“By the time they got us off that god-forsaken strip of land, we’d been there three days… three days! No water, no food, no nothing! And all the while the lights of St. Thomas, 20 miles west, just mocking us, just fucking mocking us…”
Old Walter, ripped on Green Label, telling the story he always told at closing time in a vain attempt to delay his ejection. Why couldn’t he change it up for once and give us a different story? Just part of the atmosphere, she supposed. No one could do an Ernest Hemingway impersonation like an old man in the Keys. Manny, the bouncer pushed Walter toward the door, the old man’s heavy footsteps echoing across the broad planks of the emptied room. Good Night Walter. See you tomorrow. If not, we’ll know you’re dead. A half hour later, her key spun in the lock and The Boiled Parrot was closed for the night - nothing left inside but the smell of beer, grain and grape and the ghosts of drunken patrons.
A few quick steps round back, down the long cinder path, the rioting vegetation pawing at her beneath the sodden blanket of heavy night air, and onto the footbridge across the mangrove swamp. Moving fast to outrun the mosquitoes, she made her way toward the patches of gray light between the scrub trees that marked the entrance to the dunes and the beach. The elegant smell of rotting wood and earth and the buzz of cicadas gave sudden way to the salt spray, sand and lighter, cooler air and the pounding of the surf. Myles was there. The red beacon of his cigarette glowed and dimmed near his spectral form.
She moved up on him, then dropped down and crept the last few yards on her stomach in the sand, undetected, stopping just behind his head. She paused and enjoyed the moment, her head only inches behind his, then blew her flowery breath onto the back of his ear. He started, shuddered and spun around, wrapped her up tightly and gently dragged her alongside of him down into the sand still warm from the day‘s sun. He shuddered again in anticipation. One o’clock in the morning. The dark beach. A few small bungalows, some just white forms burrowed back into the trees, others with one last light on, muffled voices, barely audible. Sunday night, no… Monday morning. Her friends back in New York were sleeping fitfully awaiting their 6 AM alarms. She was here. They laughed. Myles suited her purpose... for now.
An hour or so later, she left the beach, spent, and headed back up over the causeway to her father’s place. Old Walter might be on to something, she thought. His overwrought pirate tales of sailing the Caribbean still sustained him. Well… being pickled in Green Label must have something to do with it. She remembered back a decade or so when she was just a teenager, before her father had gone so hard to the bottle. She could remember him crouched on the bow of their sailboat adjusting the tide rigging, his skin darkened by his long-since merged freckles. If he gave her anything, it was great memories.
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