Welcome to Paradise (7 page)

He could not help noticing that everyone but
him was rubbing someone else. Over by the deep end of the pool, two
men were taking turns rubbing sunscreen on each other's shoulders;
Al scared himself by acknowledging a certain elegance in their
gleaming skins and leanly muscled arms. Nearer the hot tub, a
topless woman was doing something mysterious and sensual to another
woman's feet; he could faintly hear the rubbed woman occasionally
chanting.

Then there was the naked threesome. Two
women, one guy. Breasts everywhere; a tanned, confusing minefield
of breasts. The threesome had towels draped carelessly about their
loins, but face it, they were naked. They spoke a foreign language,
which heightened Al Tuschman's feeling that he had somehow stumbled
into one of those slow and moody European films that he never
understood. Decadence: Good or bad? Seemed pretty pleasant—so why
did someone always blow his brains out at the end? The threesome
talked softly but with animation. They giggled a lot. Were they
witty or slaphappy? Sophisticated or just plain crazy? And was Al a
bourgeois prude, or was what he was feeling a thin mask for envy,
pure and simple?

There was neither profit nor resolution to
these thoughts, but at least they kept Al occupied while Chop
Parilla, not fifty yards away on the far side of a frail reed
fence, was hijacking the tow truck that had come to fetch his
car.

It was an impulsive maneuver, totally
unplanned.

Chop and Squid had been staked out in the
shade, sitting in the Jag. Squid wore a paper hat and a white apron
that looped around his neck and tied at the waist; it was the look
he needed for his next assault on Big Al's sanity. While they were
waiting for an opportunity to put this next phase into effect, the
flatbed from Sun Motors in Miami pulled up.

The driver—lanky, sweating, and with a
shirttail out— parked next to the ravaged Lexus, then went into the
hotel office.

Chop eyed the spotless stamped aluminum of
the flatbed. Then he turned to Squid, his face flushed and his
voice breathy. "If he's here for the Lex, I'm stealin' it."

Squid frowned so vigorously that the paper
hat shifted behind his pointy ears. "Stealin' cars," he said, "that
ain't the job."

"Look the opportunity," Chop argued.

Squid maintained a solid silence.

"It ain't
botherin'
the job," Chop
pleaded. "Take two minutes."

Squid swallowed; his Adam's apple shuttled up
and down. He said, "How long it takes, that ain't the point. It's
fuckin' with my concentration. Ya wanna do somethin' right, ya do
one thing at a time."

Chop drummed on the steering wheel and sucked
his teeth as he watched the driver come back from the office, a key
now dangling from his hand. The driver opened the Lexus' door,
quickly stepped back at the stench. He shook his head and reached
in just long enough to put the car in neutral, then climbed into
his truck and maneuvered it into a position from which he could
winch the pillaged vehicle onto the flatbed.

Parilla was stewing. Whose gig was this
anyway, and why was he suddenly taking orders from Squid? He
squirmed as the greased piston lifted and the flatbed tilted down;
he plucked the damp shirt from his armpits as the driver came
around from the cab and grabbed the towing cables with their
awesome hooks. Finally he said, "Wit' all due respect to your
fuckin' concentration, fuck you, it's meant to be, I'm goin' for
it."

Squid just rolled his bulging eyes. Chop
reached across and moved his gun from the glove box to the
waistband of his pants.

He waited until the driver had laid down on
the gravel to attach the cables to the Lexus, until he was helpless
and in shadow.

Then he sprang from the Jag, walking quickly
but not running. He dropped to his knees next to the prone driver,
down at the level of axle grease and undercoating and the smell of
tires. He hid his revolver with his body as he freed it from his
pants, and stuck the muzzle of it in the driver's ear.

Softly he said, "Don't make a sound and don't
move a muscle."

The driver flinched, then went rigid as a
fish beached in sunshine.

"This is my car you're fuckin' with," Chop
whispered.

"You make mistake, I think," the driver
managed. "I have order to pick up this car."

Chop pushed the gun a little harder. "You
don't understand. All cars are my cars. What's your name?"

"Ernesto."

"You a Teamster, Ernesto?"

"
Si
."

"Good. I get along with Teamsters." He put
some fresh pressure on the muzzle and dug a knee into the small of
the prone man's back. "This can be easy or this can be hard,
Ernesto. How would you like it to be?"

The driver didn't have much breath left.
"Eassy," he wheezed.

"Good man. Tell ya what. I'm gonna give you
three hundred dollars and hurt you just enough to make you a
fuckin' hero. That okay with you, Ernesto?"

"Hokay."

"Now be a pro. Jack the fuckin' car up and
let's get onna road."

Squid Berman watched them pull away. Chop was
good, he had to admit it. The gun never showed. Anybody passing
would have figured he was down there helping. The whole move was
crisp, efficient, practiced. Now Chop would call his boys in
Hialeah for a pickup. The flatbed would drive down some deserted
road. Chop would give the driver his cash, a black eye, and a
shallow slice that would hardly need stitches. Neat.

Neat but conventional, thought Squid, pulling
on his knuckles, straightening his apron. A formula. The work of a
craftsman, not an artist. He resettled his paper hat behind his
ears and refocused his attention on the entrance of Paradise.

What he himself was doing with this caper was
on a whole different level, of course. The level of real invention,
true improvisation. It was jazz to other guys' whistling. Did Chop
realize that? he wondered. Did anybody?

*

By the time the afternoon shadows overtook
the Conch House pool, Big Al Marracotta had had four pina coladas,
and was in the grip of a salacious mix of wooziness and lust. His
shoulders were sunburned, and he liked the heat. The cup of his
bathing suit was damp, and he liked the cool. He liked the thighs
of other men's wives and girlfriends as they scissored and lifted
on their lounges, he liked the bare nearness of Katy's pinkened
behind, and he was ready to go upstairs awhile.

Up in their suite, before he'd even got out
of his wet trunks, he went straight to his satchel of tapes. He
riffled through the black plastic boxes, lips pursed as he
considered. Discipline? Chinese? Finally he said to Katy, "Feel a
little . . . futuristic?"

She looked at him a moment before she
answered. Drained and mellowed by the sun, she made an effort to
think kindly of him, and gently of herself for falling in with him.
She tried to remember his good points. That twinkle in the eye. A
certain generosity that every now and then seemed separate from
strutting or control. An unflagging and unthinking zest that amused
her and that she envied. Who wouldn't? She managed a somewhat weary
smile and went off to the bathroom.

She returned looking like a sunburned outtake
from
Barbarella
. Reinforced conic bra in space-age silver.
Strapped and shiny panties that suggested something gladiatorial.
Arm-cinching bracelets from which dangled disks resembling
electrodes.

"You are something else," Big Al said,
flicking his tongue between the gap in his front teeth.

The movie was called
Sex Trek
. Its
premise was that the future would be a very phallic era, and that
technological advances would largely focus on bold new designs in
marital aids.

Leaning back on stacked-up pillows, his hand
on Katy's thigh and his eyes glued to the screen, Big Al Marracotta
said, "Jesus, will ya look at that? Solar-powered. Gets 'er
everywhere at once!"

Katy looked from the TV to the stymied golden
light captured in the curtained window, and wondered if they'd
finish up in time to see the sunset.

Dusk. Al Tuschman stood in the outdoor
shower, which was framed in thatch and ended at his knees. He
soaped his armpits, watched sudsy water slide off the slatted
boards beneath his feet. The light was soft and violet; the air was
the same temperature as his skin and smelled of fruits and
flowers.

Al shampooed his coarse, curly hair and
finally let his mind acknowledge what his body already knew: Key
West was getting to him. All that bare skin. All that rubbing. All
those pretty sunburned necks and unfettered pendant breasts with
tan lines halfway down them. The lack of hurry. The lack of
purpose, except for the staunchly unembarrassed purpose of feeling
good. Happiness as mission. All this had been sexing him up from
the moment he arrived.

Now he no longer had excuses for failing to
get out there and do something about it. He had his bearings. He
was rested. This was the evening he would do the bars and try to
meet a woman.

He rinsed, turned off the shower, and stepped
into the bathroom, where he dried himself and shaved. Shaving, he
appraised his face. The pits and bumps of adolescent acne; the
scattered crescent scars of energetic youth. The very first gray
hairs just now sprouting at the temples. A face that had seen some
life, that had some life to offer in return. It worked for him on
the sales floor.

But in bars? In bars the salesman tended to
get shy. Flinched sometimes at soulful stares. Needed help to
jump-start conversations. Sometimes drank too much to loosen up,
then got morose instead of suave. Or, very occasionally, suave till
he couldn't stand himself. Still, a person had to try. . . .

He dressed. Pulled on snug pants that showed
the contours of his athlete's legs while revealing nothing of the
aches and creaks. A tight blue shirt, the creases where it had been
folded soon stretched and steamed away by the bulk of his chest.
Chain; rings; loafers. A last tousle of his hair, and he was ready.
He put Fifi's leash on, waved to annoy the dozing desk clerk as he
passed the office, and headed out to start the evening with some
solid food.

Squid Berman, still, with obsessive patience,
waiting in the Jag, watched him head off down Elizabeth Street,
teased himself with the danger implicit in the tough guy's wide
shoulders and his rolling gait. He sat tight until he saw Big Al
round the corner.

Then, opening a cooler in the backseat, he
grabbed a shopping bag, smoothed his apron and straightened out his
paper hat, and walked through the gate of Paradise as if he owned
the place.

He went into the office and told the clerk he
had a delivery for the gentleman who just went out.

The clerk blinked himself out of his catnap,
studs quivering on his eyebrow. "I'll hold it for him here."

"He asked me special to leave it by his
door," said Squid.

"That really isn't necessary."

"It is."

"Is what?"

"Necessary."

There was a momentary standoff.

"What I'm delivering," Squid resumed, "it
needs, very important, it needs, uh, moonlight."

"Moonlight?"

"Orchid. Very rare. Expensive. Real
expensive. Needs moonlight or it dies. In minutes. Said I should
leave it in the moonlight by his door."

The clerk furrowed his brow. The wrinkles
went all up his shaved head.

"So please," Squid said, "point me to the
room. You wanna be responsible it dies? Come on, it's too long in
the bag already."

The clerk frowned at the bag, which, oddly,
made a sudden paper sound, a scratch. He wondered why it was always
the least classy guests who made the most trouble, then sighed and
did as he was asked.

Squid skirted the blue pool, went down the
path that led to Big Al's bungalow. Hidden by foliage, he slipped
around to the side, crawled under the thatch of the outdoor shower,
scrabbled along the still-damp slatted boards. He prepared to
shoulder in the bathroom door, but Big Al hadn't bothered to lock
it.

The gremlin sniffed at his quarry's
aftershave, worked a splinter into his bar of soap, then slipped
into the bedroom and made himself at home.

*

Al started with a beer or two, tried a
frozen margarita, then switched over to Sambuca. But it was one of
those nights when he couldn't get comfortable with a drink, and he
couldn't get comfortable with a place.

It wasn't even eleven yet, and he was already
in his third joint. The first had been cheesily festive and way too
loud, with amplifiers hanging from the ceiling, sound waves seeming
to blow the smoke around. The second featured the music of his
youth, which didn't make him feel young or nostalgic, but rather
anxious and sad and weighed down with a secret. Made him think
about football games, the shameful thing that no one ever knew. He
was scared. Scared every time the ball was thrown to him. The
pressure not to blow the catch. The inevitable impact, the
skidding, scraping collision with the cold, damp ground. Same with
crashing the boards in basketball season. Smashed fingers; elbows
in his nose and eyes. Scared every time. Big tough guy. Schoolboy
hero ... A softie. He didn't need to hear seventies music ever
again.

This third place suited him better. It was
dim and moody. Grown-up. It didn't pretend to be a party. Jazz was
playing, and jazz was different every time, it didn't freeze you in
a moment like pop songs, which never changed, which were stuck in
their old neighborhood forever. He started to relax.

Relaxing, he felt sexy again. Feeling sexy,
he was frustrated. Frustrated, he kept drinking. Drinking, he
wavered between gloom, excessive confidence, and an increased
capacity to be smooth, silly, or both together.