He said that last like it solved everything, with the complete satisfaction of an Australian who has ended an argument with a rhyme. I don’t know why they feel that way about putting two rhyming words together, but they do. Rhymes had a magical power for Nicky and his countrymen. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, an Australian hit with a rhyme will back off, mutter, “Right, sorry,” and call for another round, on him. Maybe it comes from living in a place where all the towns have names like “Woolamaroo,” “Kalgoorlie,” and “Wollongong.” In a landscape littered with impossible sounds, putting two of them together is so unlikely it must call for an automatic celebration.
“You’ve gone all sour,” he told me, grabbing himself another beer.
“I know,” I said. “Art already told me.”
“It’s more than Nancy. Though that might have turned it loose. But it was already there.”
“Think so?”
“Too right. I think Nancy sensed it first, and that may have had something to do with why she pulled out.”
“Good to know.”
“The point is,” he said, after draining half the bottle, “you’ve lost your zest.” He wagged a finger at me. “Can’t do that, mate. Man’s got to have his zest.”
“I know. Grab for all the gusto you can get. I’ve seen the commercials.”
“You can laugh if you want,” he said, looking slightly hurt.
“Actually, I don’t think I can.”
“But the point is, you’re a bloody mess.”
“Are you going someplace with this?”
“Too right I am. Finish your beer.”
I finished my beer. Nicky finished three in the same time. It didn’t seem to affect him. I’ve never seen beer affect him in any way. Then he led me out the door and, to my surprise, over to Mallory Square.
Mallory Square is a small cross-section of life on earth. Nobody knows where it came from, or how it started, but it keeps growing and leaving a bigger mess. Originally the Square was a big parking lot next to an old concrete wharf. Now it’s a carnival, a street fair from one of those out-of-focus Italian films. There are jugglers, a sad magician, a high-wire act, trained animals, musicians, food vendors, and because it’s Key West, T-shirt salesmen. And the whole thing is supposed to be a celebration of sunset. But for me it was like going to the top of the Empire State Building if you live in Manhattan. It’s strictly for tourists.
“Bet you haven’t seen ’er for a while,” Nicky said as we walked through the parking lot and towards the crowd at the far end.
“Why would I, for God’s sake?”
He winked at me. “It’s fun. Remember fun?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Sour,” he said again, shaking his head.
We pushed in past a row of tables selling cheap jewelry. Nicky seemed to enjoy himself. He laughed at the performers’ bad jokes, clapped at the silly tricks, put dollar bills in the hat each time it was passed.
He dragged me all the way down the line, pausing for each act. I let him, stewing in a kind of uninvolved stupor. But eventually it all started to get to me.
“Nicky,” I said, with a small edge of anger.
“Relax. This is just exactly what you need. Straight up, you’ll see.”
We pushed through the crowd. I didn’t try to get too close. I had seen all the acts, practically memorized some of them, the ones that had been there the longest.
Nicky was humming happily, in spite of the constant threat of getting lost in a large crowd of steadily moving people, all a foot taller than he was. He had bought a couple of gigantic cookies and was working through them like a termite with rabies, spewing cookie dust in all directions. He always eats like that, with reckless disregard for community standards.
One small girl, about six years old, stopped to watch him eat the cookie, unable to believe that anybody was allowed to eat like that. A large hand yanked her back into the stream of gawkers.
We moved along the line of performers. There was a certain familiar rhythm to the place, like the tides. Nothing changed here; it was a look at the heart of Key West, with the steady rhythm of the people moving through, dropping their money into the stream, and disappearing again. The fact that there were new faces every night was less significant than the fact that there were always faces.
After a while I started to relax a little. Nicky was right. This was a great place to not think, and it provided just what I needed, a reminder that life goes on.
Just as I was starting to pick up the rhythm and blank my mind, I heard something new, and it jolted me out of my trance.
A crowd was gathered where there was not supposed to be a crowd. This had been a dead area on the dock. A guy with dreadlocks and a guitar had the spot staked out, and he droned half-hearted reggae to two or three people at a time. He’d been doing it as long as I could remember.
Something was different tonight. For the first time the guy sounded interested in his own music.
Normally there would be one small child watching him, clinging to the hand of an impatient adult. Now the crowd was three people deep, elbow to elbow, and they were craning their necks to see. Curious, I moved around the edge of the crowd and found a place where I could see.
A beautiful young woman with short blonde hair was doing a gymnast’s floor routine, working to the reggae beat with the grace and intensity you only see in Eastern European athletes at the Olympics. I watched her do an amazingly elegant walkover, up onto her hands and then over into a perfect split. As her hands went up for applause I caught her eye, and—
“That’s a whacka-toodly in the fan-doodly, eh?” said Nicky.
I stared at him. “What language is that?”
He nodded at the woman. “Bet that hurts.”
I looked back at the gymnast. Her back was to me as she began another complicated series of moves. It was a good back; slim and sleek.
I must have watched her a little too long. When I looked up, Nicky was staring at me with his gigantic, gleaming eyes.
“What,” I said.
“Nothin’, mate. Ab-so-toodly nothin’.”
Somewhere between irritation and embarrassment, I turned away and shoved through the crowd, down to the far end of the dock where they sell a pretty good conch fritter. I bought some and munched grumpily, staring out over the water at the idiots on the sunset cruise boats. Probably thought they were having fun. Bah. Humbug.
After a few minutes Nicky joined me. He went through three or four of the fritters with the same whacked-out recklessness, making chunks fly in all directions, completely unaware that he was attracting stares.
“You should put down a hat,” I told him. “Make people think you’re trying to do that.”
He shoved in the last chunk of fritter. I waited for applause, but the sun was gone and the crowds were thinning now. And as the last glow of the sun faded from the water and the circus trickled away, Nicky dragged me from Mallory Square and over to a battered old conch house near the cemetery in Old Town.
The house was owned by a woman who worked publicity for one of the big hotels. Like most local parties this one ignored class lines; there were cleaning crews from the hotel, writers, waiters and bartenders, hotel executives, even lawyers—every level of local society mixed together in a crazy swirl.
There were a lot of sarongs showing, most of them on women. I had a beer and ate some bad sushi. I listened to a man lecture me about the bond market before excusing himself to throw up in the back yard. A large woman in a floor-length muumuu explained to me that musical theatre was America’s one great contribution to world culture and I really should see Cats next time I was in New York.
I had a few more beers. So this is fun, I thought. I edged towards the door.
“Billy! Mate!” came the small foghorn voice. I turned, cornered.
Nicky chugged at me with a beer in one hand and towing a beautiful woman with the other. I felt a strange churning somewhere inside; it was the gymnast from
Mallory Square. She wore white overalls and an expression of patient embarrassment. “Billy, this is Anna.”
Our eyes met. There was a sort of electric thump at the back of my head and then she looked away, blushing. “How do you do,” she said. She had an accent I could not place, something middle European that sounded harsh and musical at the same time.
“Hello,” I replied, still trying to figure out what I was feeling.
“Anna’s new in town, Billy. Chat ’er up a bit, eh?” Nicky said, squeezing my elbow. Then he cackled and vanished into the crowd.
Anna looked embarrassed. I would have, too, except I was busy being confused, and mad at Nicky. He was ruining a perfectly good sulk.
“My name is Billy Knight,” I said, sounding stiff to my own ears.
She looked me over and our eyes met. She looked away. “Yes,” she said. “Anna Kovacic.” She said it ko-va-CHEECH.
“I saw you at Mallory Square, doing your act.”
There was a challenge in her blue eyes, the bluest I had ever seen. “This is no act,” she said. “It is to do this, or to clean in hotel rooms.”
“Where are you from?” I asked her. Not brilliant, but I wasn’t expecting the reaction I got. Her head snapped back to me and her eyes were suddenly burning.
“Ukraine,” she said.
“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be a whole lot to say to that. “How long have you been in Key West?”
Her face didn’t change, but she wasn’t seeing me anymore. “Since they are killing all my family there.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Yes.” She looked away again.
And that really should have been the end of it. There is really and truly nothing to say when someone tells you they have recently moved to Key West because their whole family was killed. This is where normal people scramble for an even half-graceful exit. This is where I should have run for the cover of a cold beer and another bowl of peanuts.
But something about the way she said it, like it was a challenge, made me stay and look for a way to keep the conversation going.
So what I came out with was, “How did you meet Nicky?”
She turned cold blue eyes on me. “Who?”
“The dwarf who brought you over here.”
She turned briefly, looking through the party for Nicky. “He is called Nicky?” She said it Nyecky.
“Yeah.”
“Ah,” she said. “I am first meeting him just now. He is talking very hot about Haitian ruffo… rufo… How you are calling the ones who come on the boats?”
“Refugees.”
“Yes, refugees. And I say, well, we are taught when I am young America is not the land of the free if you are a black person. And he is very happy I say this. And after he talks for a minute more, he is looking around and seeing you. Then he takes my arm and say, come with me, dolly. Then he is dragging me here and poom—” She shrugged. Her shoulders rippled.
I caught myself noticing that her shoulders rippled. I tried to remind myself that I was still trying to get over Nancy and I really shouldn’t be noticing anything like that right now. It was the sign of a shallow man.
But I did notice. And I noticed the graceful line of her neck, the outline of collarbone, the sleek perfection of a figure that had started good and got better through hard work. And the clear light in her eyes, the light of intelligence, wonder, doubt, thought.
Okay, I was shallow.
“Now that you’re here,” I said with a deep breath, “can I get you something to drink?”
She blushed. “Thank you. But I—” She was going to say no; maybe out of habit or insecurity, but not out of indifference, I was sure. Instead, she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, hesitated, and gave me the most serious smile I had ever seen. “Perhaps one of those yellow sodas?”
I got her a Mountain Dew. She accepted it politely and drank about half in one swallow. I admired the way her throat muscles worked as she swallowed.
We talked. Anna loosened up a little with a soda in her hand. So did I. She was astonished to learn what I did for a living. “I think everybody in America is a rich lawyer,” she said. “And you say to be a poor fishermen? Feh.”
“Not exactly. I take other people fishing. It pays a little better than if I was fishing myself.”
She looked doubtful. “In my country, fishermen is a very poor job. Very smelly.”
“In your country, people won’t pay $450 a day to go fishing. But the fish smell the same.”
She said something with a lot of consonants. “So much! For a fish?”
“Welcome to capitalist imperialism. How did you end up in Mallory Square?”
She gave me a half-sour look. “First, is what I do now. But then—” She shrugged. Those beautiful neck muscles moved again. “When I am small, I train to do gymnastic. But by the time of 16 years, 17 years, this career is over, yes? I am too big.” She made hand gestures to show how fat she was. I didn’t believe it.
“So when—when I come here I work in the hotel as a maid, clean the rooms. And in this country they are making you feel to be an animal to do this work. I watch through the windows of all the rooms every day, and I see Mallory Square, and I think I can do this and not have to feel I am a dog.”
She slanted a long look at me through thick lashes. “They are saying this is black girl’s work, to clean rooms in a hotel. It is very hard for me to see that some things in this country are just as Putin says.”
“America has a race problem,” I said. “Always has. Maybe it always will. I didn’t used to think so, but—”
“Is this why they send these Haitians home, as Nicky is saying? Because they are black people?”
“Nicky is not well right now on the subject of Haitians. But that’s part of it.”
“Why is he not well? What do you mean?”
I told her about our sailboat trip, about finding the body. “It isn’t pretty. But this happens every day and the police tend to think it’s somebody else’s problem.”
“Whose problem?”
“The Haitians.”
“And what do the people say?” I must have looked confused. “You know, the everybody.”
“The everybody doesn’t hear much about it, doesn’t think much about it.”
“And does not care because these others are black people? So if they are dying every day, this is nothing?”
I’d been hearing this from Nicky a little too much lately. On top of everything else, the subject had dropped to the bottom of my list of Things To Talk About With Beautiful Women at Parties.
But there she was, wanting to talk about it. I couldn’t very well say, “Yeah, you’re right—hey! Wanna see my boat?” No matter how much I wanted to do exactly that. So I said, “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
She made a face. It looked like Avenging Justice. “So. And this is the answer of someone who will not say the truth because truth is looking too bad, hah? The answer of politician. The answer of so many in my country who say, but is not my problem who is killed, these are not my people.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “And so nobody is doing anything because is not their problem, and by the time is their problem they are not able to do anything and soon everybody is dead, ha? Because in my country I learn. Oppression is always the problem of everybody. You must either fight for others when you can, or you become others.”
She dropped the empty soda can into my hand. “Thank you for soda,” she said, and turned away. My mouth was still open when she walked out the door and into the night.
There were a lot of opinions I could have had about her and her attitude. That she didn’t know me and had no right to judge me like that was one. And anyway, what did I care? I was still getting over Nancy.
It was nice to see that I was finally thinking clearly. The only problem was that my body wasn’t listening; it was busy following Anna out the door.
Chapter Nine
The night
was alive with the smell of things blooming, the way it can only smell in South Florida. It is a thick heady scent of orchids and rotting vegetables on top of the faint tang of low tide and it makes the hair stand up on your arms and gives you the feeling that you could live forever if you could just keep that smell in your nose.
I looked around for Anna. I saw her walking towards the center of Old Town. Still not sure what the hell I was doing, or why, I ran after her.
I caught up with her at the corner. She didn’t want to be caught. She gave me a look of icy indifference and kept walking.
“Excuse me,” I said. She did not look at me again. Now I was starting to get a little mad. “Is this the way they talk about things where you come from?” I said. “You give your opinion, which is always right, and then run out the door before anyone else can say something that might not agree?”
“Oh,” she said without looking. “You are now having an opinion. This is very good. Very much progress.”
“It must be so hard on you,” I said. “To understand everything. Nobody else even knows enough to congratulate you.”
She stopped walking. Her shoulders went up. They did it very well. “Feh,” she said. “And you, to be judge of everything. Like all Americans, you have this thing which says, I am in right, piss on you, hah? When you have beer, who cares that others die of thirst? Feh!”
It’s funny. Sometimes even when you’re mad other things filter in and hit you. Right now, instead of shouting back at her with a really snappy comeback, all I could think of was how cute she sounding saying, “peess on yoo,” with that beautiful strange accent.
I stuttered. I had been about to say, “I’m not like all Americans,” but that was wrong, not what I wanted to say, and then she said “Peess” so cute. What came out of my mouth was something like, “I’m nee-hi hut!”
She thought I was making fun of her, so she glared at me. I glared back. We just stood glaring under a streetlight.
I cracked first. I couldn’t help it; I was suddenly swamped by an overwhelming need to laugh. I fought it hard, but I couldn’t beat it. A little snorting sound came out my nose. It was followed by a big snorting sound, a cough, a short laugh, and then, when something went down my windpipe wrong, a prolonged and crippling fit of coughing.