Tropical Depression

by Laurence Shames

  That one Ponte liked. His upper lip pulled back, showing jagged pointy teeth. "You can do that, Bahney?"

  "Maybe," said the politician. "It's city, not state. But what's that quaint saying you people have? One hand washes the other."

  Ponte sipped bourbon, felt placated until he thought again of his hundred-thousand-dollar payoff, saw the neatly bundled bills flying out the window. "And how long is this persuading gonna take?"

  LaRue put on that mah-jongg smile, shrugged. "He's a stubborn man."

  "So am I," said Ponte, rising from the chair that Bruno swiftly moved to hold for him. "Remember that. You owe me some results."

  *****

  Shirtless now, hunkered on the sofa with the nautical stripe, Murray cradled the phone against his shoulder and related to his shrink, in great detail, the saga of the past thirty hours of his life. At the close of the story, Max Lowenstein came forth with a soft and perhaps involuntary "Qy."

  "Oy?" protested Murray. "What oy? Max, for months you've been telling me I'm depressed, I'm in a rut, I should do something for myself—"

  "But these decisions, Murray, they're so abrupt, so radical."

  "Rebirth is radical, Max—what could I tell ya? You should be happy for me, I feel alive again. Believe me, everything's under control."

  "Oy," the doctor said again, this time more emphatically. Everything's under control. That was classic Prozac-speak. It was what patients tended to say in that sometimes brief euphoric moment after the depression had lifted and just as they were poised to go manically careening like a Frisbee in a gale. Everything's under control they said, then went out into traffic and started handing out hundred-dollar bills. Everything's under control, then they climbed onto the sills of thirtieth-story windows because such great bliss could surely fly. "Murray, have you found a doctor down there?"

  "I just got here, I've barely found the bathroom—"

  "You need monitoring, Murray. The medication, it can be volatile."

  The Bra King paused and swallowed. Something tasted off in his saliva, it had the stony taste of sudden fear. "Max, you trying to scare me, wha'?"

  "I'm only trying to keep you on track. In touch."

  Murray's shoulders slumped. It was disheartening to have somebody tell you you were not as happy as you thought you were, and to know in your heart he was right. The Bra King looked through the open doors to the rectangle of sunshine beyond the balcony. The light was glary, over-bright, colors burned off into scorching white just as, hardly more than a day before, they had murked and muddied into gray. For one bleak moment Murray believed that things would never, ever find their balance, never, ever be the way they ought to be.

  His shrink's soft voice broke the gloomy silence. "What will you do there? Do you have friends, family, activities?"

  Thanks to Les Kantor, Murray now had an answer to this question. "I'm gonna fish."

  "Fish?"

  "Yeah, fish. Go fishing."

  The psychiatrist paused, Murray could see his hand ascending toward his bearded chin. "That's interesting. In all the years I've known you, Murray, I don't think you've ever once mentioned an outdoor activity."

  "I sell bras, Max. Bras are, like, an indoor activity."

  Another silence. Then: "I have an idea. Visualize something for me, Murray. Your finger on the fishing line, the fishing line going in the water. See it'"

  Murray closed his eyes. "I see it. I see it."

  "When you were depressed," said Max Lowenstein, "you didn't have enough voltage in your brain. Now I'm concerned you're having a little bit too much. The fishing line, it's going to be your ground wire, it's going to carry off the excess. You see what I'm saying?"

  Murray pictured little lightning bolts throbbing in his head then coursing down his arm, escaping through his index finger and pulsing along his fishing line, sizzling softly as they flashed into the ocean and illuminated snapshots of big-eyed incandescent fish. "I see it, Max," he murmured. "I like it."

  "Good," said the psychiatrist, "good." His voice dropped off to a slurred mesmeric whisper that was the perfect background music for his patient's deep fatigue. "Fish, Murray. And let that extra electricity escape into the ocean. And stay in touch, let me hear how you're doing."

  Murray only nodded. His eyes were still closed and he forgot that he was on the phone. Blindly, he managed to hang up, and in seconds he was asleep there on the sofa, dreaming of tiny lightning bolts hissing like matches doused in a shallow sea crammed full of finned and smiling creatures.

  5

  On White Street Pier, a Spanish guy held a chicken head by its still-oozing neck, put it in a crab trap. A pelican stood on the rail between two fishermen, looking for a handout of bait or guts. An old man in a captain's hat squinted at the crisp horizon and took readings with a sextant.

  Uneasily, Murray walked among them, his brand- new tackle box in one hand, his brand-new fishing rod in the other, and tried to look like he belonged. He found a place with some elbow room on either side of him, leaned his rod against the railing, and tried to figure out what the hell to do next.

  This fishing business—he wasn't sure it was such a hot idea, but then again, it had already saved him from some anguish. He'd woken from a couple hours' sleep, dry-mouthed, barely knowing where he was. The cobwebs blew away, and behind them there was mania simmering like an empty stomach, and Murray had nothing to feed it, nothing to do. Thank God he thought of fishing, and the notion, for the moment, had given him purpose and a destination. He'd got in the scratched-up car, found a tackle store. He'd talked to a salesman, spent some money, got a bunch of fuchsia lead-heads and yellow tubes and things with little feather skirts and painted happy faces. Now he was here, a beautiful place, the sun going down in back of sailboats, schooners; people around, a local feel, some action. If only he could figure out how to open the clip the salesman had tied on for him ...

  He was going cross-eyed trying to dissect the logic of the tiny mechanism, when he heard a voice, a not at all friendly voice, say: "You're standing in my spot."

  He looked up to see that morning's pissed-off Indian, sitting on a bicycle, supporting himself with a thick-wristed rosewood hand against the rail. For an instant the Indian didn't seem to remember Murray, then it seemed he did, and his gaze got even stonier.

  Meekly, Murray met his eyes and felt the baffled misery of the newcomer who doesn't know the rules and is afflicted at every moment by the nauseating fear that he will make some irreparable gaffe and spoil forever his chance of being welcomed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know. I'll move."

  "Don't move," said the Indian. "There's no reason you should move. I just want you to know, the spot you're in, that's been my spot for years."

  Murray looked abjectly at his feet, then he looked back at the Indian, at his barrel chest and parted-in-the-middle hair. The Indian's bicycle had high handlebars, and attached to its back axle was what seemed to be a homemade cart loaded up with seashells. "Look," the Bra King said at last, "I'm happy to slide over."

  "No," said the Indian. "I don't want any favors from friends of LaRue." And before Murray could answer, he stood on his pedals, rode another fifteen feet, dismounted.

  Belatedly a synapse fired, Murray said, "Hey wait a second. This LaRue—I've never even met the man."

  The Indian spat in the ocean. Then he started opening various compartments in his cart. From one compartment came a six-pack of Old Milwaukee. From another came a telescoping rod, a yellow bait pail, a casting net sewn up here and there with black and navy thread. He popped a beer, swilled half of it. He leaned over the railing, dipped the pail, filled it up with water.

  Murray managed to open his clip. He leaned over his bright green tackle box, looked at all his silly lures, picked the silliest one and went to put it on. He hooked himself in a bad place on his thumb, a line of black blood appeared beneath the nail. He sucked it, then surprised himself by saying in the Indian's direction, "Look, I was lost this morning. I was lost, and you
called me an asshole. No hard feelings, I guess you got troubles of your own. But look at it my way: I just get here, all I'm trying to do is find my apartment, some guy I've never seen before is calling me an asshole. Is this nice?"

  The Indian didn't answer, got ready to throw his net. He put the end of the retrieving cord between his teeth, draped the nylon mesh across his fists and coaxed it into evenness like a baker finessing pizza dough. He drew a deep breath in, coiled his body like a discus thrower, uncoiled like a watchspring, and sent the net spinning, twirling, unfurling toward the water. Its weighted edges stretched it flat and round, it eased down like a landing bird, then settled softer than a fallen leaf onto the green surface.

  Murray didn't know squat about fishing, but mastery was a thing unto itself, recognizable no matter what it was attached to. The perfection of the throw etched itself into his yeasty brain and he heard himself saying, "Jesus, Tommy, the way you did that, that was beautiful."

  The Indian looked at him, somber, judging, and suspicious. "You've never met LaRue? How the fuck you know my name?"

  Murray went to cast. He forgot to open the bail on the reel. The lure shot forward then quickly twanged back, it slammed into the metal railing and made an ugly clanging sound. "Your name," he said, "I hear it everywhere I go. First this morning. Then I was talking to Bert—ya know, old man with the little dog?"

  The Indian's net was settling silently to the bottom. He was sitting on a plastic milk crate, finishing his beer. Very briefly, an expression almost like approval stole across his features. "Bert's okay," he said. "Hardly white at all."

  Murray tried to cast again. This time he remembered the bail but forgot to hold the line down with his finger. The lure dribbled past his shoulder blade and hooked itself over the back of his Italian loafer. "That's a strange compliment."

  "Not if you're an Indian, it isn't."

  Tommy stood, gathered in his net with its writhing catch of pinfish. Tiny silver things with a smear of yellow along their backbones and a look of blame in their glassy eyes, they flopped in horrible displacement on the pavement. The red man gathered them up, perhaps a dozen and a half, and threw them in the pail.

  Murray said, "So you really don't like white people?"

  The Indian hooked a little fish beneath the backbone, cast it smoothly out toward the low and pulsing sun. "What's to like?" he said. He sat down on his crate.

  Murray thought the question over, could not come up with a compelling answer. Instead, he said, "Me, I'm Jewish."

  The Indian flashed him a look that very clearly said Who gives a shit?

  Murray, concentrating fiercely, his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, cast again. He did it right this time. The lure arced away, flew like a tiny satellite toward the open ocean, and just kept going. Maybe he hadn't closed the clip right after all. "Some people say Jews and Indians are closely related. Some people say Indians are the lost tribes of Israel."

  The Indian—compact, athletic, reticent—looked at the Bra King—ample, chatty, and a klutz. "I doubt it."

  Murray bent to get a fresh lure from his tackle box.

  The Indian cracked another beer, looked out toward the sun that was now as pinched and orange as a tangerine. Suddenly his rod bent double, began to twitch spasmodically. Without undue haste, he got up from his crate to fight. The reel screamed, the taut line sang as the light breeze blew past it, shaken droplets made fast rainbows. The Indian hauled and cranked, bowed and tugged and cranked some more, and at length, an eight-pound fish came over the rail, glinting silver in the sun and flapping like a flag.

  The beauty of the fish, the stunning unlikelihood of someone catching it, knocked down all the rules, and Murray found himself standing close to Tommy Tarpon. "God Almighty," said the novice. "What's it called?"

  "Snook," said the Indian, lowering the creature to the arid foreign ground.

  "Schnook?"

  "Snook. Snook." The Indian placed one foot on the fish's tail and mercifully brained it with the butt of his rod. "Good eatin'."

  He crouched and worked the hook out of the fish's lip. Catching dinner seemed to make him almost talkative. He frowned toward Murray's candy-green tackle box. "They won't take a lure when there's so much bait in the water."

  "No?" the Bra King said. He rubbed his unshaved chin, frowned at his chartreuse plugs, his fruit- scented jelly worms. "Then why'd I buy all this crap?"

  The Indian picked the fish up by its gill plate, said nothing for a moment. An odd change came over his face. His downturned eyes went from somber to sly, his severe mouth curled facetiously, almost urbanely, at the corners. "I don't think you want an answer to that."

  Murray thought that over then answered the question himself. " 'Cause I'm a schmuck."

  "Snook," said the Indian, and he gathered up his gear so he could bicycle home and eat his catch while it was good and fresh.

  6

  "Ah," said Bert, looking at his watch while petting his drowsy chihuahua with the other hand. "You're one a the reliable ones."

  The Bra King shrugged, sat down in a hot chair near the daisy-shaped umbrella. "Used to having a routine."

  "Routine," the old man echoed. "Good for the mind, good for the bowels. So whatcha been up to?"

  Murray smiled ruefully, glanced across the pool. The truth was that what he'd been up to, was frantically looking for things to do. Awake at dawn, brain buzzing. To County Beach for breakfast. Duval Street for early shopping: shorts, sandals, tank tops he doubted he'd ever have the gall to wear. "Went fishing yesterday," he said.

  "Catch anything?"

  Murray snorted. "I ran into that Indian again."

  "Loves ta fish," said Bert.

  "Strange guy," Murray said.

  "Bitter." The old man stroked his dog, absently brushed dog hairs from the front of his kelly-green silk pullover. "I like that in a person, bitterness. Don't envy it—makes life hard. But I respect it. Better'n this smiling bullshit like everything is hunky-dory."

  Murray said nothing, looked out toward the ocean where a smudge of a freighter was riding up the Gulf Stream.

  "He talk to ya?" Bert resumed.

  "He talks like he's paying by the syllable," said Murray.

  "Usually," Bert said. "But every now and then, ya catch it right, he talks a blue streak, like he's been storin' it up, it just comes gushin' out. I remember one time, few years ago, I got 'im in a long talk about names. About how Indian names, they mean somethin'. Tommy Tarpon—guy loves ta fish. Eddie Eagle—he's got great eyes. Sarah Bigheart, she takes care a people. White people's names— whadda they mean? Joe Mahoney—fuck does that tell ya about Joe Mahoney?"

  Murray had no answer. Bert didn't need one.

  "Me, my neighborhood," he went on, "we gave guys names. Guy loved eggs, we called him Benny Eggs. That way ya could tell 'im from Bald Benny. Tough Tony. Big Tuna. These are names that tell ya somethin'. My nickname, it was Bert the Shirt. On accounta my style, my habbadashery. Tells ya somethin'. Practically like Indians, am I right'"

  Murray nodded. Tough Tony? Big Tuna? With the mild and woozy acceptance of the tropics, he was coming to realize that the first person to show kindness to him here in Florida was almost certainly a mafioso.

  "Back when I was a kid," the old man rambled on, "there was Jewish gangsters, they had great names too. Guy put a speakeasy in a potato field, they called 'im Potatoes Kaufman. Longy Zwillman. Guy had a schwantz on 'im, t'ree families could hang laundry on it. Yeah. Y'innerested in poker later? Six-thirty. I think we need a hand."

  *****

  Six-thirty, Murray thought. Six-thirty, and he would have something to do. He could eat pretzels, stack quarters, shuffle cards. For several hours starting at six-thirty, the burden of gapping time would be lifted from his nervous shoulders.

  Meanwhile, he caught a little sun. When his skin started feeling crinkly he retreated to the penthouse. He spent awhile walking aimlessly from room to furnished room. He sat on all the beds, peeked in all
the closets as though expecting to find some exciting dirty secret. He thought of trying out the Jacuzzi in his enormous bathtub but didn't feel like getting wet just then. He paced, he looked in cupboards; time dragged, solitude weighed, and by the daintiest increments he came to understand that he was going to call his wife.

  He still thought of her that way: his wife. Taffy had never been the wife but always the second wife, and the extra word subtracted from the title, made it suspect, like putting it in quotes. The wife had always been Franny. Even though he'd dumped her more than half a decade ago. Even though she hated his guts.

  He found himself sitting on the striped sofa, the telephone at his sunburned elbow.

  She didn't want him to call, she'd been quite clear on that. They had no children. She'd taken her divorce settlement in one lump sum, wanting no reason to stay in touch. They hadn't spoken since two, three years before, when Murray thought he was having a heart attack and called to say goodbye. The following day he'd called again to tell her it was heartburn. Franny had sounded only mildly relieved.

  "In Sarasota, please," the Bra King heard himself saying. "A number for Frances Zemelman."

  The line went silent for a moment. Murray looked past his balcony at the gleaming rectangle of sky and water. Then the operator told him she could find no listing under Frances Zemelman.

  The news was one of those small sharp disappointments that bypasses the brain and instantly deflates the gut. Then Murray came back to the present, which was the deeper past of Franny's maiden name. "Frances Rudin, I mean."

  A computer voice droned out the number.

  Murray sprang up from the sofa, sat back down again, crossed his legs, uncrossed them dialed. His pulse was racing. It vaguely dawned on him that his nervousness was absurd, but still, his heart hammered like that of a pimply teenager asking for a date.

  His wife picked up on the third ring and said hello.

  "Franny. Guess who this is?" He knew it was an asshole way to start a conversation; it was his nervousness that made him do it.