April ignored Jean’s lighted windows and walked over to the Adirondack chairs under the darkened mango tree. The soles of her cut feet burned. She waited for Lonnie before she sat down.
“It’s all right I’m here?”
“Yeah.” She rested the hot cup on her knee, remembered burning herself with the Mobil station coffee yesterday afternoon driving Franny, the hurried walk into Tina’s office. “I could kill Tina, Lonnie. I swear to God I want to kill her.”
“She feels pretty bad.”
“She should. She fucking should.”
“But I should’ve checked in on her like you asked. I just didn’t—”
“No, Lonnie, it was Tina. I paid her for that.” She meant it; she wasn’t mad at him. She raised the cup to her lips but her throat closed and her eyes began to fill and she was ashamed. “I should’ve called in sick, Lonnie. But fucking Louis.”
“They’re lifting prints in your car. They think they’ll find something.”
She watched him sip his coffee, his Adam’s apple rising and falling in his throat. “You mean find someone.”
He nodded. The garden beyond him was shadowed in the blue-gray light, and Jean’s door opened, her slippers slapping against the soles of her feet. She stood in front of them both. Her robe was cinched tightly and Franny’s backpack dangled from her hand. April’s stilettos stuck out of the half-zipped flap.
“Any news? Is there news?”
“No, ma’am.” Lonnie sat forward. “Would you like to sit?”
“Thank you, no.” Jean was looking down at April. “Where did you go?”
“Everywhere. Nowhere.” April couldn’t look at her. She shook her head.
Jean held out Franny’s pack. “That’s an awful lot of money.”
April took it and lowered it to the ground at her feet. She could feel her heart beating behind her eyes and she wanted to tell Jean she never made that much, that she got a drunk foreigner in the Champagne, that every single bill in there meant nothing to her now, nothing.
“She works hard,” Lonnie said.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Are you judging me, Jean?”
Jean folded her arms.
“Who are you to fucking judge me?” April pushed herself out of the chair, her cup falling and spilling onto the bricks. “You’ve never worked a fucking day in your life. You don’t even know what work is. This wouldn’t’ve happened if you weren’t such a hypochondriac and had to go to the hospital. I had to take her ’cause of you, Jean! You!”
“April.”
The phone was in a spreading puddle of hot coffee and April snatched it up and grabbed the backpack and moved around Jean standing there, the stairs ahead of her April wouldn’t climb, Jean’s apartment she couldn’t stand with more of Franny in it than upstairs where she really lived, in her real home, and she yanked the backpack strap over her shoulder and walked toward the growing light of the driveway, Jean calling her name.
AJ DROVE SLOWLY along the southern tip of Longboat, his eyelids swollen with fatigue. Past the pale beach was the Gulf he could just begin to see in the dark and it’d be daybreak soon and he didn’t want to drink a beer while driving the child but what else could he do? The coffee was long gone and hadn’t done anything but give him heartburn and a dry mouth. He needed some kind of fuel for just two more hours. That’s all, just two.
He pressed his knees up against the wheel and reached into the passenger’s seat for one of the Millers. The can was cool and he wedged it down between his legs, popped the tab, kept his eyes on the road, and took a long drink. Up ahead were the dim lights of the drawbridge over to Lido Key. His heart picked up a bit. He glanced in the rearview, could see in the darkness her hair over his T-shirt covering her.
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING LONGBOAT KEY
The sign was streaked with pelican shit, and he passed the empty expanse of the aquarium’s parking lot, then the thick mangroves where they’d built boardwalks snaking through the trees. He’d wanted to take Cole there when he got bigger, go look for bobcat and manatee and osprey. And he would. He would.
He drank and accelerated up over the drawbridge onto Lido Key. He finished his Miller and dropped the empty onto the passenger seat. Soon enough he pulled into dark and quiet St. Armand’s Circle, a few streetlamps shining dimly among the palm trees and hibiscus in the center, and he guided his truck around the circle John Ringling designed before he died. He built the causeway over to Sarasota too, used his circus elephants to haul the bridge timbers. AJ had always like reading about Ringling, a man with vision and balls, a head for numbers and no fear of hard work, a man AJ frankly believed he had much in common with; he just needed some help getting started. He just needed to get pointed in the right direction.
AJ drove the full circle. At his constant right were locked tourist shops and bookstores, ice cream parlors and cafés. No light came through their windows and some were covered with steel shutters padlocked to the sidewalk. Most of the buildings were painted white as oyster shells, even Mario’s-on-the-Gulf he’d planned to bring Marianne to, his headlights sweeping over it now—the red canopy and diamond-shaped windows, the outdoor tables and their collapsed umbrellas as tall and still as sleeping vultures; there was the feeling he was a dog-assed fool who’d never be allowed in such a fine place with such a fine-looking woman on his arm and he reached for another Miller, but the lights of a car shone out at him from twelve o’clock, and he eased up on the gas and cut the wheel to the right and shot his truck away from the circle.
He gunned along a palm-lined street of fine homes behind stucco walls. Coming up on his left was an opening between two of them and he turned into it, a route for the trashmen and deliverers of food and ice, a place in the shadows for men and women who kept things running smoothly. It was dark and narrow and he was about to stop when a corner revealed itself to the right and he turned again and parked in a shortened driveway leading to a garage, its security lights coming on bright in his face, but keep cool, keep cool. They’re on motion detectors, that’s all. Just like the ones he almost bought for him and Deena. So sit still and they’ll go dark soon enough. Switch off your engine and sit tight.
All was quiet. He opened the Miller and turned to look at her. Her chin was touching her chest, the part in her hair straight from front to back. Again he pictured Spring doing that with a comb before she brushed it—somebody had to’ve done it—and there was the feeling he’d done something wrong, that maybe there was more to all this than he knew. And if the cruiser—’cause what else could it be? poor neighborhoods don’t get looked after all night like rich ones do—if it pulled up on him now, sitting in this service entrance waiting for the light to go off, they’d bust his ass for sure and there’d be no chance to cash in against Caporelli. No chance for anything but trouble.
He hated to see her sleeping like that, though; she’d wake up with a sore neck. He leaned past the seat and with two fingers pushed her head up till he could see her face, but then the cab went dark, the air outside too. He let go of her and hoped her chin didn’t loll back to where it’d been.
SHE IS OLD. She is the old of his dear mother. Her skin is dark as his own, her face round, and her hair is gray and black and her eyes are black as well. Before her is a small television and her hearing must be bad for it is so loud Bassam can hear all of it on the other side of the shop, the sound of shooting, of shouting, of autos racing, and more shooting. And it is here under this white light before the cooler of bottles of water and Gatorade and Pepsi and Coke that he knows he is still not yet himself, that he is still damaged from the drinking.
The blackness out there, kilometers and kilometers of it. Over one hour driving and only one auto coming at him from the east, its lights blinding. Then more blackness, the Neon’s headlamps cutting into it dully, weakly. The whores’ protector at the fuel station. Bassam had felt followed and bought no fuel or drink or cigarettes. He disciplined himself not to drive too fast and once in the countryside h
e turned on the radio, but it was meaningless talk in this language he hated, the language of the far enemy his father insisted all his children learn. And so Bassam had learned and it had made him more valuable than Ahmed al-Jizani could have ever known, and his son opens the glass door and removes three plastic bottles of Coke and at the counter for paying she smiles at him, and perhaps she says to him words, he does not know, her television so very loud.
Behind her are magazines of whores. Above them stacks of cigarette packages. He asks the woman for Marlboros. She shakes her head, turns down her television. “What, honey?”
“Please, Marlboros.”
She turns for them. On the back of her clothing is written: Miccosukee Indian Resort. Indian. He does not know this word, or the one before it. He pulls from his pocket too much money, the surprise in her old eyes. Too much surprise.
Outside once more, the air is warm yet beginning to cool, and the cigarette package and three bottles difficult to hold at once. He shakes his head at his own foolishness, at his own continued recklessness. The white Neon is parked beside the fuel pumps, and he rests upon the roof two of the plastic bottles and opens his door, but one of the bottles rolls down over the windscreen to the ground at his feet. He lowers himself to it, and grasps it and as he rises he tells himself to be careful with this one, Bassam. Be careful with the one that may explode.
LONNIE LEANED AGAINST his driver’s door and looked at April. In the peach-blue light, she sat low in the passenger seat, her daughter’s backpack on the floor between her bare calves, the cordless phone in her hand. She still wore her makeup from last night but her cheeks were drawn and he wanted to kiss her.
She was looking out the windshield at the empty street. “Say something, Lonnie. I can’t have any quiet right now. I can’t.” She began tapping her bare foot on the floor.
He reached past her and pulled open the glove compartment, five rows of cassettes wedged on top of his registration and manual. “Books on tape. I listen to them ’cause I can’t read.” He shut the hatch, his wrist skimming her bare knee.
“Really?” She was looking at him now. He felt about fourteen years old and wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“I’m not illiterate. I can read signs and shit. It’s just sentences. They get all fucked up in my head. Unless I hear them. Then the words don’t crash into each other.”
“What do you listen to?”
“Novels. Some poetry.”
April kept looking at him. Her lips were parted. She opened the glove compartment. “Can we listen to one? Can we just sit here and listen to one?”
She pulled out a tape. T. S. Eliot.
“Poetry. You want that?”
“Anything.”
Lonnie didn’t like the voice of the reader; he sounded like one of those little shits he’d seen in clubs over the years who’d gone to prep schools on the East Coast and somehow ended up with a British accent.
But Eliot was Eliot and April wanted to hear him. Lonnie turned his ignition quarter way and pushed in the tape. “Want me to rewind it?”
“No.”
“This is from The Waste Land.”
“‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou Pluckest
Burning
IV. Death by Water”
April jabbed at the buttons. “Stop it. Turn it off.”
He did. She was breathing hard, shaking her head. Lonnie put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right.” He could feel her lungs filling and emptying down there inside her. “It’s okay.” He began rubbing her back but her muscles tensed and he pulled his hand away. She was squinting out at the road like there was something coming from a long way off. Lonnie looked but there was just the purple asphalt and the palm trees and hibiscus along rose-colored walls.
“Lonnie? You know that foreigner I had in the Champagne?”
“Yeah?” Nicotine- and cologne-smelling little fucker, the way he walked right past him at the filling station.
“He kept saying something bad’s going to happen to us all. He kept saying we’re all gonna burn.”
“In hell?”
“I don’t know. He just kept predicting something bad.”
“You believe that?”
April sniffled, dabbed at her nose. “He looked at me like one of those born-agains. Like I’m dead and don’t even know it.”
“They blame you for their own weakness, April. I can’t stand those people.”
“Maybe they should.”
“What?”
“Blame me.”
“For what? Showing them what they came to see?”
“But I’ve made money dancing, Lonnie.”
“Good.”
She stared down at the phone in her hand. “A lot.”
“Not as much as Louis.” Lonnie’s eyes felt dry and his arms were heavy and there was still a swelling in his finger from where he’d caught Dolphins Cap in the mouth. He wanted more coffee.
“I always kept it separate, Lonnie. I swore I’d never be one of those bitches dragging her kids to the club and I didn’t, Lonnie, I never did.” She shook her head and lowered her chin. “I was only going to do it till I didn’t have to anymore.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
She nodded. She looked again at the phone in her hand. “Keep talking, Lonnie. Please, just keep talking.” She shook her head and started to cry and he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her. He began to rock her. Then he smelled her hair, and felt like a real lowlife for doing that.
HE TURNED SIDEWAYS in his seat and watched her sleep. Her hair was in her face, and she had a slight snore on her inhale. The beer had cleared his head: forget the temple or any other public building out on the circle or just off it. He couldn’t chance the county cruising by again. Outside his truck window and over the stucco wall, the stars had faded. She was a sweet child and he didn’t want to let her go just yet but dawn was twenty or thirty minutes away and now was the time to move.
He upended his Miller, laid the bottle on the seat beside him, reached across himself with his good hand, and was out of the truck three or four seconds before the light switched on bright all over him again. Just don’t wake the girl. Just don’t wake her up. His hand and wrist pounded hot at his hip and he could see the flecked paint above the garage door handle he squatted for now, gripping it, standing and pulling, a hollow shriek of spring and wheel in an iron track that needed oil.
His heart was kicking again. He held on to the handle above his head, stood there looking at a new Honda Civic sitting in front of him like a gift.
He let go. The door slid up another foot or so, bobbing once against its spring, then all was quiet but that goddamn door had been loud—he wouldn’t’ve slept through it—and if he was going to do what he had to do, this was the one and only moment he had to do it in. He moved quickly over the concrete floor and hooked his fingers under the handle of the rear door and pulled. The door didn’t budge and what’d he expect? He began to look around for a place he could put her where somebody’d see her right away, where she wouldn’t be run over, his fingers hooking under the front door handle now, the metallic click in his hand as the door swung open, the interior light coming on.
There was a leather briefcase on the passenger’s side, stacks of papers on the backseat. He jabbed the unlock button and opened the rear door and knocked all those papers onto the carpet, the air smelling like a new car, like just-molded plastic and spotless upholstery, rustless steel and dustless electronics, clear oil and smooth glass—it was the smell of First Place, a just reward for one’s hard-earned dues, and AJ took it as a good omen, his own prize coming jus
t as soon as he did the right thing by this child.
He walked fast back to his truck, the floodlight on him too damn bright, as if it had its own sound, and he had to focus his mind and ignore his broken bone and move her as quickly as he could.
He got the access door open and leaned in. He smelled Wild Turkey and diesel, coffee and grape Slush Puppie and dirt. He was breathing hard and closed his mouth, felt his heart bucking in his head. He’d doubled her dose but maybe he should’ve tripled it—man, what if she woke up? What if she woke and began to howl?
He’d leave her anyway.
He lifted his shirt off her, reached between her legs for the buckle, but he couldn’t get at it unless he pushed his palm against her leg. He began to raise his left hand but it was swollen useless. The air at his back felt crowded and he put his fingers around her bare ankle and pulled it over just a bit, then he pressed on the button and the buckle let loose and he swung the plastic tray up over her sleeping head. He wanted to part the hair from her face, he wanted to do so much more than he was, but this was it, and he leaned close and snaked his hand behind her back and let her cheek rest against his shoulder, his fingers scooping her up beneath her butt, in his head Marianne’s shaking at him from the stage under blue light, how it wasn’t right that a little girl could grow to end up doing that—so many things weren’t right and he pressed his face to her head and backed out of the cab on one knee. He was breathing hard and the concrete under him tilted a second, like the whole town was a boat out on the Gulf, a boat of revelers, and surely there was somebody who’d look after Spring’s girl better than she had.