Welcome to Paradise (5 page)

Berman hesitated, sighed. In this life
nothing was ever quite perfect. Never enough time, enough
resources. That's just how it was. Shaking his head, he dumped the
last ten pounds of calamari on the gas pedal, the brake.

He rose and closed the door. He took a moment
to admire his macabre and slithery work. The tubes of calamari
looked somehow like ranks of condoms dancing the samba.

Moving toward the Jag, he sniffed his hands
and said to Chop, "D'ya bring the whaddyacallit, Wash'n Dri?"

"Ah, shit," Parilla said. "Forgot."

"Bummer," said Squid, and wiped his slimy
fingers on his pants.

Big Al Marracotta, a little lost inside his
one-size hotel bathrobe, rang down for extra salsa for his
scrambled eggs.

It was pretty early for extra salsa, but he
was eager to get that spice thing going, that burn. He slathered
butter on his toast, slurped coffee, and watched Katy pout. Today
she had a right to pout, he admitted to himself. He'd promised that
they'd see the town last night, and then he'd fallen immovably
asleep. Well, what the hell. It had been a long day. Lotta driving.
Lotta drinking. Lotta sex. A man was entitled to get tired. He'd
make it up to her today.

"Tell ya what," he said, his lips glistening
with butter. "We'll finish breakfast, skip the A.M. workout, see
the town. How's that? Pick up the dog, check out the beach, do a
little shopping. Whaddya say?"

Katy picked at the edges of her mango muffin.
"Fine," she blandly said. Mornings were not her best time. Her
raven hair, brittle from the dyeing, stood up here and there in
random curlicues. With only smears of faded makeup, her eyes looked
rather small and waifish. Her breasts felt heavy in the morning;
they pulled down on her collarbones and reminded her that she was
twenty- nine, and being kept in only so-so fashion by a terminally
married man who, no doubt, would dump her fairly soon, by which
time she'd be thirty, thirty-one, and what then?

Maybe Big Al was reading her mind. Maybe just
trying to regain lost ground. He reached out gently and held her
chin. His hand was small and surprisingly soft, the heel of it like
a pillow. His touch could on occasion be infuriatingly tender. He
said, "Come on. You're beautiful. Ya know that?"

She blinked. She could have cried. Instead
she tried to smile, and when that didn't quite work out, she made a
playful and ferocious face and bit his hand, the pillowy part
between the wrist and thumb. Selfish bastard. Selfish bastard who
could also sometimes be a charming bastard.

Big Al squirmed and pretended to wince as she
nibbled on his hand, her small teeth leaving shallow dents in his
flesh. It almost hurt; it did hurt, in a way that got him going,
and he began to calculate just how much hell there'd be to pay if
he took back his offer to skip the A.M. workout.

*

Alan Tuschman also woke up early.

He'd managed to slip beneath his light
blanket, though not to get out of last night's clothes. Now he
smelled damp earth and chlorine, and gradually remembered where he
was. He opened his eyes to see his slowly turning ceiling fan, palm
shadows flickering against his raw wood walls, greenish women with
greenish breasts staring down at him with no great curiosity.

He stretched, his long hands and feet
overreaching the confines of the bed. The dog licked his face. She
wanted walking. He got up, washed, and went outside.

From behind its thatch enclosure, the pool
pump softly hummed. Otherwise the courtyard of Paradise was quiet.
Dew was shrinking back on enormous leaves as the sun climbed higher
in the sky. A large woman sat lotus-style on a towel near the hot
tub. Her eyes were closed and she didn't have a shirt on. She
inhaled deeply and raised her arms, displaying furry armpits.

Across the way, the breakfast buffet was just
being set up. Al caught a whiff of coffee and realized he was
famished. He went over to investigate. There were thimble muffins
and miniature croissants curled up like unripe fetuses and dainty
little ramekins of fruit cup. It was all very cute but it didn't
look like breakfast. Not to Al, who was used to Jersey diners.
Danish big as hubcaps. Omelets the size of shoes. Home fries
bleeding paprika, piled to the very edges of the plate.

He decided to go out to eat. He went back to
his bungalow to grab his car keys. Then, with Fifi in the lead, he
rounded the pool, trod the gravel path, and exited the gate to the
parking area.

He took no special notice of the old hippie
nodding out behind a buttonwood hedge across the street—the red
bandanna wrapped around the long and stringy hair, the small, round
Trotsky glasses worn far down on the nose. It was Sid the Squid, of
course. He hadn't been able to sleep. Too excited. Hungry, like
every artist, for a reaction to his efforts.

So he'd left Chop snoring in the mildewed
motel room that they shared, and strolled to Paradise at dawn. Now
he struggled not to fidget as Big Al approached the violated,
sunstruck Lexus. Moisture pooled beneath Sid's tongue; he swallowed
and his Adam's apple shuttled up and down.

Al Tuschman, tunelessly whistling, used his
remote to unlock the driver's-side door. He'd reached out for the
handle before he realized anything was wrong. Then he froze and
squinted, disbelieving, through the windshield.

Sunshine was skidding across the sweep of
glass, making it half mirror. Sky was reflected, and the restless
crowns of palms; but light also penetrated, and what Al Tuschman
saw behind the glare mocked all understanding. Calamari. Stale, dry
calamari, spoiled to a sickly mottled gray, glued in wavy patterns
to the leased leather of his seats. Scallops of scum marked the
places where dead tentacles had shrunk back in the tropic heat. The
black dots of eyestalks stood out creepily against the tasteful
taupe.

Across the street, Squid Berman squirmed and
swallowed, trying not to wet his pants or let out a whoop of
glee.

Al Tuschman opened the car door. Fifi, by
long habit, jumped up toward the seat, then seemed somehow to
reverse field, midair, and pulled away, whimpering, to the limit of
her leash. She'd smelled a stink that seemed to be the vapor of
death itself. Ocean turned to ammoniac poison. Nourishment
corrupted to putrescent goo.

Al Tuschman sucked in a tiny sniff that
brought tears to his eyes. He stopped breathing. Yet some
compulsion, some need for confirmation, led him to reach out a
thick finger to touch the calamari. The tubes felt stiff and
starchy, like undercooked lasagna. The tentacles were dank and
crusty and bore a disgusting resemblance to something secretly
discovered in one's nose.

Al closed the door, wiped his eyes, turned in
a different direction to inhale.

Across the street, Squid Berman rejoiced and
waited for the inevitable explosion, the operatic tantrum. In his
world, men had magnificent and primal tempers that gave rise to
absurd and highly entertaining displays. When something bad
happened to them, they screamed, cursed, turned red, kicked walls,
punched doors, swore revenge, and railed at heaven. It was great to
watch.

But Al Tuschman did none of these things.

He didn't have much of a temper. Not anymore,
having spent so much adrenaline on the ballfields of his youth.
Besides, innocent, clear of conscience, he had no reason to suspect
malice. So he wasn't thinking about revenge; as his mind gradually
cleared, he began instead to think about insurance. What was the
deductible on calamari? What if he needed a whole new interior? He
rubbed his chin, wondered how he'd schmooze the lease people on
this one. He shuffled his feet in the gravel. As if it mattered, he
pulled out the remote and locked the car again.

Squid Berman watched him from behind the
buttonwood, and his disappointment at the absence of a show turned
moment by moment to grudging admiration. He thought: Christ, this
guy is really cool. Calculating; patient. Made sense. Tough and
cool—that was the combination that brought guys to the top. The
hotheads, they went just so far before burning out or making a
fatal blunder. . . . Besides, this guy was probably so fucking
rich—what was a brand-new Lexus to him?

Squid retreated behind the hedge, choked back
a private embarrassment that his initial ploy had fallen short,
that his masterpiece of seafood had elicited barely a grumble from
his prey. He was let down but not discouraged. He liked a
challenge. Big Al was cool and rich, unflappable? Fine. Sid Berman
would find a way to get to him. No problem. He'd just have to get
some rest and try a little harder.

There were times when shopping was about
acquiring needed things, and times when it was a desperate search
for comforts true or false, and times when it was first and
foremost an exercise in spite. The expedition that carried Katy
Sansone up and down Duval Street, Big Al and Ripper at her side,
was of this final type.

She wasn't getting what she wanted from this
trip. Not at all. She hadn't been on the beach yet, even for a
second. She hadn't seen the ocean except for slices of it from the
cocktail lounge or through the window of her room as she lay there
on her back. It was his trip, his vacation.

Well, what had she expected? The question
mocked her, but she couldn't let it go. How had she imagined it
would be? What did she think or hope she might get out of it? The
awful truth was that, if she was going to cut through the fibs and
poses and excuses and just be deadly honest, what she'd really
wanted from this trip was not about beach and not about ocean and
not about a suntan.

It was about romance.

There, she'd admitted it. Romance. It was
ridiculous, pathetic, and she knew it was pathetic. Of course she
did. She'd wanted to feel special. Ha. With Big Al? Whose idea of
romance, maybe, was to light a candle before he poked her. Clink
champagne glasses before the porno films came out. Before he washed
himself and combed his hair and went back to his fat wife in Bay
Ridge. This was romance? This was what people wrote songs about?
Katy wished she was either a little smarter or a whole lot dumber.
Little smarter, maybe she wouldn't have got herself into such a
jerky situation. Dumber, maybe it wouldn't gnaw at her so much. As
it was . . .

As it was, she promenaded up and down Duval
Street, shopping with grim and joyless fury. Designer sunglasses
that made her look either like a European actress or a total geek.
Wraparound skirts whose ease of removal caused Big Al to lick his
sloppy lips. A dolphin brooch; fake Spanish coins set into
earrings. With each purchase, she looked sideways at her sugar
daddy, trying to determine if she'd succeeded yet in annoying him,
had managed to spend enough of his money so that he would reveal
discomfort, and she could feel that she was somehow winning.

The strategy failed utterly, as she secretly
knew it would. Big Al, swaggering along, flanked by his big-balled
rottweiler and his tall young squeeze, got only happier and more
puffed up as they shopped. Buying power was a beautiful thing. A
potent thing. There was sex in a wad of fifties. Throwing dough at
his girlfriend's whims didn't bother him at all. It tightened his
grip and therefore made him frisky.

At some point, with shopping bags chafing
against her thin and still-pale legs, Katy understood she was just
digging herself in deeper. She got depressed. The sun was high, the
fresh part of the morning had been wasted, and what had she
accomplished? Got some things that, after Al got bored and dumped
her, she'd never want to see again anyway. "I'm ready to go back,"
she said.

Big Al, on a spending roll, was surprised.
"Already?" he said. "There's nothing else ya want?"

"Nothing I'm gonna find here," said Katy.

Big Al blinked up at her; and for some part
of a second she thought perhaps he'd understood. Then he said,
"Where, then? Miami?"

"Al," she said, "I'd like to get out of these
shoes."

That, he understood. He shrugged and they
headed back toward the Conch House, Ripper's testicles bouncing
proudly as they went.

Alan Tuschman, disgusted, baffled, trudged
into the office of Paradise and asked the clerk to call the
cops.

The clerk seemed unsurprised and maybe even
pleased that the slightly thuggish-looking salesman was having
trouble. Unctuously, he said, "Is something wrong?"

"Nah," said Al, "just thought I'd say
hello."

This was exactly the sort of Northeast
sarcasm the clerk had moved down from suburban Philadelphia to
avoid. He averted his gaze and made the call. Al went back outside
and leaned against the trunk of his despoiled car. The old hippie
across the way was gone.

A motorcycle cop roared up in about ten
minutes. The short-legged officer climbed off the bike like a pug
addressing a fire hydrant. He looked at Al accusingly. "What's the
problem?"

Al pointed through the driver's-side window
of the Lexus.

The cop clomped over in his boots and
squinted through his Ray-Bans. "What is it?"

"Calamari. Wanna smell?"

The cop said no.

"Crazy, huh?" said Al.

The cop didn't offer an opinion.

" Something like this," Al asked, "why would
it happen ?"

The cop scratched his head right through the
helmet. Then he began an expert examination of the car. He
determined that it was new and pricey and from a Northern state
held in universal and profound contempt. "Town like this," he said,
"there's a certain amount of vandalism against tourists.
Resentment, ya know. Hate."

Al Tuschman gave a worldly nod. To be
resented, detested, mocked, and victimized—why else did anybody
take vacation? He said, "Any chance of fingerprints?"