“You’ll love living in the Keys,” Evan Shook said.
Ford Lipscomb handed up the check. “I’d like to buy a boat. Do a little fishing once I get the hang of it.”
“First let’s talk about window frames,” his wife said. “Also, a skylight in the master bedroom? Is that doable, Mr. Shook?”
“Anything’s doable.”
A skylight inevitably would leak during the rainy season, as did all skylights in Florida, but Evan Shook felt unmoved to mention this because every whimsical add-on served to pad his wispy profit line. By the time the silicone sealant began to disintegrate, in two or three years, he’d be back in Syracuse, probably ass-deep in divorce papers.
Recently his mistress had delivered a curdling ultimatum: Dump the wife or else.
The else being a musician-slash-poet with whom she’d shared a cannabis vaporizer at the bluegrass festival—a mandolin player, she’d informed Evan Shook, knowing he would find that more threatening than a perky banjoist. The young man was tall, his mistress had added cruelly. Six-one in his socks.
Ford Lipscomb said, “When’s the last time this island took a direct hit from a hurricane?”
Evan Shook chose to narrowly interpret the term “direct hit.”
“Never,” he declared. “Anyway, the building codes are much tougher now than in the old days. Heavy-duty glass, reinforced trusses—it’s the law.”
Jayne Lipscomb asked if he’d been keeping track of Tropical Storm Françoise on the Weather Channel. “Because this house, no offense, it’s wide open. No windows, no doors, the roof could fly off to Cuba—”
“Oh, we’d board up the place,” Evan Shook said with a patient-looking smile. “That storm isn’t coming this way, don’t you worry. It’s rolling straight up through the Bahamas.”
“Just what I told her,” said Ford Lipscomb.
“But look at what Katrina did!” The wife, tracing an elaborate S in the air.
Evan Shook inconspicuously touched the breast pocket into which he’d tucked the couple’s check, and he was comforted to feel the crisp paper rectangle beneath the fabric.
Ford Lipscomb rose. “There is one important detail we need to discuss.”
An unpleasant contraction commenced in Evan Shook’s colon.
“Fire away,” he croaked, bracing for the deal breaker.
“Sewer or septic?” Ford Lipscomb said.
Evan Shook went blank, such was his apprehension. He saw the husband’s lips moving but he heard not a word. Helplessly he shook his head.
“The house,” Jayne Lipscomb intervened, from behind tortoise-shell frames. “Is it on a sewer main?”
Evan Shook nearly gurgled with relief. “No, no, we have state-of-the-art septic, totally aerobic,” he said. “Come outside and I’ll show you where the tank’s buried!”
Neville took his boat up Victoria Creek ahead of the first band of heavy showers. He tied off in some mangroves, threw out an anchor, tested the bilge pump and crossed back to shore in a skiff run by some conch boys from the South Bight. The thought of being confined with Joyous for the storm’s duration was withering, so he decided to walk back to Rocky Town and surprise one of his less surly girlfriends. On the way he avoided Bannister Point, feeling lucky to be alive. The white man Christopher could have shot him dead as a thief instead of firing over his head, and Neville wondered why he’d been spared. After giving it some thought, he decided there was no mercy at play; Christopher simply didn’t wish to draw attention to himself.
For an American businessman needing favors from the Bahamas government, killing a local fisherman would be foolhardy and counterproductive. Neville’s death would have brought the top police authorities from Nassau, generating an inquest that would have stalled the Curly Tail Lane development and poisoned public sentiment. All this Christopher must have known. Still, the ugly confrontation was a close call that had left Neville shaken and doubt-ridden. Never before had he been called a “beach nigger,” and he wasn’t sure what that meant beyond the obvious slur. Did Christopher know it was Neville’s home that he had leveled on Green Beach? That it was Neville who’d pissed in the fuel tank of the offending backhoe, Neville who’d been stomped by Egg?
No, he cont know dot was me, thought Neville, or he would hoff say sum ting more den juss ‘hey beach nigger.’ He would hoff warn me stay offa dot property, mon, or next time Egg, he gern break your goddamn arms and leg bones too!
The rain was falling harder by the time Neville approached the settlement. He worried about the angry look of the ocean, a deep muddy purple, the furling wave tops sheared by the rising wind. Hurriedly he hiked up the hill to the shack belonging to the Dragon Queen. The wooden shutters had been lowered and through the crooked slats came the sounds of a man and woman singing, or trying to. Neville selected the outside wall that was exposed most directly to the thumping raindrops, the noisiest wall, where his breathing wouldn’t be heard by the occupants. There he positioned himself at a window and peeked through a gap between the sagging shutter and the warped pine frame.
Inside, the Dragon Queen was astride the broad lap of Egg, who had squeezed his ebony bulk into the pilot seat of her motorized scooter chair. The vehicle was rolling in tight circles around the dank little room—doing doughnuts is what the wild boys with cars called it. Neville could tell that Christopher’s henchman and the hag were dizzy from their drunken orbits. Egg wore a sweat-soaked undershirt and possibly nothing else, his long yet oddly unmasculine feet protruding from beneath the Dragon Queen’s rainbow skirt.
Neville muffled a gasp when his eyes fell upon Driggs, his former ward and companion. The haggard primate stood on the table amid empty rum bottles and plates of half-eaten fruit that was twitching with flies. He was holding his face over the yellow flame of a candle, lighting the bowl of a pipestem clenched in dingy teeth. Neville was appalled by this coarse new habit, and his anger swelled as the monkey studiously exhaled a train of smoke rings that dissipated in a swirl as a fresh gust rattled through the shutters. Driggs extended the pipe to arm’s length and the Dragon Queen grabbed it as the scooter chair sped by, Egg cackling as he worked the joystick. The old woman got one heavy drag before losing her prize on the very next lap, Driggs reaching out to swipe it from her mottled lips.
The back of Neville’s T-shirt was drenched, but the rain was warm, hurricane rain, and he didn’t shrink from his spy post at the window. Inside the darkening room, Egg halted the motorized chair and snapped two fingers at the monkey, who blinked aloofly and spat into an upturned tambourine. A small commotion began, and bile rose in Neville’s throat—the Dragon Queen and her new boyfriend were attempting to screw!
To and fro rocked the shiny scooter, its tires carping on the smooth-worn planks. The entanglement progressed clumsily, and soon the shack filled with adenoidal moans and raspy howls that melded into a lurid, tuneless yodel. Neville slapped his palms over both ears and turned away, the raindrops slicking his cheeks.
What is the awful nature of this woman’s power? he wondered.
Thunder crashed and Neville dove to the ground as the shutter by his head banged open. Out leaped Driggs, still mouthing the pipe. Clutched in his paws were a Bic lighter and a tin of Dunhill tobacco. He never glanced Neville’s way, pausing only to shed his lumpy diaper before loping down the road through the squall. Neville called the monkey’s name but another thunderclap smothered his doleful cry. He sprang to his feet and gave chase, although in the downpour he soon lost sight of his fleet quarry. Spurred by guilt, Neville continued his blind pursuit, shouting miserably for the small friend he’d sold to the terrible voodoo priestess.
Sold for nothing.
His lungs were burning by the time he reached the old Cooper place, which had been empty ever since Virgil Cooper went to Havana and fell for a tour guide named Miguelito. Neville ducked into the carport to rest and wait out the lightning. He was dripping like a horse. In a puddle at his feet floated an empty tobacco tin, which Neville picked up and examined solemnly.