanned easily. No challenge; not a
mission. He was soon bored.

He sat up, then stood. Light-headed, he
blinked until the colors returned to flesh and flowers, and decided
he would go check out the beach. He put on sandals, fetched a shirt
that sort of matched his bathing trunks, and put Fifi on the leash.
He got directions from the drowsy and mock-helpful clerk behind the
desk and headed out.

The walk was a great deal longer than he'd
been led to believe. Still, it wasn't long enough for him to notice
the Jaguar that crawled along amid the traffic of rented
convertibles and whining mopeds and clunky bikes, now lolling half
a block behind him, now pulling ahead, then discreetly circling
back.

Al's route wound through town streets full of
bars and fishing stores, past a misplaced brick enclave of
courthouses and county offices, through an apartment complex whose
faux-Bahamian motif was the only thing that prevented it from
looking just like Jersey. Beyond the complex was a half-abandoned
navy base penned in by a rusting chain-link fence, and past the
bunkers and scrap heaps of the base was a narrow road that finally
got sandy at its edges.

Along this road, his throat parched, his
headache returning, and his heels beginning to blister, Al Tuschman
saw someone he vaguely recognized.

She was moving toward him on silver
high-heeled sandals. She was long-legged, slim-hipped, and bosomy,
with a rather small-featured face behind big sunglasses, topped by
raven hair that salt air and dyes had made a little stiff and
spiky.

Their eyes met, then tried to slide politely
apart but stuck, as happens between people who look half familiar.
Al finally remembered where and when he'd seen her. Breakfast
yesterday. Promenading with a short guy. "Hey, there," he said.
"Where's your dog?"

Katy could not help frowning at the mention
of the slobbering and thankless rottweiler. "Oh, hi," she said.
"It's not my dog, it's my boyfriend's."

She regretted the words before she was
finished saying them, but there it was, she'd said them. Why did
she do that to herself? Fact one: I have a boyfriend. A possessive,
maniac boyfriend who takes care of everything and holds me back
from anything decent while I play right along.

Al had to say something, so he said, "Ah.
How's the beach?"

"Nice," she said. "Once you get to it.
Water's really green. Wonder why that is?"

Al wished he knew. He shrugged. The Jag
squeezed past them on the narrow pavement, considerately slowing as
it headed toward the beach. Its effect was to push them to the
margin of the road, moving them closer together.

The woman crouched to pet the shih tzu. It
was a long way down for her but she descended very smoothly, ankles
and knees and waist compacting like a closed expansion gate. To the
creature she said, "And what's your name?"

"Fifi," Al told her.

"Fifi," she repeated, rubbing the shih tzu's
knobby head.

"Mine's Al," he volunteered.

She kept her face down and gave a quick and
mordant chuckle. "So's his." The disembodied pronoun sounded
strange, and then again it didn't. It was the way unhappy people
referred to their partner when their partner seemed less like a
person than a blank but overwhelming fact. Almost as an
afterthought, she said, "Mine's Katy."

She straightened up. She was nice and tall.
Her forehead was as high as Al's nose. She leaned forward like she
was ready to start walking. Al hoped that she would stay a little
bit. "You having fun down here?" he asked her.

"Pretty nice," she said. "You?"

He thought a moment, scratched his ear. Then
he said, "Not really."

This was so wildly and gauchely honest that
both of them held their breath a heartbeat, then let out a giggle.
No one ever admitted that vacation was going lousy.

Laughing was a great relief, a godsend, so Al
went on. "I'm staying at this weird place. Paradise, it's
called."

"Not exactly modest," Katy said.

"No. And like, weird stuff has been happening
to me from the minute I arrived."

"They say Key West is like that."

"No, I mean really weird," Al said.

"Okay," she gave in. "How weird?"

"Like someone filled my car with calamari.
Then someone put lobsters in my bed."

Katy's eyes screwed down behind her
sunglasses. She figured he was bullshitting but she didn't see the
harm. "You must have some wild and crazy friends."

"I don't have a friend within a thousand
miles," Al said. He said it a little louder than he meant to, and
the words seemed to hollow out a lonely capsule in the air.

Katy didn't see it as lonely. She saw it as
free and exotic and bold. "You often travel alone?"

"Depends." Depended on whether he had a
girlfriend when he won a selling contest, which usually he didn't,
in part because he spent so many evenings on the selling floor.

"I bet," said Katy, "that's really when you
see great stuff, when you get to do exactly what you want."

Al pursed his lips. "If you can figure what
that is."

"Me," she said, "I'd go out on a sailboat,
look at coral, look at fish."

Al finished his own thought. "And, like, if
no one steals your car."

"Your car got stolen, too?"

He nodded, shrugged.

She gave her head a sympathetic though not
totally persuaded shake, then began to move away. She didn't really
want to move away, but they were strangers, and she had a
boyfriend, and what else was there to do? "Well, I hope things go
better here on in."

"Couldn't go worse," said Al. He looked for
some wood to knock on. There weren't any trees along the narrow
road. He wished he hadn't said it.

They moved off in opposite directions. After
a few steps Al looked back across his shoulder. He'd had a fantasy
that the tall woman was looking at him, too.

She was not, of course. She was going back to
the man who'd brought her here.

Al continued toward the beach. Without
admitting he was doing it, he counted up the days until vacation
would be over and he could go back home. In the meantime he looked
forward to the yielding crunch of sand and the cooling sting of
ocean water against his blistered feet.

From where the road finally ended, it was
another third of a mile to the water's edge. Through a scorching
asphalt parking lot. Beyond a grove of Australian pines whose
feathery needles imperfectly screened the blaze of mid- afternoon
sun, and where dog and master drank greedily from a lukewarm
fountain. Down a slope of coral rocks that challenged ankles and
clawed at heels. Then past a swath of trucked-in sand that gave, at
last, onto the ocean.

By the time he got there, Al Tuschman was
really ready for a swim.

Squid Berman had figured that he might
be.

He'd stationed himself—in a loud and baggy
print bathing suit that came down to his knees, bug-eyed goggles,
and a pebbled shower cap—in a shadowed cranny of a pile of rocks
that rose up from the green water thirty, forty yards offshore.
Kids with snorkels climbed up on the rocks, yipping like a pack of
seals. But Squid's weirdness enforced an empty space around him,
and from his private grotto he had a panoramic view of the life on
land—the gay trysting grounds over near the jetty, the picnic area
with its whorls of charcoal smoke, the occasional topless European
with teenage boys walking casually back and forth around her.

He saw Big Al swagger toward the shoreline,
his water-shy dog quailing behind, sniffing sand. Watched as he
kicked off his sandals and stepped into the first cool lick of the
ocean. He imagined he heard a sizzle come off the tough guy's
feet.

He willed him in farther, deeper.

But Al Tuschman stayed right where he was. He
still had his shirt on, his sunglasses. The water felt great but he
wasn't sure how much of it he wanted. He was an okay swimmer, not
terrific. Besides, it was a commitment, going in the ocean. The
adjustment in body temperature. The inevitable dried salt itching
in the chest hair. The wet bathing suit that was sure to chafe the
inner thighs on the long walk home.

Then again, there was the widely known effect
of cool water on the scrotum. Given his stretched and irritated
state, it might be very therapeutic. He pulled off his sweaty
shirt, laid it on the sand with his sandals and his shades, told
Fifi to be good and stay right where she was.

Squid Berman watched him stride into the
ocean, big legs fighting off the suck of sand and the weight of
water. Squinting through his goggles, he firmed his concentration
and thought, Come on, you bastard, dive. Swim!

Al Tuschman took his time. Strolled in up to
his calves, his knees. Stared off at fishing boats returning to the
harbor, pleasure sloops just heading out. Felt the faint and
ghostly pull of an undertow that was stifled by the reef.

Finally a wavelet lapped against his bathing
suit and wet his nuts. The water wasn't cold but still he shivered.
Ravaged skin contracted, inhaled into corrugations. He rose up on
tiptoe, did a little dance.

The crisis over, he took another step,
feeling now a primordial delight and wondering, as people always
did, why he'd hesitated plunging in. A resolute stride brought the
water past his waist, and he made a less than graceful lunge that
soaked his head and started him swimming toward the far
horizon.

Crouched in his cranny of the rockpile, Sid
the Squid swallowed hard, licked dried salt from his twitching
lips.

Al swam ten strokes, twenty, scudding even
with, then past, the outcrop. The exercise chased away the remnants
of his hangover. Not as fit as he wished he were, he yet reveled in
the strength of his arms, the scissoring force of his kick. The
ocean blotted out sound, turned the searing sun into a gentle
blanket tickling his back, and it dimly dawned on Al that, for the
first time since he'd got here, he felt like he was on vacation.
Away from everything, including his usual self. Refreshed by
strangeness. Not so much feeling as being the plain, gut happiness
that some people insisted was a mission. Joyfully, he swam another
dozen strokes.

Then he saw the shark.

The shark was around the same size he was,
but half of it was mouth. Behind the fearsome maw was a rank of
gill slits like the airholes on old Buicks, and behind the gill
slits a miraculous machinery of fin and muscle that gave swimming
the suave weightlessness of flight.

The beast was fifteen, twenty feet ahead of
Al, swimming slowly with fluid wiggles, crosswise to him. Al fixed
on one beady, sleepily malicious eye and froze. His body lost its
buoyancy, helplessly went vertical. His feet groped for, and
couldn't find, the bottom. He held his breath, treaded water, and
watched.

It seemed the shark was easing past him. Then
it turned. Maybe it had caught a glint of pinky ring. It banked
with the merest flick of fin and tail, and torpedoed straight
toward Al. Its mouth was slightly open, crooked rows of incurved
teeth just barely visible. In the instant before he screamed, Al
imagined he saw water sluicing through the gills.

He screamed before his face was quite clear
of the ocean. He sucked in a mouthful of water and choked on the
stony taste of salt.

Still spluttering, he swam like hell for
land, arms thrashing, neck craning. Even as he kicked he tried to
pull his legs into his torso, hiding his feet and knees from the
ripping pull of triangle teeth.

Terror made him forget about the need to
breathe; he was winded after half a dozen strokes. For a while,
fear filled in for oxygen, and he kept pumping with his arms
although his ears were ringing and his vision had narrowed into a
hellish tube of glare.