between the two of us, the way we're always busting each other's balls, it's like a, whaddyacallit, a vicious cycle, circle, whatever, and the only way it's gonna stop is if we both stop. That's why I'm saying, hey, let it go, we gotta forgive each other.'
Gino hesitated, maybe even wavered. Then he remembered the feel of the emeralds in his hand. They were solid, cool, he knew their price, he had a vivid idea of what they could have done for him. 'Nah, Joey, save it. Ya sound like a goddamn priest. I'm pissed about the fucking stones. You wanna be pissed too, that's your business.'
Joey looked down at the water. There was enough light now to blot out the phosphorescence streaming from the oars. He noticed suddenly that he'd raised blisters on both palms. 'O.K.,' he said, 'I tried.'
'And there you go again,' razzed Gino, revving up for one more spasm of exasperation, 'with that I tried bullshit. Joey, you're givin' me advice, lemme give you advice. No one gives a fuck you tried. Do something right, and do it to the end. Cut this bullshit with I tried. It just makes you look like a horse's ass.'
Joey rowed in silence through the Sand Key Channel. By the first light of morning, the derelict marina was even more forlorn than it had been at night. Lizards darted in and out of the windows of the abandoned trailer. Pieces of forgotten boats lay stranded on the shore like dead animals. Joey Goldman and Gino Delgatto, their backs stiff and their feet wrinkled with wetness, climbed out of the twelve-dollar dinghy and left it to rot with the others. Then they stepped into Zack Davidson's skiff and motored off.
Beyond the dimness of the cove, the sun was already glaring across the water, going from orange to yellow and from warm to searing hot. It was not yet six-thirty.
Bert the Shirt was waiting at the bridge, standing against the early traffic of fishermen and truckers. A stickler for grooming, he was already shaved, his cheeks pink from freshly slapped-on bay rum, his white hair with its tinge of bronze still damp from the shower. He was wearing a sea-green pullover of knitted silk, and he had Don Giovanni in the crook of his arm. The chihuahua, rousted out of its velvet dog bed before the accustomed time, looked grouchy; its huge black eyes refused to open all the way, its whiskers hung down in a sour arc. Vicki didn't look too chipper either. She'd dozed but hadn't slept, yanked back from the brink by visions of snakes and spiders and by the infernal buzzing of mosquitoes in her ears. Her thin blond hair was matted on one side and electrified on the other; her neck and forehead were dotted with bug bites as closely arrayed as chicken pox.
The goodbyes were brief, almost nonexistent. Nobody thanked anybody. Nobody apologized. Joey held the skiff against a bridge stanchion while Gino, his ribs on fire, slime on his clothes, dried blood matted in his hair, clambered up and out.
'Jesus, Gino,' Vicki said to him, 'they gonna let you onna plane like that?'
'Shut up, Vicki.'
They climbed into Bert's car and slammed the doors behind them. Joey had almost forgotten there could be so dry a sound as a car door clicking shut.
He pushed off and headed for home. He suddenly realized he was exhausted. His hands were swollen, his eyes were crusty, and he'd forgotten to bring along his sunglasses. But all in all, he felt O.K. He'd gotten his brother out alive and thought he had a reasonable chance of keeping him that way. He didn't have the emeralds but he knew where the emeralds were. He figured he had enough of Gino's thousand left to buy Zack a new little outboard. He'd said some things he'd been meaning to say, and if he didn't get the answers he'd hoped for, at least he got the answers he'd expected. Pretty soon now, he'd get to sleep. His conscience was clear.
Part IV
— 37 -
He slept till four, and woke up feeling the dryness and dislocation that are the price of daytime sleep. His eyes itched, his arms hurt, he smelled his own sweat on the pillow. Gradually he remembered where he was: not just in Key West but in a Key West that was free of Gino. A pleasant place, an easy place, a place he had chosen for himself. He rolled over, stretched, and slowly started noticing things he'd been too nervous to notice for the past few put-upon weeks: the smell of the air that was sometimes dusty, sometimes flowery, depending on how humid it was and where the wind was coming from; the way the curtain fluttered over the louvered window, like the skirt of a woman walking. His eyes half open, he groped on the nightstand for his sunglasses.
He pulled on a bathing suit, threw a towel around his neck, and went outside. No one was around, and Joey jumped feet first into the pool. Waves rolled from his body, collided with the sides, and started back again, converging at a dozen angles like the roiled water over a coral reef. He threw himself backward and tried to float. For a few seconds the water held him; then, as if overburdened by the added weight of his doubt, it sagged and let him sink. One of these days, he told himself, he'd learn to swim. To live in Florida and not know how was crazy.
He toweled off and settled into a lounge chair under a palm tree. He was looking up absently through the interlaced fronds when Sandra came through the wooden gate of the compound. She was wearing a straight white skirt with a zipper on the side, white shoes with low heels, and a short-sleeved pink blouse whose shoulders stuck out an inch or two beyond her own. She walked with quick, compact steps around the hot tub and sat down next to Joey on the lounge- sat with her usual precision so that she was as close as she could be without putting her skirt against his wet bathing suit. 'You're back,' she said.
'Sure I'm back. You worried?'
'A little, yeah,' she said. 'It's been a long time since we spent a night apart, Joey. Besides, I'm always worried when you're with Gino.' She reached out and touched Joey's hair, brushing it back from his forehead. Her fingertips felt good against his scalp, and he surprised himself by clutching her wrist and kissing it.
'Well, Gino's gone,' he said. 'He's back in New York by now.'
Sandra said nothing, and Joey was grateful for her restraint. If she'd come out with too much relief, he would have had to take Gino's side somehow because he was family. That's just how it was. But she kept still and looked down at the blue shimmer of the pool.
'Yup,' Joey resumed, 'he's history. So, Sandra, now I can start making good on some a the promises I been making.'
'Promises?' said Sandra. 'You, Joey? You've been making promises?'
'Yeah, ya know, like having friends and all, doing stuff. I'm ready.'
'Just like that?' said Sandra. 'Ready for what, exactly?'
'I don't know. Ya know, like life. Hey, what day is it?'
'It's Thursday, Joey.'
'Right. Well, like, on Saturday. Zack and Claire, let's have 'em over to dinner. And Bert.'
Sandra started to smile but could not help letting a quick flinch tighten the comers of her mouth. Joey, just then discovering the comfort of small affections, put a cool hand on her knee.
'Sandra, hey, I know what you're thinking: Bert isn't gonna fit in, it's gonna be, like, awkward. But ya know what I think, Sandra? I think the more ya try to keep one part of your life over heah, and another part over theah, the more it doesn't work. I've tried it, believe me. You're embarrassed, ya try to keep things separate, they just get more bollixed up together. Ya can't go around feeling like ya all the time gotta apologize for where ya came from, who ya came from. Ya gotta, like, trust that people are gonna adjust, adopt, adapt, whatever. Ya know, like lighten up and get along.'
Midway through dinner, Joey started yawning, and afterward, when he and Sandra made love, it had some of the floating bafflement and tender discontinuity of sex in dreams. He did not feel her slip out of bed to straighten up the kitchen.
But by three a.m. he was all slept out. His eyes popped open, and the moonlight filtering through the curtains was more than bright enough to guide him to the stove to put up coffee. He pulled on his bathrobe and took a cup out by the pool.
The night was just barely cool enough for the coffee to steam. Overhead, the palm fronds rustled dryly; the
