Her jeep screeched to a halt in the parking lot outside John Steven’s and they both hopped out.
“I’m not sure why you have to drive like that.”
“Because I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
As they started walking, another car pulled in and the driver got out.
“Hey, there’s someone I want you to meet. Of course, you should know her already since she owns the place three doors down. But, seeing how you never get out… Hey Paula!”
They met in the middle of the parking lot and exchanged greetings. Cara introduced Paula to her father and mentioned, apropos of nothing, that he was a writer. It was just this sort of awkwardness that never failed to elicit an eye roll from him, but she persisted in making a big show of it, ticking off a few of his well-known titles and awards for good measure. He knew his daughter well. Well enough, in fact, to realize that she was doing this on purpose just to see him squirm. Paula, seeming to know exactly what was going on, graciously diffused the tension by a show of polite interest and the three continued toward the restaurant together.
Cara noticed her father’s mood brightening as they chatted on their way through the lot covered with pine needles and overhung by Spanish Moss, which spilled from writhing live oaks overhead. Entering the whitewashed shanty-style building, their voices blended with the clatter of dishes and silverware, music and the droning banter of customers. Paula said she'd try to catch up with them later before starting for a table where a man sat waiting. Cara and her father put in for a table for two before dodging their way through the tables in the dining room toward the bar in the back.
At the bar, she ordered a dirty martini and her father a double Maker‘s Mark. They sat and drank quietly together and, as the alcohol did its work making them serene and complacent, she noticed him stealing glances toward Paula’s table. She could understand. Certainly Paula was attractive from whatever distance one chose to look at her, but upon drawing closer, one could experience the full affect of her beauty: her alluring blue eyes swept by iridescent shoulder-length blonde hair, nearly perfect skin and the peculiarly seductive shape of her mouth. Cara could just hear the purple prose that her father was conjuring as he contemplated Paula furtively from his seat at the bar. What made it worse for him was her obvious intelligence, and it had been clear that every word she had spoken in her lilting soprano during the short trip from the parking lot had stuck like a blade in his heart.
Another round of drinks and their table was ready. They barely spoke as they set upon their food quenching the queasy effect of lowered blood sugar left by hunger and alcohol. They had a few more drinks and, when the food was gone, stared placidly ahead like over-grazed cattle.
“Holy hell! It’s Cara and her dad! Who the hell let them in here?! This is my place and I say who gets in here.”
They both turned but they need‘nt have, they both instantly recognized Katie’s giggly voice coming from the bar. Somehow she had gotten in past them, unnoticed. Shannon and two guys from Saints and Sinners, Jeremy and Chris, were in there with her.
“Come here, you guys, give me some sugar. You too, Dad,” Katie cooed.
“Yeah, sugar…” added Shannon. “Sugar is what we need over here.”
The two got up from their table and headed back toward the bar carrying their drinks. Katie darted out and threw herself into her father’s best friend’s arms. He hugged her tight and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She looked up at him and he brushed her blonde hair away from her face. “Kathleen, my dear, adoptive daughter… it’s been way too long…” Cara went up and put her arm around Shannon.
“God! I can't escape you people anywhere,” she said.
“Why don’t you come to the beach anymore, Dad?” asked Katie.
“Why would anyone want to escape us,” said Shannon. “Isn’t the whole attraction of living here the opportunity to hang with us?”
“I don’t know. I’m working all the time these days. Although, I know if I spent more time at the beach observing your antics, I’d probably have much more material for writing realistic-sounding dialog. I’ll try to get out there later this week.”
“What’s everyone drinking?” said Chris. “I don’t want any interruptions in the flow of alcohol. Not after spending all afternoon etching koi fish and tribal armbands into tourists' milky white flesh.”
“Amstel Lite.”
“Another martini.”
“Old Granddad 114.”
“ How appropriate.”
“Anchor Steam.”
“Gray Goose.”
“That’s all a buncha crap, fucking foo-foo drinks. A round of Cuervo Gold shots. It’s my call because I’m buying. If you don’t like it, don’t drink it. And if you don’t drink it, well then the hell with you!”
“What the fuck? Will you just shut up?! You think it’s funny to say that sorta stuff, but it’s not,” Cara shot back. “But go ahead and buy. No one's gonna stop you.”
The shots came and down they went. Another round and down it went. Lots of cheerful talk. Another round and down it went. And so it went, until…
“Oh God. It’s Miles. He’s really not here, is he? mutha fffuh... He’s gonna know I had the day off and I’m gonna have to listen to his shit. What the hell do I do? Dammit, I do what I wanna do…” Cara mumbled to herself as Miles started toward her. “Why is he here? I picked this place specifically so he wouldn’t be here.”
“Hey sweetie… I didn't expect to see you,” he said.
“How was Key West?” she asked. “Did you take care of your dad’s real-estate deal?”
“Uh.. Oh, it went okay. It took all day to convince them to except the original terms of the deal. They didn’t like the flooring. It’s bamboo and they wanted red oak.”
Cara looked at him quizzically. "Huh. He’s gonna stick with it," she thought to herself. "What’s up with the elaborate lie? What's he hiding?" She knew from talking to Katie that he hadn’t been in Key West at all but up in Layton at Swan’s Wharf.
“I figured you’d be at the Parrot tonight,” said Miles.
“I took the day off. I didn’t feel well when I got up this morning." She took a step back from her own lies and was amazed at them. “God, I’m no better than him. What a couple we make.” So she set it all aside for the moment and they lost themselves in the effervescent, meandering type of conversation that lovers allow themselves. He really could be a sweet guy.
“Do you need another one?”
“Sure.”
They talked on.
There comes a time in the course of drunken reverie when space and time become muddled. Colors are visible but seem unattached to discrete objects. Voices pull loose from their owners and move here and there of their own accord. The continuity of events breaks down and the before becomes the after and the after before.
“Do you need another one?”
“Katie is talking to Chris. ‘Please, if they want koi fish, give ‘em koi fish and stop yer bitching'. 'No, it’s not so bad the first few you do, but do you know how many koi fish I’ve done? I looked it up - seventy-five and I‘m only twenty-six. People celebrate marriages, births; memorialize their dead loved ones with that shit. Think about it!’ Some fat guy offering to buy Katie a drink… I’ve never seen him before. Rejected. Jeremy is talking to Shannon and she has her hand on his leg. Hmmm… now that’s something new. ‘That’s why I only work part-time, working with ignorant people sucks. I’d rather be poor.’ Shannon said that.”
“Do you need another one?”
“Miles… Where’s Miles? Where’s Daddy. He was here just a minute ago. She scanned the room for him. Over there… talking to Paula. Yes! How did that happen? Her brother? Oh, the guy she was eating with was her brother… not a date. Nice. Perfect. Well, of course, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein were lesbians… and yeah the expatriates were refreshing after the late Victorians. E.M. Forester is for girls… and everything Ernest Hemingway ever wrote was homoerotic. Big man… bullfight aficionado. If there‘s anything gayer than a bullfight I don‘t know what it is. I think Ezra Pound and John Dos Passos are complete crap. Me too. Ulysses - the best novel of the 20th century? He thinks so too. God, this is perfect! They’re talking books. I’ve never seen him talk to a woman about books and look interested. He’s smoking a cigar and she’s smiling, looking up at him with those big blue eyes. Holy shit… she just took a big puff off his cigar… off the spitty butt end of his cigar. And he’s laughing… she’s laughing. Their knees are touching. Who am I talking to? Apparently, no one…”
“Look at me! I’m Marilyn Monroe and Cara’s dad is John F. Kennedy!” Katie blurted out from somewhere in the room.
“Miles?”
“You gotta stop calling me that,” he laughed. “I told you my name is Mark.”
“Oh yeah, sorry…”
“Hey, if you’ve gotta bite someone, come take a bite out of me!” Shannon’s voice said from the opposite end of the room from where Shannon was sitting.
“Do you need another one?”
“My sweet sister. I love you, Cara. I hope we‘re together for the rest of my life.” Katie flung arms around her neck. “Are you okay honey?”
“Does anyone need another one?”
“What is it like to be the only sober person in room full of drunken people? Drunks are normal to other drunks. But not to a sober person. Like someone watching a circus. Clowns and elephants and performers swinging from the rafters, falling into nets. Sick demented clowns. The sober person in the room. The watcher in the woods. The catcher in the rye. The silent observer. The voyeur.“
Her mood darkened and some incomprehensible terror crept into her and settled in around her shoulders. Are you okay honey? “Shannon?” She was sure it was Shannon but Shannon was across the room talking to Jeremy. “Is there a sober person in the room?” She stopped and willed her mind clear. The fog dispersed for a moment. “Yes, there is. He is.” Miles. “Miles.” She hadn’t seen Miles accept another drink all night, since the one he'd sipped slowly during their conversion. He was sitting at the other end of the bar, watching, his eyes were locked on Katie and he seemed to be trying to listen to what she was saying. Breaking his stare, his eyes darted to the fat man, sitting a few barstools down, and the fat man met his gaze. There was only a slight nod of the head and a look as if to say, “Her.” And the fog enveloped her again.
“Does anyone need another one?”
“I'm buying.”
“Does anyone need another one?”
Cara felt guilty. Everyone else had been buying all night. “I’m buying… What does everyone want?” she asked. No response. She felt sandy pavement and pine needles against her knees and heard her father’s voice. The parking lot wheeled around her.
“Come on, honey, let me help you into the car. From now on I think you should leave the heavy drinking to us drunks.” She heard the seat belt click around her and then Katie’s voice.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m over off of 24th. I can make it. Leave me alone,” she laughed. “You guys be careful on the road.”
The tropical night, a wake for the tropical day past. The deceased is embalmed, wrapped in misty winding sheets, laid out on a bier and prepared for the crypt. Overhead a watchful eye, red with mourning, looks on over a world seething with life and death. “Keep silent. Show respect for the dead. Hang crape on the doorframes. Burn incense in the mangroves. Wind and waves, give us a dirge.”
Katie shuffled along the side streets between buildings, past darkened doorways and into the alley that led over to 24th street. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the dark. A noise. The outline of a large man blocked the dim light at the end of the alley. “God, you scared me, what the…” A crushing blow from behind. She sank to the ground, dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment