Killer Move

feel it, situate myself on the planet and in my memory and know this was the spot that had held a scruffy old U-shaped motel where you drove under an awning and turned right or left to park in front of two parallel blocks of rooms. There were perhaps a dozen rooms on each of the two levels, a swimming pool in between—and a walkway that led out to the beach. The motel had a laundry room, a Ping-Pong area with a table whose net never stood up, and whirring ice and soda machines. No restaurant, no bar, no store, no child-care facilities or concierge service. Just a place for families to hang out while they soaked up some rays (back in the days before it was determined that sunlight was cancerous poison and to be avoided at all costs). For a moment it all seemed totally real, as if those family vacations had been only a year or two ago.

I saw, however, that the building that had replaced the Lido Beach Inn could itself do with a lick of paint, a chunk of render missing up on one side. The next generation was already getting old. I recalled, too, that only two days ago I’d been caught up in lobbying Tony Thompson to refresh The Breakers, and found it hard to remember why. I knew I would do so again, at some point, but right now it seemed far less important than the fact that a gangly kid with my name and DNA had once passed over this stretch of sidewalk without realizing that twenty years later an older version of himself would be weaving there, drunk, missing a wife, his life in disarray. It seemed strange that we can do this, stand in a place and not be able to feel the breeze of a future self walking past. We wouldn’t be coming back, after all, had we not been there before—so the events must be conjoined. How had he not been able to see my shadow standing here? Had he not happened to look in the right direction? Or not listened hard enough? Or had I in fact caught a glimpse, and was that why I was back here now, to try to find my way back to that self? I thought about asking something like this out loud, but guessed I probably seemed drunk enough already. I let my hand drift back to my side.

“Come on,” Cassandra said. She stepped closer and looped her arm through mine. “I think you need to sit down for a while, big guy.”

It was only another ten minutes’ walk, down at the far end of the drive. Just before the road abruptly downsized to a single lane before winding off into the palms and scrub of the undeveloped part of the key, there was an old and dilapidated apartment block, a little back from the road on the nonocean side.

Cassandra led me through the metal gate. The building was three stories high and arranged in a horseshoe, an empty water feature in the middle with a long-dead fountain at the center. It was all straight lines and semicircles and looked like it might have been kind of a big deal in the 1930s. Giant grasses were running riot around the courtyard now, obscuring it from the road. Patches of once-white render had fallen off, revealing a pinkish layer underneath. I’d vaguely noticed this place many times before, assumed it was derelict and waiting a wrecking ball under the control of one of the local developers. Most from that era had already vanished, including the old Art Deco casino that older locals still spoke of with pride.

“You live here?”

“For now. It’s mainly empty, which is cool. Nice and quiet. Got kind of a vibe, too.”

“It’s an abandoned ship, is what it feels like.”

“Adrift, and far from home.”

She led me up some spiral stairs at the end of the right arm. As we came out onto the top floor, I tripped on a chunk of plaster that had fallen off the wall.

“Sorry,” she said, as she got out her keys. “The maid hasn’t been in a while.”

“Maybe the rats ate her.”

“The only major rodents I’ve seen are roving packs of developers—wondering if the time is right to pull down something fine and throw up something cheap and profitable in its place.”

“Touche.”

Feeling seedy, I followed her along the balconied walkway to a door halfway along the arm. I peered down into the overgrown courtyard as she undid the three separate locks in the door to apartment 34.

“Welcome,” she said, as the last one gave a thunk.

A short corridor beyond led onto a living room. Cassandra flicked a switch and three small lamps came on, shedding yellow-orange glows in the corners. There were two doors on the right-hand side of the room, a frosted glass one at the end. A single bed had been pushed against the other wall and piled with cushions. There was a desk fashioned out of cinder blocks and an old door, a set of shelves made of bricks and short planks. The walls had been painted some dark color. There were a lot of computing books and magazines and bits of computer hardware and in general quite a lot of stuff, but it would be hard to find an object that looked out of place or as if it wasn’t designed to go exactly where it was.

“You’re . . . tidy.”

She set the grocery bag down on the table, momentarily seeming awkward about having a stranger in her space. Despite her poise, it probably wasn’t very long since she’d been living in a room in her parents’ house. She looked around. “Well, I guess. Do I win a prize?”

“It’s just that women aren’t, always. I thought they would be, but you live with a few and find it ain’t so.”

“Well, then, Bill—if I may call you that—I’m pleased to have restored your retro faith in my kind.”

I felt myself coloring. “I didn’t mean women should be tidying the whole time.”

“Well, no, indeed. Then whenever would we have the time to cook and sew?”

I decided to shut up, and went to the bathroom. This was small but also tidy, and smelled of other people’s soap. Compared to Stephanie’s stash in the bathroom at our home, there was a notable lack of Women’s Bathroom Stuff, and I realized Cassandra probably just didn’t have the money for it. It was a long time since I’d been in the company of a woman who didn’t have the money for Stuff. I splashed a lot of water on my face, which made my head feel colder but no more clear. The towel I used had a hint of mildew, which made me feel nostalgic and affectionate, too. I think it was the towel I was feeling this toward, anyhow.

Back in the living room I saw that Cassandra had opened the frosted door at the end, revealing a minuscule balcony. She’d also taken off her coat, and was holding a white USB cable in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other.

“One of these you need,” she said, jiggling the cable hand up and down. She was wearing black jeans and a close-fitting, multilayered top made from black lace, with a scooped neck and sleeves down to her wrists. “The other, not so much. But, like, it’s your call.”

“A small glass, maybe,” I said, businesslike. “While the phone charges. Then I’d better head home.”

She efficiently connected my phone to the battered laptop on the desk and waited until it had chirped to confirm it was getting juice. “All systems operational. All we can do now . . . is wait.”

She poured me half a glass of wine and a full glass for herself and sat down on the edge of the kinda- sofa.

“So, my friend.”

I felt lumbering and awkward, an untidy older man in a young woman’s just-so room. “So . . . what?”

She looked up, glass in her lap. Her face was open, very pretty, and unlined. “We’ve got a little time. You totally don’t have to, but . . . do you want to share?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

An hour later, to my surprise, I’d told her quite a lot. About the e-mail with the joke, about the book from Amazon, about the fact that the police were claiming David Warner was dead when I had the evidence of my own eyes to prove he was not. We were sitting on the floor by then, our backs against the kinda- sofa, and I had been informed that, should I wish, I could call her Cass. In my defense, I’d tried both the house phone and Steph’s cell again, twice. It was now well after eleven, and the world felt like it was teetering in the balance. Midnight is a feasible time to get back: I’d returned home around that time after the evening trying to meet Warner. Midnight can happen if the evening gets away from you just a little. Much later than that, however, and either you’re trying to make a big and serious point, or . . . I couldn’t complete the thought. That or led in directions that tangled and became poisonous.

“Okay, well, that’s pretty strange,” Cassandra said, after thinking about what I’d told her. She poured us both another glass of wine. It was not the first refill. “Weirdness-wise, you can tick the box.”