Welcome to Paradise

by Laurence Shames

  Squid skirted the blue pool, went down the path that led to Big Al's bungalow. Hidden by foliage, he slipped around to the side, crawled under the thatch of the outdoor shower, scrabbled along the still-damp slatted boards. He prepared to shoulder in the bathroom door, but Big Al hadn't bothered to lock it.

  The gremlin sniffed at his quarry's aftershave, worked a splinter into his bar of soap, then slipped into the bedroom and made himself at home.

  *

  Al started with a beer or two, tried a frozen margarita, then switched over to Sambuca. But it was one of those nights when he couldn't get comfortable with a drink, and he couldn't get comfortable with a place.

  It wasn't even eleven yet, and he was already in his third joint. The first had been cheesily festive and way too loud, with amplifiers hanging from the ceiling, sound waves seeming to blow the smoke around. The second featured the music of his youth, which didn't make him feel young or nostalgic, but rather anxious and sad and weighed down with a secret. Made him think about football games, the shameful thing that no one ever knew. He was scared. Scared every time the ball was thrown to him. The pressure not to blow the catch. The inevitable impact, the skidding, scraping collision with the cold, damp ground. Same with crashing the boards in basketball season. Smashed fingers; elbows in his nose and eyes. Scared every time. Big tough guy. Schoolboy hero ... A softie. He didn't need to hear seventies music ever again.

  This third place suited him better. It was dim and moody. Grown-up. It didn't pretend to be a party. Jazz was playing, and jazz was different every time, it didn't freeze you in a moment like pop songs, which never changed, which were stuck in their old neighborhood forever. He started to relax.

  Relaxing, he felt sexy again. Feeling sexy, he was frustrated. Frustrated, he kept drinking. Drinking, he wavered between gloom, excessive confidence, and an increased capacity to be smooth, silly, or both together.

  That's when the two women came in and sat down near him. They were no younger than himself, possibly a few years older. He smiled at them as they sat and they sort of smiled back, then pulled their eyes away. They ordered vodkas, lit up cigarettes, and started talking.

  By their second round they were talking louder and Al was leaning subtly toward them.

  "Don't get me wrong," one of them was saying. She had wonderful thick hair that rose up in a single wave, dark brown with unapologetic flecks of gray. "I don't hate men. I like men. In fact, I prefer men, all in all. It's just that men are kinky."

  The other woman rattled her ice cubes. She had a tan and bony face closely framed in lank pale hair. Al didn't like her nostrils, which were flat as the nose holes of a skeleton. "You can't just generalize like that," she said.

  "Oh yes I can," the other woman answered and lit another cigarette. She squinted at the smoke, which made Al realize how big and round her eyes had been when they were fully opened. "Look, I know the pattern," she went on. "At first it's lovey-dovey, aiming at the conquest of the body. You know, straight from high school. Getting in. But then right away it's head games, toys—"

  "Hey," the lank-haired woman interrupted with a soft but bawdy giggle, "women, too, there's a lot of . . . let's say improvising."

  Al Tuschman sipped his 'Buca. He was dying.

  "That's different," argued the woman with the wonderful thick hair.

  "What's different?" said the woman with the nose holes, gesturing for more drinks. "The body's the body and the mind's the mind."

  The thick-haired woman was groping for an explanation. She ran a hand through her hair and her fingers disappeared entirely. "It's about intimacy."

  "Agreed."

  "If the . . . improvising ... if the improvising makes people more intimate, then it's, like, exploring. Less intimate, then it's just kinky."

  The pale-haired woman nipped into her fresh drink. "So you're saying women explore but men are kinky?"

  "I'm not kinky," Al Tuschman said.

  He had no idea he was going to say it and he could not believe that the words had actually passed his lips. He inhaled sharply, as if to suck them back. An agonizing moment passed. The two friends might ignore him or call him an asshole or simply move away. He tried to look friendly. Not pushy, not leering, not drunk. Above all, not desperate in his loneliness.

  The lank-haired woman glanced at him sideways. Blow him off or humor him? She gestured toward him, lifted an eyebrow in what might have been some part of a smile, then turned toward her friend as though she'd proved a point. "You see?"

  The thick-haired woman looked away, seemed bothered and hard. Up until that moment, she'd seemed the cuddlier of the two; in fantasy, she'd been the one that Al Tuschman was going to sleep with. Now he realized the light-haired woman was really much more spirited, appealing.

  "You see?" she said again. "Not all men are kinky. Some men know what simple pleasure is. No games. No bullshit. Pleasure and comfort. Am I right?"

  Al Tuschman sipped his 'Buca, dared now to look full at her, soulful. She had high cheekbones, cat's eyes; the nostrils weren't really so bad. He told himself, Don't say too much, don't try too hard, don't blow it. "For me," he said, "that's what it's always been about."

  That was good. He was pleased with that. The lank- haired woman smiled, opened up her shoulders, showed some teeth. He could almost taste her mouth. He stopped himself from reaching out his hand, draping his palm across her wrist. Too bold, too soon.

  The thick-haired woman reached forward over the bar and roughly stubbed out her cigarette. She tossed back her vodka like she was ready to leave. Al thought: Good friend, she knows when to get out of the way.

  Then she propped her chin in her hand. She fixed Al Tuschman with a stare that cut right through the smoke and through the other woman's gaze, a stare that was half defiant and half imploring. Her lips puckered and breath moved between them in the instant before there was a sound. "Prove it."

  *

  Not till he was bending over on the sidewalk to unravel Fifi's leash from the parking meter where she'd been tied did Al Tuschman realize he was very tipsy. Blood rushed to his head, stars burst at the edges of his vision, annexed themselves to the insane glare and flash of Duval Street.

  But the thick-haired woman was impressed with and reassured by the little shih tzu. So unlikely, so unmacho. She petted the dog, made faces at it. Then, cuddly once again, she leaned against Al, her side warm along his flank, as they strolled together off Duval and through the quieter streets toward Paradise.

  They went through the gate, around the pool that shimmered blue in a mild breeze.

  "Nice place," the thick-haired woman said.

  Al nodded modestly. "Where you staying?"

  "Me? I live here."

  Al felt dumb for asking. But impressed with himself, too. And flattered. Sleeping with a local. More exciting, memorable, more legit, somehow, than just colliding with another unmoored tourist far away from either person's life.

  He unlocked the door of his bungalow. Inside, they had their first kiss, peppery with the taste of her cigarettes.

  "I'm glad I'm here with you," she said.

  "I'm glad, too," said Al.

  "You don't talk much, do you?"

  "Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't."

  "Strong silent type," she said.

  "Not really," he admitted. "Sometimes, to the dog, I ramble on and on."

  She laughed, and the laugh became a long kiss. They pressed and petted. Loins together. They had their clothes on and they were four feet from the bed. An awkward moment.

  "You a little nervous?" the thick-haired woman asked.

  Al tried to answer, could only nod.

  "I am, too. I think that's nice, don't you?"

  She led him toward the bed, undid the buttons of his tight blue shirt. Lifted off her loose, thin blouse, stepped out of her soft and draping skirt. He looked at her. She was bluish in the moonlight. Fleshy and candid as the women in the painting on the wall above the bowl of fruit. He kicked off his shoes
and wrestled with his pants and pulled back the thin blanket.

  She lay down. He was in love with her hair by now. It was so thick and springy that it made a second pillow for her head. He settled in next to her and they embraced. Mouths together; chests together. Kinky? Al thought dimly. Who needed kinky when there was such delight in lips and arms, such unfailing suspense in the surge of bellies and the wrapping of thighs?

  That's when he felt the first pinch on his scrotum.

  It was a harder pinch than was really necessary. There was a certain excitement in it, though he couldn't honestly say it felt that good.

  Then the thick-haired woman made a soft and teasing and catlike sound. It might have been meow or maybe only ow.

  He liked the sound but didn't know just what to make of it. Was she goading him to pinch her in return? Where?

  Then she pinched down really hard, so hard that his testicles seemed to flash forth a pulsing red and green like Christmas bulbs.

  Through the pain he noticed that both her hands were on his chest.

  And her soft and playful ow rose to an enraged and screeching OUCH, and she belted him across the temple with her forearm.

  Wrestling with the bedclothes, thrashing and struggling to free herself, she hissed out, "You're not kinky, you sick bastard? Just one more sick bastard!"

  She managed to rise, clutching at the inside of her thigh. As she did so, something clunked onto the floor and seemed to drag itself away. Fifi, her neat paws skidding on the varnished boards, ran in circles until she'd tracked it down. There was a scuffle, then a yelp.

  A befuddled but tumescent Alan Tuschman scrambled up from bed. He watched the thick-haired woman quickly climb into her skirt. The anguish of losing her briefly overwhelmed the searing pain in his groin, and it was a heartbeat or two before he focused on the unnatural weight and appalling pressure he was feeling there.

  Then he looked down and he screamed. Loudly. He had a two-pound lobster dangling from his nuts. Its antennae were exploring his stomach hair and its tail was curling upward toward his asshole. "Help!"

  The thick-haired woman was not inclined to get that close. She pulled her blouse on and turned her back. "You fucking pervert," she said across her shoulder. "I feel sorry for the dog!"

  Al reached down and grabbed the two shells of the lobster claw, tried with all his strength to pry them off his scrotum. "You think I had this planned?" he yelled.

  There was no reply. The thick-haired woman was out of there. Hadn't even closed the door behind her.

  Hopping madly, fighting with the lobster and fondling his dented balls, Al Tuschman stared out at her sudden absence, at the giant philodendrons and the faint blue shimmer of the pool beyond.

  TWO

  11

  In a clean and quiet Long Island suburb, Nicky Scotto climbed out of the bed he shared with his skinny, late- sleeping wife and padded off to the bathroom. He showered and carefully shaved, paying particular attention to the difficult places at the corners of his mouth. Then he found scissors and trimmed the overly luxuriant fringes of his eyebrows.

  Standing now in his underwear and knee-high cashmere socks, he buffed his Bruno Maglis till they gleamed. He pulled on a black silk turtleneck and a pearl-gray worsted suit, and headed off for his first morning at his former job, now very temporarily his again.

  He didn't have to dress this fancily for work. In fact, it was totally impractical. The thin soles of the loafers barely cleared the streams of fishy ice water that trickled over tile floors toward half-clogged rusty drains. The silk turtleneck didn't keep him warm enough as he made the rounds of reefer trucks and seafood lockers, which steamed a frosty fog when their doors were opened.

  Still, he dressed rich because it reflected how he felt. Walking through the clamor and the echoes of the market, making his presence known, waving benignly to the little people in the stalls as they shoveled ice, uncrated octopus, he might have been an old-time duke parading through his village. People called his name. There was a friendliness in it, almost a hurrah, though it was not the friendliness of equals. It was the friendliness of happy subjects, supplicants who were rewarded as long as they paid tribute and obeyed the rules. Pete, Luigi, Tony, Fred—beyond the confines of the market, they would casually make it known that they called Nicky by his name, and this would give them standing in the wider world.

  So, quietly thrilled to be back, he did his circuit, shaking hands, slapping backs, then headed down a chilly corridor toward what used to be his office.

  An absurd and salty sorrow tweaked him as he neared the door. Not that there was much to have missed about the place. The lighting was lousy and it smelled of fish. The furniture was cold, cheap metal, and the one, dirty window faced out on a loading dock and a mountain of cracked pallets. Still, when he stepped across the pitted threshold and pulled the string that worked the lights, Nicky Scotto felt a pang. He'd been happy here. It wasn't just the money and the power. He'd felt like he was where he ought to be. And if happiness and belonging didn't give someone a claim, what did?

  He went to his old desk. On it, in corny frames, stood pictures of Big Al Marracotta's fat wife and ugly, spoiled kids. He flipped them facedown against the metal, buried them under a phone book. He sat in what used to be his chair, and drummed his fingers on the arm, and told himself not to get too comfortable.

  He was there only as a fill-in, a pinch hitter; his pal Donnie kept reminding him of that, as gently as he could. Tony Eggs hadn't changed his mind about who should run the market. Carlo Ganucci had been very clear: when Al Marracotta got back from vacation, he would take over once again.

  Well, that was life, thought Nicky Scotto. You're up, you're down; you're in, you're out. But he didn't have to like it, and he didn't have to pretend it felt right. Sitting there as Big Al's sub, guest host on the show he used to run—it felt wrong as hell, wrong as a bad clam beginning to break down and spread its poison through his churning gut.

  *

  Al Tuschman didn't wake up happy.

  His tongue was dry and swollen; there was a deep, slow throb where his spine plugged into his brain. He ached between the legs, and couldn't tell how much of the ache had to do with thwarted sex, and how much with the depredations of the lobster. In a feeble attempt to cheer himself, he remembered that most people paid two hundred bucks a night to be here.

  He got up from the sweaty sheets, threw water on his face. He collected Fifi, whose nose bore a deep scratch from a flailing claw, and they headed out for breakfast.

  As they rounded the blue pool, Al noticed a tangled and inert lump of something at the bottom. Turned out to be a pair of suffocated lobsters, strangled by chlorine. Al felt a moment's thin revenge, followed quickly by remorse. Poor guys. Try to see it their way. Could they help it they were lobsters? They'd survived bizarre adventures, endured the weight and heat of human crotches, then made a bold break for freedom through terrain as dry and foreign as the moon, only to end up in the dread gravity of the sucking drain.

  Then he recalled the thick and springy hair of the woman he almost had, and thought, The hell with 'em, let 'em smother.

  He passed the office, and the desk clerk called to him in a tone of mock politeness. By now it was war between the two of them. The passive, insolent employee smirking behind a charade of cheerful service. The disgruntled guest whose grumbling would have to ripen into bodily assault if he ever hoped to express his full dissatisfaction.

  "Important call for you this morning," said the clerk. He handed Al a slip of paper, serenely confident that it contained bad news.

  Al read it and his headache instantly got worse. Sun Motors in Miami. He asked the clerk for the phone.

  The clerk moved grudgingly away to eavesdrop.

  He heard Al say, "What?... Stolen?... Hijacked?!... What kind of craziness is hijacked? . . . Now, wait a second. I deal with the public, too. So let's make sure we have this clear . . . we're not saying we'll work it out. We're saying you'll work it out. Rig
ht?"

  Al slammed the phone down, pushed it across the desk in the direction of the clerk hard enough so that its rubber feet squeaked against the varnish. "What the hell kind of town is this?" he said.

  The clerk allowed himself a hint of a smile. "Most people find it a very pleasant and relaxing town."

  Al ran a hand through his hair. The motion pulled a throb behind it, as if something were stuck and crawling between his scalp and skull. "And another thing," he said. "Someone put lobsters in my room last night."

  The clerk fingered the row of studs above his eyebrow. "You mean orchids."

  "Whaddya mean, I mean orchids?" Al demanded. "If I meant orchids, I'd say orchids. I'm saying lobsters."

  "Lobsters," the clerk said numbly.

  "Lobsters," Al repeated. "In my room. Now they're in the pool."

  "Mr. Tuschman. You shouldn't put lobsters in the pool."

  "I didn't put them in. They ran in. They dove in. They're dead."

  The clerk scratched his shaved head.

  "And what's this crap about orchids?" Al asked him.

  "Orchids?"

  "Yeah, orchids. I said lobsters, you said orchids."

  "Right. Someone came last night to deliver orchids."

  "And you let him in my room?" said Al.

  "I didn't let him in your room. He said he'd leave them by the door."

  Al Tuschman bit his lip. "This guy, what did he look like?"

  The clerk bit his lip, too. "He looked like ... he looked like . . . who remembers? A delivery man. Apron. Paper hat."

  Al drummed his fingers on the counter, thought that over. At last he said, "Where I'm from, florists don't wear paper hats and aprons. Seafood guys wear paper hats and aprons."

  "Gee," said the clerk, "I never thought of that." He stifled a yawn.

  Disgusted, Al Tuschman turned to go. Halfway to the door, he was struck by something else. "Don't you ever leave here?" he asked the clerk. "Don't you ever sleep?"