Bob lifts one hand from the steering wheel and flips a wave at Ave on the terrace above. Ave makes a signal for him to stop, and Bob brakes the car and gets out. The sun is behind Ave’s head, and Bob visors his eyes with the flat of his hand. “What’s up?”
“You have a party this morning?”
“Yeah. Four guys.”
“How was it?”
“Okay. Buncha trout and redfish from out by Twin Key Bank.”
“No bonefish?”
“They wanted stuff they could land. You know.”
“Assholes.”
“Yeah.”
Ave takes a sip from his drink. “We gotta talk soon, Bob,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’ve been going out—what—three, four half days a week, maybe a full day now and then?”
“Yeah. Now and then.”
“This time of year, we should be booked solid three weeks in advance, seven days a week.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s the recession, I guess,” Bob says in a low voice. “The fucking Arabs.”
“How’re you making it, buddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Dollar-wise.”
“Oh, okay,” Bob says. “Fine, actually. Listen, I gotta get home. Ruthie’s been sick.”
“Okay, sure. We’ll talk, though, right?”
“Yeah, sure. We’ll talk,” Bob says, and he slides back into the car, closes the door and slowly drives away, out the sandy, unpaved lane toward the highway, past the piles of steel rods and mesh, cinder blocks, sand and building materials stacked for the second condominium building. The developers from Miami have plans for a half-dozen buildings, forty apartments to a building, and a shopping center, a much improved and enlarged marina and restaurant, a nightclub, a nine-hole golf course, until the entire island has been stripped and laid out, covered over from the bay to the gulf with buildings, pavement and small plots of cropped grass kept fresh and minty green by slowly turning sprinklers.
Bob turns left onto Route 1, crosses the bridge onto Upper Matecumbe, and a few miles down the road, just south of Islamorada, turns right onto a bumpy dirt road not much wider than a path. He drives through clumps of shrubby saw palmetto trees and bitterbrush for a quarter mile, to a clearing near the water, where he parks his car in front of one of three rusting, flaking house trailers situated on cinder blocks in no discernible relation to one another or the landscape. All three trailers have tall, wobbly-looking rooftop television antennas with guy wires staked to the ground. Scattered around the trailers are several rusted car chassis, old tires, tossed-out kitchen appliances, children’s toys and bicycles, a broken picnic table, a dinghy on sawhorses with a huge, ragged hole in it, a baby carriage with three wheels.
When Bob gets out of his car, a mangy German shepherd tied on a short rope to a cinder block under one corner of the trailer across the road stands and barks ferociously. Leaning down, Bob picks up a small chunk of coral rock and tosses it feebly in the direction of the dog, and the animal slinks back to the trailer and crawls underneath it.
A paunchy, middle-aged woman sitting on the stoop of the third trailer drawls, “Don’t let ol’ Horace catch you doin’ like that, Bob. He’d as soon you tossed rocks at his wife instead of his dog.” She’s wearing a wavy ash-blond wig, a pink cotton halter, and aqua shorts that cut into the flesh of her thighs. She’s smoking a cigarette and sits spread-legged, her elbows on her knees, a king-sized can of Colt 45 on the step next to her. “Hot,” she says. “Ain’t it.”
“Yeah, for January.”
“Inside, I mean. Wait’ll you go in. Elaine and the girls, all of ’em, they went swimming up the beach early, so your place’s been closed up all morning.”
Bob thinks, That’s good; he’ll be alone. He can drink a cold beer, maybe make himself a sandwich and take a nap. The trailer is small, thirty-three by ten feet, with one bedroom in the back and a closet-sized cubicle off it for Bob junior, or Robbie, as they’ve started calling him. Bob and Elaine sleep in the living room on a convertible sofa, and from the foot of the sofa, when it’s pulled into a bed, Bob can reach over the kitchen counter and open the refrigerator, turn on the propane stove, run water in the sink.
“She say when they was coming back?” Bob asks the woman, whose name is Allie Hubbell. She’s divorced, makes her living selling beadwork and shell jewelry to tourist shops along the Keys, lives alone and sometimes reminds Bob of his old New Hampshire girlfriend, Doris Cleeve, although Allie is about ten years older and, according to Elaine, may be a lesbian. “Why else would a nice, attractive woman her age live like that, all alone?” Elaine said impatiently, as if offering him a self-evident truth. Lots of reasons, Bob wanted to answer, but he didn’t say anything, because he was thinking of Doris Cleeve.
Bob doesn’t know why Allie brings back to his mind the image of Doris, sharp memories of those brief, heated visits to her dingy, small flat above Irwin’s bar in Catamount, unless it’s because, to him, both women seem to be waiting for another kind of life to come to them. Their good-natured passivity pleases Bob, and he almost envies them for it, as if it were a kind of wisdom they possess. This mixture in him of pleasure and near-envy was what lay behind his sexual attraction to Doris, and it works on him as well with Allie. It’s an easy attraction to resist (though he’s never resisted it), for there’s almost no erotic power to it, none of the deep, frightening curiosity that fed his hunger for Marguerite, none of the wonderful fear that the woman might expose him to depths and sides of himself that he does not know exist.
“No, she didn’t say when she’d be back, but probably not till late, what with the heat and all. Horace give ’em a ride up,” Allie says.
“Hah,” Bob says. “Nice of him.”
Allie smiles knowingly. “You don’t hafta worry none about Horace. He talks big and makes lotsa noise when it comes to women, but that’s all. Besides,” she says, “you and Horace ain’t in the same league. You got class, he’s … well, you know.”
“Yeah. He’s the kinda guy who calls this junkyard of his a trailer park,” Bob says, sweeping his hand in a half circle around him. “Some park.”
Allie has removed her wig and placed it on the step next to her can of beer, where it looks like a sleeping, long-haired pet. “Thing’s hot, like wearing one of them ski hats.” Her hair is cut short, is straight and black, streaked with gray.
“You got good hair, Allie. You oughta let people see it.”
“Think so?” She brushes the nape of her neck with one hand, reaches for the beer with the other. “Makes me look older’n I already am, is what I think.”
“Naw. Makes you look more sophisticated.”
“Think so, eh? Sophisticated.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bob says, backing away from his door and stepping to the ground. “Horace and his wife around?” he asks, peering over at the battered, junk-crowded trailer across the lane. The dog has crawled out from under the trailer again, and with his snout between his front paws, watches Bob carefully. The air is still, and the saw palmetto trees droop in the heat. Beyond Allie’s trailer, the pale limestone ledge of the key drops off directly into the water, where, from the shore to nearly a quarter mile out, coral heads emerge at low tide, dripping and alive with sea urchins and hermit crabs. The tide is coming in now, but the water rises slowly, without waves, like a bathtub being filled, and one by one the dark clumps of coral get swallowed by a tepid, dark green sea. In the distance along the southern horizon, gray-topped cumulus clouds heap up against the sky and promise rain by nightfall.
Allie flicks her cigarette butt onto the sand in front of her, then runs her fingers through her short hair, loosening and lifting it. “No, they both went out this morning, when Horace give your wife and kids a ride to the beach. Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”
Bob has crossed the lane from his trailer and has approached to within a few feet of Allie, when he stops short, crosses his arms over his chest and says, “
You remind me of an old girlfriend of mine. A real nice woman, she was. Probably still is.”
“That so? From up north?”
“Yeah. New Hampshire.”
“Your wife knows about her, this woman you’re comparing me to, this old girlfriend of yours?”
“No, she never knew. It wasn’t a real big thing anyhow.”
“But you’re telling me about her now. Because I remind you of her.” Allie has large, sad, dark blue eyes that turn down at the corners, a narrow-browed Irish face with tight mouth, long jaw, pale skin. “Did she look like me, or what?”
“No, nothing like you at all. I don’t know, it’s just something about the way you talk, how you’re so relaxed and easy, maybe. Actually, you’re both kind of sexy in the same way,” he blurts. “It’s hard to describe,” he adds, almost as an apology, wondering suddenly if she is in fact, as Elaine wants to believe she is, a lesbian, wondering if therefore she finds his compliments offensive, because after all, he tells himself, he’s not propositioning her or anything, he’s not asking her to fuck him, he’s just complimenting her, that’s all, which he is sure doesn’t happen to her every day, since she’s not what most men would ordinarily think of as attractive or sexy. Still, to him, she is sexy. So why not tell her so? Even if she is a lesbian. Hell, it’s better that way; it’s better if she’s a lesbian.
Allie’s eyes are wide open now, her breathing is tight and quick, and leaning forward toward Bob, her hands clasped to her knees, she says, “Well, I think you’re pretty sexy yourself, mister. If you want to know the truth.”
“You do?” Bob smiles.
Allie stands up and looks around the yard with care, at the faded gray trailer next to hers, over at Bob’s salt-pitted, lemon-yellow trailer, into the trees and shrubs and out along the sandy lane. A pair of egrets with gray bodies and rust-colored heads and serpentine necks, eyes like agates, legs like bamboo stalks, stroll watchfully along the shore. Allie says, “You want to come inside, Bob?”
“What?”
“You want to come inside awhile? With me?”
Suddenly he understands what he’s done, and at first he’s ashamed of himself. He’s not surprised, however, by anything that’s happened, by anything he’s said or she’s said, and he’s not surprised that now she’s inviting him inside so he can fuck her. But he feels the way he did an hour ago, when he brought in the Belinda Blue and ran for his car, though he cannot fully explain to himself why he feels that way—like a liar and a fool, a man who has ruined his own life and has no one to blame but himself.
A moment before, talking to Allie about Doris Cleeve, flirting a little, sure, and curious, he’d felt good, a normal man chatting up the woman across the way, nothing serious, nothing dangerous to either of them, certainly nothing cruel. But now he’s got to say no to her, and he’s never said no to a woman before. He asked for something, and now he’s received it, and it’s turned out to be undesirable to him. The problem lies in asking in the first place, he suddenly realizes. Not that he can’t imagine fucking Allie Hubbell; he could do it if he had to. But he knows, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he’s supposed to want to fuck her, and her in particular. Jesus, he thinks, if you can control what a man wants, you can control everything he does. “Listen, Allie, I … I’m really sorry. I better go on home, okay?” He turns and steps away, looking back over his shoulder, as if a little afraid of her.
“Yeah,” she says. “See you later.” She sits back down on the stoop, places her elbows on her knees again and watches Bob make his retreat.
3
It’s hot and stuffy inside the trailer, and in Bob’s dream he’s aboard an airplane, a long, narrow commercial jet. He’s seated alone, somewhere near the middle, with seats on both sides, and the interior of the plane is hot and moist, almost as if he were underwater. He struggles with the overhead controls, trying to turn on the fan, but nothing happens, and he gives up. There’s no evidence of a crew, no attendants and no other passengers. He’s waiting for takeoff, he knows, though there’s no reason he should know this, no particular indications of it. He looks out the rain-obscured window along the wing to the engines, which are silent, cold. Suddenly it comes to him—everyone’s abandoned this plane for another, the crew, the attendants, all the other passengers. This plane has mechanical problems, faulty wiring, a fuel leak, trouble with the hydraulic systems, and in fact it may blow up any second. No wonder they swapped it for another. He smells smoke. Sweating, terrified, he struggles to get out of his seat, to flee the plane and join the others. But he can’t get out of his seat. It holds him down, hugs him around the waist, where he’s clamped by a seat belt. He laughs at his own stupidity and unhooks the seat belt, tries to rise, but as before, he can’t move. The smell of smoke is stronger now, almost like burned wiring. He knows the plane is about to explode. He wrestles the belt loose a second time and lurches away from his seat, but he still can’t get free of it. He calls out for help, Help! Help! He fiddles with the belt buckle, twists and yanks at it, zips down his fly, feels his penis, a prick, erect, large, and a flash of pride and relief passes through him, when he remembers that he’s got to forget his prick, he’s got to get out of this plane before it explodes and tears him into a thousand bits of flesh and bone. He lets go of his penis, pats it back into his underpants and zips up his fly. Calmly, rationally, he unlocks the seat belt, and it comes free. The smoke and heat are now dense, heavy, dark, and he gropes his way forward, feeling his way along the aisle between the seats, when he is aware that, as he passes each row of seats, he’s patting people on the shoulder, a man, a woman, another man, all of them dressed in Sunday suits and dresses, the men with neckties, the women with hats. He’s in church, St. Peter’s in Catamount, and it’s a funeral service. He sees the white coffin in front of the altar, the lid raised, and as he nears, he knows that he will look in, and he’ll see his mother’s face, her dead face. He can’t imagine what she will look like. He did not look into the coffin when they had the funeral in Catamount, though he pretended to. He just dipped his head and kept his eyes closed. But this time he will look, as he’s very curious now, and also he knows that everyone wants him to look—his brother Eddie, who wasn’t afraid of looking, and his father, who died the year before his mother did but was given a closed-casket service, closed because of his wife’s wishes, for she insisted she did not want her memory of the man alive tainted by the sight of him dead. Elaine wants him to look into the coffin too. She’s right behind him in line, prodding him, nudging him on, saying, Go on, Bob, you can do it. You should do it. He smells smoke again, a foul, acidic smell, an electrical fire somewhere, he knows, probably in the coffin, in the wiring of his mother’s body, put there by the undertakers, the Webb Brothers that Eddie insisted on hiring for the job. Fire! he shouts, and he grabs at the font to the right of the coffin, lifts it and empties the water into the coffin, pours holy water over the maze of smoldering wires and wheels, cables, shafts and belts, putting out the fire and saving everyone on the plane. His father comes forward and pats him on the shoulder. Good work, Bob, he says in his gruff voice. Eddie comes up behind him and catches him by the elbow. Way to go, kid. Way to go. Elaine and the girls and little Robbie look up at him from their seats, their eyes wide with love and gratitude, their small, delicate bodies strapped tightly into their seats. There’s still a foul, wet, smoky smell coming from the coffin, and Bob reaches out and brings down the top of the coffin with a bang.
Elaine is home, and the screened door slaps shut behind her, opens again and slams as each of the girls follows her inside. “Oh, Jesus, Bob!” Elaine cries. “You left the stove on!” She rushes to the stove, grabs at a smoking pan, yelps in pain, snatches a potholder and takes the pan off the stove. She tosses it into the sink and turns on the water, shouting to the girls, “Open the windows! Get the windows open!” The pan hisses and smolders in the sink, while Emma and Ruthie race through the trailer opening windows. Elaine turns off the stove, shifts the baby aro
und from her hip, where he’s been riding, terrified and silent, and begins to comfort him. “There, there, honey, everything’s okay now, everything’s okay.”
Then the girls are back, Ruthie sucking intently on her thumb, her younger sister prowling through the refrigerator. “I’m hungry, Mama. I want somethin’ t’ eat,” she whines. Ruthie stands off to one side of Bob, works her thumb and drifts into a dreamy-eyed state that in recent weeks has come to be characteristic, though Bob has not seen that yet. To him, her thumb-sucking and dazed expression and silence are merely embarrassing and somewhat irritating, and he treats her behavior as if she were doing these things on purpose, just to antagonize him.
Elaine says quietly, “Ruthie, please, take your thumb out.” Then, to Bob, who has swung his legs off the couch, planted his feet on the linoleum-covered floor and squared to face her: “You could die that way, Bob, falling asleep with a pan on the stove. Asphyxiated in your sleep. It’s lucky I came home when I did….”
“I forgot. I was warming up some hash, you know? And I was tired, so I just lay down for a minute, and then, pop, I was gone.”
Continental Drift Page 28
