Welcome to Paradise (18 page)

They went upstairs and danced. Danced like Al
hadn't danced in many years, and like he never thought his grinding
knees and gnarly ankles would let him dance again.

They left around one-thirty. A red moon was
low in the west. Fifi was tangled in her leash and sulking. They
reclaimed their bikes and shakily headed home toward Paradise, much
too tired and too secretly nervous at being roommates to notice the
Jaguar parked across from the hotel in the ragged shadow of the
buttonwoods.

*

Big Al Marracotta's evening had not been
going all that well.

He'd been in several bars, and he was fairly
drunk before he'd started. But he'd made a plan and he was sticking
to it. For the sake of both economy and sport, he'd decided to give
it until midnight to find some sex he wouldn't have to pay for.
Your basic pickup. Sex with a lonely visitor who needed her
cigarette lit, who was waiting for her package tour to be made
complete.

But with this stratagem he'd gotten nowhere.
Women kept turning their backs on him. Big Al wasn't used to this.
The places he went to in New York—they were Mob places, and he was
recognized, if not by name, at least by type. The women there were
looking for that type. This made Al mistakenly imagine that he was
attractive. But these tourist women—from Iowa, from Ontario—what
did they know from Mafia? Too ignorant to be impressed with what he
did, they saw him only for what he was: a short gruff pushy guy
with shiny shoes.

After midnight he started looking for a
hooker. To his surprise, this turned out to be not so easy either.
Again, it was a question of style. Al's eyes were peeled for a good
old-fashioned New York whore: the slinky one-zip dress, the blowjob
lipstick, the stockings with their dark tops showing just a little.
Al couldn't seem to find that type, though he looked in several
likely joints, and had a few more drinks in the process. Stumbling
now on a sidewalk no longer horizontal, he wandered toward the
oceanfront, looking for a floozy by the seawall. Nothing doing.

Once more he staggered up Duval Street. A
fleeting spasm of wisdom came to him in the guise of nausea, told
him he was probably too smashed to function anyway, and he might as
well go back to his hotel. But just then, half a block away, he
spotted a woman who came very close to his ideal. She was tall. Her
skirt was short, her stockings obvious. In silhouette her chest
made a long grade to the summit. She was standing outside a bar
that Al had missed, finishing up a cigarette. She met his eye; he
was sure she did. She dropped the butt on the sidewalk, snuffed it
out with a twist of high-heeled shoe that refreshed Big Al's
libido, and sashayed back inside.

He followed her in, moved through
close-packed tables, and found her at the bar. As was right and
fitting, she was unsurprised to see him. Not without some
difficulty, he climbed onto a bar stool next to her. "Buy you a
drink?"

"I love that opening," she said.

Al didn't take the sarcasm personally. Sass
was part of the routine. He liked it. He gestured toward the
bartender. They ordered drinks and he sized her up. Good wig but
arousingly fake, blond above dark brows. Thick, cakey bands of
eyeliner continuing past the edges of her eyes. Powdered cleavage
delving into tempting shadow.

The drinks came. Al said, "Ya don't mind,
let's get down to business."

"Can we have a toast at least?" the hooker
said. Rather forcefully, she clinked his glass. "Bottoms up."

They drank. Al said, "I want the whole night
and I don't want no to anything. How much?"

The hooker let her cold glass rest against
her lip a moment. "Five hundred."

"That's big-city prices," Al observed.

"So? You wanna get fucked or you wanna ride
the subway?"

Al looked down at the hooker's backside.
"Riding the subway doesn't sound like such a bad idea."

"Five hundred. Free transfer."

"Deal," said Al. "Let's go." Gingerly, he
started climbing down.

The hooker didn't budge. "Can't a girl even
finish her drink?"

Grudgingly, Big Al climbed up again. The
sudden change of direction made him just a little dizzy. He sipped
his drink, and somewhere between the sip and the swallow he got the
first inkling that something was not exactly right. He couldn't put
his finger on it. He looked at the hooker. There was something a
little too playful at the corners of her mouth. He glanced all
around the bar. He liked tall women but this looked like a hoops
squad. Redheads whose necks were on the thick side, brunettes with
voices huskier than average. And there was something in the air,
something barely smellable beneath the layers of flowery perfume,
an elusive whiff of mannish sweat.

Big Al dropped his slurring voice. "You sure
you're a woman?"

The hooker said, "Honey, I'm all the woman
you can handle."

She said it a little louder than it needed to
be said, and it dawned on Al that she wanted other people to hear
it, that other people had been listening all along. Through a fog
of alcohol he dimly realized that this was not the normal sass,
that he was being mocked. His lips pulled taut across his teeth and
his hairline started itching. "Don't fuck with me," he said.

The hooker gave an unafraid, coy shrug that
really pissed him off.

With his chin he gestured toward her crotch.
"I find a dick down there, I swear ta Christ I'll cut it off."

"
Now
you tell me, sweetie. Cost me a
Miata to have a fancy surgeon do that very thing."

Big Al Marracotta blinked, and in the blink
he was visited by a terrifying image of a hairy ersatz vulva
between two hairy thighs. What was it made of? Pig intestine?
Scrotum skin? Where did it lead? He said to the hooker, "You
fucking faggot."

"Yeah, ain't it grand?" she said, and threw
the rest of her drink in his face.

It took Big Al a moment to react. Then, eyes
burning, cheeks dripping, he reached down blindly toward the knife
he carried in his sock. But before his fingers could find the
handle, the hooker grabbed him by the shirtfront and shoved him
backward, stool and all. To Al, it felt like he was strapped
securely in his seat but the airplane had disintegrated. His head
snapped forward then back, his knees had somehow got above his
face, he saw the ceiling skating past like a nightmare of galloping
sky. He tucked and felt his stomach slide up toward his throat and
waited for the sickening collision with the ground.

Two six-foot drag queens caught him just
before he hit the floor. Putting dignity aside, he rolled off the
stool onto his hands and knees, then scrambled to his feet. His
legs trembled and his head was pounding and his innards churned. He
longed to punch someone but didn't dare. A large and perfumed group
had gathered all around him. Their heaving and emphatic bosoms left
him barely room enough to wobble toward the door.

Al Tuschman hadn't brought pajamas. Katy
Sansone had no clothes except the ones she was wearing. They tried
not to acknowledge a certain awkwardness as they prepared for
bed.

Brushing her teeth with an index finger, Katy
examined the outdoor shower and said through toothpaste, "Hey,
Tusch, y'ever go to sleepaway camp?"

He was washing his face, reaching for a
towel. "Coupla summers. Sports camp, mostly."

"Me, I never did. Always wanted to. Crickets.
Marshmallows. Canoes. Ya have canoes?"

Al looked at her. Her eyes were sleepy and
her mouth had softened with fatigue. There was an intimacy in
seeing someone so frankly tired. They kept talking because they
couldn't stand to have the intimacy of silence added to it.

"Canoes," he said. "A raft you could swim to
in the middle of the lake. Steps were slimy. Squished between your
toes."

He sidled out of the bathroom. In the armoire
by the picture of the greenish women with the greenish breasts, he
found an extra pillow and a light blanket. He took them over to the
sofa in the alcove. Fifi, exhausted and confused, followed him and
sniffed at the upholstery. Al turned off the light. Skulking in
shadow, he stripped to his jockey shorts and lay down. The sofa was
not quite as long as he was, but if he curled his legs it wasn't
bad. The dog jumped up and settled in against his feet.

He heard the toilet flush. A wedge of light
came through the bathroom door then was extinguished. Katy padded
toward the bed; Al could tell her shoes were off. He didn't want to
hear it, but he heard the zipper of her shorts. He heard the soft
tick of buttons as she laid her blouse over the back of a chair.
The bed squeaked a little when she sat down on it, and he could not
help wondering if the sheets felt cool or warm against the backs of
her long legs. He heard her swivel and lie down. He was relieved to
think that by now the cotton blanket was pulled up beneath her
chin.

After a moment, she said, "Tusch?"

"Yeah?"

"I think it's really great you're letting me
stay here. I think it's really great we danced."

Trying to sound more sleepy than he felt, Al
said, "I'm glad you're here."

"Really?"

"Really. Go to sleep."

She was silent for a moment. A soft breeze
lifted the curtains from the windowsills.

"Tusch?"

"Yeah?"

"Hear the crickets?"

"I think those are tree frogs."

"Hey, I'm from Queens. G'night."

The sheets rustled once and then Katy seemed
to be asleep. Al lay there for a while in his gallant curl. Then he
reached down and dragged the dog underneath the blanket till it was
nestled in between his arms and chest, and drifted off himself.

*

Outside in the Jag, Chop Parilla said, "So,
Squid, we don't get fancy, right?"

Sid Berman didn't answer, didn't even look
Chop's way. He was gathering his concentration, and besides,
killing people made him irritable. He didn't like it at all. This
was a matter not of sentiment but taste. Other crimes evolved,
unfolded. They had a flow to them, a music. But murder was a blank
brick wall that stopped the band, destroyed the flow, forced an
ending that, by necessity, was always too abrupt. This depressed
him.

Edgy, Chop Parilla went on. "You're in, spear
'im, you're out again, I drive away, we're finished. Right?"

"Right," said Berman grudgingly.

It was getting on toward three o'clock A.M.
The moon had dimmed to a mauve smudge and set. The streets were
quiet except for the electric hum of the streetlamps and a very
occasional howl or cackle from a passing drunk. The air had cooled
just enough for a patina of condensation to form on the windshields
of parked cars.

"What about the broad?" said Chop.

"What about 'er?"

"I don't like it there's someone with
him."

"Picked up a chippy. Getting laid before he
dies. I think that's kinda nice."

"Nice we got a witness?"

"Chop," said Squid, "imagine this. You've
just fucked a guy. Next thing you know he's got a fish stuck
through his heart. You gonna notice much besides the fish?"

Chop frowned, drummed fingers on the steering
wheel. "I just wish he was alone."

Squid was getting exasperated. "You're the
one so anxious to get finished. Ya want we do 'im tonight or ya
want we don't?"

Chop just squeezed his lips together.

But all at once Squid was ready, and with the
readiness came an awful thrill he could no longer deny. He felt it
behind his knees and underneath his tongue.

Swallowing deep, he opened the glove
compartment, reached for his powdered rubber gloves, and pulled
them on. From underneath his seat, he produced a cylinder of pepper
spray, stuck it in the waistband of his pants. "Come on," he said,
"it's time."

Chop petted the dashboard then started the
Jag, eased it over to the hotel entrance, and sat there softly
idling.

Squid pulled a cut-off stocking down over his
face. The nylon squashed his nose and tugged at the corners of his
eyes, exposed the red rims of his eyelids. He slipped out of the
car, reached into the backseat, and retrieved the stuffed fish with
the two-foot spike of a nose. He bounced the pad of his index
finger against the tip of it. "Fucker's sharp," he said to
Chop.

Chop said nothing, just sat there scanning
the street with his passenger door wide open.

Squid slipped through the gate of the hotel,
darted into the shadow of an oleander; and took a moment to survey
the courtyard. Soft blue light hovered as though it were a solid
thing above the pool. Empty lounges were arranged in friendly
groupings. Wisps of mist escaped from the edges of the hot tub
cover.

He looked toward the office. The light was
on, the door was open, and he had no choice but to pass quite near
it. He took a deep breath, held it. Hunkering low, the fish under
his arm, he scooted by the doorway. Out of the corner of his eye he
saw the sleeping desk clerk, elbows on the counter, cheeks resting
in his palms.

Squid jogged around the still-damp apron of
the pool until he reached the gravel path overgrown with giant
philodendrons. Small stones crunched beneath his feet, but nothing
stirred as he slipped around to the side of Big Al's bungalow and
stood in the darkness near the thatch enclosure of the shower.
Through the mesh that muffled his nose and mouth, he sniffed the
air, freighted with chlorine and salt and iodine. He practiced his
grip on the fish. With his right hand around the narrow place just
before the tail, he could use his left to guide the thrust. The
fish weighed six, eight pounds and would make an admirable
harpoon.

He got the pepper spray ready to immobilize
the dog.

Then he crawled beneath the thatch onto the
wet slats of the shower. He scrabbled to his feet and tried the
bathroom door. Unlocked as always. He let himself in. Smelled soap
and toothpaste and deodorant. Gave his eyes a moment to adjust to
the deeper darkness inside the bungalow, then sidled toward the
doorway to the bedroom.