A whirlwind of seeds and dust in the backyard rustle out a voice in the dark, whispering,
you may be taller, but you'll never be as great as me— Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, because you’re an alcoholic and I'm not.
Henry gets out of bed, puts on his bathrobe, opens the patio door, whispering back at the whisperer standing in the middle of the jungled backyard,
what does size have to do with it?
Not much, Toulouse-Lautrec was 4 foot 9. The point is he’s greater than you because you have a drinking problem. Henry whispers back,
Is this a joke?
Dick Byrd, known as Tarzan in the neighborhood, has climbed the fence into the Lucowski's yard.
Dick was like, Nelly, the bipolar swimmer in John Cheevers's short story The Swimmer, a habitual suburban fence hopper.
Tarzan's standing in the moonless backyard whispering nonsense and Henry tells him,
Dick the cops are on the way, I reported a prowler in the neighborhood, asshole.
You're shitin me, boss. I couldn’t sleep so I jumped the fence to see what you're doing.
Frankly, I was in the middle of a homosexual dream. Tarzan who's surprised admits,
now, you're scaring me.
Dick, I was in someone's arms, I don’t know him. All I know is that he will take care of me. He will pay the bills, the taxes, balance the checkbook. Tarzan asks,
Were you lovers?
I wouldn’t go that far, it was a more a half lucid, fading, androgynous dream of fucking, lasting seconds in real-time.
It begins to rain heavy, Tarzan says,
so much for fuck dreams. I’m gonna hop the fence and bone Jane in the kitchen, we do it in different rooms, it's bringing back the vim in our relationship.
Forget it pal, never happen, you're a lousy lover.
Henry turns away from Dick the whisperer, walking through the patio door, silently going back to bed. Lucia, his Cuban wife is talking in her sleep.
The rain falls even heavier, she calls out a man’s name three times,
Pedro, Pedro, Pedro,
he wonders who Peter is?
Lucia begins crying, the loudness of the rain wakes her.
You were crying,
yes, I had a nightmare,
Lucia turns away from him and goes back to sleep.
Between five and six in the morning, a few birds are singing and it’s still dark. Henry lays on his back with a sleeping mask on looking like Zorro, he sleeps two more hours, waking at seven, fearful and feeling unprepared for the day.
By 11 AM he's in the kitchen, biting into assorted donuts and sweet rolls, throwing them back into the box—distracted, thinking, trying, to put the bits and pieces of last night's homoerotic dream in place.
Sipping coffee he looks over the Miami Herald, reading in the folio it's July 1984 in South Florida. He remembers they're out of everything at home and need to go to Winn-Dixie.
After showering, Henry and Lucia drip dry, torpidly cooling their bodies.
There’s a clean pile of summer clothes on the bed. They choose tank tops and shorts, they're close to the same size and they wear each other's close, medium-large.
Accessorizing, they don contoured straw cowboy hats, the brims shaped like scalene triangles— the hats help rein in their waist-length hair.
Henry and Lucia are phobic— they're tonsurephobic. What are the chances of a couple of tonsurephopics finding each other and spending their lives together?
On the front porch, they slip into rubber flip-flops. Most South Floridians dress casually like— Hawaiians, Saint Lucians, Jamaicans, Bahamians, Tahitians, the tropical climate demands it.
Henry makes a b-line to the bungalows’ two-car wooden garage, inside opening the drivers' side of his 73 Chevy Malibu wagon, getting in, switching the ignition on, and listening to the V8 engine rumble.
He reverses onto the chipped rock driveway, stopping— Lucia opens the middle door of the wagon, so the Chihuahuas, Che, and Mia can jump in.
Then, going to the passenger door and getting in, sitting next to Henry, close, so their bodies touch and she can put her arms around him. Henry hugs her saying,
ain't love grand?
On the way to Winn-Dixie, he drives the long way around the island to the mall, on scenic Highway 1.
It’s a fast-moving summer day in Key West. The speed boats, sailing catamarans, sports fishing boats, and mega yachts from Miami, Louisana, and the Caribbean Islands berth at conch Harbor, or A & B Marina for supplies— bait, booze, fuel, ice. The vessels are packed with good ole boys and rich folks doing what they do at sea — fishing, and getting loaded.
As the station wagon moves down Highway 1, the Chis stand with their forelegs braced on the half-open windows with their little heads outside taking in the breeze.
Lucia waves a handheld Japanese fan briskly, the Chevy wagons' air conditioner is on the fritz, she's hot and says,
the traffic's awful, it's tourist season, the island is overcrowded. I’m going to Saint Thomas, or Nassau next summer. Henry has a plan to escape the summer crowds,
we'll hide out till winter— in our bungalow and at Dog Beach. We'll have meals delivered, booze and ganja. We'll declare war on the jungle in the backyard, hacking it to fleck with machetes. We'll turn the earth with our hands like Mandarin peasants, plant a garden— pot, rosemary, rows of Anthuriums, and tulips. We can share the housework— you can teach drama at Key West Community College, you were a movie star in Havana. Lucia laughs out loud, playing the monkey,
Señor monkey lips, hooh, hooh...hooh, hooh.
He wheels the station wagon into the parking lot of
Sunshine Mall, parking in the back of the lot, backing into a spot, facing the two-story peach colossus, the department store that looks like a mausoleum— The Sears & Roebuck Building. Henry comments,
art deco at its best, they don’t make 'em like that anymore. She says,
yeah, it pulls at you to go inside and shop, where’s Winn
Dixie?
On the opposite side, we'll walk through Sears to get there.
Inside Winn Dixie, the love couple walks the well-stocked aisles discriminately placing this and that in their cart. Ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, Himalayan salt, olive oil, dried rosemary. Lucia says,
I know we’re going to forget something, you should have typed a shopping list, you spend most of your life in front of a typewriter.
I memorized the list.
We didn't do a list, pendejo.
Nevermind.
At the meat counter they order the butcher around, they're particular about the look of the meat— weary of butchers spritzing decomposing beef with dioxide to color it rosy-red.
The butcher's a proud member of Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union #307. A poor slob who looks like every butcher in the world with a thick neck, pale skin, and dark lines around his eyes.
Worst of all, the carnivore is unhealthy because he eats meat every day, frying steaks in the afternoon with his pal the produce manager on the deli grill.
Indifferently, the couple chooses a number of prime cuts, moving on and pushing their packed cart to the check-out lane.
The cashier's a high school girl, seventeen maybe, the job bores her. Her hair's frosted and the special offer concealer on her face is drying and cracking.
She ignores Henry and Lucia, working the cash register tactically but removed from the moment.
Two hundred dollars worth of groceries, Henry hands sweet sixteen his American Express card saying,
that'll do for few days.
The Lolita in thick makeup is thinking to herself that the couple are old people. She's a self-assured queen bee who'll be seventeen forever.
Lucia pushes the grocery cart outside to the sidewalk. Henry walks through Sears into the parking lot to get the station wagon.
Driving around the mall, he parks on the Winn-Dixies sidewalk and gets out of the car. They load the groceries in the boot of the wagon as the Chis bark at passing strangers, pawing the car windows,
yap, yap...yap, yap.
He drives the wagon straight, then turning, reaching the exit of The Sears & Roebuck Mall, choosing a direct route home to Pearl Street.
At the bungalow, he parks in the cut-rock driveway. Lucia steps out of the car, opening the middle door, letting the Chis out to play in the yard. Then the couple schleps bag after bag of groceries through the front door, placing them on a counter near the kitchen sink.
Lucia puts the ice cream in the freezer first, followed by ground meat, pork ribs, sliced french fries, fresh-caught grouper, and a couple of whole chickens, deftly balancing the bagged goods into the available freezer space.
At 7 PM, Henry orders take away from Tongue Thai'd— pha Thai, sweet and sour chicken, sum tom, and barbecued curried pork sticks. Then mixing some drinks.
In the living room, Lucia switches on their Hatari fan, arranging it to blow on her body. She sits on the sofa with her legs open, enjoying the gust from the fan on her thick bush.
Lucia hangs her hat in the here and now, she and Henry are hedonists who can feel every grain of sand when they walk on the beach.
He carries a pitcher of Dewar's Double Aged whiskey mixed with frozen peach-ade, pouring drinks into tumblers on the coffee table, sitting with Lucia on the sofa— they suck down the top line booze.
The lovers watch Stanley Kubrick's film, Dr. Strangelove, which was supposed to be a drama until Peter Sellers hijacked it, adlibbing during takes, creating comic mayhem, losing himself throughout filming because Kubrick pressured him to play three roles— the mild-mannered US president, Merkin Muffley, and the creepy ex-Nazi scientist, Strangelove.
The doorbell rings, Lucia gets up, going to the front door, and opening it. An attractive middle-aged Thai woman asks,
Lucowski?
si, how much?
Twenty-four sixty-six.
Lucia hands her a twenty and a ten, the lady says thank you in Thai,
kop coon kap,
Stashing the cash in her pocket, she turns, walking down the porch steps into the yard where the Chis nip at her heels as she walks and tries to brush them away with her feet.
There's a 60s Daihatsu parked on Peach Street, she, opens the door, gets in, driving a short distance to Tongue Thai'd.
Henry sets up a collapsable card table in the living room, placing paper pails of Thai food, a bottle of Dewars, peach-aide, highball glasses, an ice bucket, bowls, and chopsticks on it.
Eating bits of Thai food off of chopsticks, they watch Dr. Strangelove. The film fills them with disbelieve and awe. She giggles somewhat nervously wondering,
Is this a true story darling? El Generales Americanos have blood flowing out of their eyes. They're going to blow Cuba out of the sea someday, no one is safe in the world.
Forget it, Dr. Strangelove's fiction— a crazed film about crazed people, with crazed actors directed by a crazed man.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, who have their exits and their entrances — one man in his time plays many parts, WHISPERING to anyone who will listen.
William Shakespeare
