DeAntoni said, yeah, he wanted to eat, too, but Sally was reluctant.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see the old marina gang, Mack and Jeth, Rhonda and JoAnn and all the others,” she explained, “but I’ve learned that old friends feel a little uncomfortable when a friend changes.”
Referring to herself.
She certainly had changed. It happens a lot, and all too often to good men and women. It happens through misfortune, random accidents, the tragedy of disease, the realization of personal failure.
It also happens because the detritus of an unsatisfying life can accumulate like a weight, until even a strong person finally breaks, gives in and seeks shelter in one of the many escapes available to us all. Drugs are a common route of escape. Religion can be another.
Something had happened to this good lady. Maybe for better, maybe for worse. I have no illusions about my competence as a judge. I screw up my own life so consistently, disappoint my own vision of self so regularly, that I have become a reluctant critic of other people, other lives. But it was obvious that she was no longer the woman I had held, laughed with and made love to on the moonlit outside deck of my stilt house.
Surprise, surprise. Tomlinson had returned for the party. Karlita, the television psychic, was with him. Her idea, he said. Totally. Because she wanted to see me.
Tomlinson threw his arm around my shoulder, weaving mightily. Drunk, stoned, nearly out of it, slurring, “The lady likes the cut of your jib, compadre. Karlita the Chiquita. She’s looked you over port to starboard, bow and stern.”
“Tomlinson,” I said trying to shush him. “Enough with the sailing metaphors. I have no interest in the woman. I already told you that. How’d you get here? Please tell me you didn’t drive your own car.”
“My car? I’ve never owned a car in my…” He let the sentence trail off, thinking about it. “Wait a minute, I do own a car. I bought a Volkswagen Thing off Bud-O-Bandy. Classic beach transport. It’s like a tent with four slabs of drywall built around an engine. My dream car.”
“Exactly,” I said.
We were standing by the sea grape tree next to the Red Pelican Gift Shop, the docks, the darkening bay behind us, the masts and fly bridges of boats strung with party lights. Tomlinson had a pink sarong knotted around his waist, tarpon and snook hand-painted on silk. Shirtless, he was skin over bone, all sinew and veins, his gaunt cheeks and haunted eyes suspended above his shoulders like a human face perched on the stem of a delicate mushroom.
His hair was longer than ever, scraggly, sun-bleached to straw and silver. He’d isolated two shocks of hair with the kind of spring-loaded combs that little girls use: One shock was a ponytail that hung to the middle of his back. The other sprouted directly from the top of his head, a Samurai effect.
He took a deep breath, eyes wide, trying to calm himself. Then he held up an index finger. “Ah-h-h-h, now it’s all coming back. I didn’t drive. I came with Karlita in her black sports car. A hundred fifteen miles an hour through the Everglades. Sawgrass a blur, rednecks in airboats flipping us the bird, screaming foul oaths while I sent out telepathic warning signals to innocent wildlife. Yes, of course. There’s no mystery here. I returned to Sanibel like any normal working lug. In a Lexus GS 400, my head mashed to the seat like I’d been Velcroed by kidnappers. So… what was your point again, Doc?”
“Karlita,” I said. “She’s the point. I’ve got no interest. I don’t want her in my house. I don’t want her in my lab. I don’t want to spend more than a minute or two listening to her bullshit. As long as we’re clear on that.”
He held up an index finger, asking me to pause so he could ask a question. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m getting a very negative vibe here. You don’t like the lady?”
“No. I don’t like the lady.”
I watched my old friend sigh heavily, eyes drowsy, his whole body drooping as if he were about to fall asleep. Or pass out-a more accurate term.
I hoped it was my imagination, but lately, it seemed, Tomlinson was absolutely smashed after only nine or ten beers-a historically light night for him.
Not a good sign.
I am not a fretter, but, of late, I’d been worried about him. He was killing himself. Slowly and surely, he was destroying his own body, his own first-rate mind, by overindulging in a garden variety of legal and illegal drugs.
He’d gotten worse in the last year or so. My personal guess was that it was his way of dealing with the pressure of his growing notoriety. A way of re-creating an insular privacy that he no longer enjoyed.
So he was staying drunk most of the time. Or hiding out on his boat. Or on the Florida Keys: Key Largo, renting the little apartment overlooking the Mandalay Bar, Mile Marker 97.5. Or in Key West, moored at the Conch Republic Fish Company docks, or staying at Simonton Court, or Old Cypress House, doing happy hour with Dave, then drinking all night with Chris Robinson at Louie’s Backyard.
Or exploiting absurd excuses to retreat to the Everglades.
Every day by sunset, he was out of control. Mostly, it was alcohol-which is why the fact the he seemed to be getting drunk on fewer drinks was a troubling symptom.
Chronic alcohol use causes the liver to become fatty. The fat chokes off blood that delivers oxygen to liver cells. Those cells are replaced with scar tissue called cirrhosis. Result? A drinker can tolerate less and less alcohol because there are fewer liver cells to process it.
Of course, it was also probable that he was supplementing his alcohol intake with marijuana, illegal pharmaceuticals, psychedelic fungi, even surgical halothane gas when he could get it.
Tomlinson made friends quickly, and he had a long list of medical professionals he could call on for special fun and favors. Because he knew I didn’t approve, he rarely confided in me when it came to his current drug of preference.
The height of paradox was this: A couple of months back, he took me aside and said, “Doc, I don’t want to offend you, but I’m telling you for your own good. The whole marina’s worried because of your drinking.”
I said, “What?”
“Used to be, you’d have a couple of beers a night. Now you’re drinking that black Nicaraguan rum. Getting drunk, too-that’s the rumor floating ’round. That’s what I suspect. ”
Trying my best to be patient, I told him, “Tomlinson, you know exactly what I drink because you’re right there with me. Drinking rum on my porch at sunset, or your boat, almost every night. Geezsh. ”
Which made him pause a few beats, thinking about it, before he replied, “ Oh. In that case… well, you’re in the hands of a professional. Enjoy!”
Standing near the marina’s picnic tables, where there were trays of crab cakes, bowls of ceviche, steamed shrimp and fried fish, Tomlinson told me, “Last night, when you two were out canoeing, Karlita said she had a psychic vision. That you were destined to become lovers.”
I answered, “The lady’s wrong. Count on it.”
He wagged his finger at me, having fun. “Um-huh, the Ford Theory of Reality. You only accept as fact that teeny weenie bit of ignorance that can be measured, weighed and classified.
“One day, though, you’ll step through the veil and experience the spiritual world. When you’re ready, man, when the student’s ready, your teacher will arrive. You put out such good vibes, my brother, I’m willing to bet cash money that your spiritual teacher will come complete with a really great ass. So maybe it’s Karlita.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So now I have something to look forward to.”
I turned and began to walk toward the docks, where I could see Sally and Frank DeAntoni standing among a group of liveaboards, red plastic cups in hand. Yet, by the way they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, facing one another, talking intensely, they effectively isolated themselves. Two people alone in a crowded space.