Along about the first of April, the weather changes in Key West. The daytime temperature jumps one day from eighty-two to eighty-five, and there it stays for six weeks or so, until a similar increment signals the setting in of summer. The evenings suddenly no longer call for sweaters; the light cotton quilts are kicked down to the feet of beds, and even top sheets are likely to be bunched around waists but pulled no higher. The east wind, which had been rock-steady at twelve to fourteen knots all winter, becomes fitful, moves toward the south, loads up with salt, and blows moist enough to make cars wet. These changes, by the standards of the temperate zone, are so subtle as to seem insignificant. In the subtropics, however, people grow spoiled; the range of perfect comfort shrinks for them as it does, say, for the very rich, whose standards of acceptable luxury become so crazily refined that they can hardly ever be satisfied. So, while eighty-two degrees with a twelve-knot wind seems sublime, eighty-five with an eight-knot wind seems sultry, and people alter their routines accordingly.
At the compound, Peter and Claude put aside their silk sarongs and seldom wore anything more confining than the lightest of seersucker robes. Wendy and Marsha decided that the hot tub was too hot, and were more likely to stand chest-deep in the pool while discussing modern sculpture and rubbing the stress out of each other's shoulders. Luke and Lucy spent a lot of time in their outdoor shower and never quite looked dry. And Steve the naked landlord, to fend off dehydration, carried four beers rather than three to the pool with him at ten a.m.
"Whatcha reading, Steve?" Joey asked him as he went to hand over Sandra's check for the April rent.
Steve turned the damp paperback over and looked at the green flying saucer on the cover. "Aliens," he said. "Germ warfare from space." Then he smiled.
As for Sandra, she had finally broken down and done some shopping, finally put aside her fuzzy cardigans and long-sleeved business blouses with the built-in shoulders that made even Joey forget how radically compact she was. Now, for work, she wore pale blue cotton knits that nicely set off her version of a tan. Her skin, it seemed, had not changed color, but the tiny hairs on her arms had been bleached an almost tinsel silver, which offered much the same effect. Also, Sandra had greeted the warmer weather by going on a salad binge, a veritable orgy of roughage. Joey would open the refrigerator door and be confronted by a jungle of romaine, an impenetrable forest of spinach, watercress, endive. "Sandra," he'd say, "how come there ain't no food in heah?" And Sandra would smile. The heat made her softer-spoken but no less immovable. "There's a steak in the back somewhere. Probably behind the cottage cheese."
Certain other routines were also changing around Key West, although for different reasons. Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia, for example, no longer took Don Giovanni to the beach across from the Paradiso condominium to watch the sun go down, but had moved a third of a mile or so down the shoreline, closer to the Flagler House. He brought with him on these excursions his wife's old opera glasses, ladylike things encased in mother-of-pearl and trimmed in silver, and he looked quite eccentric if not perverted, fondling the chihuahua as he peeked through the oleanders and buttonwoods that fringed the beach. Joey had asked him to study up on the habits of Charlie Ponte's thugs, and Bert, while he hemmed and hawed at getting involved in any way, was still pissed off enough at Charlie Ponte to do it. As far as the old man could tell, two guys in one Lincoln were always stationed at the near end of the self-parking area, with a clear view of the hotel entrance. At around seven o'clock this watch was relieved by the two soldiers in the other car. The second car would take over the same parking space as the first one drove away. It didn't appear that all four thugs were ever employed at once. And it didn't seem that Charlie Ponte had thought to place a lookout on the ocean side.
–
"So Joey," said Zack Davidson, "you ever run a boat before?"
Joey looked down at the water, wiggled the earpieces of his shades, and tried to choke back his long-standing impulse to bullshit, to make it sound like he'd done more than he had and knew more than he knew. "Well, uh," he began, "this one time, up at Montauk, well, uh. No."
It was after work, around five-thirty, and they were at City Marina, a decidedly no-frills establishment for people with yacht club tastes and a rubber ducky budget. A very democratic place, City Marina was. Very Key West. Clunky houseboats with vinyl siding and TV antennas lay in berths next to dainty sloops whose polished hulls reflected every glint in the water, and also next to the staunch craft of working fishermen, where razor-beaked gulls scraped slime off moldy planking. The marina was nestled in a well-protected cove known as Garrison Bight, whose location underscored Key West's status as an intersection at the end of the world. On its south end, the Bight lapped quietly against the embankment of Highway 1. To the west, narrow channels wound through mangrove flats toward the open Gulf of Mexico; to the north and east, the long arced chain of the Keys stretched away under its freight of bridges and pylons.
"No." Zack repeated the single syllable, briefly puffed his cheeks out like a trumpeter, and ran a hand through his unvarying hair. He looked down at his little boat, which had never before appeared so frail. It was an eighteen-foot fiberglass skiff with a dark blue Bimini top. A perfect flats boat, it did less well in the ocean swells, where it bounced from wave to wave like a skipping stone and skidded down following seas like a riderless surfboard. The skiff had a sixty-horsepower outboard and an eight-horse auxiliary that was propped next to it on the transom, seeming to nestle up like a duckling to its mother.
"What's the little motor for?" Joey asked.
"Emergencies," said Zack. His mouth twisted up as if the word tasted bad. "But hey, first things first. You know how to tie up?"
Joey gave a nonchalant shrug. He told himself that, in his pink shirt and khaki shorts, he at least looked like he belonged at a marina. "Sure," he said. "I mean, I guess so. Well, not really."
Zack showed Joey how to make a clove hitch around a post, whtle pelicans banked by and cormorants dried their spread wings on top of pilings. On board, he showed him how to tilt the engine down, hook up the extra gas tank, and close the choke. "You know what the buoys mean, right, the green and the red?"
"Yeah, sure," said Joey. "It's, like, the red ones are stop and the green ones are go."
Zack leaned back against the gunwale and played with an ear. His boat was insured, but only for liability, not for being totally trashed by a guy who had no idea what he was doing.
"Joey, you sure there's no way I can go with you?"
The novice looked down at the fiberglass floor of the cockpit, toyed with his sunglasses, and shook his head. "Zack, listen, if you're having second thoughts, I understand. I really do. But like I said, this is something I hafta do alone. Believe me, it's not fair to involve anybody else."
Zack hesitated, though there was really nothing to hesitate about. He'd offered Joey the use of the boat, no strings attached, no explanations demanded, and it would be too undignified to back out now. "Well, let's take 'er out for a test drive, at least. Ya know, once you're away from the dock, it's mostly just like driving a car."
"Yeah," said Joey, "that's what I figured, like driving a car. That I can do."
"And swim," said Zack. "You can swim, right?"
Joey choked back his impulse to bullshit, but not quite soon enough. "Sure," he said. "I can swim. Sort of. Like, a little. Not really. Nuh-uh."