by Janis Ian
Everybody in Key West knows every song Jimmy Buffett ever wrote; it’s one of the few requirements of residence. There are at least a dozen guaranteed to make everyone in the joint pause in their seductions long enough to sing along—but "Fins" is certain to get them on their feet, the way I play it anyway. It’s about being hit on in bars—fins to the left, fins to the right, and you’re the only bait in town—so the lyrics tend to strike a certain chord, in predator and prey alike.
And the guitar lick would make a preacher dance the dirty boogie: halfway into it there was a roar of recognition and approval, and by the time I started the first verse, half the place was dancing, and the other half was trying to find room to.
I lost track of Dora in the crowd at once. But I could make out the two shooters, trying to force their way across the room to him. They were better than average at it, spreading out just enough to block his escape path as they came.
I’d just finished the first verse; as I went into my guitar solo, I stepped away from the mike and began doing a Chuck Berry Strut back and forth across the stage. Bingo: an instant line dance organized itself out there on the floor and started to conga back and forth. By the time Frick and Frack managed to work their way through that, Dora was long gone. They stood where they’d last seen her, blank faced as mannequins, and each turned in place five times before they gave up.
I finished the song, got a big round of applause, and, since I had everyone on their feet, went into a slow-dance song, a ballad by Woody Smith called "Afterglow."
Tending to tension by conscious intent,
declining declension, disdaining dissent,
into the dementia dimension we’re sent:
we are our content,
and we are content.
The half of the crowd that wasn’t doing that well tonight sat down, and the rest went into their clinches. I saw the shooters’ eyes meet, saw them both consider and reject the idea of slow-dancing together for the sake of their cover. They left together, and I finished my set feeling the warm glow of the Samaritan who has managed to get away with it.
I glowed too soon. As I stepped out the back door of Slim’s Elite to walk home a little after two, I heard someone nearby drive a nail deep into hardwood with a single blow. I was turning to yank the sticky door shut behind me at the time, so I even saw the nail appear, a shiny circle in the doorjamb beside me, where no nail belonged, and no nail had been a moment before. By the time my forebrain had worked out that the nail was the ass end of a silenced bullet, I was already back inside the club, running like hell.
~~~~~
Ever try and run carrying a guitar case? Fortunately I gig with one of those indestructible Yamahas; I tossed it case and all behind the bar as I went past, and kept on running.
As I burst out the front door onto the deserted poorly-lit street, Dora pulled up in front of me on a Moped. I skidded to a halt. The sight was surreal and silly enough to start me wondering if all of this might not be a bad dream I was having. "Get on," he said, gesturing urgently. "Get on." I stood there trying to get my breath, and wondering how Dora knew I needed a ride just then. "Pat, come o-o-o-on—"
An angry mosquito parted my hair. Behind me someone snapped a piece of wood with a sound like a muffled gunshot—
—no. Just backwards. That had been a muffled gunshot, no louder than a snapping yardstick. That explained why I was in mid-air, in forward motion, falling toward the back of Dora’s Moped—
If a man had landed there, that hard, he’d have gelded himself. It wasn’t much more fun for me, and as I drew breath to yell Dora peeled out. Fast. Somehow his Moped had the power of a real motorcycle—without the thunder. I ended up hanging onto his fake boobs for dear life. There was one last ruler-snap behind us, without mosquito this time, and then we were too far away to sweat small arms fire. I shifted my grip down to Dora’s waist and began to relax slightly.
Someone ripped my left earring out, and behind us someone snapped a two by four.
"Jesus Christ," I screamed, "rifle fire!"
Dora began to deke sharply from side to side. Since he did it randomly to surprise the shooter, he kept surprising me too, but I managed to hang on. The sniper must have realized his chance for a headshot was gone, and went for a tire. Thanks to the weaving he blew the heel off my left shoe instead, and for the next ten or twenty busy seconds I thought he’d shot me in the foot. I clutched Dora hard enough for a Heimlich, and preposterously he yelled, "Hang on," and hung a most unexpected sharp right into a narrow driveway. We passed between two sparsely-lit houses in a controlled skid—I told myself it was controlled—heeled so far over to our right that visually it was remarkably like part of the famous scene at the end of 2001: a Space Odyssey, lights streaking past us above and below. Nearly at once it gave way to the end of the original Star Wars, a smashcut montage of pitch-dark backyard/obstacle course of crap/oncoming stone wall/broken bench reconsidered as ramp/midair, like Elliot and E.T./narrowly missed pool/asskicker landing/many naked people in great dismay/demolished flowerbed/long narrow walkway between houses like Luke’s final run at the Deathstar/chainlink fence/providentially open gate/sharp left onto a deserted street where no one seemed to be firing any rifles, with or without hellish accuracy/fade to black.
Roll credits.
~~~~~
Dora pulled a pair of my pants up over his own red silk g-string and said, "To be honest, I’m kind of surprised."
I snorted. To be understated, I’m kind of mindfucked. "What exactly was it that surprised you? The gunfire? Our surviving it? How many of the people at that orgy looked good naked?" I tossed him a balled-up pair of socks.
We were at my place. He’d wrecked his frock driving a Moped like Jackie Chan. He was way too tall—and too slim-waisted, damn him—to fit into any of my jeans, but I’d found a baggy pair of painter pants around that didn’t look too ridiculous on him, and a maroon sweatshirt, and some one-size-fits-none sandals. Half the people in Key West were dressed worse.
He unrolled the socks and stared down at them. "I’m kind of surprised you stuck your neck out for me in the first place. That’s what I meant."
I said nothing. I sat on the edge of my bed, put my left foot up on my knee and checked the heel for signs of damage. The tingling had gone away by now. It looked okay. I put on my good sandals, dropped the ruined shoes in the trash, and tried a few careful steps. The heel felt a little tender, but not enough to make me limp.
"We barely know each other, Pat. We move in different circles. We play on different teams. But you took a risk for me."
"You returned the favor," I said, and even to me my voice sounded brusque.
He nodded. "Okay. I guess it’s none of my business. It’s just that…well, I know a lot of dykes don’t have much use for drag queens. We must make you feel a little like black people watching some clueless, happy white guy do a Step’n’Fetchit routine in blackface. We revel in the very mannerisms and attitudes you’re trying to get away from."
I said some more nothing. Partly that was because he was right. I try to be polite to just about anybody, on principle, but drag queens test my principles even more than skinheads. They exaggerate the aspects of stereotypical femaleness I find most infuriatingly embarrassing—and think it’s screamingly funny.
"And of course the lipstick Lezzies hate us because we’re so much better than they are at makeup—"
He was simply trying to be friendly, but even if he had just saved my life, I didn’t want to be his friend. "You don’t know my heart," I said harshly, and heard myself sounding just like the kind of uptight judgmental dyke I’ve always hated.
His face went blank. It was several seconds before he spoke. "You’re absolutely right," he conceded then. "I have no business making presumptions. All I know about you in the world is that you sing and play guitar very well, you hate the sight of car engines for some reason, and tonight you—"
"What did you say?"
Somehow he knew which clause
I meant. "Don’t sweat it: as phobias go it’s pretty tame. Once I happened to see you jump a foot in the air and then cross the street when someone popped the hood of his car as you were walking past. And then another time my friend Delilah was working on her old bomber, trying to get the timing right, and she said she asked you to just sit behind the wheel and rev it when she told you, and instead you turned white as a ghost and turned around and ran away. If I had to guess, I’d guess one of your parents was a mechanic—but I don’t have to guess. Like you said, I don’t know your heart. And nothing says I have to."
"That’s right." God, would I ever say anything again that wasn’t churlish?
"I just wondered why it made you stick your neck out for a stranger. That’s all."
"Look, Dora, maybe sometime my heart’ll make me feel like telling you why," I said. "Okay?"
He held up his hands. "Understood." His nails clashed with his—with my—sweatshirt. "You haven’t asked me why those two are after me. I appreciate that."
"I don’t care why they’re after you," I said. "They’re after me too now, that’s all I care about at the moment. They’re crazy enough to fire guns in Key West—big guns, right out in the street—and I’ve pissed them off. How you pissed them off doesn’t interest me: I have to know who they are." She was frowning. "I need to know right now, Dora."
She looked stubborn. "Why?"
I retrained the impulse to smack her one. "Think a minute! Dangerous men are pissed at me. Pros. If they work for Charlie Pontevecchio up in Miami—or for any other private citizen, whether or not his last name happens to end in a vowel—then there probably isn’t a lot they can do to locate me until Slim’s reopens at nine, giving me a whole, Jesus, six hours to disappear into thin air somehow. But if those two clowns are cops, any kind of cops at all, they’re probably rousting Big Chazz out of bed right now, and tough as she is, she’s got her license to think of: they could be here in half an hour. So which—?"
I didn’t have to finish the question. His expression answered for him.
"Shit. What kind of cops?"
Very expressive face.
"Oh my god. Federal?"
He nodded. "Yes, but—wait!"
I’d be hard pressed to say which was moving faster, me or my brain. I’m pretty sure it took less than a single minute before the carryon bag I always keep half full under the bed was topped off with the few bits of this life I wasn’t ready to abandon, and another fifteen seconds was plenty to reach the pantry, kick aside the small rug on the floor, and pull up the concealed trap door. I felt around under the near edge for the little mag lite, found it, and damn near dropped it when I popped it out of its holder.
"What the hell are you doing?" asked Dora.
"In the military they call it retiring to a previously prepared position." I hesitated. "You can follow if you want. There’s room enough for someone your size."
She looked appalled. "Under the house? Down there with the roaches and snakes and spiders and…not on your life, girl. Forget it."
I didn’t have time to argue. I sat at the edge of the hole and let my feet and legs dangle down into the damp dank darkness. "Fine. Walk right out my front door, whenever you feel ready to be shot. Don’t bother closing it behind you. Of course, you may not make the door. Every room in this dump has a window."
He shook his head. "I’m not worried about them. And listen, you don’t have to be either."
"Right," I said, and let myself down into the crawl space under the house.
Damn, I thought, I’m going to miss that Yamaha. I just got the action right—
~~~~~
Only a moron would attempt to flee Key West alone by car. There’s exactly one road out of town, and a dozen spots from which it can be conveniently and discreetly monitored with binoculars or longlens camera. Or sniper scope. A clay pigeon would have a much better chance: they move way faster than traffic heading up the Keys.
So my plan was to head for The Schooner, an open-air thatched-roof blues bar right next to the Land’s End Marina. Its only neighbors are boat people, and its clientele aren’t all fags and dykes, so it gets to stay open a little later than Slim’s Elite. I knew a Rasta pot dealer named Bad Death Johnson who would probably still be there, and would certainly be able to put me on a fast boat to West Elsewhere without troubling the harbor master.
But before I’d gotten two blocks I became aware I was being followed, so clumsily that I knew who it was. I could have outrun him. I sighed, found a dark place, and waited for Dora to catch up. When he did, I started to step out of the shadows and call to him, but I got distracted watching him. His walk was so distinctive that even dressed in gender-neutral clothes, wearing sandals, I’d have recognized him by it, even in the poor light. You’d think a drag queen would be better at disguise, but apparently he just knew the one. He was past me by the time I finished that thought train, and I was going to step out behind him and call his name softly—but then I decided the hell with it and stayed where I was. He was just going to tell me again that I didn’t have to be afraid of federal agents with clearance to kill. And tell me why he wasn’t, which couldn’t possibly be anything but moronic.
But since Dora was heading toward the marina, now I couldn’t anymore. It took me ten aggravated seconds to come up with a Plan B, and another ten to persuade myself it had a chance of success. That was good: even a few seconds less, and I’d have strolled blithely out there and collided with the two feds as they hurried by on cat feet.
For yet another ten seconds I couldn’t move; then I managed to take a deep breath, and that rebooted my system. Then there was another ten second interlude, of hard thought, at the end of which I went with Plan C. I slipped from my place of concealment and began tailing the two fake leatherboys as they tailed Dora.
Why? Don’t ask me. I don’t know my own heart, I guess. God knows I was scared of those two. I’d been scared of people like them forever. The kind of scared where you don’t have a roommate because then you won’t have to explain why you wake up sobbing with terror a few nights a week. These two weren’t my particular personal nightmare, but they were, as the saying goes, close enough for folk music. Dylan once wrote, "I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours." They wanted to kill me for stumbling into theirs. They didn’t seem to have their long guns with them this time, but I could make out two lumpy right ankles. Big sticks would have been more than I could cope with.
And there was the question of why they were after Dora. While I’ve never been a big fan of the government, I had to concede that it probably did not covertly pop caps on American soil without a pretty good reason. On the other hand, a "good reason" in their estimation might be something like Dora having recognized some fellow drag queen as a senator. He wasn’t swarthy enough or Irish enough to be a terrorist. What would his cause be, Free Tammy Fae Baker?
In between these speculations I kept doing the math. I’d helped Dora, then Dora had helped me. The books balanced. I owed him nothing; if anything, he owed me for clothes and sandals. I didn’t have to do this—
After awhile they took the last turn. From there it was a straight one-block shot to the Schooner, with almost no cover along the way. If one of them even glanced over his shoulder he could hardly miss me. So I hung back, waiting to make the turn until they’d had time to at least build up a little more of a lead. Finally I judged there was enough distance between us that if they did glance back, they might not necessarily recognize me. I was dressed differently than I had been at our last encounter. At the last moment I had a rush of brains to the head and adjusted my walk to be almost as exaggeratedly feminine as Dora’s. They’d never suspect it was me. I was congratulating myself on my sagacity when I turned the corner and crashed head-on into Dora, coming the other way.
~~~~~
It took several confused seconds for Dora to convince me she hadn’t seen the feds, and for me to convince her that one minute ago they’d been no more than a block behind her. Then we
stood there together and looked up and down that street for anywhere they could reasonably have gone.
After awhile Dora shrugged and gave up. "They beamed up," he said, and dismissed the matter.
Some people can do that. I sometimes wish I were one of them. When I don’t understand something, I can’t dismiss it, any more than I can ignore a stone in my shoe. I was convinced the two shooters were concealed in some cunning blind, and any second they were going to get good and ready, and drop us both—
But what could I do about it?
The Schooner was nearly deserted, down to a couple of hardcore regulars nursing the night’s last cup of cheer. No sign of Bad Death anywhere. Inside the big old mahogany racetrack of a bar, two tired young bartenders dressed like refugees had stopped serving and were into their close-up routines when we arrived, but Dora and I were both known there. The band shell stage was dark and empty; so was the kitchen-and-washrooms shack adjacent to the bar. We took our beers to a table between them, and thus were mostly concealed from both the street and the marina.
"You’re right," Dora said. "I don’t know your heart. So I have to ask again: why did you take a chance and follow those two?"
I’d been asking myself that same question all night, and I had a pretty fair answer, but there was no way I was going to share it with him, no way in the world. I tried to think of anyone on the planet with whom I would share it, and failed. I thought of a great lie and decided I didn’t much want to tell it. "Look—"
"Please," he said softly.
To my astonishment, I heard myself tell him the truth.
~~~~~
"The only thing I hate worse than winter is cars," I told him. "And the only thing I hate worse than cars is cars in winter. I hate them all the time, but especially on cold mornings. The goddam things just never want to start when it’s really cold, you know?"
He said nothing.
"So I had this old beater, a Dodge. For Detroit iron it wasn’t bad. Slant six, not a lot of pickup but hard to kill, easy to work on. Only in the winter, it needed working on a lot. On really cold mornings, getting it to start could be major pain in the ass, that left you with grease and smelly starter fluid all over your frostbitten barked knuckles. Sometimes it wouldn’t start. Once in a while, you’d get desperate or clumsy from the cold and use a little too much fluid, and then there’d be a carburetor blowback that could perm your bangs and fry your eyebrows right off."
