Florida Straits (26 page)

"Nothin'. No money. No stones. All I got for
my trouble is this big fucking problem with Charlie Ponte."

"Yup," said Joey, "ya still got that."

Gino said nothing. He shifted on the cracked
stern seat of the rowboat and watched blood congeal on his finger.
Somehow the zest went out of his rage when he remembered he was
scheduled to be rubbed out.

"So what ya gonna do about it?" Joey
resumed.

Again Gino made no answer, and Joey, between
strokes of the oars, could not resist adding, "I mean, you said you
had a plan and all."

"I do have a plan," Gino said by reflex. In
the old days Joey might have believed him.

"Want my advice?"

Gino snorted. "Yeah, Joey, like I want a
root canal."

"Just lay low for a while. Not long. A week,
tops. Don't get antsy. 'Cause I got a feeling that things can still
work out."

Gino considered this a moment, then his
temper kicked in again. "Yeah? Like as good as they been workin'
out so far?" His blood pressure rose so that his cut finger spat
out its half-formed scab. His side throbbed like a drum. "Joey,
man, I cannot fucking believe you are still giving me advice and
I'm sittin' heah like almost half taking you seriously. After what
you did to me, you dumb twat." He gestured off in the general
direction of land. "Joey, the fucking stones were in my hand.
In
my hand!
Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone? I
coulda been halfway to New York by now. But no, you gotta get
fancy. You gotta play the smart guy. And I listen." He smacked
himself in the head. "Joey, do me a favor, don't fucking talk to me
no more."

Joey shrugged and rowed. For a long time the
only sound was the soft splash of the oars, a noise that was
companionable and oddly domestic, like a cat lapping milk in the
kitchen. Off in the east, in a colorless and utterly undramatic
way, the sky was just barely beginning to lighten. Low stars were
doused and two different shades of black were sandwiched at the
horizon.

"Gino, man," Joey said at last, "I got,
like, a suggestion I wanna make."

He paused, waiting to see if Gino would shut
him up. He didn't. It was one thing to sulk, but with two guys in
an eight-foot rowboat, silences could turn truly psychotic.

"So listen," Joey went on. "I realize maybe
this isn't the best time to bring this up, I know you're a little
upset and all. But Gino, I been thinkin'. I been thinkin' it would
be a good thing if like you and me could just forgive each
other."

Gino Delgatto looked at his half brother as
if he'd never seen him before, as if he'd just that minute dropped
from the sky and landed in the rowboat. "Fuck you talking
about?"

Joey breathed deeply but kept rowing. "Gino,
I just lost you a fortune. You were gonna be a big man, set for
life, and I fucked it up for you. I could say I'm sorry, but you
know what? I'm not sorry. I'm glad."

Gino stared at Joey. He had a thought to
lunge forward and strangle him but was held back by stupefaction
and the fear of falling overboard and drowning.

"All my life you been makin' me feel bad,
Gino. It's like either you use me or ignore me. When I was a little
kid, you didn't protect me, you lemme get beat up. When I dropped
outta school—"

"Joey, what is this bullshit? We're gonna
sit here inna middle of the fucking ocean and drag out grudges from
a million years ago?"

"Not from a million years ago," said Joey.
"From now. 'Cause it's never changed, Gino. You don't take me
serious. I leave New York. Does it ever dawn on you to wonder how
I'm doin', what I'm doin'? No. When you get involved in somethin'
down heah, then you're innerested 'cause then you can use me. You
can take it for granted that I'll drop everything to help you out.
You see what I'm sayin', Gino? You don't treat me right, but you
don't lemme get away either."

"You wanna get away, get away," said Gino.
"Who's stoppin' ya?"

"Who am I chauffeurin' around inna fucking
rowboat? But O.K., say I really do break away. Gino, my mother's
dead. Your mother's a little old lady. Pop, you look at 'im close,
he don't look great. He can still keep his tie straight and his
shoulders back, but he's an old man. What happens when they're all
dead, Gino? Are we still brothers then? Why, what for? Are we even
gonna talk?"

"Sure we are, kid. Sure."

"I'm not so sure," said Joey. "Why should
we? I'm not gonna run errands for you. I'm not gonna make you any
money. That's over. And I know you, Gino. A guy doesn't do exactly
what you want, right away he's disloyal, he's ungrateful, he's an
enemy. So that's how you're gonna thinka me. And that's just gonna
get me more pissed at you for all the time you held me down."

Gino slapped his knees so hard the rowboat
bucked, and gave a grunt that mingled with a bitter laugh. "Joey,
this is fucking rich. You drop tree million dollars a mine inna
fucking water, now you try to make it sound like I'm inna fucking
wrong and that's why it happened?"

"Gino, this is the whole point. I'm not
talking right and I'm not talking wrong. I'm saying that what goes
on between the two of us, the way we're always busting each other's
balls, it's like a, whaddyacallit, a vicious cycle, circle,
whatever, and the only way it's gonna stop is if we both stop.
That's why I'm saying, hey, let it go, we gotta forgive each
other."

Gino hesitated, maybe even wavered. Then he
remembered the feel of the emeralds in his hand. They were solid,
cool, he knew their price, he had a vivid idea of what they could
have done for him. "Nah, Joey, save it. Ya sound like a goddamn
priest. I'm pissed about the fucking stones. You wanna be pissed
too, that's your business."

Joey looked down at the water. There was
enough light now to blot out the phosphorescence streaming from the
oars. He noticed suddenly that he'd raised blisters on both palms.
"O.K.," he said, "I tried."

"And there you go again," razzed Gino,
revving up for one more spasm of exasperation, "with that
I
tried
bullshit. Joey, you're givin' me advice, lemme give
you advice. No one gives a fuck
you tried
. Do something
right, and do it to the end. Cut this bullshit with
I tried
.
It just makes you look like a horse's ass."

—

Joey rowed in silence through the Sand Key
Channel. By the first light of morning, the derelict marina was
even more forlorn than it had been at night. Lizards darted in and
out of the windows of the abandoned trailer. Pieces of forgotten
boats lay stranded on the shore like dead animals. Joey Goldman and
Gino Delgatto, their backs stiff and their feet wrinkled with
wetness, climbed out of the twelve-dollar dinghy and left it to rot
with the others. Then they stepped into Zack Davidson's skiff and
motored off.

Beyond the dimness of the cove, the sun was
already glaring across the water, going from orange to yellow and
from warm to searing hot. It was not yet six-thirty.

Bert the Shirt was waiting at the bridge,
standing against the early traffic of fishermen and truckers. A
stickler for grooming, he was already shaved, his cheeks pink from
freshly slapped-on bay rum, his white hair with its tinge of bronze
still damp from the shower. He was wearing a sea-green pullover of
knitted silk, and he had Don Giovanni in the crook of his arm. The
chihuahua, rousted out of its velvet dog bed before the accustomed
time, looked grouchy; its huge black eyes refused to open all the
way, its whiskers hung down in a sour arc. Vicki didn't look too
chipper either. She'd dozed but hadn't slept, yanked back from the
brink by visions of snakes and spiders and by the infernal buzzing
of mosquitoes in her ears. Her thin blond hair was matted on one
side and electrified on the other; her neck and forehead were
dotted with bug bites as closely arrayed as chicken pox.

The goodbyes were brief, almost nonexistent.
Nobody thanked anybody. Nobody apologized. Joey held the skiff
against a bridge stanchion while Gino, his ribs on fire, slime on
his clothes, dried blood matted in his hair, clambered up and
out.

"Jesus, Gino," Vicki said to him, "they
gonna let you onna plane like that?"

"Shut up, Vicki."

They climbed into Bert's car and slammed the
doors behind them. Joey had almost forgotten there could be so dry
a sound as a car door clicking shut.

He pushed off and headed for home. He
suddenly realized he was exhausted. His hands were swollen, his
eyes were crusty, and he'd forgotten to bring along his sunglasses.
But all in all, he felt O.K. He'd gotten his brother out alive and
thought he had a reasonable chance of keeping him that way. He
didn't have the emeralds but he knew where the emeralds were. He
figured he had enough of Gino's thousand left to buy Zack a new
little outboard. He'd said some things he'd been meaning to say,
and if he didn't get the answers he'd hoped for, at least he got
the answers he'd expected. Pretty soon now, he'd get to sleep. His
conscience was clear.

—
37 —

He slept till four, and woke up feeling the
dryness and dislocation that are the price of daytime sleep. His
eyes itched, his arms hurt, he smelled his own sweat on the pillow.
Gradually he remembered where he was: not just in Key West but in a
Key West that was free of Gino. A pleasant place, an easy place, a
place he had chosen for himself. He rolled over, stretched, and
slowly started noticing things he'd been too nervous to notice for
the past few put-upon weeks: the smell of the air that was
sometimes dusty, sometimes flowery, depending on how humid it was
and where the wind was coming from; the way the curtain fluttered
over the louvered window, like the skirt of a woman walking. His
eyes half open, he groped on the nightstand for his sunglasses.

He pulled on a bathing suit, threw a towel
around his neck, and went outside. No one was around, and Joey
jumped feet first into the pool. Waves rolled from his body,
collided with the sides, and started back again, converging at a
dozen angles like the roiled water over a coral reef. He threw
himself backward and tried to float. For a few seconds the water
held him; then, as if overburdened by the added weight of his
doubt, it sagged and let him sink. One of these days, he told
himself, he'd learn to swim. To live in Florida and not know how
was crazy.

He toweled off and settled into a lounge
chair under a palm tree. He was looking up absently through the
interlaced fronds when Sandra came through the wooden gate of the
compound. She was wearing a straight white skirt with a zipper on
the side, white shoes with low heels, and a short-sleeved pink
blouse whose shoulders stuck out an inch or two beyond her own. She
walked with quick, compact steps around the hot tub and sat down
next to Joey on the lounge— sat with her usual precision so that
she was as close as she could be without putting her skirt against
his wet bathing suit. "You're back," she said.

"Sure I'm back. You worried?"

"A little, yeah," she said. "It's been a
long time since we spent a night apart, Joey. Besides, I'm always
worried when you're with Gino." She reached out and touched Joey's
hair, brushing it back from his forehead. Her fingertips felt good
against his scalp, and he surprised himself by clutching her wrist
and kissing it.

"Well, Gino's gone," he said. "He's back in
New York by now."

Sandra said nothing, and Joey was grateful
for her restraint. If she'd come out with too much relief, he would
have had to take Gino's side somehow because he was family. That's
just how it was. But she kept still and looked down at the blue
shimmer of the pool.

"Yup," Joey resumed, "he's history. So,
Sandra, now I can start making good on some a the promises I been
making."

"Promises?" said Sandra. "You, Joey? You've
been making promises?"

"Yeah, ya know, like having friends and all,
doing stuff. I'm ready."

"Just like that?" said Sandra. "Ready for
what, exactly?"

"I don't know. Ya know, like life. Hey, what
day is it?"

"It's Thursday, Joey."

"Right. Well, like, on Saturday. Zack and
Claire, let's have 'em over to dinner. And Bert."

Sandra started to smile but could not help
letting a quick flinch tighten the comers of her mouth. Joey, just
then discovering the comfort of small affections, put a cool hand
on her knee.

"Sandra, hey, I know what you're thinking:
Bert isn't gonna fit in, it's gonna be, like, awkward. But ya know
what I think, Sandra? I think the more ya try to keep one part of
your life over heah, and another part over theah, the more it
doesn't work. I've tried it, believe me. You're embarrassed, ya try
to keep things separate, they just get more bollixed up together.
Ya can't go around feeling like ya all the time gotta apologize for
where ya came from, who ya came from. Ya gotta, like, trust that
people are gonna adjust, adopt, adapt, whatever. Ya know, like
lighten up and get along."

—

Midway through dinner, Joey started yawning,
and afterward, when he and Sandra made love, it had some of the
floating bafflement and tender discontinuity of sex in dreams. He
did not feel her slip out of bed to straighten up the kitchen.

But by three
a.m
.
he was all slept out. His eyes popped open, and the moonlight
filtering through the curtains was more than bright enough to guide
him to the stove to put up coffee. He pulled on his bathrobe and
took a cup out by the pool.

The night was just barely cool enough for
the coffee to steam. Overhead, the palm fronds rustled dryly; the
sound was almost like brushes on a snare drum. The closed flowers
had lost their individual perfumes and gave off a generic sweetness
like that of wet paper. Joey sipped from his mug and thought about
the last time he'd been out by the pool at three
a.m
. It was only ten weeks or so ago. His prospects
had been zero and a sense of failure was keeping him awake as
stubbornly as a toothache. He'd had no job and he was running out
of money. Sandra was getting fed up and the one person he could
talk to was a resurrected mafioso who talked to his neurotic dog.
He was trying to concoct a way to pull a living out of Florida, and
all he could think of was baby alligators, suntan lotion, pencil
sharpeners in the shape of oranges.