by Ann Beattie
By then, Harry was no longer in touch with Ron. Ron and Alice had gotten divorced after she found him in bed with a three-hundred-pound transsexual, story went, though, as people said at the time, who was this three-hundred-pounder? Even in Key West, such a person would be noticed before long, because come on: people went to the trouble of going all the way to Key West in order to strut their stuff, but no one had ever seen him/her except Alice.
Harry’s friendship with Alice began after Ron sold the business, renovated the last eyebrow house (symbolic; after the transsexual, everyone’s eyebrows were raised), got a quickie divorce, and moved to Costa Rica. Though just recently, word was, on good authority (the Black Pig’s girlfriend), Ron had moved again, to San Miguel de Allende. His friendship with Alice…Several years before, she called him one night after Ron had been gone a week or so and she asked him if he was working for the new guy. He wasn’t, as it happened. The new guy was an asshole, and he was tired of doing construction, anyway. Tired of even seeing all those backyards bulldozed for pools while he was ripping out dry rot and the termites were swarming. Was there a chance she could buy him a drink and talk over something with him? she wanted to know. When he missed a beat, she answered his unasked question: No funny stuff—she wanted to talk to him about continuing her project: drawing him. As they chatted, he found out she knew a guy with a catamaran, and that when she wasn’t sketching, she was floating over the reef, snorkeling. It sounded like fun—fascinating, the way she talked about it; it sounded like she didn’t want to see the fish and later make them into squares and rectangles and have them falling through space, she just appreciated them. He remembered being almost hypnotized by the way she’d described the fishes’ colors, and how silvery and surprising everything looked down there, so that first he agreed to go out on Billy G’s boat, then he said—yeah, he probably said—that if she wanted to come into the bar and sketch while he worked—he was working four days a week when the construction job ended—that would be fine with him, as long as she realized a bunch of drunken fools would try to pick her up because she was an artist. Or just because she’d be sitting there, actually.
The snorkeling outings got to be a regular thing, or at least as regular as anything got to be in Key West: most Mondays, except for bad weather, except for anything unavoidable that came up. Also, Alice almost always showed up when he was working. It got so he’d leave a message if his schedule changed. But except for seeing her on the boat or, more often, seeing her shadow floating near him, seeing her black flippers, feeling, almost, her fascination with the fish encircling them as they both swished through the water—except for that, he never saw her unless it was in Tropics. Didn’t even run into her at the store. Didn’t see her walking around town. Therefore, after eight, nine months or so, why had he been so surprised to hear from her that she was remarrying? Sitting and sketching at the bar, the rare times things were slow, he’d learned a little about her marriage to Ron. The big transsexual hadn’t been the first—Ron had a taste for exotica. And he didn’t want kids, and she thought she did. Maybe she should have married the guy she intended to marry years ago, because she’d heard he was still pining away for her, even though he was living with somebody else, in White Plains. She seemed to think it was as confusing and pointless—all of it—as he did, and she hadn’t really been asking for advice. She knew he was seeing a girl named Lucia, because when he told her about his weekends, Lucia’s name usually came up. And after that, she knew he was seeing Nance Goodwin, and that it was top secret because Nance would lose her alimony if she lived with anybody, and every time Nance even hung out with a guy for a long time, her ex would have her tailed—usually for considerably longer than the guy lasted. So Alice knew those things, but he never talked about his feelings (yeah, yeah: everybody always said men didn’t), and he had to guess at hers vis-à-vis the man in White Plains. He was pretty surprised when she called him early one Sunday morning, either drunk or weepy or both, and asked him if he would do her an enormous favor. She called him at three in the morning, but then, she’d been in the bar until two, and she knew—because he’d told her so—that he was going home when he got off at three, because Nance was being followed again.
The big favor was that Ames Albright, Mr. White Plains, was coming to Key West a week from Monday, and she wanted him to have dinner with them. In fact, if there was any way he could spare the time, she would also like it if he would go to the airport to pick him up with her, but she realized that was asking a lot. He was surprised she asked, and he also didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t know exactly how to get out of it.
“Please,” she said. She sounded urgent.
“What do you want me to meet him for?” he said. He realized this sounded uncharitable, but why did she want him to meet the man?
“It doesn’t have to be for anything, does it?”
“But Alice, you know—we don’t hang out,” he said.
There was a long moment of silence, during which he reflected that what he had just said was not very charitable, but he also felt that in spite of the snorkeling, and in spite of their fragmented conversations as she sat on a bar stool at Tropics, he had spoken the truth.
“You’re not my friend?” she said, her voice very quiet.
That one got him. “Of course,” he said. “You want me to meet the guy, I’ll meet the guy.”
“You have time to come to the airport?”
“No,” he lied, “but you name the place for dinner and I’ll be there.”
“Well, at the house,” she said. “You know, come by at seven o’clock.”
He had never been to her house. Ron had said many times that he was going to have everybody over for a barbecue, but the one time he’d asked them, it had gotten rained out. The house was on Frances, five blocks or so from where he was renting a room.
“Will do,” he said.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘What can I bring?’ ” she said, “so I can say, ‘Just bring yourself.’ ”
“That’s all I was bringing,” he said. Three-thirty in the morning, ex-boss’s ex-wife wanting him to come to some pointless dinner with some guy from New York. For what? Which was the way he thought in those days. Work all the time—for what? Get married—for what? Mortgage? Sniveling kids? Support another person? Play the Man’s game—for what? So you can be like every other ungratified, overworked chump? He put on Jim Morrison—this many years later, he could remember putting on Dead Jim, stretching out on the futon, falling asleep looking at the palm fronds blowing outside his window: his version of venetian blinds.
—
She didn’t come to the bar on Sunday evening, but she’d missed a couple of Sundays. She and a girlfriend had started to check out lawn sales and flea markets farther up the Keys. But she didn’t come the next night, either, and he decided that if he didn’t see her on Wednesday, when he worked next, he’d call. Naturally, she wasn’t there, though once he looked up and saw a woman who resembled her, in a scarf, and he was surprised how relieved he felt for a split second. He phoned her from the bar but only got her answering machine. “Hey—let me know if anything’s wrong. Got used to your being here,” he said. It wasn’t until he’d hung up that he realized that if something was wrong—say, if somebody’d broken in and knocked her out or tied her up—she could hardly return the message. But how likely was that? He decided to walk by, to see if everything looked okay. And he did, when he got off, but it was late, and there were no lights. The front door was closed. The moon seemed to be shining directly over the roof. Very nice cacti on the front lawn, plus the inevitable two or three cats. Hers? He walked home and watched TV for a while, hoping she might call. Before he went to bed, he left a second message, because he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said on the first: “Hey, listen, last time I called I got the machine, and then I worried that if something was wrong, and you couldn’t get back to me for some reason…I wanted to say that I’m here tonight, if you want to talk about anyt
hing. I’m assuming everything’s okay. Call me if there’s any change in plans. About the dinner, I mean.”
He hung up and wondered why he hadn’t told her to call him, period.
He didn’t hear from her or see her in the bar. The last night he worked that week, Friday, he didn’t expect to see her, and he didn’t. A couple of underage kids with fake IDs tried to hassle him, but he grabbed one by the wrist and made it clear he could do damage, and they both ran out of the bar afterward, screaming insults over their shoulders, but what did that matter? Down the bar, an older guy was putting the make on a dyed blond in a low-cut dress who feigned great interest in what he was saying. The guy kept asking for more peanuts and scooping them up like he was thirsty and drinking water from a stream. Like he’d come a long way, but finally, at long last, he’d arrived at the peanut dish.
On Monday, late in the afternoon, he went to Fausto’s and got a bottle of wine and an Entenmann’s crumb cake, thinking that it would be funny to take something, after all. He got a box of devil’s food cookies and opened it and ate as he walked home. He was eating nervously, he realized. He had not been able to shake the thought that she might not be there that night, especially after he’d called twice and gotten neither her nor the machine. He thought about going by the house again, but decided that would be pointless, because he felt entirely sure she wouldn’t be there. Maybe she would have left for the airport, but even if she hadn’t, he still felt sure she wouldn’t be home.
By the time it was time to leave, he’d eaten almost all the cookies and wasn’t very hungry. He’d also cut himself shaving, because he’d done it in a hurry, realizing at the last minute that he’d forgotten to shave. He wore his favorite khaki shirt—the one Nance had given him for Valentine’s Day, with one of those peel-off metallic hearts above the pocket. He’d been relieved the thing hadn’t been sewn onto the shirt. That was long gone. Valentine’s Day was long gone. Nance was, herself: gone back to Mother in Buffalo, New York, to ditch the guy tailing her. Nobody her ex-husband hired lasted long in the winter in Buffalo.
—
Alice opened the door before he even knocked. She said “Hi!” and reached out her arms. He hugged her one-armed, because he was carrying the Fausto’s bag.
“Something for the hostess,” he said, indicating with a small downward turn of his lip that he meant it wryly. But she took it, exclaiming as if he’d brought some wonderful gift.
He was surprised at the living room. It was quite striking, all done in black and white, with a green rug and very healthy palms growing out of big brass containers. There were spotlights beaming down from the ceiling on the palms. There was a black leather sofa, and two black and two gray chairs. A big aquarium, freestanding, was at the side of the room, where you might expect a wall to divide the living room from the kitchen. Ames Albright stood to the left of the aquarium. He had risen from one of the gray chairs, and he was walking forward, with his hand extended. He had a very pleasant face, but he was winter pale, and as Harry grasped his hand, both he and the man seemed to instantly realize how different they were. Also, the man must be fifty, fifty-five. He was handsome, with thick hair, black streaked with gray. He was wearing a shirt with cufflinks, khakis with pleats at the waist, and loafers. He was like nobody who ever came into Tropics, and like nobody Harry had seen personally for years. One of those guys you’d see with a cotton sweater tied around his shoulders, up on the Sunset Deck at Pier House, being serenaded by white boys playing reggae on their Rhythm Ace as sailboats passed by and seagulls swooped: a rich guy on vacation, waiting for sunset.
“Ames, this is my good friend Harry. Harry, Ames.”
She sounded nervous. He wasn’t exactly comfortable himself. In this context, the boxed cake and the bottle of wine looked quite strange sitting next to a large geode on a marble-topped table. He had also apparently lost a devil’s food cookie in the bottom of the bag as he ate. She had taken it out and looked at it, puzzled.
“Those are very special. I just brought you one to try,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Flight get in all right?” he asked Ames, sitting in a chair next to Ames’s.
“There was some delay in Miami, but it worked out all right.”
“Have you been to Key West before?”
“No. Never have. Went fishing years ago off Key Largo with my brother, but we didn’t make it down this far.”
“It’s really special,” Alice said. “I love being here.”
“I’m trying to persuade her to move to New York,” Ames said. He smiled at Harry.
“You are?” Harry said.
“Well—keep a place here and live in New York, too.”
He looked at her, but he couldn’t read her expression. She got up and went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of champagne.
“Here,” he said, reaching for the bottle.
“Thanks,” she said. “And I guess I should get glasses—”
“Can I help with anything, darling?” Ames said.
Darling?
“No,” she said, over her shoulder. “They’re right here.”
“So I understand you’re a fisherman yourself,” Ames said.
“Oh, I used to do some fishing. Not too much these days, though. I’m a bartender,” he said, hoping the information would fall like a lead balloon.
“Yes, I heard that. But Alice says—oh, sorry: I know what it is she told me. She said the two of you liked to snorkel. Not quite the same thing as fishing.”
“No, not exactly,” he said. He reached for a champagne flute. He had begun to feel like a minor character in a 1940s movie. He also felt extraneous, antisocial, and confused.
“So then,” Ames said, raising his glass, “here’s to possibility.”
“Possibility,” Alice said, raising her glass.
Harry raised his glass, silently, then sipped.
“Alice says you’re her muse,” Ames said.
“She draws me when I’m tending bar. Yeah,” Harry said.
“Yes, she said,” Ames said. “I hope I’m not taking you away from your work tonight.”
“No,” he said, “I wasn’t scheduled.” He wasn’t trying hard enough. Why wasn’t he? Because he was exasperated with Alice. Because he’d worried for so long that something might be the matter. Because she was someone’s darling, so what was he there for?
“Alice and I were engaged years ago,” Ames said. “I was awfully happy she decided to call, after my letter finally found its way to her. The thing is, if she thought you liked me, I think my chances would be significantly improved. I’m afraid you’re here to approve of me, but because of the way I appear, I doubt that you do. Not that I feel you need to approve, but Alice cares very much.”
Talk about odd fish. This guy had the brain of a needlefish, if he was willing to hang around to be auditioned in front of someone else. Of course they didn’t like each other. How could she have thought they would?
Harry frowned. He put his glass on the table. He saw that Alice had put her hands over her face.
“You understand that I used to be on her husband’s construction team, right? That she and I have in common snorkeling and a fondness for this place. That it’s been fine with me if she’s wanted to draw me while I’m working, but that’s it. Right?”
“Oh, right, absolutely,” Ames said. “I hope I didn’t in any way suggest that she—”
“Oh God,” Alice sighed.
“Well, I don’t see—I don’t see what’s wrong with our conversation, really,” Ames said. “I don’t see anything to be upset about. I just thought I’d put my cards on the table, so to speak.”
