Sunburn

by Laurence Shames

  Murray Zemelman, gasping and sweating on his driveway, opened his window and sucked greedily at the freezing air with its smells of pine and snow. He coughed, gave a dry and showy retch, mopped his clammy forehead. A shudder made him squirm against the leather seat, and when the long spasm had passed, he felt mysteriously light, unburdened. New. He felt as though a pinching iron helmet had been taken from his head and a grainy gray diffusing film swept clean from his eyes. He blinked against the sidearm brightness of a January sunrise; in his refreshed vision, the glare became a glow that caressed objects and displayed them proudly, like a spotlight that was everywhere at once.

  Amazed, Murray looked at his house, looked at it as if he'd never seen it before. It was a nice house, a grand house even—big stone chimney, portico with columns—and in his sudden clarity he was able to acknowledge, not with sorrow but ecstasy, that he hated it. Yes! He hated every goddamn tile and dimmer switch and shingle. This was not the house's fault, he understood; but nor was it his. He'd worked his whole life to have a house like this; he'd paid through the nose to own it. By God, he was allowed to hate it. To hate the plaid-pants town of Short Hills, New Jersey, where it stood. To hate the dopey high-end gewgaws that cluttered up the living room. To hate the stupidly chosen second wife curled in bland, smug, already-fading beauty on her own side of the giant bed.

  He hated all of it, and in the wake of the nasty and forbidden joy of admitting that, came a realization as buoyant as the feeling of flying in a dream: He didn't have to be there.

  He didn't have to be there; he didn't have to go to work; he didn't have to kill himself. He remembered with surprise and awe that the world was big, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, he had a fresh idea.

  He wheeled out of his driveway, burned rubber around a sooty snow-bank, and headed for the Parkway south.

  He drove all day, he drove all night, giddy and relentless in his quest for warmth and ease and differentness.

  At nine-thirty the next morning, he was draped across his steering wheel, dozing lightly in yellow sunshine cut into strips by the tendrils of a palm frond. His back ached, his jowls drooped, his hips and knees were locked in the shape of the seat, but he'd outdistanced 195, barrelled to the final mile of U.S. 1. He'd made it to Key West.

  By first light he'd found a real estate office called Paradise Properties. He'd parked his scratched-up Lexus at a bent meter and then contentedly passed out.

  He was awakened now by a light tapping on his windshield.

  He looked up to see a slightly built young man in blue-lensed sunglasses. The young man made his hands into a megaphone. "Looking for a place?"

  "How'd ya know?" said Murray, rolling down the window.

  "Jersey plates," the young man said, more softly. "Ya got a tie on. And, no offense, you're very pale." He held out a hand. "Joey Goldman. Come in when you're ready, we're putting up coffee."

  Murray yawned, climbed out of the car, tried to stretch but nothing stretched. He saw yellow flowers, flowers on a living tree in January. He sucked air that smelled of salt and iodine, air the same temperature as his face. He smiled tentatively then dragged himself into the office.

  Joey Goldman, at his desk now, regarded him. Joey had lived in Key West half a decade. He knew that almost everyone who came there, came there on vacation—and there was nothing duller in the world than a person on vacation. Some came to snorkel and drink. Others came to drink and fish. Some came to chase sex while drinking. Others just drank. But one visitor in a thousand, Joey had observed, probably more like one in ten thousand, was not a tourist but a refugee. Sometimes it was refugee as in fugitive. Sometimes it was refugee from a monster spouse or lover, or from a northern life that had finally hit the wall. Joey looked at the new arrival's hound-like bloodshot eyes, his kinky graying wild hair, his rumpled shirt and posture that somehow seemed exhausted and frenetic all at once. He decided that maybe the frazzled fellow was not there on vacation.

  "So, Mr.—"

  "Zemelman. Murray Zemelman."

  "Some coffee, Mr. Zemelman?"

  Murray nodded his thanks and an assistant brought over a cup for him.

  Joey said, "What can I do for you?"

  Murray held his java in both hands and gave a little slurp. "Place on the ocean."

  "Onnee ocean," Joey said, "that'd have to be a condo. No rental houses onnee ocean."

  "Condo's fine."

  Joey cleared his throat. "What price range—"

  "Someplace nice."

  "You know the town?"

  "Not well," said Murray. "I was here once, twelve, maybe fifteen years ago."

  "Ah," said Joey.

  "With my first wife," the Bra King volunteered.

  "Ah. Well—"

  "And yesterday I was thinking," Murray rambled. "I don't mean thinking like trying to think, I mean the thought just came to me, out of the blue, that maybe it was the last time I really had fun."

  Joey riffled through his boxful of listings.

  "The crazy things ya remember," Murray went on. "This old Spanish guy, big hairy birthmark on his cheek, like four feet tall. Had a big block of ice on a cart. Shaved it by hand, with a whaddycallit, a plane. Put it in a paper cone with mango syrup. Franny loved it. Cost fifteen cents."

  Joey pulled out an index card. "You know where Smathers Beach is, Mr. Zemelman?"

  Murray blinked himself back to the present. "By the airport, no?"

  "Up that way," said Joey. "There's a condo there, the Paradiso."

  " 'S'nice?"

  "Very nice. Coupla former mayors live there. State senator lives there when he's not up at the capital."

  Murray yawned.

  "There's a penthouse available," Joey went on.

  "Penthouse?" Murray said. "Like thirty stories up?"

  "Like three stories up. We're not talkin' Miami. It's a little pricey—"

  "On the ocean?"

  "Across the road. We're not talkin' Boca. Three bedrooms. Three baths. Master suite has Jacuzzi—"

  "Okay," Murray said.

  "Okay what?"

  "Okay I'll take it."

  "You don't wanna see it first?" said Joey.

  Murray shrugged dismissively and reached into a pocket for his checkbook. "Company check okay?"

  "Fine," said Joey. "It's five thousand a month and they'll want a month's security."

  "I'll take three months for now," said Murray, and he wrote a check for twenty grand.

  Joey took it and examined it briefly, discreetly. The company name rang a bell. "Hey, wait a second," he said. "Beauty Breast, Inc. Murray Zemelman. I thought you looked familiar. The guy that does the ads, right? Late at night. Wit' the crown. The Bra King crown. Always wit' the women in their bras."

  "My bras," Murray corrected softly.

  "Dancin' with 'em," Joey remembered. "Bowling, playing volleyball—"

  Murray nodded modestly.

  "My favorite?" Joey said. "The opera one, the one where all these women in their bras got spears and shields, and you come down, what're you wearin', a bathrobe, somethin'?—"

  "Toga," said the Bra King. "I didn't know they aired down here."

  "Me, I'm from New Yawk," said Joey. "Everybody here, they're from somewhere else." He opened a desk drawer, pawed his way through many sets of keys. "The Bra King," he muttered, "whaddya know . . . Okay, this is them. The square key, it's for the downstairs lock. The round one's for the penthouse. There's three buildings, like in a U around the pool. You want West. Got it?"

  Murray took the keys and nodded.

  Joey shook his hand, stole a final look at him, almost spoke, but realized it would be indiscreet to ask if they touched his hair up for TV.

  2

  Maybe it was Prozac, maybe it was glee. Was there a difference? Did it matter?

  It didn't matter to Murray. Gleefully, he drove through the narrow streets of Old Town, his brain awash in juices that tickled, enzymes that made hair triggers of each synapse. Everything d
elighted him: bawdy clusters of coconuts dangling under skirts of fronds; purple bougainvillea that swallowed up white fences; the breath-damp air whizzing over his furry arm as it rested on the window frame. He wound his way to A1A and clucked with pleasure at the sun-shot green of the ocean, the green-tinged bottom of a distant cloud. By the time he found the Paradiso condo, his chest was tight, the unaccustomed elation strained his heart like unprepared-for exercise.

  Still, his step was blithe as he moved to what he thought was the West Building of the complex and opened up the downstairs door. He got in the elevator, reveling in the naked lightness of traveling with nothing whatsoever, starting a new life without so much as a familiar coffee mug from the old. He rode to the third floor, went the wrong way down the corridor, then wheeled and found the penthouse. By a mix of filtered sunlight and flickering fluorescent, he tried his key in the door. It didn't work.

  He withdrew it, tried it upside down. He went back to the first way. He finessed, he jiggled. He was stooped over the lock, one hand on the key and the other on the doorknob, when the door was suddenly, violently yanked open, pulling the Bra King halfway into someone else's unit.

  Bewildered, guilty, feeling like a burglar in a dream, Murray Zemelman looked meekly up. He saw an Indian. A very angry Indian who was wearing a chamois vest with fringes and jabbing a thick finger back toward someone Murray couldn't see.

  "Just forget about it," the Indian was saying. "No way you're gonna suck me into any of your greedy bullshit white-ass—"

  'Tommy, Tommy," came a drawling and conciliating voice from behind a living room wall, "all I'm saying, I'm saying think about this opportunity."

  "Opportunity my fuzzy red balls," said the Indian, and he turned to go. Only then did he seem to notice Murray, still half-crouched above the doorknob. For just an instant the two men met each other's eyes. The Indian's were very black and flat, so wide-spaced that they seemed to wrap around his temples; they turned down at the outside corners, gave him a look that was solemn, judging.

  He hissed at the Bra King, "And you're a white asshole too." Then he pushed past him and was gone.

  Murray stood there. He wasn't about to follow the Indian, and he didn't know what else to do.

  After a moment, the mellow and conciliating voice turned bored and mordant and said, "The stupid savage didn't even close the door. Lock it, please, Pascal."

  A muscular young man appeared in the foyer. He was wearing a hair net and a red kimono. He saw Murray standing there, rumpled and unshaven, fugitive and baffled, fraudulent key in hand, and said, "And just who the hell might you be?"

  Murray had a sudden impulse to cry. What day was it, where was he, and just how exactly had he gotten there? "I'm very very tired," he said. "I think I'm in the wrong place."

  "I think that's obvious," said Pascal, who coaxed him, not gently, out the door.

  In his own apartment finally, his directions sorted out, the Bra King felt better, reassured by the sharp smell of a recent cleaning, layers of fresh towels on all the racks. He gave the place a cursory onceover, didn't really notice much. He hadn't come to Florida to sit indoors; he went onto the L-shaped balcony to suck the air and feel the sunshine and let the view nourish his resilience.

  To the south—it had to be the south, he realized now—a parade of candy-colored convertibles streamed by on A1 A; the trucked-in sand of Smathers Beach looked as moist and crumbly as the topping on a coffee cake. At his feet, the Paradiso's gracious quadrangle appeared a perfect map of the easy life of Florida. A big tiled pool shimmered a minty blue. Two tennis courts contributed a soothing geometry; a pair of cheery yellow flags waved above a putting green made of Astroturf.

  Murray looked at tended plants, lounge chairs in neat rows: calming things. He told himself it would all be fine. And yet he paced. Fear of change, and loneliness, and weirdness, chafed against exhilaration. He needed to sleep; he couldn't sleep. Too much had happened; was happening. He had too much to say, too much that he could only now explain. A sort of emetic candor overtook him, he had to talk like he had to breathe. He dove into the living room to work the phone.

  He sat on the edge of a huge sofa upholstered in a nautical stripe and called his second wife.

  "Murray!" she said. "Where are you? I called work, I called the police. I was worried, Murray."

  She didn't sound worried. In fact she sounded like she'd been placidly asleep until the phone rang. God forbid that anything like madness, upheaval, death, or salvation should intrude on Taffy's beauty rest. God forbid that a shard of early light should violate her eyeshade, a snore or a fart or a garbage truck send vibrations past her earplugs.

  "I'm in Key West," the Bra King said. "It's eighty-two degrees."

  "Key West? Murray, are you out of—"

  "Taffy, listen. It's over."

  There was a pause. A muffled rustling of bedclothes came through the phone. "What are you talking about, Murray? What's over?"

  He looked past the parted curtains and open sliding door to effervescent sunlight. "This cockamamie deal we call a marriage. It's finished. Kaput. Finito."

  "Murray, you're—"

  "Happy. I'm happy."

  A dubious silence at the Jersey end of the line.

  "Taffy, allow me a spasm of honesty. Marrying you was the stupidest fuckin' thing I ever did in my entire life. No offense. I blame myself, not you. Fact is, start to finish, it had nothing to do with you. Why couldn't I just bang you on the desk like a normal human being? Once, and get it over with. Boss shtupps model. Happens every day, right? Zip up and get back to work. But no, for me it's the first infidelity, I have to make a big deal out of it, turn my whole life upside down. Why? Conscience, that's all. 'Cause if it was love, I wasn't such a turd for doing it. Except, Taff, let's face it, it wasn't love. What we had, you and me, it was no big deal. Never was."

  Again, a pause. Murray pictured her sweeping off the eyeshade, running a hand through the thick auburn hair that was part of what seduced him half a dozen years ago.

  "Murray," she said at last, "I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm gonna assume you're cuckoo. But if you're not, you son of a bitch, if you've got the faintest idea what you're saying, I am going to take you to the cleaners so bad—"

  "Yes!" hissed Murray in a kind of pyrrhic transport. "I want you to! Get a good lawyer, tell him how I took advantage of you just because you took your bra off in my office and wagged your bubbies in my face. Grab all you can. The house, it's yours. I never wanna see it again. Goo'bye."

  He hung up, stared with wonder at the silent telephone, as if the instrument, and not himself, had done the talking. Truth. Flat-out, in-your-face directness—what a wild and intoxicating mystery. Where did it come from, this reckless truth, what was it made of?

  He sprang up from the sofa, took a spin out to the balcony. When he got there the sun was just emerging from behind a small and fluffy cloud. The ocean twinkled, clean heat returned to the world, and absurdly, the Bra King took this as an omen. He scratched his head with gusto, was on top of things once more. He went back to the striped sofa, which was already taking on the potent feel of headquarters.

  He called his office in the garment district of Manhattan, got his friend and number-two man, Leslie Kantor, on the line.

  "Murray," Kantor said, "you okay? Taffy called last night. You didn't go home, you didn't come in—"

  "I started to come in," the Bra King interrupted. "But the day got off to a really shitty start, so I said fuck it and retired."

  "Excuse me?"

  In the distance, very soft, the sound of swatted tennis balls.

  "Retired, Les. Resigned. Quit. I'm in Key West. Palm trees. Coconuts."

  The line went silent save for the faint scream of tearing paper. Murray had known Les Kantor for a lot of years, knew him like a book. He knew Les had retrieved his pack of Tums from his left-hand trousers pocket and was trimming down the wrapper with a perfect thumbnail. "Coconuts," he murmured at last.
r />   "Coconuts, Les. And I'm divorcing Taffy."

  "Murray, you spoken with Max?"

  Max Lowenstein was Murray's psychiatrist.

  "He's next on my list," the Bra King said.

  "Maybe he should be first on your list."

  An affectionate singsong came into Murray's voice. "Les. Les. You're beautiful, bubbala. So reasonable. So levelheaded. This is why I feel perfectly at peace leaving you to run things."

  "I don't wanna run things. Murray, you don't just walk away like that. Milan's coming up. The big promotion with Bloomie's—"

  "I don't care."

  "You have to care," said Kantor.

  "This is where you're wrong," said Murray. "It's where I was wrong till yesterday."

  More Tums went into Leslie Kantor's mouth, the Bra King heard them clatter softly against his high-priced teeth. Then the partner said, "So Murray, what'll you do down there?"

  Not until the question was asked did the Bra King realize he had no idea what he would do. He knew where he would do, and that was as far as he'd gotten. "I guess for awhile I'll do nothing."

  "I've known you a long time," said his friend. "You're incapable of doing nothing."

  Murray couldn't deny it. His only response was to chew a fingernail.

  "Go fishing," Kantor suggested.

  "Fishing?"

  "It's as close as you can come to doing nothing and still be doing something."

  "Les, I've never gone fishing in my life."

  "All the better. You'll have something new to learn."

  "Great," said the Bra King, "a fifty-three-year-old shmegeggi with a hook in his eye."

  "Try it. It's very soothing. And Murray, hey, what about the ads?"

  On the striped sofa in his penthouse living room, Murray Zemelman gave a little smile. He could not deny that he still liked the idea of wearing the Bra King crown, sashaying like Bert Parks among the ranks of pouting shiksas in their push-em-ups. "The ads," he said, "we'll see. If my public demands it, maybe I'll still do the ads."