Floridian nights, p.34
Floridian Nights, page 34
“It was a good thing I didn’t. It was Becker, and he was tugging at my trunks. I turned around and started to give him hell, and that’s when I noticed he was wearing his trunks around his neck.” Rick began to laugh, rather nervously. “When I saw that, I started to get turned on–”
“So am I.”
Gary ignored that. “–and then Becker said, ‘Try it, Buckeye. You’ll like it.’ Frankly, at that point, I didn’t need much more encouragement.”
“That’s what he called you? Buckeye?”
Gary’d forgotten that he’d kept that information from Rick. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m from Ohio?”
“Oh. Right.” Rick threw off this distraction and returned to Gary’s scenario. “So did you do it in the water?”
“I wouldn’t say we did it, exactly. It was very clear water, planes flew overhead every once in a while, and there were other people not that far away–”
“So that was all there was to it?”
“I wouldn’t say that either. Did you ever swim nude in the ocean?”
“No. I’m from the Midwest, remember?”
It struck Gary that Rick must, indeed, have had a fairly conservative time on Fire Island in August. “I can’t begin to describe the difference from wearing a swimsuit,” he said, “especially if you’re in warm water like it is down here. It’s a totally different experience. It’s so much more sensual. We, uh, touched each other, and it was so sexy. That was plenty.”
Rick flopped back in his chair. “Whew! How long were you out there?”
“Quite a while. Then I got worried about getting burned in places that seldom saw the sun.”
“Did you?”
“We both got a little pink. Where our tan lines were usually tan and white, they were tan and pink for a day or two.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah. It put a temporary crimp in our sex life. But it was worth it.”
They were both quiet for a minute, until Rick said, “That’s a hot story. I like it. You say you can fly there from here? Does it cost a lot?”
Gary nodded. “A lot. It was a splurge for us then. God knows what the price is now.”
“Oh, well. Can’t do everything on one trip.”
Gary found himself taking umbrage at Rick’s presumption that they’d be here together again, but he didn’t say anything. “What should we do tonight?” Rick asked. “You gonna feel up to going out?”
“Nothing strenuous. You say you wanna go back to your piano bar?”
“Sure. But I don’t think it really gets going until late.” After a pause the kid continued, “I got an idea! I’ve got about ten extra dollars stashed away. I saw signs for a dog track–”
“You really got into that, didn’t you? Yeah, in fact, it’s on the next key over–”
“Let’s go see if I can win some money so we can fly to the Dry Tortugas.”
“Rick, you should never go to the track expecting to win money.”
“Aw, c’mon, Gare. Think positive.”
•
Cocktail hour at poolside gave everyone a chance to ooh and ahh over Gary’s wound and hear his and Rick’s accounts of the big fight. Keiko and Tony weren’t about, but Wes and Keith from Seattle were. They had struck up a friendship with Lynn, a dark, stocky lesbian from Tacoma who was visiting the island solo. Though the three had never met back in their home state, they’d hit it off so well that Lynn had switched to Ken and Allie’s guest house, somehow managing to pull off that feat in the middle of a holiday weekend. Gary was enjoying all the attention until Ken said, “Did you ever talk to the police?”
“No,” Gary said quickly, and Lynn immediately picked up the chant:
“Why not? You should.”
“I know. But I’m on vacation–”
“I talked to the police,” Rick abruptly volunteered. That was as much news to Gary as to anyone else.
“You did?” Allie asked.
“When?” Gary said simultaneously.
“First thing when I went out last night.”
“That’s why the police were here, then,” Ken said.
“Probably.”
“Why did you just do that, and not tell anyone?” Gary asked Rick.
“I felt like it was something I should do. I mean, you had really been hurt. But it’s everyone’s own choice, whether or not to talk with the cops.” When nobody followed up on this pointed remark, he added, “They said it was probably a tourist that actually hit you, not a local. So they probably won’t be able to find him.”
“How would they know before they looked?” Lynn asked. “I smell a cover-up.”
“Not from our police,” Ken insisted.
“How can you be so sure?”
“What makes you so sure?”
Lynn paused to light a cigarette. “I had a friend. Sweet guy. Drag queen. Picked up some rough trade one night and we found him dead a couple of days later. We went to the police and they wouldn’t do jack-shit.”
“Well, this is Key West, not Seattle.”
“Tacoma,” Lynn, Wes and Keith all corrected at once.
“I thought you remembered every little thing about your customers,” Gary needled Ken, who rewarded him with a frown.
At that point, someone new emerged from the back door of the guest house – Terry, the nurse/doctor. He was, appropriately, all decked out in white, evidently headed for a game of tennis. He’d picked up quite a bit of color, both in his skin and his hair, and the effect was dazzling. “How’s my patient today?” he asked cheerily as he walked over to Gary and stood between him and Rick, who suddenly looked, well, ordinary.
“Much better, thanks,” Gary replied, as Rick said rudely,
“Who are you?”
“This is Terry Liscomb,” Ken told Rick, “The guy who stitched Gary’s head while we sent you out for the bandage last night.” It was, Gary noticed, the first time Ken had directly addressed Rick during cocktail hour.
Rick stood and offered Terry his hand and his name. “Thanks. You did a real good job.”
“I appreciate your saying that,” Terry said pleasantly, looking over at Gary, “but maybe I should be the judge of that.”
“You wanna check me out, Doc?” Gary asked him, ignoring Rick.
“I think I should, if you don’t mind.”
Gary rose and said, “I don’t mind. But let’s do it in my room. I don’t think this needs to be a public spectacle.” He and Terry and Rick headed for the back door until he said to the latter, “I think all we need is me and the doctor, kid,” deliberately utilizing the nomenclature that would piss Rick off. He didn’t even wait to check his lover’s reaction.
Back in the room, Terry prodded him here and there, noted his stitching job with satisfaction, and asked him if he’d had any dizziness, etc. To Gary’s considerable disappointment, he did not ask him to so much as remove his shirt. When the exam was finished, Terry smiled beguilingly and said, “Well, you seem fine. I guess I was right.”
“I don’t believe in taking unfair advantage of professionals,” Gary said flirtatiously. “Can I offer you payment?”
“Of course not.”
“But you’re on vacation, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And I interrupted it.”
“Uh-uh. Whoever bashed you interrupted it.” Terry leaned in a bit toward Gary as he said this, giving him a cheap thrill. “If you were some hypochondriac, I might charge you, but – you were bashed.” He leaned back and added briskly, “Let me just consider it my good deed for this trip, okay? Take care now.”
“Can I buy you a drink or something, then?” Gary said quickly.
Terry hesitated. “I have a court reserved right now–”
“Not now. Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well, I’m kind of–” He stopped himself, seemingly in mid-thought. “What about Rick?”
“What about him? I asked you.”
Now the doctor smiled a little. “Well, okay, if it’s later in the day.”
“Say, about three?”
“Three-thirty?”
“Meet me here?”
“Fine. See you then.” Terry turned on his heel and headed for the door. With the white clothes and the tanned limbs, the view from behind was breathtaking.
Gary lingered in his room alone after Terry left, in no particular mood to rejoin Rick. He stayed there until he heard Allie’s voice call, “C’mon, GG! We’re all going to see the sunset!”
•
Mallory Square, at the northern end of Key West’s Old Town, had long served as the scene of a daily happening where tourists and locals gathered to watch the sun set into the Gulf of Mexico. Although this ritual at the docks had no doubt considerably preceded Gary and Becker’s first visit to the island, Gary suspected that the playing of “Taps” and the applause from the crowd dated from the ’60s or early ’70s.
Wes and Keith and Lynn, already self-proclaimed veterans since they’d been to the docks the day before, led the way. Gary had not yet ventured into this part of town on this trip, and he was shocked to see that the area where he and Georgia Peach had so often been part of the sunset scene had been cut virtually in half by new construction. He was glad to see the long-haired woman in the granny dress still bicycled in and among the crowd, selling her chocolate-chip cookies, and there was still a guy with a trumpet, though he couldn’t be sure it was the same one. As the guy played “Red Sails in the Sunset,” a few strong wisps of golden cloud partially obscured the orb that was descending against a deepening blue.
Quite without warning, the feeling of complete desolation struck Gary again. He’d participated in this ritual with BB many times; it had always given him a peculiar feeling of freedom, and had made both of them romantic. Now, watching the sunset with this crowd in this smaller space, he felt simultaneously hemmed-in and bereft. Someone put their arm around his shoulder, and somehow he naturally assumed it was Allie, the only person in his group who had known Becker. But of course when he turned partway around to see, it was Rick. The kid looked thrilled to be there. “This is amazing, Gare. I’m really glad you made us come here. Think it’d be okay if I kissed you, right out here in front of everybody?”
He didn’t appear inclined to wait for a response, so Gary blurted out, “No.”
Rick gave him an injured look and said, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing like it used to be.” He turned to Allie, who was standing in front of both of them. “What happened? How did the square get cut in half?”
Apparently enjoying his young guests’ enjoyment of a classic Key West event, Allie looked at Gary in befuddlement. “They didn’t cut it in half. I guess there has been some construction since–”
“They’ve ruined it!”
“No, they haven’t, Gary,” Allie countered. “Look at this crowd.”
“I like it,” Rick said quietly.
“But you never saw the way it was!” Gary nearly shouted, turning on him. “They’re commercializing this whole place to death.”
“The place was always plenty commercial,” Allie persisted. “Even when you were here with BB.”
“It was not, not like this.”
Allie threw up his arms in smiling, gracious surrender. “Have it your way,” he said, turning back to Wes, Keith, and Lynn.
That left Gary with Rick, who said, “Are you – uh, having a bad time, Gare?”
“No, kid. Forget it.”
“Does your head hurt?”
“I said no!” Gary repeated angrily. “I just – I just wish it could be like it was when I was here before.” This drew no comment from Rick. “So are we gonna take a taxi to Stock Island, or what?”
“Stock Island?”
“The next key over. Where the dog races are?”
“Oh. We don’t have to take a taxi. There’s a city bus that runs there–”
Gary was tired of arguing with Rick about things like this. “If you wanna check on taking a bus, go ahead.”
“I’m telling you, I already did.”
“What?”
“Well, going to the track was my idea. I didn’t wanna waste my betting money on a cab.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “How come you figured out the bus goes to the track but you didn’t know it was on Stock Island?”
“I just called the city bus number and asked if they went to the dog track.”
“How resourceful. And?”
“We can catch a bus a couple of blocks from here, in about fifteen minutes. But we can’t stay ’til the last race if we wanna take the bus back. The last bus leaves earlier than that.”
“Right, but we’re gonna win big money, remember? We can take a limo back.”
“That’s the spirit,” Rick agreed with a smile.
There wasn’t enough time to get dinner, so they window-shopped until the bus was due. Rick’s information about the mass transportation was accurate, but his luck was less on target. From the moment they arrived at the Stock Island track, which seemed sleazier than Bonita Springs (or maybe it was just that they weren’t with Bubbeleh), things did not go well. Rick had blown his extra ten dollars by the sixth race; none of his dogs in the first five contests had even come close to finishing in the money. Losing money made Rick surly, while Gary’s unhappiness seemed to be growing exponentially.
Their mutual crankiness abated as they stood at the bus stop about a block from the track, in near-country-road darkness, and listened to the cheering crowd. The only light in the vicinity radiated from the grandstand; then, abruptly, it disappeared, and the noise of the crowd took on a different tone. “Look at that, Gare!” Rick exclaimed. “They’ve had a power failure!”
So, apparently, they had. There were sounds of confusion, which died down to a steady murmur. Gary and Rick both looked up, to where the tropical stars, heretofore hidden by the ambient light, were emerging one by one. “Did you ever read this story by Arthur C. Clarke–” Gary began with no hope of an affirmative answer.
“The Nine Billion Names of God?”
Astonished, Gary looked over at his young lover in the darkness. “Where the stars go out–”
“–one by one, yeah.” At least the kid read science fiction. Rick took Gary’s hand then, and Gary squeezed his hand in return. The kid caressed Gary’s shoulder; then they were startled as the track lights went back on, and the crowd roared. At virtually the same time, they were caught in the glare of the headlights of the Key West bus, swinging into view.
The driver gave no indication he’d seen their show of affection as they boarded the bus. “Did you see the track?” Rick eagerly asked him. “They had a blackout.”
The driver gave Rick a sullen look, and as Gary paid his fare, the driver muttered something, possibly anti-gay. Nasty service wasn’t limited to New York, Gary thought. As the bus pulled away, Rick whispered to Gary, “It’s almost like we imagined it.”
“We’ve each got a witness.”
“You wanna stop at the house and get a jacket?”
“Yeah. It seems to be cooling off a little.” Rick reached for Gary’s hand again in the darkened bus, but Gary put both of his hands up on the seat in front of them.
•
The place where Gary had sent Rick the night before was a brightly lit, sprawling bungalow on a block with a large banyan tree. There was a big round bar in the middle of the place, with a piano off to the side. In front, they served pretty good food, well into the evening. It was almost ten when they were seated for dinner. Their moods, especially Gary’s, had reverted, and they were quiet throughout much of the meal, Gary thinking of Becker and Rick looking increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, when they were served the ubiquitous key lime pie for dessert, the kid made a face that caught Gary’s attention.
“Something the matter?”
“It’s real sour?” This with an asking inflection that reminded Gary of Anita.
“It’s not sour, it’s tart. Key lime pie is supposed to be tart.”
“And it’s this ugly kind of yellow–”
“It’s supposed to be that yellow, too.”
“I like Gina and Laurel’s better.”
“You should ask for the recipe here. Take it back for them to try. I’ll bet they’d like it.”
“I’m not in the restaurant business.”
“Oh? I thought you managed your own place.” Rick gave Gary a look that told him he didn’t think that was funny. “Have you sent them a postcard?”
“Yes, mother.”
At that point Gary’s attention strayed, because a smashing-looking young man with blue eyes and black hair had walked into the place, alone. So pronounced was his distraction that Rick, whose back was to the door, turned around to see the focus of Gary’s attention. “David!” he cried, and the handsome young man responded in happy recognition,
“Rick!”
David loped over to their table, all smiles; to Gary’s relief, he and Rick did not kiss, hug, or even shake hands. “David Schlitz,” Rick began, and Gary thought as he contemplated David’s long dark eyelashes, he looks more like a Guinness than a Schlitz. “This is Gary Gaines.” Gary noted that he hadn’t been introduced as “my lover” by Rick, either.
“The macho man!” David said heartily, approvingly, without a trace of sarcasm. “I like your stitches.”
“You just knew where to look for them,” Gary replied, offering his hand since David hadn’t offered his. The grasp was warm and firm.
“Mind if I join you?” David asked. Gary reckoned he was maybe twenty-five.
“We were just finishing up–” Gary began, as Rick said,
“Yeah. We were about to go to the piano bar.”
“Are you a doctor, too?” Gary suddenly asked, inadvertently verbalizing the connection he was making in his mind between David and Terry.
“Too? What do you mean? Rick, you been holding out on me? You’re a doctor?”
“No,” Rick said good-naturedly, as Gary wondered if, in fact, he had been holding out on David or not.
“So what is it?” David addressed Gary. “Not all Jewish boys become doctors, you know.”
