Welcome to Paradise

by Laurence Shames

  "How'd they used to do 'em?" asked Squid.

  "The real ones? They'd peel back the skin, sever the backbone, pop the eyes, scoop the brains out with a little pick—"

  "Hey," said Chop, "I'm eatin' heah."

  "Sorry," said the waiter. "The new ones, they're just paint and plastic over Styrofoam."

  "But that one's real?" asked Squid. It was important to him that it was.

  "Pretty sure," the waiter said. "Been there years and years."

  Casually, Squid said, "How sharp's the nose?"

  "You mean its sense of smell?"

  "No. I mean, the nose, how sharp, ya know, for sticking things."

  The waiter let out a respectful sound. "Like a razor. That's how he feeds. Gets into a school of jack or yellowtail and just starts slashing. Sometimes hacks 'em up, sometimes runs a fish right through."

  Moisture was pooling beneath Squid's tongue. He swallowed hard, said to Chop, "Hey, Joe, wouldn't it be great to tell the folks back home we caught one a those?"

  Parilla, still working on his plate of wings, his celery and blue cheese dressing, was slow on the uptake, didn't answer.

  Squid said to the waiter, "How much ya want for it?"

  The waiter gave a nervous laugh. "It isn't mine. It isn't for sale."

  "Okay, okay, but how much is it worth?"

  The waiter shrugged. "You see 'em now and then, antique stores, estate sales, three, four hundred."

  "Take two thousand?"

  The waiter paused to see if he was kidding.

  "Cash. Right now," Sid Berman damply said. "Look, we gotta drive back t'Ohio right after lunch."

  The waiter said, "You're serious. I'll ask the manager."

  While he was gone, Chop said, "Two grand, Squid? You're fuckin' crazy."

  Squid was looking at the seafood with the razor nose. "Worth every penny," he said. "The absolutely perfect ending don't come cheap."

  They left with the stuffed fish tucked under Squid's proud arm like something he'd won at a carnival.

  23

  For Big Al Marracotta, things went from bad to worse. He'd reached that stage of being mad where he had no clue who he was really mad at.

  Back in his hotel room, alone, he nipped into what was left of last night's scotch and decided that everyone was betraying him, everyone was letting him down. His goombahs up in the city. One asshole gets himself indicted. Does anybody think of telling Al, giving him some notice? No, he's gotta be put through the embarrassment, the humiliation, of having it thrown in his face by the bosses. And what do they do? Do they talk to him like a man, a respected colleague? No, they cut him right out of the loop, treat him like a punk who needs a lesson, and put his worst enemy in charge. Nicky Scotto. Preening wiseass conceited cocky shithead!

  And why does all this happen? Why? Because he's trying to have a short vacation with a woman who turns out to be an ungrateful flirty bitch. Couple of hours on her own, she's throwing herself at some big hairy guy with muscles. And does she have one shred of sympathy or understanding for what he's up against, the pressure that he's under? Does she cut him any slack at all? No. He has one tiny second of losing his temper, and she has the gall to walk.

  Well, she'd be back—he had no doubt of that. All her stuff was here; he was still her ticket home. She'd walk off her hurt feelings, size up her situation, and return.

  But what if she returned and found Al moping and drinking in their empty room? How would it look? It would look like he was a little bit lost without her, like he had nothing better to do than brood and pace and wait to see if they could turn things around and maybe try again.

  It wouldn't do to have her see that, think that. Wouldn't do at all.

  So Big Al Marracotta, clutching his glass in one hand, started undressing with the other. He'd get into his cabana suit and go down to the pool. Let Katy know he wasn't about to piss away the day just because she got huffy. Let her see that he was perfectly content to tan alone, sneaking peeks at the breasts and asses of other men's girlfriends, sipping coladas at the swim-up bar without the hassle of a moody, flirty woman cluttering up his mind.

  *

  "Nothing till nine-thirty," said the desk clerk, muffling the phone against his chest. He said it with a smile, happy in the knowledge that it caused inconvenience to the suburban salesman and his unregistered, unpaid-for visitor.

  "I'll take it," Katy said, bearing down to hold on to her resolve. Leaving was never easy, and leaving something awful was in some ways harder than leaving something almost good.

  "So what now?" Al asked her, when the booking had been made. "Wanna hang out here?"

  Secretly, the desk clerk winced. Ruby studs moved above his eyebrow.

  Katy bit her lip, considered. "What I'd really like to do is go back to the beach. See that green water. Wanna come along?"

  This sounded good to Al. After these few days wholly on his own, it was a relief to have someone else suggest a plan. But he could not help glancing down at his blistered feet. "How 'bout we call a cab."

  Katy suddenly brightened. Her jaw relaxed, her eyes got wide, she stopped looking like somebody's mistress and resembled instead a kid with a day off from school. "Let's rent bikes!" she said. "That's what people do here. Rent bikes and ride around with maps."

  Al cleared his throat to stall for time. He hadn't ridden a bicycle in many years.

  Wanting to be rid of them so he could settle back into his semi-doze, the desk clerk said, "There are a couple here that you could use."

  So they got on clunky one-speed cruisers and rode off to the beach.

  Al put Fifi in his basket. She clamped her tiny claws around the wire mesh as her master jerked the handlebars, causing palms and mopeds and other bicyclists to sweep past in a sun-shot blur. Katy seemed unhindered by her high-heeled sandals; without apparent effort she stood up on the pedals and held her slender butt above the seat. They rode through the faux-Bahamian development and down the sandy road between the navy fences until they reached the shore.

  Afternoon was well advanced by then. The Australian pines threw long and feathery shadows. Sunburned people with beach chairs held in the crooks of their arms were heading for the parking lot. On the water, catamarans were returning from the reef; the yellow sun seemed at moments to balance on their giant masts. Al and Katy sat down at a spot where the sloping sand was at an angle like a lounge.

  Katy curled up, knees to chest, and stared out at the water as though she didn't expect to see anything so beautiful for a long, long time, as if trying to memorize the shifting patterns of emerald green with gold-white flashes. At some point she glanced at Alan Tuschman's striped Bermudas. "Jeez," she said, "I didn't even give you time to change. You could've swam."

  "Not me," said Al. "Swam here yesterday. Got chased by a shark."

  "A shark?"

  "Were, like, thirty other people swimming. Thing zeroed in on me like it had radar."

  Katy shook her head. "Car heist. Shark attack. Now you're stuck babysitting me. You always so unlucky?"

  "You always so down on yourself?" he countered.

  It was mostly just a reflex quip, but Katy took the question seriously. She'd kicked off her sandals; now she sighed and buried her toes in sand. "No," she said. "I don't think always. Just the last thirteen, fourteen years or so."

  Al did not know what to say to that. He lay back on his hands, felt hot sun underneath his chin.

  As if she were talking to herself, Katy said, "Before that I think I was a pretty happy kid. Felt safe. Felt confident. Then I sort of messed it up."

  Alan Tuschman briefly weighed the words, then said, "Got pregnant?"

  Katy swiveled toward him, sand making a crunching sound beneath her. "How'd you know?"

  "I did the math and took a wild guess."

  Katy stared down at her knees.

  Al said, "Come on, everyone gets pregnant at that age."

  "Not exactly everyone."

  "Get pregnant, crash a car—everybod
y makes the same mistakes."

  "Maybe," Katy said. "But not everybody's from a really Catholic family in a really Catholic neighborhood."

  "Ah," said Al. "You had the kid?"

  Katy nodded. "Dropped out of school. Hid out. A sinner with the nuns."

  There was a pause. Offshore, a schooner tacked, its sails flapping like wet laundry until they filled.

  Katy looked away and said, "I don't talk about this stuff."

  "Hey, we're on vacation."

  She didn't quite see what difference that made. "Your life is still your life."

  "Okay. But you're allowed a little breather from it now and then."

  Katy pouted. She watched Fifi busily digging a hole in the sand, wondered if the dog had some deep purpose in doing so. She surprised herself by going on. "You give away a baby, it's supposed to haunt you, right? Well, call me unmaternal, it isn't that for me. I mean, sure, it's weird to think I have a kid out there somewhere. But he, she—they're better off adopted. That's the simple truth. What gets me, though ... I just lost my momentum. Never really got on track again. Forgot how to be a regular person around regular people. Understand?"

  Al half nodded. He wanted to say something but nothing would come.

  It didn't matter. Katy wasn't stopping now. "You know what it's like? It's like when people choose up sides in the playground. But now it's like the teams are the good people and the bad people. And once you make a big mistake, and your father calls you terrible things and your family is ashamed of you, you get put on the bad team. And then the people on the bad team are your friends, whether or not you really like them. They're your people. The good people—you sort of stop understanding them, stop knowing how to talk to them, stop knowing how to meet them even. So you're stuck. It doesn't change. You see?"

  Al came up a little ways on sandy elbows. "Except it can change. Any day."

  She tried to smile, waved her arms like she was swatting hope away. Again she looked off at the water. The colors kept changing as the sun slipped lower. Finally she said, "It's nice to talk to you." She twisted up her mouth. "I just wish you had a different name. Nickname, even. Didn't you ever have a different nickname?"

  Al hesitated, then confessed. "Had one all through childhood. Hated it."

  "What was it?"

  He shook his head.

  "Come on," she urged. "We're on vacation."

  He reached forward, brushed some sand from above his dog's eyes. "Tusch."

  "Tusch?"

  "Last name's Tuschman. And as a kid I had a big behind."

  "Tusch," she said again. "Mind if I call you that instead of, you know, that other name?"

  Al grimaced though he didn't really mind.

  "Come on," she said, "it's only for a few more hours."

  He grabbed his dog and wrestled her a little bit. "Okay. What the hell," he said. "Only for a few more hours."

  24

  Big Al Marracotta was quietly flabbergasted when Katy had not returned by sunset. Very gradually, in blips of irritation and waves of masked regret, he lost his certainty that she was coming back at all.

  He'd been drinking at a measured pace all afternoon, never quite getting drunk, but proceeding on a slow slide from anger and frustration to befuddlement and self-pity. At moments he even felt a grudging respect for his vanished girlfriend, for her moxie in standing up to him and skipping.

  When thoughts like that began occurring to him, he'd wade over to the swim-up bar and have another cocktail.

  The day dragged on. Eventually the sun dipped behind the building; an oblong of shadow crept across the pool. People started leaving. They left in couples; they had other things to do; and Big Al hated them for it. Curtains were drawn across the sliding glass doors of the lanai rooms. The shutters were closed on the towel kiosk. With maybe half a dozen sun-fried people still glued to their lounges, Big Al got up to leave. He was damned if he was going to be the last one there, lying by himself like some kind of loser.

  He went back upstairs to the room. In spite of himself, pretending that he wasn't doing it, he snooped around to see if Katy had perhaps been by. Everything was as before. Her suitcase on its stand next to the armoire; her makeup kit on the bathroom counter, unzipped and gaping open. The two big bags of goodies from the porno store. They mocked him now: all those toys and no one to play with.

  He sat down on the bed, reached deep for another dose of anger to chase away the gloom. "Fuck her," he said aloud, though with faltering conviction. He had three more lousy days down here before returning to the shit storm in New York, and one way or another he was going to make them memorable.

  He picked up the phone, called room service, and ordered himself a steak and a bottle of red wine.

  Half an hour later, the waiter's knocking on the door woke him from a leaden sleep.

  *

  Katy and Al Tuschman watched the sunset at the beach. They saw the sun squeeze out of round just before it touched the water; saw its reflection rise to meet it, transforming it for a time into a fat and melting candle; saw it slip at last beneath the surface like a vast quarter sliding down a slot.

  Watching it together both was and was not wonderful. Sunsets were supposed to be romantic. You were supposed to watch them with your arm around someone. At the final instant, you kissed as a token of shared passage from bright day to tender evening, and then you strolled off in the twilight hand in hand.

  Al and Katy, mere acquaintances in a nutty situation, did none of that. They sat with their knees and elbows close but not touching. As near as they came to contact was in taking turns petting the dog. They stared off at the sky until the sparse, underlit clouds had gone from flaming pink to a powdery lavender; then by silent agreement they stood, unceremoniously slapping sand off their bottoms. Al resisted looking at his watch. In the wistful awkwardness of the moment, he wasn't even sure if he wanted the time until Katy's departure to go faster or more slowly than was natural.

  They walked to their bikes. Finally Al said, "Feel like a drink? Something t'eat?"

  Katy, not used to being consulted, just shrugged at first, then said, "Sure."

  They pedaled off between the navy fences, through the fake development; then, on Thomas Street, before they'd reached the busy part of town, they heard music coming from behind a wooden fence that was painted blue and pink and green. A hand-scrawled sign said the place was called Coco's. In place of valet parking, it offered a row of bike racks that were full of locals' clunkers.

  "Chance it?" asked Al Tuschman.

  Katy nodded, widened her eyes. They crammed their fat-tire bikes in among the others and went around the fence.

  They walked through a short passageway and were immediately outdoors again—in a side yard paved in nothing but stomped earth. Well-spaced tables leaned in ruts, and no two tables matched. A hammock was strung between a rubber tree and a mahogany; an old man and a child seemed to be asleep in it. Chickens roamed around; Fifi sniffed their tracks. The music was Caribbean, took its slippery rhythms from the scratch and recoil of blowing palms, the surge and fizz of lapping waves.

  Al and Katy moved to the far end of the place, found a vacant table with a rooster on it. Al shooed the bird away; it cackled out a protest, then half flew, half hopped, first to a chair back, then the ground.

  "This is excellent," said Katy, sitting down.

  Al was happy she was happy, pleased with himself for stumbling on a place she liked. He had to remind himself this was not a date.

  The waitress came over and they ordered margaritas.

  Clinking salty glasses, Katy gestured up toward swaying fronds against the jewel-box velvet of the sky, over at the dim bandstand where a Bahamian trio, cool beyond words, played like they could play forever, and said, "Cheers. Now this is what I pictured. Now I feel like I'm on vacation." She sipped her drink and added, "Better late than never, huh?"

  The comment made Al Tuschman unpleasantly aware of the watch on his wrist. "Hungry?"

  Sh
e pursed her lips. "I could eat."

  They ordered jerk chicken and popcorn shrimp.

  Pretending to scratch a bug bite, Al sneaked a look at the time. It was ten of eight, and he, too, was only now beginning to feel like he was truly on vacation. Unless, that is, vacation truly felt like being lonely, and paranoid, and discombobulated.

  "So Tusch," said Katy, "can I ask you something? Traveling alone—it's a fantasy of mine, I envy it. The freedom. You love it?"

  Al pulled on an ear. "Has its moments," he said. "But the novelty's sort of over. I spend a lot of time alone."

  She studied him, the strong shoulders and big kind face and curly hair. "How come?"

  He shrugged. "I work a lot. Where I live, the 'burbs, it's sixteen-year-old girls in Camaros or soccer moms in minivans. I live long enough, I'll catch the next wave of divorcees."

  "Ever married yourself?"

  "Long time ago. Too young. Wrong person."

  It was as good a time as any to signal for another round of drinks.

  They clinked glasses once again, knocking loose damp salt. A breeze moved through the yard, carrying smells of spent flowers and clove and cinnamon from the kitchen. Katy took a small sip of her cocktail, then looked up and down and left and right, and said out of the blue, "Wanna dance?"

  Al had still been thinking vaguely of his ill-considered past. The question took him by surprise. He pulled his brows together, let slip a nervous laugh, then glanced quickly, furtively around the yard. People were eating. People were drinking. Nobody was dancing. "I don't think this is a dancing place," he said.

  "Come on," she said. "It's dirt. There's chickens. Who cares?"

  "I don't know how to dance to this stuff."

  But Katy was already getting up, her long body smoothly unfolding. "Please?" she said, holding out her hand. "I wanna be able to remember that I danced by moonlight in Key West. Come on—two minutes of your life."

  With grave misgivings, Al Tuschman dabbed his big lips on his napkin, rose on creaky ankles.