Welcome to Paradise (15 page)

Disgusted, Squid turned his back, looked at a
dead fly snagged and hollowed out in a spiderweb at a corner of the
room.

Chop continued anyway. Without seeming to
notice he was doing it, he tugged at his wrist like he was pulling
on a glove. "We grab the piece a shit outside his hotel. Take 'im
up the Keys, ice 'im, dump 'im inna mangroves. Boom, it's over.
T'ree hours later we're home, checkin' out titties on South Beach.
Beautiful."

Petulantly, still looking away, Squid said,
"I'm not doin' it."

Chop pivoted around the bed, wedged his way
into the other man's field of vision. "Whaddya mean, you're not
doin' it? Come on now, don't embarrass me. I tol' Nicky no problem,
we'd do it."

Berman sulked and salivated. He swallowed
hard, his hands fluttered like contending birds. He shook his
head.

Chop Parilla pawed the carpet, breathed hard
through his mouth. In desperation he said, "I never knew Sid Berman
to go half-ass on a job."

This got to Squid, hit him where he lived. He
blinked, he squirmed, he moved his tongue to a mouth corner and
left it there awhile. Finally he said, "Okay, okay, we'll take him
out. On one condition."

Chop's eyes rolled up toward his low and
deeply furrowed forehead. "What's the condition?"

Squid gave a determined sideways tilt to his
head. "We finish the job the way we started it."

"And fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"We take 'im out by seafood."

Chop roughly spanked his thighs as he sprang
out of his crouch. "Fuckin' seafood? Squid, Jesus Christ! Why ya
gotta make everything so difficult?"

Calmer now, more settled in his mind, Squid
folded his bandy arms across his chest. It wasn't about difficulty.
It was about unity, integrity. Did you begin a statue with a hammer
and chisel and suddenly switch to a chain saw? No, you were true to
the tools you started with. That was a basic rule of craft.
Fundamental.

Chop hadn't dropped his protest. Fists
balled, knees bent in a simian slouch, he was working off
frustration in great bounds around the narrow, mildewed room. "Ya
take guys out wit' guns," he said. "Ya take guys out wit' knives.
Baseball bats. Piana wire. What kinda horseshit is ya take a guy
out wit' seafood?"

Knowing that he'd won, Squid spoke very
softly. "Death by seafood, Chop," he said. "Either that, or you get
yourself a different partner."

*

Alan Tuschman leaned forward at his tiny
table at an outdoor restaurant that overlooked the harbor, and bit
deep and lustily into his grouper sandwich.

The thin crust of the Cuban roll caved in
beneath the clamping of his teeth; mayo squished against his gums;
the crunch of onion lit a small fire on his tongue; and the fish's
charbroiled surface blended the tastes of ocean and woods. He
savored the bite a good long moment, then washed it down with
beer.

He couldn't remember when he'd tasted food so
vividly, and vaguely wondered why it seemed so new and marvelous.
Perhaps his recent sufferings, coupled with the humid vacancy of
his days, made him more appreciative of simple things, the mundane
pleasures too often shouted down by busyness, routine. Maybe it was
just that his long run had quieted his mind and opened up his body,
lulled him back to basics.

In any case, he thoroughly enjoyed his lunch
and was in calmly buoyant spirits as, led by Fifi, he strolled back
to his hotel. Everything was oddly perfect on that stroll. A
brilliant sun warmed him, but seemed to duck behind a scrap of
cloud whenever he grew too hot. Locals with groceries in their bike
baskets smiled at him as if he'd suddenly come to belong. Papery
bougainvillea petals came unstuck in soft breezes and fluttered
down russet and fuchsia in his path, and he decided that today was
the day he'd get naked at the pool.

He strolled through the gate of Paradise, and
the desk clerk called to him.

Al's posture drooped, his euphoria imploded.
By now it was Pavlovian. What next? The desk clerk had bad news
only, and delivered it always with a smarmy and malicious smile. On
legs suddenly grown heavy, Al walked into the office.

The clerk looked at him from between the ruby
studs above his eyebrow and the purplish bags beneath his eyes. His
mouth was sardonic, his tone as irritating as ever, but shockingly,
his news today was good. "There's someone waiting for you at the
pool," he said. "A woman."

Al took in the information as though his ears
were in his pants. "A woman," he punchily echoed. "Waiting for
me."

"You're the tall guy named Al."

"This is true." He swallowed. He knew who it
was, of course. His near-lover, the woman with the wonderful thick
hair. The woman whose unclothed torso he'd briefly held against his
own. She'd come to realize he wasn't kinky after all, that the
lobsters in the sheets were some grotesque but blameless accident.
She'd returned in the sober light of day to finish what they'd
started. It would be even sweeter for the long delay.

Alan Tuschman pulled down smartly on his
shirtfront, wished he hadn't had the onion on his sandwich. He
turned with almost military crispness and walked out toward the
pool.

He scanned the helter-skelter ranks of
lounges for that mass of springy hair, the fleshy shoulders and
heavy breasts that he remembered.

Then he spotted Katy, the woman with the
nasty boyfriend. She was laid out long and thin and ill at ease,
save for Al the only person in the place with clothes on.

"Hi," she said as he sat down on a lounge
beside her. She said it sheepishly, but packed into the single
syllable, as well, was a suggestion of bent humor and a
head-shaking acceptance of the fact that things seldom went as
planned.

Al fumbled through a greeting in return.

"Surprised to see me," she said. It was not a
question. She patted Fifi's knobby head. The dog licked her
hand.

"How'd you know where—?"

"You told me," she reminded him. "On the road
to the beach."

"Ah."

She glanced furtively around the courtyard at
the European threesome, the fuzzy lesbians, the basted gay men with
their bronzed and dimpled buns. "Kind of an amusing place."

"Kind of is," said Al. He had no idea why she
was there, but could not help suspecting some sick game with
himself as beard. His gaze wandered over to the courtyard gate. He
half expected to see the sneering jealous boyfriend come barging
through it, shaking his fists and sticking out his feisty chin and
making an appalling scene.

Katy followed his eyes, understood his
thoughts. The playfulness fell out of her voice, and suddenly she
sounded very young and very lost. "I just walked out on him," she
said. "I didn't know where else to go. I'm sorry."

Al looked at her more closely then. The sun
was in his eyes, and it wasn't until he shaded them with his hand
that he saw the red place on her jawbone, just below the ear.

She saw him looking at it, and was horrified
and ashamed. She hadn't known there was a mark. Her composure let
go and she cried for half a second. A tiny whimper escaped. A tear
swelled at the corner of her eye, then vanished, as though by sheer
act of will she could suck it back.

"Are you okay?" Al Tuschman asked her.

She nodded that she was, and looked away. It
was all so stupid, she was thinking. So pointless. The second
they'd sped off from the promenade, Big Al had started cursing at
her, calling her names. She was a tramp, a slut, an ingrate. She'd
crossed her arms and rolled her eyes and slunk against her door. He
drove a little ways up the Keys, then stopped and had a couple
drinks while she sipped lemonade. For a while he calmed down; then,
as they were getting back to town he started in again. Ugly words,
ugly accusations. Finally she stood up for herself. She'd done
nothing wrong. All she'd done was talk to someone for three
minutes, and if he couldn't handle that, then he was really
pathetic.

That's when he hit her. They were stopped at
a red light, heavy traffic. He yanked a hand off the steering wheel
and slapped her. It was a weak and awkward smack. It didn't hurt,
and what made it yet sadder was that even Katy could see that he
was trying to hold himself back. But he hadn't managed; he'd hit
her. She stared at him a second. He stared back with what might
have been remorse. But it was too late. She got out of the Lincoln
and on milky knees she stormed away. She'd heard horns honking but
didn't look back.

Now, at poolside, she took a deep breath and
started sitting up. "Look," she said, "we don't even know each
other. I shouldn't be bothering you like this."

"Are you bothering me?" Al Tuschman said.
Mainly he was asking himself. "Hey, I'm on vacation. I'm bored out
of my mind. Let's talk."

She hovered halfway out of her lounge a
moment, studied Alan Tuschman's face. There was kindness, she felt,
in the spacing of the features. Big eyes, wide apart. A full and
candid mouth. Fleshy olive cheeks with here and there a small and
unembarrassed crater. She liked his face, yet found herself
searching for the things that she was more accustomed to—suspicion,
guile, temper. When she couldn't find them, she grew briefly
confused. Her practiced toughness let go a little bit, and her back
eased down again onto the chaise. "Oh, God," she said. "This is a
helluva vacation."

Al pursed his lips, folded his hands. "Look,"
he said, "maybe you'll give things a little while to calm
down—"

"Then what?" she interrupted. "Go crawling
back? Look, I'm done with him about twenty seconds before he's done
with me. And he's the wrong guy anyway. It was a stupid thing to be
involved in the first place."

"Why?" asked Al.

She gave a mirthless laugh. "Too many reasons
to go into. Why feel even worse?"

"Okay," he said. "So what'll you do?"

She twisted up her mouth and shrugged. "Get a
flight back home, I guess."

"What about your things, your luggage?"

Her face went briefly sour as she thought
about the thongs, the garters, the underwire bras Big Al had bought
her. "There's nothing there I care about," she said.

"You have a ticket?"

Katy shook her head. "We drove. The car.
Remember?"

At this Al gave a rueful snort. "I drove,
too. I had a car back then. Same license plate. Isn't that a
pisser?"

"Same license plate?" said Katy.

"I mean, Jersey, not New York, but, yeah,
same plate."

Katy's mouth stretched into a cockeyed smile.
"Christ, I wish you had a different name."

Al had no response for that, so he said, "You
really sure you wanna leave?"

She didn't answer quite as fast as she meant
to. But she sighed and said, "Yeah, I'm going. I'll try to find a
friend up in the city, see if she can wire down some money."

"Wire money?" said Al Tuschman. It seemed
like such a quaint idea, he smiled.

Katy took offense, her eyes unblinking
beneath the spiky hair. "Look," she said, "I'm twenty-nine.
Sometimes I work as a waitress. Cocktails, mostly. Lately I made
the idiot mistake of letting a rich boyfriend pay my way. I happen
not to have a credit card. That shock you?"

Blindsided by her sudden vehemence, Al
Tuschman leaned back a little way. Why was she daring him to look
down on her? "Hey," he said, "I'm not judging you."

She dropped her eyes, her hands fidgeted on
her tummy. "Ah, shit. I'm judging myself. Nothing to do with you.
I'm sorry."

Al said, "Three minutes, that's like the
fourteenth time you've apologized."

There was a silence broken only by the
ceaseless tittering of the Europeans and the soft splash of a naked
man stepping gingerly into the pool. After a moment Al heard
himself say, "Listen, if it's really what you wanna do, I'll lend
you the money for a ticket home."

Katy looked at him, still fidgeting. With
wonderment and not without mistrust, she said, "Why? Why would you
do that for me?"

Al blew a little air between his lips, softly
rubbed his hands together. "Why?" he said, and for a moment he
wasn't the least bit sure himself. Then he leaned down, and in a
conspiratorial whisper he continued. "I'll tell you why. 'Cause you
and me, we're the only people in this town who will admit that
vacation's going lousy." He reached a hand across the narrow space
between their lounges. "Come on. Let's see about getting you a
flight."

*

Chop Parilla should have known better, but
he still imagined that maybe he could talk Sid Berman into doing
the job his way. Over a late lunch at a dim and dusty place called
the Half Moon Tavern, he said, "Jesus, Squid, this job could get
done so much faster wit', say, a thirty-eight."

"Right," said Berman, eating french fries the
long way. "And the Sistine fuckin' Chapel coulda got done so much
faster wit' a roller. Zere somethin' that you're drivin' at?"

"I'd like to get back home sometime," said
Chop.

Squid Berman frowned. Such thinking was
beneath him. You didn't think of home when you were on a job. You
didn't think of anything except the job. That was concentration.
That was purity.

Chop gnawed the paltry meat off a chicken
wing. "Sistine Chapel? Zat in Little Havana?"

To avoid laughing in his partner's coarse,
uncultured face, Berman looked away. As he did so, in one of those
serendipitous opportunities that only the concentrated mind is
quick enough to seize, something caught his eye.

It was a stuffed fish nailed onto the cheap,
fake paneling of the wall. The fish's back was an electric blue,
its belly a metallic silver. From its gorgeously arched spine
protruded a large webbed fin as graceful as a Japanese fan;
extending from the tapering head was a nose that stretched and
stretched, Pinocchio-like, into a two-foot spike.