That’s when the strangers approached. They started talking to Rick and Billy from the pier, complimenting the vessel. The women didn’t like the men, didn’t exactly know why, just didn’t. The guys hit it off.
After that, the other men always seemed to be hanging around the marina when the couples came back from sailing. Rick and Billy started going out for drinks with their new friends. Then phone calls at the house where Billy would go in another room and close the door. The husbands developed a sudden interest in night fishing.
Anna knew something was up, so Billy got the shoe boxes down from the attic and showed her the cash. “It’s just pot….”
That was five years ago. Rick and Janet got a bigger house, and another place in the Keys they rented out. Billy got a gambling habit and another lease on the duplex.
Rick changed. He became smart with money. They were living well, but not spending nearly what was coming in. Rick was putting it somewhere. Billy changed, too. Cocaine, the dog track. Then the women from the bars that Billy always swore were the very last time. Finally his temper, which steadily grew worse and spilled into phone arguments with the guys from the pier.
Rick tried talking to him, and Billy said he’d change. He changed into a liar. Rick didn’t know what to do. From time to time, he passed money to his sister on the side.
Now the indictments…
“What are we going to do!” Janet yelled in the phone.
The Trans Am squealed around a corner. “Stay calm. I’ll be right there.”
“I can’t take it anymore!” Janet leaned weeping against the pay phone. Truck drivers heading into the coffee shop couldn’t help notice the drama. That hot little number in distress who obviously needed a knight.
A man in a Pennzoil cap walked up from behind. “Ma’am, is everything okay?”
Janet jumped and screamed. “No! Get the fuck away from me!”
“Jesus. You got it, lady….”
“What’s going on?” said Anna.
“I have to get out of here!”
“No, stay put,” said Anna. “You’re in the open. You need to be in public.”
“I have to go! I can’t handle this! I’ll call back.”
“Don’t hang up!”
“I have to!”
“Okay, you know that place Rick and Billy have? The piece of land they go duck hunting and have that aluminum building where they work on their motorcycles?”
“I know it.”
“Meet you there.”
12
SERGE COMBED HIS hair as he drove. He pulled up to a stop sign, tilted his head back and squeezed a Visine bottle.
“How are your eyes?” asked Coleman.
“Still sting a little, but I’m not blinking as much.”
“She got you good.”
“Was worth it,” said Serge, capping the bottle. “I discovered her problem with men before we got too deep into the relationship.”
Coleman lit a joint and pointed with the lighter. “Another midget deer.”
Serge eased onto the brakes. “They’re endangered. That’s why I won’t let you drive on this island.”
“But they’re so cute. I want to take one home. It would be neat having it roam around the trailer to keep me company. Do they make a lot of noise?”
“You can’t take care of yourself.”
Coleman looked at the road again, then at the joint in his hand, then back at the road. “Serge, I think I see a big dragon. Can you check?”
Serge hit the brakes again. “Iguana.”
“It’s huge.” Coleman put his face to the windshield. “I’ve never seen one that size. Must be five feet.”
“Closer to six.” The lizard slithered into someone’s azaleas. Serge stepped on the gas. “Exotic pet breed that got loose on the island. No natural predators and a plentiful food source, so they just mate and grow to unforeseen sizes. Hundreds now.”
Serge drove around a bend on Watson Boulevard and pulled up to the No Name Pub. They went inside and grabbed a pair of stools in the middle of an argument.
“Flotsam!” said Bud Naranja.
“Jetsam!” said Sop Choppy.
“But the boat sank!”
“But they threw it overboard first!”
“What a great place,” said Coleman, slowly looking around. “I didn’t even know it was here.”
“Bet it beats those weeklong benders where you never leave your trailer.”
“They have their moments.”
The bartender came over and automatically set bottled water in front of Serge.
“I’d like a draft anything,” said Coleman. “But not lite anything.”
The bartender stuck a tall glass under a tap. “What’s new, Serge?”
“He’s getting married,” said Coleman.
“You’re kidding! Congratulations!”
“Who’s the lucky gal?” asked Bud.
“Don’t know yet. We’re still doing recon.”
Sop Choppy laughed. “What about Brenda?”
“We’re just friends,” said Serge. “She doesn’t like me that way.”
“Are you kidding?” said Sop Choppy. “She’s crazy about you, always coming around and asking if you’re back in town.”
“Not my type.”
“What do you mean ‘not your type’?” said Bob the accountant. “She’s every guy’s type.”
“Brenda’s got some great qualities,” said Sop Choppy. “College degree. Big tits.”
Serge shook his head. “The soul-mate vibe just isn’t there.”
Coleman was turning his eyelids inside out.
“You’re going to freeze that way,” said Serge.
Coleman flipped his lids back. The Stones came on the juke.
Serge hopped off his stool and began strutting to the music. “Can you feel it, Coleman? You’re sitting in the greatest place in the world — the last frontier in America! Dig it everybody: It’s the Florida Keys! We’re weirdness on a stick!”
The gang: “Hooray!”
The petite woman in the back of the pub tensed up at the noise. “What’s going on over there?”
The man sitting across from her turned around. “Oh, that’s just Serge.”
Serge strutted faster. The regulars: “Go, Serge, go!… Go, Serge, go!…”
“I’m a cold Italian pizza, I could use a lemon squeezer! Yowwww!” Serge did a split at the end of the bar, popped up and started strutting back toward them. “These islands have always attracted a ragtag, bottom-of-the-barrel cast of life-bunglers….” He made a sweeping gesture at the bar. The gang smiled and waved at Coleman.
Serge stopped and placed a hand on a shoulder. “This is Bob the accountant, not to be confused with Shirtless Bob here. How’s the car coming?”
“I just bored out the—”
“That’s wonderful. And here’s the well-read biker named Sop Choppy, a regular doubting Thomas who’s in charge of debunking all the phooey that’s slung around this joint, and this is Bithlo Tice, who runs an unethical towing service, and Odessa ‘Odey’ Goulds, same deal but with plumbing, and Trilby Mims, who’s on total disability (wink), and Belle Cutler, a bouncer in the private room at the Cheetah Club who takes payoffs to look the other way on rim jobs, and Loughman Mascotte, who can never let himself get fingerprinted for some reason…”
“Shhhhhh!” said Loughman, hunching over his beer, holding a hand up to his face.
“…And Darby Felsmere, who has a bunch of washing machines and doorless refrigerators marked offshore with GPS coordinates that he uses to supply the restaurants with lobster, and Ogden Ebb, who was about to lose everything in the divorce but instead talked his wife into faking his death at sea and splitting the insurance, and Noma Lovett, who’s also Lawtey Pierce and Sewall Myers according to the unemployment checks, and ‘Daytona Dave’ DeFuniak, the one-hit wonder who had that big song back in the seventies, ‘Island Fever,’ which caught the draft behind the Changes in Latitudes album and topped out at number thirty-nine and he’ll even sing it for you if he gets drunk enough…”