Florida Straits (16 page)

Marsha shook the Arts and Leisure section,
then peeked out over the top of it and over the top of her reading
glasses. "All families are weird," she pronounced. "Don't claim it
as a special privilege, Joey."

Was this meant to be comforting, or was he
under attack? It often happened that Joey wasn't sure. "Privilege?"
he said. "The aggravation I have with my family, you think I think
it's a privilege?"

"You'd think so if you didn't have any
family," said Steve. He waited his usual beat, then started to
smile; the smile was half formed when he seemed to realize it
didn't go with what he'd said.

"My family, when I see 'em, it's a treat."
This was Luke talking. It was so rare that Luke spoke that everyone
looked twice to make sure of where the sound was coming from.
"They're way up in Rochester. It's always snowing when I see 'em. I
love 'em, my folks, but it's like I can't picture 'em without
shivering."

"Shuddering?" said Wendy. She was doing the
crossword puzzle, making associations.

"Speak for yourself, babe," Peter said, and
everybody chuckled.

"Well, look," said Joey from behind his
sunglasses, "all I know is that where I come from, there's like
certain things you do, and one of 'em is that ya live somewhere, ya
show your family where ya live. Ya have 'em over, ya give 'em food,
ya show 'em. It's, like, expected. Am I wrong?"

No one could say he was, and Joey,
encouraged by the tacit and unaccustomed approval, lifted himself
onto an elbow and went on, getting more emphatic as he went.

"So like, with my brother, my half brother
really, I mean, I know up front he isn't gonna be crazy about this
place. For him, it isn't fancy enough. I mean, ya know, fancy.
Like, sharing the pool, that kinda thing. And another thing, I
don't know exactly how to put it, but my brother, he's like, well,
he's a fucking bigot, pardon my French. So like, if he met you
guys, he wouldn't like ya. Any of ya. He'd have like, ya know,
things to say. Now, only fair, you wouldn't like him either. But
like, what I'm saying, whether he likes it or not, I should have
him over. Am I wrong?"

No one said he was wrong. No one said he was
right. Peter and Claude went back to their scones. Marsha snapped
her paper and returned to Arts and Leisure. Lucy the beautiful Fed
stopped swimming. She lifted her bare brown shoulders above the
edge of the pool and blinked chlorine from her enormous black eyes.
"Got so quiet all of a sudden," she said, "I could hear it
underwater."

—

Later, when they were alone in the cottage,
Sandra said, "Joey, you wanna have your brother over, of course
we'll have him over. But while we're at it, ya know what I wish?"
She looked at him hard and tried to push her gaze through his
eyeballs and into his brain. "I wish we had some friends."

They were sitting in the Florida room,
drinking iced tea out of gigantic glasses that dribbled
condensation. Joey could not help sounding a little bit affronted.
"We got friends."

"Yeah? Who?"

He threw his head back on the settee and
looked upward through the louvered windows. "Bert."

"Come on, Joey. I'm not gonna say anything
against Bert. He's a sweet old guy. But really. He's three times
our age. He's your friend, not mine. And he's not really the kind
of people I have in mind."

"No? what kinda people you have in mind,
Sandra? My kinda people aren't good enough to be our friends all of
a sudden?"

Sandra leaned forward in her chair and
hugged her knees. She was still wearing her bathing suit and Joey
admired her midriff. It was one of the prettiest parts of Sandra,
lean enough to show the arc of her ribs, the skin as smooth as if
it were powdered. "Don't start in on that, Joey. You know that's
not what I'm saying."

"But Sandra, the way you make it sound—"

"Joey, all I'm saying is I think it would be
nice to have some regular friends. Some normal, ordinary people.
That's nothing for you to get offended about."

"You got friends at the bank, right?'

"Yeah," said Sandra, "the girls at the bank
are terrific. But Joey, this is exactly my point. Do I ever see
them outsida the bank? No. And why not? 'Cause you don't seem to
have any interest. The other girls, they see each other. Claire and
Zack, they have dinner with Tina and Mike. Betsy, they invite her
to the movies, they try to line her up with guys sometimes. But, ya
know, they do things as a couple. Me, I get left out 'cause the guy
I'm a couple with couldn't care less."

Joey crossed his arms and listened to the
palm fronds scratching against the roof. He was very tempted to
flat out agree with Sandra and leave it at that: he
couldn't
care less. But he wasn't quite sure that was so. Was he thrilled at
the idea of sitting in the movies and eating popcorn with these
citizens? Was he all excited at the thought of hanging around their
backyards and shooting the breeze over a bowl of potato chips? No.
But at the same time, he had to admit that maybe he shied away from
these ordinary, casual friendships for the same reason he'd shied
away from the idea of a job: he just didn't know how they worked.
Joey's own kind of friendship—that, he understood. It came from the
neighborhood, it was like an outgrowth of family. It came from
crime. Crime told you right away who your friends were because it
made it so clear who your enemies were. But without family, without
enemies, what reason did you have to fall in with this guy rather
than that guy? Where was the glue to hold that kind of friendship
together? And what did you do—like call up somebody you hardly knew
and say, hey, you wanna go bowling or some-thing? It was a mystery.
But Joey wasn't ready to admit that out loud.

"Ya know, Sandra, it's not exactly like all
these terrific people have been rolling out the welcome wagon for
us."

Sandra shook her head and flicked cold water
off her glass. "Joey, I'll tell you the truth, I don't think you'd
notice if the welcome wagon pulled up right in front of you with
bells on. You just don't pay attention. Besides, that isn't how it
works. It's give-and- take. Ya gotta make an effort."

"Sandra, I'll be honest with ya." Joey
rubbed his chin and ran a hand through his moist hair. "I'm just
not sure I see the point. I mean, there's this stuff ya don't
especially wanna do with people ya don't especially wanna know,
you're pretty sure you're gonna be bored stiff, but still, you're
supposed to make an extra effort to have it happen. Why?"

"Why?" said Sandra. "Why? Because, Joey,
it's one of the things ya do to make a life. It's nice to have
friends. And it might help you at work—you ever even think of
that?"

He hadn't.

"Besides," Sandra went on, "you don't know
for sure you're gonna be bored. These people do nice things. They
go boating. They go snorkeling. They look at fish. Don't laugh,
Joey, you might even like it."

Joey squinted backward through the louvers.
The palm fronds looked feathery against the sky. He still wasn't
convinced, but he was willing to take Sandra's word that maybe
making some local friends was worth the trouble. Only not right
now. He reached across and put his hand on her knee. "After Gino
leaves."

"After Gino leaves, what?"

"After Gino leaves, we'll see, maybe we'll
decide to make some friends."

—
22 —

That Wednesday evening, Gino, Vicki, and
Bert were invited to the compound for dinner. Joey bought stone
crab claws because they were the only thing he could find that was
more expensive than lobster, and besides, he wanted to give his
brother something he could crush. But when he got the claws home,
Sandra pointed out a problem.

"Joey, ya need, ya know, those squeezie
things to break the shells. The crackers."

"We don't have any?"

"Joey, you know we don't."

"Hm." He put the white paper bag on the
counter, sniffed his fingers, and washed his hands with dish soap.
"Well, we got a hammer and some pliers."

Sandra put one hand on a hip and held the
other out with the goofy grace of a charm school headmistress.
"Vicki won't find that very elegant."

"You give a crap how Vicki finds it?"

"I don't if you don't."

"And I don't if Gino doesn't. Which means
that no one does. Wine inna fridge?"

At a few minutes after the appointed time of
seven-thirty, Bert arrived, resplendent in a big shirt of nubbly
lavender linen, monogrammed over the left breast pocket in
navy-blue silk. Don Giovanni was twitching in his hand, and as soon
as the old man put him down, the dog ran stiffly toward the
shrubbery, lifted a leg as scrawny as a chicken wing, and deposited
a few drops of urine on a coleus. "Is that rude or what?" said
Bert, but he could not quite disguise an expression of wonderment
and admiration, as if life with the chihuahua were an unending
discovery of the creature's profundity. "Most places he won't do
that. I guess he's really getting to feel at home here."

"We're so flattered," said Sandra. She
approached Bert with a plate of olives in her hand, and kissed him
on the cheek.

"Come on," said Joey, "we'll have a glassa
wine."

They sat by the pool and made chitchat amid
the faint smell of chlorine and damp towels. Overhead, the leaves
shook in the light breeze with a raspy sound like a broom on a
sidewalk. After ten minutes or so, Joey got up and fetched more
wine; after ten minutes more, the small talk was wearing thin, the
way it does when people are afraid they'll use up all their stories
before the party actually gets going. By eight o'clock, Bert was
sneaking glances at his watch. By ten after, Sandra was wrestling
with the impulse to point out that Gino was being extremely
inconsiderate, and Joey was secretly depressed at the realization
that lateness had long been one of his half brother's many ways of
insulting him.

At eight twenty-five the telephone rang.

Joey jogged into the cottage, sat down on
the edge of the bed, and took a deep breath to collect himself
before he picked up the receiver. "Hello."

"Joey."

"Gino. Where the hell are you?"

"I'm inna hospital."

Joey's sweet and righteous irritation soured
instantly to guilt and made the wine go rancid in his belly.
"Jesus, Gino, wha' happened? You O.K.?"

"Me?" He sounded surprised at the question.
"I'm fine. It's Vicki."

Joey knew it was a lousy thing to feel, but
he felt relief. "Wha' happened to Vicki?"

Gino blew some air into the telephone, and
Joey could picture him shaking his head and puffing out his heavy
purplish lips. "Crazy fuckin' thing, Joey. Just before we're gonna
come to your place, she goes out for a walk, ya know, to do some
window-shopping. She's standin' there, lookin' inna window, fuckin'
moped goes outta control, clips 'er behind the knees, knocks 'er
right tru the fuckin' glass."

"Holy shit. How bad is it?"

"Bad enough. Not that bad. I mean, she's
kinda cut up, took a lotta stitches. And she got a little
hysterical, ya know, worryin' about her looks and all. So they give
'er a sedative, put her out for a while. But listen, kid, I gotta
ask a favor."

"Name it," said Joey.

"Well, I rode out here inna cop car," Gino
said.

"So you want me to come get you? No
problem."

"Nah, I think I oughta be here when she
comes around. But I need ya to bring my car out here for me. I got
some extra clothes in it so, like, if I spend the night, ya
know."

Joey paused. He was touched that Gino would
give up the comforts of the Flagler House to be at the bedside of a
girl like Vicki. Now and then, not often, his half brother
surprised him. "Sure, Gino, sure. I'll work it out. I'll be there
right away."

"Thanks, kid," said Gino. "Listen, I'm sorry
to fuck up your dinner."

"Hey," said Joey.

"And remember, tell the valet the car's for
Dr. Greenbaum."

"Goddamn mopeds," said Bert the Shirt. "I
wish they'd ban 'em."

"Treacherous," said Sandra. "And the
noise."

"Hey," said Joey, "I don't even know where
the hospital is."

"It's out on Stock Island," said the Shirt.
"By the dump." He gathered up Don Giovanni and rose. The kind of
guy Bert was, he didn't wait to be asked to help. "Come on."

Sandra glanced through the sliding doors
into the cottage, where the table had been set for five. It looked
pretty festive, with a big mound of crab claws, a large hammer, a
small hammer, two pairs of pliers, and an ice pick. "Come back for
dinner, Bert," she said. "At least there's nothing to get
cold."

—
23 —

Bert d'Ambrosia gently placed his dog in the
passenger-side bucket of Gino's rented T-Bird, then snapped on his
seat belt and fussed with the mirrors and the tilt on the steering
wheel. Joey Goldman looked on through the smashed window of his
rusting Cadillac and squirmed. Usually he didn't think of Bert as
old. But now, when Joey was in a hurry, he noticed the fidgetiness,
the excessive caution, the extra thought and care that went into an
old man's preparation for almost any action. Now he tested the
emergency brake. Now he clicked the car into gear, and double-
checked that the shifter was firmly set in drive. Finally he inched
forward through the parking lot of the Flagler House.

Joey followed him through the narrow streets
of Old Town. Bert came to a dead halt at every stop sign and waited
a full five seconds before crawling on again. Joey looked out
through the top of his roofless car, squeezed his steering wheel,
and tried to talk himself out of his antsiness. There was no real
reason to hurry. Vicki was asleep; Gino was probably watching
television in a waiting room. Was his brother going to be impressed
if he got there thirty seconds sooner? Besides, hadn't Joey had
enough of the eager-beaver errand-boy routine, wasn't he a little
tired of being the guy who arrives panting and sweaty so maybe
he'll get a pat on the cheek for trying so hard? Screw it.