Welcome to Paradise (17 page)

Watching it together both was and was not
wonderful. Sunsets were supposed to be romantic. You were supposed
to watch them with your arm around someone. At the final instant,
you kissed as a token of shared passage from bright day to tender
evening, and then you strolled off in the twilight hand in
hand.

Al and Katy, mere acquaintances in a nutty
situation, did none of that. They sat with their knees and elbows
close but not touching. As near as they came to contact was in
taking turns petting the dog. They stared off at the sky until the
sparse, underlit clouds had gone from flaming pink to a powdery
lavender; then by silent agreement they stood, unceremoniously
slapping sand off their bottoms. Al resisted looking at his watch.
In the wistful awkwardness of the moment, he wasn't even sure if he
wanted the time until Katy's departure to go faster or more slowly
than was natural.

They walked to their bikes. Finally Al said,
"Feel like a drink? Something t'eat?"

Katy, not used to being consulted, just
shrugged at first, then said, "Sure."

They pedaled off between the navy fences,
through the fake development; then, on Thomas Street, before they'd
reached the busy part of town, they heard music coming from behind
a wooden fence that was painted blue and pink and green. A
hand-scrawled sign said the place was called Coco's. In place of
valet parking, it offered a row of bike racks that were full of
locals' clunkers.

"Chance it?" asked Al Tuschman.

Katy nodded, widened her eyes. They crammed
their fat-tire bikes in among the others and went around the
fence.

They walked through a short passageway and
were immediately outdoors again—in a side yard paved in nothing but
stomped earth. Well-spaced tables leaned in ruts, and no two tables
matched. A hammock was strung between a rubber tree and a mahogany;
an old man and a child seemed to be asleep in it. Chickens roamed
around; Fifi sniffed their tracks. The music was Caribbean, took
its slippery rhythms from the scratch and recoil of blowing palms,
the surge and fizz of lapping waves.

Al and Katy moved to the far end of the
place, found a vacant table with a rooster on it. Al shooed the
bird away; it cackled out a protest, then half flew, half hopped,
first to a chair back, then the ground.

"This is excellent," said Katy, sitting
down.

Al was happy she was happy, pleased with
himself for stumbling on a place she liked. He had to remind
himself this was not a date.

The waitress came over and they ordered
margaritas.

Clinking salty glasses, Katy gestured up
toward swaying fronds against the jewel-box velvet of the sky, over
at the dim bandstand where a Bahamian trio, cool beyond words,
played like they could play forever, and said, "Cheers. Now this is
what I pictured. Now I feel like I'm on vacation." She sipped her
drink and added, "Better late than never, huh?"

The comment made Al Tuschman unpleasantly
aware of the watch on his wrist. "Hungry?"

She pursed her lips. "I could eat."

They ordered jerk chicken and popcorn
shrimp.

Pretending to scratch a bug bite, Al sneaked
a look at the time. It was ten of eight, and he, too, was only now
beginning to feel like he was truly on vacation. Unless, that is,
vacation truly felt like being lonely, and paranoid, and
discombobulated.

"So Tusch," said Katy, "can I ask you
something? Traveling alone—it's a fantasy of mine, I envy it. The
freedom. You love it?"

Al pulled on an ear. "Has its moments," he
said. "But the novelty's sort of over. I spend a lot of time
alone."

She studied him, the strong shoulders and big
kind face and curly hair. "How come?"

He shrugged. "I work a lot. Where I live, the
'burbs, it's sixteen-year-old girls in Camaros or soccer moms in
minivans. I live long enough, I'll catch the next wave of
divorcees."

"Ever married yourself?"

"Long time ago. Too young. Wrong person."

It was as good a time as any to signal for
another round of drinks.

They clinked glasses once again, knocking
loose damp salt. A breeze moved through the yard, carrying smells
of spent flowers and clove and cinnamon from the kitchen. Katy took
a small sip of her cocktail, then looked up and down and left and
right, and said out of the blue, "Wanna dance?"

Al had still been thinking vaguely of his
ill-considered past. The question took him by surprise. He pulled
his brows together, let slip a nervous laugh, then glanced quickly,
furtively around the yard. People were eating. People were
drinking. Nobody was dancing. "I don't think this is a dancing
place," he said.

"Come on," she said. "It's dirt. There's
chickens. Who cares?"

"I don't know how to dance to this
stuff."

But Katy was already getting up, her long
body smoothly unfolding. "Please?" she said, holding out her hand.
"I wanna be able to remember that I danced by moonlight in Key
West. Come on—two minutes of your life."

With grave misgivings, Al Tuschman dabbed his
big lips on his napkin, rose on creaky ankles.

Katy stood before him, ballroom style. He
took her hand, which was very cool from cradling her drink. As
lightly as he could, he held her waist. Warmth came through her
shirt, he felt the long muscles that let her bend and rise so
neatly. He silently counted several beats, then they started
dancing. The dance they did was a little like a stiff-kneed samba,
a little like the first foxtrot kids ever learn, sweaty-handed in
the junior high school gym.

They'd danced for maybe thirty seconds, made
it three quarters of the way around their small table, when the
waitress showed up with their plates in either hand, trailing
plumes of fragrant steam.

They dropped their hands and sat back down. A
few people briefly applauded.

Al's face was flushed. His knees tingled and
he was very aware of the pulse in his neck. None of this had to do
with holding Katy in his arms; of that he was quite sure. She had a
plane to catch in an hour and a quarter. She was the mistress of a
jealous bully; she imagined she was finished with him, but chances
were they would drift unwholesomely together once again. Besides,
she wasn't even Al Tuschman's type—that spiky hair, the suspect
lashes matted with mascara. No—this accidental excitement he was
feeling . . . okay, this thrill—it didn't have to do with her. All
it was, was nerves from standing up to dance with people watching.
Neither more nor less than that.

He sipped his margarita and looked across the
table. Katy was smiling broadly above her plate of shrimp. Her eyes
were bright, and sinews stood out in her throat. "That was great,"
she said. "That was the nicest thing I've done down here.
Thanks."

To his amazement and chagrin, Al heard
himself say, "Wanna do it more?"

Katy had just picked up her fork. Now she was
a little bit confused. She looked from Al to her shrimp and back
again.

Himself confused, Al said, "I don't mean
right this second." He seized his knife, cut into his chicken, and
smiled weakly.

They had some bites of food.

"How's the time?" asked Katy. She said it as
neutrally as it could be said, but still there was something like
death in the words.

"Sucks," said Al. "How's the shrimp?"

"Umm," she said. Her mouth was full. She
gestured for him to try some.

He did. He chewed awhile. Then he put his
fork down. He looked at Katy, who was not his type and who, at the
very least, was on an instant messy rebound. But they'd watched the
sun go down together. They'd danced. He'd eaten off her plate.
Knowing that he shouldn't say it, he said, "That plane. You really
wanna go?"

She looked away and wiped her mouth. "Oh,
Jesus. Please don't ask me that."

He sipped his drink. It had lost its chill
and tasted very salty. The tireless musicians played without a
lapse. He said, "Simple question. What's so terrible I'm
asking?"

Katy said nothing. Her fork jabbed toward her
shrimp again, and then it stopped midair.

Al found himself staring at her fingers. He
could see that they were bearing down, blanched around the nails.
He wondered if he was tipsier than he'd realized. Fumbling, he
said, "Look . . . hey, listen ... I don't know exactly how to say
this. I'm not asking you to sleep with me."

Katy only gaped and blinked at that, touched,
relieved, befuddled, and just a little bit insulted all at
once.

"You wanna stay," he rambled, "we could see
the town. Dance. There's a sofa in my room."

Katy dropped her fork, picked up her drink.
"A sofa?" She looked past Al at the shrubbery, the arching palms,
the orange mist around the streetlamps on this rare and humid
night. Incredulous, she said, "You're asking me to be your
roommate?"

Big Al and his rage woke up together from
their nap.

Sitting on the edge of his vacant bed to eat
his room- service steak, he thought angry thoughts that made him
chew so hard he could feel it in the sockets of his teeth. An
infuriating sense of wasted time assailed him. Time wasted on a
moody broad who dragged him away from running his business and then
turned out to be a flaky brat. Katy's betrayal—what else could he
call it?—made him hanker to humiliate her, but it was tough to take
revenge against someone who wasn't there. It called for
ingenuity.

He ate his steak, drank his wine, and thought
it over.

After a while, he dropped his utensils,
mopped his mouth, and pushed away the rolling table, pushed it so
vigorously as to tip the tiny bud vase with its single drooping
orchid.

Leaning to his right, he opened the drawer of
his night table and grabbed the knife he kept always within reach.
It was long and slender with a brushed edge and a razor point, good
for filleting and concealment. The plastic handle was flat and
unobtrusive. The narrow blade slid smartly into a supple leather
sheath; when he wore it on his person it barely made a bulge in his
sock.

He admired the weapon a moment, then leaped
the short distance between his small feet and the floor.
Theatrically, he paused before moving with the measured steps of a
toreador toward Katy's suitcase, still propped up on its stand.
Knife in hand, he contemplated her lingerie, then leaned into a
slow and lewd assault upon it.

He lifted up a lacy bra, severed the
well-formed cups one from the other. He raised a translucent red
negligee, vented it at chest and tummy. He skewered panties, halved
thongs into the shapes of slingshots. He wrestled with stockings,
tatters of nylon falling around him like dark snow. In his
gradually accelerating fury, unsprung clasps and ribbons of spandex
were tossed around the room.

Titillated by his deranged exertions, Big Al
broke into a rutting sweat. He destroyed a final garter belt,
murdered a last chemise, then threw himself into an armchair and
surveyed with pleasure the black and pastel mess he'd made. Let her
come back, he thought, and find
that
.

In the next heartbeat he edited the thought;
in fact, erased it. He wasn't thinking about her coming back. He
didn't want her to come back. He was over it already. He was moving
on.

He'd be going out tonight. Hitting the bars.
Pick up a sex-starved tourist or, failing that, a hooker. Get back
on track, vacationwise. And, just in case his former girlfriend
Katy happened to swing by to retrieve her things, let her find him
with someone else. Let her see how easily replaced she was, how
little she'd really mattered.

*

Katy and Al Tuschman finished up their
dinner, then lingered over coffee to hear the island music and
watch the chickens scratching in the dirt.

By the time they left the courtyard, it was
well after nine. Heading for Duval Street, they slowly pedaled
their borrowed bikes through air the temperature of skin. Katy now
and then heard airplanes flying in and flying out, wondered which
one she was supposed to be on. She was surprised at herself for
staying; more surprised to have been invited. Now and then she
stole a look at Al, wobbling along beside her with his dog in his
basket. Straightforward, decent, he was just the sort of man she'd
forgotten how to understand. Grateful for his gallantry, she told
herself that when they parked the bikes and walked, it would be
nice to take his arm. But she doubted she would really do it
because she doubted that he wanted her to. That's how much she
didn't understand him.

Duval Street was crowded and it gleamed with
the ghoulish colors of humming neon. Drunks weaved among tourists
trying to be drunk. Southern girls strutted by in tight lace
shirts, their piled hair fighting off the dampness.

Al and Katy locked their bikes to a tree. Al
bent down to tie his shih tzu to a parking meter. The dog looked at
him with resignation and maybe just a hint of blame. They picked a
bar more or less at random.

The place had music but no dancing. After a
while Katy tapped Al on the back of his hand. He was looking at the
bandstand, he hadn't expected to be touched, and he jumped a little
bit. "Still wanna dance?" she shouted.

He did, but the truth was that his nerve had
been eroding. Dancing at Coco's was one thing—it had just happened.
Now he was planning to dance. This was different. "First let's have
another drink," he shouted back.

Around eleven they were on the sidewalk once
again. Retrieved the yawning dog. Left the bikes and strolled up
the still-mobbed street. Katy thought to take Al's arm but didn't.
After a couple of blocks they saw, reflected on parked cars and
cafe umbrellas, the edgy, shattered light of a disco ball. They
traced the flecks of glare to a second-floor club above an outdoor
restaurant. Katy looked at Al. Al swallowed hard, wrapped Fifi's
leash around a bike rack.