Nacho Unleashed

by Laurence Shames

  “Never get discouraged!” he shot back. “Or at least don’t be in such a hurry about it. You’ll have years and years to get discouraged. Trust me on that. So take your time. Savor it.”

  Resignedly, she opened the paper again. She tried to do it with an emphatic snap, but the pages had gotten mushy from the humidity and failed to make that nice crisp sound. “Okay, here’s another one. Hey, wait, this one actually looks promising. Grow With Us! New Business at Key West Bight Seeks Vibrant, Curious Person Eager to Learn. Experience Less Important Than Attitude. Challenging Work With a Harbor View. Wow,” she said, “does that sound custom-made for me, or what?”

  “Sounds perfect,” said Albin. “But just a small detail. Does it mention what the job or the business actually is?”

  “Yeah, hang on, there’s more. Entry-Level Tasting Room Associate. Apply in Person A.M. at Wreckers Rum.”

  “Ah.” He said nothing more, and he tried to keep his encouraging smile in place, but his luxuriant silver eyebrows sagged for just a heartbeat.

  “Something wrong about that, Albin?”

  “Hm?” he said, trying, impossibly, to undo the impression he’d just given. “No, not at all. Sounds like a good fit. I expect it would be fine.”

  “You didn’t look so happy,” she pressed.

  “Look, it’s fine. I don’t know anything about that business. It’s just that, well, one of the people involved is not my favorite person.”

  “Oh, great. And he’d be, like, my boss?”

  “Look, I really don’t know the details. The person I know is the owner. Or maybe just one of the owners. I’m really not sure. And he’s based up in Miami, so who knows if you’d even meet him. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

  “You didn’t,” she pointed out. “It showed in your face. Why don’t you like this guy?”

  “Let’s not even go there. Doesn’t matter. Call it a personality clash. Happens in life, you know.”

  “Old boyfriend, maybe?”

  “Rita, please, let’s have a little decorum here.”

  “Fuck decorum,” she said. “Where’s it get ya? And, come on, you like gossip as much as I do.”

  “Maybe even more,” he confessed in turn. “But no, not that it’s any of your business, not an old boyfriend, absolutely not. Frankly, that’s about the most disgusting thing I could imagine. So, can we please move on?” He bit into his toast. The toast had gotten as soggy as the newspaper.

  After a moment of deciding—one of those moments that seem perfectly ordinary at the time, and life-changing only in retrospect—Rita put aside the classifieds, smoothly swiveled on her backside to pull her legs out of the water, stood up, and casually blotted her wet feet on the sports section. “Well, I’m going to apply,” she said. “Probably a wasted morning, but what the hell.”

  2

  T he yellow cottage was anything but fancy, but it had a haphazard, thrown-together charm that suited Rita fine; perfectly, in fact. The place was honest; it looked like what it was: A first stop or passing-through place. To those for whom Key West turned out to be an episode but not a destiny, the yellow cottage served as an easy and even iconic way-station on the path to somewhere else. But for those who truly caught the Key West bug and stuck around, the threadbare little place would have the remembered sweetness of a setting where they first fell in love.

  Either way, the premises came with a three-month lease and no commitment whatsoever. There was cracked wicker furniture, painted white except for the places where it had been rubbed to brown again, with floral upholstery whose colors were bright or dull depending on how much sunshine had slanted through the louvered windows to bleach them out. In the kitchen, no two plates or glasses were quite the same. The bedroom had a leaning dresser with one foot propped up on an unsteady shim, and a smallish double bed that sagged so steeply toward the center that it seemed like the bastard child of a mattress and a hammock. Since Rita had no plans to share it anytime soon, she found it really pretty comfy.

  Now, standing in front of the wavy mirror that topped the dresser, she pulled on a pale green sundress and sandals with low heels, then climbed onto the old clunker of a bicycle she’d recently bought for thirty bucks, put her resume in the rusty wire basket that dangled crookedly from its handlebars, and pedaled off to apply for the tasting room job.

  Her route took her across stubbornly ungentrified Truman Avenue with its strip clubs and perennially failing music shops, and through the above-ground cemetery where corpses were stacked in expandable family tombs that looked like file cabinets with no handles. On the far side of the graveyard, the houses had gorgeous pastel shutters and deep porches with swings and rocking chairs; then, closer to the waterfront, the Key West that locals lived in seamlessly phased over into the Key West that the tourists saw. At the Bight, long ago center of the shrimping trade, the spiffily refurbished wharves still looked out at sailboats and fishing skiffs and green water, but now were home to a growing colony of bars and restaurants and souvenir shops and galleries.

  The Wreckers Rum tasting room was a relatively narrow storefront tucked in between a seashell emporium and a place that sold paintings of smiling fish. It had a dark wood entranceway made to look old; there was a logo of a schooner in gold leaf on the door.

  There was also a sign that said Closed. But it was eleven-thirty and the ad had said Apply A.M., so Rita knocked anyway.

  After a moment she heard some shuffling around inside and then the door was opened by a man around thirty-five or so who had a pleasant face but was a bit of a mess. He was unshaved and had a wicked case of bed-head on one side. His shirt was rumpled, its tails hanging over the waistband of khaki shorts that looked like they’d been picked up off the floor. She said, “Hi, I’m here about the job. You the manager?”

  She said it as neutrally as she could, but there must have been something dubious in her tone that made him gesture toward his ungroomed face and wrinkled clothes. “Guess I don’t look much like the manager, but yeah, I’m the manager. Name’s Blake.”

  He extended a hand and invited her in.

  “Sorry to be a little grungy and discombobulated this morning,” he went on. “Had a really rough night last night.”

  “Partying?” she asked. It seemed the natural guess.

  “I wish. No. Had a feral cat in heat right underneath my window. Shrieking went on all night, like a really bad porn flick that just won’t end. Then the roosters started. Cats then roosters. Sex-crazed animals. Hardly slept at all. I love this town. Did you bring a resume?”

  She handed him a piece of paper. He motioned for her to sit across from him on a high stool while he read it. She looked around in the meantime. Teak bar, clean mirrors. Tidy rows of amber bottles. On the walls, etchings of old sailing ships and steamers running up on reefs.

  After a minute or so, he looked up from the resume, ran a hand through his tangled hair, and said, “Have to admit I’ve never seen one quite like this before. Seven semesters of college spread out over six years. Three different schools. Four different majors.”

  “I get bored easy,” Rita explained.

  “Easily,” said Blake.

  “Yes, that would be the adverbial form, as distinct from the adjectival. I’m aware of that, thank you very much. One of my majors was English. But I’m from Jersey and I prefer to talk the way I talk. You got a problem with that? If you got a problem with that, I guess I should just leave now.”

  She started sliding down from the stool.

  He rubbed his temples and the tired skin scrunched up around his fingers. “Hold on, hold on, don’t be so touchy. Did I say I got…have…a problem with it? I don’t have a problem with it. Be yourself. It’s fine. Can we please continue the interview?”

  She pressed her lips together, inched back up onto the stool. He looked down at the resume again.

  “Quite an assortment of jobs,” he said. “Stage-manager Off-Off Broadway. Counselor at a Boys and Girls Club. Orderly in a mental hospi
tal.”

  “Those went with my other majors,” Rita said. “Drama, Sociology, Psychology.”

  He rattled off some more. “Assistant car mechanic, short-order cook, apprentice carpenter.”

  “Those didn’t go with any majors. I just had rent to pay. Look, I know what you’re probably thinking. This chick burns through a helluva lot of jobs. Fair enough. But just for the record, I’ve never been fired, I’ve never quit without giving fair notice, and I’ve never left on bad terms.”

  “You just leave,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s correct. So far at least. I just leave.”

  He put aside the piece of paper and looked at Rita in a way that made him realize he hadn’t really looked at her before. Maybe he was finally waking up, or maybe he was now looking at her as a person rather than just an applicant. After a pause, he said, “Can I ask you why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you’ve left all those jobs.”

  “Oh, different reasons different times.”

  “Right. I’m sure. But why always?”

  She hesitated.

  He said, “Look, I’m asking because I’m just plain curious. If you think it’s none of my business—”

  “Nah,” she said, “it’s fine. I don’t mind. I ask myself the same thing all the time. It’s a tough one. The closest I get to an answer is that I sometimes get this weird feeling that my life hasn’t exactly started yet, not really. Like everything I’ve done so far—school, jobs, dating—is just sort of a warm-up, an intro, a rehearsal. Know what I mean?”

  The unkempt manager splayed his hands out on his bare knees and blew some air between his lips in what wasn’t quite a laugh. “Do I know? Hell, yes. Some days I feel that too, and I’m almost freakin’ forty, with a degree from Penn and parents back in Pittsburgh who are completely baffled about what the hell I’m doing with my life.”

  “Well, okay, so you understand. Plus it makes me feel better that I’m not the only one blundering through. Thanks for sharing.”

  Blake scratched his unshaven neck. “Probably I shouldn’t have. I mean, I’m supposed to be the interviewer, right? So anyway, about your always leaving—”

  “Right. What happens is I get to a point where I feel like this or that job or this or that romance isn’t gonna get me over the hump to feeling like a grown-up, and at that point it just feels like a waste of time, even if I kind of like the job or the person or whatever, so I leave.”

  “And you’d probably leave this one too,” said Blake.

  “Yeah, probably,” she admitted. She gave a little shrug and swiveled to look out the front window. Boats were bobbing. A few plump clouds were pegged on top of masts. They looked like potatoes on campfire sticks. “But the view sure is nice.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  After a moment more of gazing, she said, “But look, what I’m hoping is that I wouldn’t leave. I mean, that’s what I’m looking for. Something I wouldn’t just walk away from so easy.”

  “Easily.” This was meant to be ignored and she ignored it.

  “Something where I could learn stuff, that would lead somewhere.”

  He hesitated a few seconds, then climbed down from his bar stool and seemed to notice for the first time that his shirt was misbuttoned. He stuffed the uneven tails under the belt of his rumpled shorts and labored to connect with the overqualified, underachieving, professional self who he knew was buried in there somewhere beneath the wrinkles and the stains. “Know anything about rum?” he asked.

  “Zero,” she admitted, “except that when I used to drink underage and work really hard at feeling drunk I liked it mixed with Coke.”

  He winced. “Let’s let that be our little secret. Here at Wreckers, we don’t mix our rum with Coke. Ever. Or at least we don’t admit it. And we don’t just toss it back to get drunk. Or at least we don’t admit that either. We sip it appreciatively and in moderation, savoring it as the world-class booze that it is.”

  She bit her lip and looked down at her lap. “So I just blew the interview? One stinking rum and Coke and I blew it?”

  “No. You didn’t blow it. But listen, Rita, cards on the table, okay? I hate hiring and training people. It’s a real pain in the ass, and I don’t want to be doing it again two weeks or two months from now. If I give you a tryout, will you stay a while?”

  “If I’m learning stuff, yeah.”

  “Can I trust that?”

  Her dark blue eyes didn’t blink and didn’t waver. “You can always trust what I say. You might not like it but you can trust it.”

  “Okay, deal. You get a tryout.”

  He smiled. She smiled. It was always nice to be hired. There was always hope in those moments.

  “There’s plenty to be learned here,” the manager went on, “and some of it’s pretty damn interesting. But it takes time. And meanwhile, don’t kid yourself, the tasting room is a tough job. Place like this, you meet all kinds.”

  “Excellent. Perfect.”

  “There’ll be people who think they know everything. People who know nothing and are proud of it. Guys’ll hit on you, drunks’ll get nasty when you cut them off. There’ll be bachelorettes getting stupider and stupider and cruder and cruder until someone laughs so hard that she throws up on the bar. I mean, people can get really obnoxious in here. Think you can handle it?”

  Rita folded her hands over one knee, leaned far forward, and smiled sweetly. “Blake, if you’d ever met my family, you wouldn’t need to ask me that.”

  3

  B y the time Rita left the tasting room, she was weighted down with a stack of Wreckers Rum brochures, a pile of fact sheets about distilling, and a long list of suggestions for further reading. She headed home to start cramming for her tryout, but something was nagging at her, so when she got back to the compound she dropped off her materials at the yellow cottage then skirted the pool and hot tub and went straight to Albin’s place.

  His front door was wide open, as it generally was, so she just stood on the threshold and said, “Knock, knock. Got a couple minutes, Albin?”

  “For you, my dear, always,” came a mellow voice from the cool dimness inside. “But hang on just a sec. I’m working on my suicide note.”

  Suicide note? He said this in a completely calm and ordinary tone, but Rita had read somewhere that suicides often experience a profound serenity in the moment just before the fatal act. In a dizzying instant she pictured her new friend holding a gun against his temple or wrestling his big, squarish head into a noose. Panicked, bent on rescue, she bounded into the living room. “Albin! Don’t!”

  He looked up from the velvet settee where he was sitting. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t…kill yourself.”

  He blinked then gestured toward a side table that held a plate of small sandwiches with the crust cut off. “Don’t be absurd, my dear. Do I look like a man about to kill himself? I haven’t had my lunch.”

  Confused, adrenaline still coursing, she said, “But you said you were working on your suicide note.”

  His big leather book was spread across his lap. He ran his fingertips across a page. “Well, yes, I am.”

  “So you’re thinking about it. Suicide, I mean?”

  “Certainly. Doesn’t everybody? Occasionally at least. En passant, as they say.”

  “Who says that, Albin? I don’t know anyone who says that.”

  “It’s only natural. Would you like some tea? A sandwich?”

  “A sandwich? Albin, I can’t eat while you sit there writing your farewell to life.”

  “Not to worry,” he said. “I’ve been writing it for twenty years. Hope to keep it going twenty more. Never fails to cheer me up.”

  “That seems a little morbid if ya don’t mind me sayin’.”

  “Morbid? Not at all. Perhaps it seems that way to you, my dear, because you are in that lovely sweet spot between adolescence, when life seems very tragic, and old age, when it sometimes just feels a little long. No, the note�
�s a joy and a relief. I’ll kill myself when it’s finished, but I’m a very slow writer. So, please, no drama, relax, sit down.”

  Still trying to calm herself, she sat down on the edge of a bentwood chair that was part of Albin’s Balinese motif. That his place had a motif at all, of course, made it completely the opposite of the yellow cottage. Albin’s place looked permanent. It was a home. The things in it had been hand-picked. They matched. The rug went with the settee; on a low rosewood table in front of it stood a resplendent bowl of mangoes and papayas. There were some gold screens and a couple of gongs spread around. But Rita couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from the big leather suicide book. “So, what kind of stuff you write in it?” she asked.

  “Oh, whatever. Just now I was compiling a list of some of the many things I haven’t got around to doing and never will. For instance, riding a luge. In fact, I don’t even know what a luge is, exactly, or how it differs from a bobsled. I only know I’ve never ridden either of them. Or conducted an orchestra. Or hired a Sherpa. How does one even hire a Sherpa? Do you just show up in Kathmandu and drive to a Home Depot or something? Anyway, my point, if I have a point, and I think I have a point, is that maybe life is just too damn rich for it’s own good. I mean, no matter how richly you live it, how open you are to different things, there’s inevitably so much more that goes undone than done. It’s sort of—”

  He didn’t get to say what it sort of was, because just then some Mozart started to play. Albin’s ringtone. He made an apologetic gesture and took the call. Rita leaned back on her Balinese cushion. Her head brushed against a gong and it gave off a low soothing sound, more a hum than a bang.

  For some moments Albin just held the phone and made faces, then he said mildly, “No, I’m not interested, thank you, and for your information I’m on the Do Not Call list, and I happen to be the sole caregiver of a terminally ill grandchild, and if you ever call me again I will instruct my attorneys to hold you personally liable. Goodbye.” He clicked out of the call and said, “Damn telemarketers. I knew it was one of those.”