Miami Noir: The Classics

To Go by Lynne Barrett

Hialeah

(Originally published in 1996)

So I insist that we stop and at least I’ll get something to go, even if B.K. won’t come in, won’t eat, his stomach nervous, he’s in such a rush to make Clewiston by noon. He stays in the cool car

while I pass through bright heat into one of those places, lunch counter/souvenir store, where the air has the sweet mustiness of pecans and orange wine. I wait while they zap the sausage biscuits and when I come out with iced teas on a tray and hop into the Chrysler

he’s dead. Hunched over the wheel with the same glare he had when he drove a two-lane and some old-timer in an Airstream got ahead of him and nothing, not flashing the high beams, not honking, not gunning up to ride three inches from the guy’s bumper, nothing would make the slow poke speed up. B.K. looks just like that now, aggravated

and dead, clutching the wheel. His cheeks are slippery with tears and there’s a faint bad smell. The air conditioner is blasting. The motor runs ragged. I stick my foot over and press his shoe down on the gas, and the idle richens. I want to charge inside and howl for help, but I know for once in my life I ought to stop and think. I look out through purple-tinted windows at the parking lot — nobody in sight but some family at a picnic table under the sign for LIVE BABY ALLIGATORS and GOAT’S MILK FUDGE. If I go inside I’ll have to say,

Excuse me, Mr. Brian Kittery is out there, dead. It must have been his heart. His stomach bothered him last night, but it always did. He used to say, “Nobody dies of indigestion.” And it never slowed him down. Sure, we did it this morning in that motel on South Dixie he liked to stay in whenever he visited the Home Office, me leaning on the table, looking out the window at the sunlit swimming pool, him with his pants around his ankles as if when he finished he would yank them up and dash — but that was his favorite way and it was his idea, don’t blame me,

he wouldn’t, he wasn’t that kind of guy. Impatient, sure, with inept cashiers, Zavala Junior at the Home Office, but basically fair. He groused about phoning his wife in Arcadia every evening at seven, but he did it on the dot, I noticed. When I first rode with him, six weeks ago, he was so jumpy I thought he could be one of those guys like they show on TV, Mr. Normal Church Choir Wife and Two Kids in Little League, who is socking it away the whole time, stealing everyone’s investments, and then takes off — but no, I got to see he was just in a rush, horny, in hock, buying scratch-off lottery tickets, pressing to make time on the road, driving

up and down Florida stopping in every I Love Jesus Beauty Parlor & Auto Repair to sell his line of beauty products — Seagrape Scrub and Alligator Mask and Key Lime Conditioner, with me as his demo. It was his great idea, my fake ID saying I’m forty-two years old and look thirty, when really I’m twenty-six looking thirty, which is an achievement if you ask me because I’ve been through enough to look forty-two. We like to say life is short

but it’s a long, long time when you’re sitting in it. When I met him, I was in Cocoa, doing a Miller Lite promotion, giving out free hats in a sports lounge during Monday Night Football, wearing short-shorts and high heels. “Nice wheels,” he said, meaning my legs. I told him I taught aerobics in the daytime, was saving for a move to Miami, where you can get work as a dancer, and he said, “Why wait?” Big man, seventeen-inch neck, eating chicken fingers. That night we got as far as Briny Breezes, Palm Beach County, and next morning, just for me, he took the slow route down the A1A past the oceanfront millionaire houses, to Miami. While he was at the Home Office, Señora Zavala’s storefront in Coconut Grove, I checked out the rents and decided to say yes to a swing around the state with him, zigzagging: Naples — Fort Pierce — Tampa-Orlando-Daytona-Jacksonville and then the long glide out the Panhandle where I saw my granny. And then back down, opening up new territory in Ocala and Port St. Lucie. Amazing how fast the state changes, new cutteries in strip malls and vanished salons. Florida is motion

even on this part of 27, the old tourist trail from Miami on up to Tallahassee. After we’d gotten through bumper-to-bumper Hialeah, the road was stretching out toward empty wetlands and sugar country when I made him stop. It’s almost eleven and the parking lot is beginning to fill up. Nobody gives us a glance, but I think it will look better if we seem to be eating, so I stick my straw in my tea and suck its sweetness, then chew the warm fat of my sausage biscuit while I try to figure out my situation. I keep looking at his eyes, dark blue with the long lashes of a lover boy. Reassuring shoulders. I liked him. He’d say,

“Make your own luck,” he believed in hard work and drive, but who’s gonna stand up at the funeral and say, At least he made those last three calls. Honestly, what’ll happen if I go, Excuse me, this man is dead. No, I had no warning, Sheriff—

they have sheriffs, places like this, elected for their swagger and intolerance of strangers—

Well, I didn’t really know him and um. Can’t say my boyfriend. My employer, and please call his dear wife. She must suspect he was out here with someone like me, though women, my God, women can not-know whatever they put their minds to. Turn him into a shadow and concentrate on the kids. Then she’ll be here, and Zavala Junior will say B.K. was supposed to do his demo on a local girl each time, and when they check the motel records they’ll know we slept together if you can call it sleep, him always on the side nearest the door, grinding his teeth. Something was chasing him, and I guess it’s caught him now. He won’t be resting any easier if there’s a fuss. Excuse me, I noticed this man in a parked car, he hasn’t moved, I think he’s dead. How did I get here, though? Excuse me, I was just hitchhiking. Excuse me, Sheriff — and then I better not have ID for Carrie Hull, forty-two. B.K. got her birth certificate, a little girl he went to school with who died, leukemia. He must’ve liked her all those years ago. He said it was like we were giving her another chance, but that driver’s license with my picture, my granny’s address, is fraud, probably a felony. How simple it was when I used to be

Ruth Ann Reedy, just a little cracker girl from Paxton, highest point in Florida, 345 feet, right near the Alabama line. And then Ruth Ann Wheeler, when I married at nineteen. Jeep Wheeler threatened me into it and I was fool enough to think if I gave in he’d be reassured and uncrazy. On our honeymoon weekend in St. Pete he punched me out so, duh, I wised up. Back in Paxton I went to a lawyer and said, “You’ll think I’m weird, I’ve been married five days and I want a divorce,” and the lawyer said, “Happens all the time.” When I was hiding out, then, Jeep beat his mother up, and she got me word to come sign the papers to commit him for observation, which I did. Before he could get loose

I took off, went back to Reedy, made it Reed, and cocktail waitressed and studied dance in Tampa, where they started calling me Ginger in tap class. It’s Ginger Reed with the record for disturbing the peace, ’cause when I drank rum I liked to do the time step, flap shuffle flap shuffle flap ball change, on the roof of my apartment building. And it’s Ginger Reed who got pulled in when they raided the exotic dance club in Daytona where I was shaking it for the college boys. Charges dropped but those sheriffs can still get in to where it’s on record, and Now then, little lady, you’ve got quite a past, they say while they’re checking out your boobs. Which makes me think this leotard, fine for demonstrating Avocado Bosom Cream, shows too much for any decent Excuse me,

so I recline the passenger seat and slither through to crouch under B.K.’s suits and shirts hanging from the rack across the backseat. I wriggle into a long cotton skirt and T-shirt and switch my silver sandals for my Keds. I take down the two dresses I’d hung up and stuff everything into my big soft bag. Check to make sure my money’s in my tampon box, the place I figure no thief will look. I guess I can’t take the big sample case, so I just snag some Orange Mint Restorer, Señora Zavala’s original recipe, ’cause I really think it’s done my skin a lot of good. I toss my bag up front, and when I get in the seat and slowly crank it up I see

an old school bus, painted blue, has pulled into the lot. Homemade script proclaims, Christ’s Canaries, Choir of the First Church of Our Savior Sanctified. Out come round-faced women with virtuous perms. They look like home to me. Excuse me, but some sinning fellow ditched me here and could you please give me a lift? Excuse me, I’m working my way to my granny’s in Sebring, Leesburg, wherever you’re going. I’ll mingle with them in the bathroom line. I’m a second soprano, Carrie Hull, age forty-two — why, thank you, if I look good it must be living clean. B.K. will get found on his own. They’ll shut down for the night and there he’ll be, car stalled, heart attack, warm tea, and no one will even know I was here. I gather our food wraps and get out, soft bag across my shoulder, purse in hand. At the trash basket I turn,

look at him across the parking lot. He stares into the tinted windshield like any man left waiting for a woman. He must hate being stuck. He used to take right turns on red just to keep moving. We’d twine through a new town not yet on the map, and he’d grin when I worried and say, “We may be lost, but we’re making good time.”

Lemonade and Paris Buns by John Dufresne

Aventura

(Originally published in 1996)

I called the clinic and made an appointment for a cholesterol test. I ticked that off my list. I called Dentaland at the Aventura Mall. They told me Dr. Shimkoski was no longer affiliated with their practice. Well, what was I supposed to do then? I’ve got this temporary crown here. I thought I heard someone outside talking to Spot. We can set you up with Dr. Perez. Fine, I said. Wednesday, noon. I dumped the whites into the washer, poured in the Tide, set the timer. I walked to the window to check on the voice.

Four children sat on the ground near Spot patting him, talking to him. Spot, I could tell, was loving the attention. I went out to the deck and introduced myself. I said, I’m the dog’s — and I was going to say master until I heard the word in my head and realized how absurd it was — I’m the dog’s dad, I said. I take care of him.

“What you dog name?” the oldest-looking child said.

“Spot. And yours?”

They were brothers, I learned, named Smith. The oldest, Trayvien, probably ten, introduced me to Demetrius, Everett, and Kendrick.

Spot rolled on his back with his legs in the air like quotation marks. Everett stroked Spot’s belly. I asked them where they lived. Trayvien pointed across the backyard. I asked them if they’d like a snack. They would. So we had brunch on the deck.

Trayvien helped me set the table and led us in Grace before we ate — his idea. We had lemonade and Paris buns. That’s what I called them for the occasion. They were crescent rolls, actually, from Pastry Lane. Kendrick, the tiny one, sat on my lap and rubbed the hair on my arm back and forth. Trayvien was like the father. He poured lemonade for his brothers, wiped their faces with napkins. He asked me what I did for a job. I told him I write stories. He said that’s what he did too. I asked him to tell me a story. Trayvien told me the one he called “The Wolf, the Bear, the Lion, and the Man.” The four characters are friends, and they don’t have enough money to buy ice cream. The lion wants to eat the bank to get some. The man says they should go to work and earn the money. The bear is sure they can find some dollars in the street. The wolf says we could just ask nice. And the wolf is right.

As I scooped out the chocolate ice cream, I asked Trayvien did he have any stories with vegetables in them. No, he didn’t. I told them all they should come by more often. Spot and I would enjoy their company. Trayvien said where they were living — he pointed across the yard again — was a frosted home, and they didn’t know how long they’d be here. Foster home? I said. That’s it, Trayvien said. Everett asked me, Where you daddy?

Louisiana, I said. Way far away.

I found out that their mama lived with a man named Walter. Their granny took care of them for a while. Now they’re here. What are your foster parents’ names? I said. Trayvien said, We don’t know yet. You think they might be worried where you are? Trayvien shrugged. I said, Well, let’s go find them, okay? We all washed up at the kitchen sink. We put Spot on his leash and paraded down the street. We waved to Mr. Lesperence next door. Everett walked beside Spot. Spot kept licking Everett’s face. Demetrius held the leash. Trayvien held Kendrick’s hand. I held Trayvien’s. Trayvien was sure it was a blue house. We made a couple of lefts and rights, but nothing looked familiar. Demetrius told me that Spot pees a lot.

Here it is, Trayvien said.

I wanted to ring the bell, let the people know we were back, but Trayvien wouldn’t let me. They napping, he said.

The boys hugged Spot. They stood in the driveway and waved goodbye until we turned the corner. This all happened a year and a half ago. I’ve never seen them again.

For a while, Spot and I took our walks by the blue house. One evening a man in a T-shirt and shorts stood there in the front yard, watering a Manila palm. He must have thought I was crazy. No kids ever lived here, he said. I looked around. This was the house. Spot slurped water from the hose. The man said, Shoo. Spot woofed at him. So you’re not a foster parent? I said. He made a face. Spot sniffed around the sidewalk. Evidently, the children’s volatile molecules lingered here, though the children did not. I called the Welfare. No one there would tell me anything — confidentiality, the woman said. I said, What kind of world is this? Four babies wandering the streets. You shouldn’t worry, she said.

My cholesterol is in the stratosphere it turns out. So I drink red wine now with my Paris buns. I brunch on the deck with Spot, imagine Trayvien telling me a story with a happy ending. Like maybe he says, The lion wants his friends back, but the man says forget about it. The bear is sure it was all a dream anyway. But the wolf says what he believes is you meet everyone twice before you die.

The Red Shoes by Edna Buchanan

Downtown

(Originally published in 1999)

He stared from the shadows until the lights went out. He knew which apartment was hers, had conducted several recon missions to scout the layout of the building after following her home a week ago. She had been wearing narrow red sandals with little straps that night. The heels had to be four inches high. She wore them bare-legged, soles arched, each delicious digit of her toes spread like some exotic bird clinging to her elevated perch. Harvey’s knees felt weak as he remembered, picturing the voluptuous curve of her instep, and the right heel, slightly smudged, from driving. She should carpet the floor of her car, he thought, it would be a shame to ruin those shoes. Their sharp stiletto heels had pounded across the pavement and up the stairs, piercing his heart. Had to be at least four and a half inches high, he thought.

Suddenly her second-floor door swung open and someone emerged, taking Harvey by surprise as he gazed up, lost in fantasy. A big man trotted down the stairs, stared for a moment, then brushed by, ignoring him. Though husky, the fellow was light on his feet, in running shoes, jeans, and a hooded yellow sweatshirt. Must be the boyfriend, Harvey thought, turning away as the stranger strode toward the parking lot. Harvey took the opposite direction, the breezeway to the mailboxes, his head down, pretending to be a tenant coming home late.

His first instinct was to abort, to go home and watch another old movie, but instead he lingered. Nobody could know all the neighbors in a complex this size, he assured himself, aware that he was not a man most people would notice, or remember, anyway. A car door slammed and a big engine sprang quickly to life. Harvey relaxed as headlights swung out of the parking lot and melted into the night.

A close call, he thought, loitering behind the dumpsters. From his vantage point he continued to watch her apartment. The lights were still out. He had read that the deepest sleep comes soon after the first hour. He was too excited to give up now. The wait would be worth it, he thought, and settled down.

Harvey had always liked women’s feet. The roots of his obsession dated back to the moment he realized that he was the only one in his high school art-appreciation class turned on by the bare feet of the Virgin Mary.

Women’s feet became even more alluring after he stopped drinking. He had worked the steps, had a sponsor, and saw the truth behind an AA counselor’s comment that “you often replace one addiction with another.” How true.

Unfortunately, his recent expeditions had made the newspapers, forcing him to exercise more caution. But this one was worth the risk, more exciting than all of the others he had followed home.

Two of his encounters had apparently never been reported. That had perplexed him. He wondered if they had been too afraid or too embarrassed, or too lacking in faith in the local police? Perhaps they had liked it and hoped he’d be back. He pondered that possibility until, consulting the luminous dial of his watch, he decided it was time to make his move.

He silently ascended the open staircase. Glittery stars winked from above and Mars burned like an ember to the east. The rudimentary hardware on the sliding glass door was laughable. The high school summer he worked for a local locksmith had been well spent. These people should know how little protection they have, he thought righteously, then slid the door open just enough to slip in sideways. The darkened dining room smelled of lemon furniture polish on wood and the fruity aroma of fresh oranges arranged in a ceramic bowl.

A pendulum clock’s rhythmic tick was the only sound. It followed him to her bedroom, keeping time with his stealthy footsteps. His body quaked with anticipation. He knew the right room, always the last light out at night. Her faint form was barely distinguishable, a dim outline on the bed as he paused in the doorway. A jumbo jet roared overhead in ascent from Miami International Airport, but she never stirred. He waited until the airliner’s thunder faded, replaced by the faint hum of the ceiling fan above her bed.

He did not need his penlight to find what he had come for. The stiletto heels, side by side, stood at rigid attention next to her closet door. She had slipped them off carelessly, without unfastening the tiny metal buckles and the skinny straps. That’s how you ruin an excellent pair of shoes, he thought indignantly, then shivered with delight at her rash and wanton behavior.

In the beginning, during his early forays, he simply seized his prize and fled, pilfering their shoes, sometimes from the floor next to the very bed where they slumbered. Sometimes he snatched a bonus, a worn sock or nylon stocking from the dirty-clothes hamper on the way out. But one breezy and memorable night, his inhibitions had crumbled, along with his resistance. She was a shapely little waitress from Hooters, red-haired with a ponytail. Creeping in a window left open to the breeze, he had found her running shoes. They radiated a delightful, intoxicating aroma, a mixture of musky sweat, rubber, and Odor-Eaters. He was about to depart with them, when the blossoming full moon silvered the room, the sweet, alluring scent of night-blooming jasmine filled the air, and she stirred, murmuring in her sleep, and kicked off the flowered sheet. He stood frozen, the enticing arch of her bare foot beckoning, just inches away. Lord knows, he wasn’t made of stone. Who could resist? He planted a passionate wet kiss on her metatarsal. She woke up screaming, of course, and he beat feet out of there, but the shared terror, the adrenaline, the flight were irresistible. He was hooked.

Since then, local papers and television newscasters had reported the unknown intruder’s fondness for feet, announcing that police wanted him for eight to ten such escapades. The notoriety made it a more risky business. Couldn’t they see how harmless it was? Nobody hurt. And no matter how many valuables, jewelry, cash, even drugs that he found scattered across dresser tops, all he ever took was footwear. He had his pride. Actually, he was doing them a favor, demonstrating their lack of security before some truly dangerous stranger paid a visit. This might be out of the norm, but it was certainly safer than driving drunk or ruining his liver. And it was so much more stimulating — and satisfying. Nobody could deny that.

Excited now, he heard her breathing, or was that his own? This one slept naked, sprawled on her back, her feet apart at the foot of the bed. His heart thudded as he stepped closer, hoping she hadn’t showered. The polish on her bloodred toenails gleamed in the eerie green light from her bedside clock as he focused on the seductively plump curve of her big toe. He licked his lips in anticipation, the pleasure centers of his midbrain slipping into overdrive as he touched her, stroking her feet gently with his thumbs and index fingers, then leaned forward. The toes were cool beneath his warm lips. He could almost feel them stiffening.

The scream came as expected, but it was his own, as the moon broke free from clouds and he saw her clearly in the light spilling between the blinds. Eyes wide open and protruding, the twisted stocking grotesquely embedded in an impossibly deep groove around her throat. He gasped, stumbled back in horror, and tried not to gag. Instinctively he fled, then hesitated in the dining room and turned back, wasting precious moments.

He snatched the red stiletto heels off the floor near the closet, shoved them under his shirt without looking at the bed, and scrambled for the exit. The bulge beneath his shirt forced him to push the sliding glass door open even farther to escape. What if someone had heard his cry? The door shrieked unexpectedly, metal rasping on metal, resounding through the night. In his haste, he stumbled against a plastic recycling bin outside her neighbor’s door. It tipped over, spilling aluminum cans that clattered everywhere. He righted the receptacle with both hands and stood quietly for a moment, breathing deeply, his pulse pounding like a racehorse at the gate. A few feet away someone opened a window.

“Who’s out there?” a deep voice demanded.

Harvey fled blindly, in panic, descending two and three steps at a time. Another window cranked open.

“What’s going on?”

“There he goes!” someone else shouted.

He plunged headlong from the landing, stumbled, scrambled painfully to his feet, and hobbled across the parking lot, right ankle throbbing.

Lights bloomed, a concert of light behind him, as he glanced over his shoulder. Miamians are notoriously well armed and primed to shoot. He could not chance an encounter with some trigger-happy crime stopper. The cold metal of the dead woman’s stiletto heel jabbed him in the belly as he flung himself into his Geo Metro. He winced at the pain as it broke the skin, fumbling frantically to fit the key into the ignition. His hands shook so uncontrollably that it seemed to take forever. Finally the engine caught. He tore out of the parking lot, burning rubber, lights out.

He took deep breaths, the car all over the road, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror. No one in pursuit. He forced himself to slow down, assume control, and switch on his lights, just in time. He saw the blue flasher of an approaching patrol car. It roared past at a high rate of speed, westbound, no siren, probably responding to the prowler call. Harvey whimpered, turned onto US 1, and merged with other late-night traffic. How could that vibrant young girl be dead? Murdered. Her killer had to be that bastard, the man he saw leave, the man in the yellow sweatshirt. But the police wouldn’t know that, they’d think he did it. His prize, the coveted strappy red sandals now resting uneasily against his heart, could send him to the electric chair.

Fear iced his blood and he shuddered involuntarily as he wrenched them from beneath his shirt, tearing it as a heel caught the fabric. He rolled down the window to hurl the incriminating evidence out by the side of the road, but could not bring himself to do it. It was not only because another motorist or some late-night jogger might see. He felt suddenly emotional about the final mementos of that lovely woman, so vivacious and full of life. The sort of lovely, lively woman who never would have given him a second look. He tried to think.

How could he explain? What would he say if they arrested him? “I’m not a murderer, I’m only a pervert.” He said it out loud and didn’t like the way it sounded.

How good a defense was that? Nobody would believe him. His favorite fantasies occasionally involved handcuffs, but their image now horrified him. Yet he could not bring himself to throw away her shoes like so much garbage, like someone had left her lifeless body, naked and exposed. He needed a drink, really needed a drink. Mouth dry, his tongue parched, he eased into the parking lot of the Last Chance Bar, but changed his mind before he cut the engine. Drinking was no answer, backsliding wouldn’t help his situation. He needed to think clearly. He drove back out onto the street, toward Garden Avenue. The AA meetings there were attended in large part by restaurant workers and airport employees whose shifts ended at midnight or later.

The big room radiated light, fellowship, and the smell of fresh coffee. He was glad to see Phil, his sponsor, in the crowd.

Harvey sat and listened, sweating despite the cool evening and the laboring air conditioner. He wondered why nobody ever bothers to turn them off in Florida, even when the weather is comfortable. He sailed through the preliminaries when his turn came, then began, “You don’t know how close I just came.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, already thinning at twenty-six. “Something happened tonight.” The shrewd eyes of a member named Ira lingered speculatively on Harvey’s torn shirt.

“Old bad habits almost got me in big trouble.” Harvey licked his lips. His mouth felt dry again despite the coffee he’d had. “You know how they always tend to come back and cause you problems.” He looked around. Several people he didn’t know were present. “Tonight, I was only trying...” Harvey’s eyes continued to roam to the back of the room, to the coffee urn, where the man in the yellow sweatshirt stood watching him.

Harvey nearly strangled on his own words. “I have to go,” he mumbled. His sponsor called his name, but he was out the door.

The Dew Drop Inn was quiet, a few regulars at the knotty-pine bar, an old martial arts movie on TV, and some guys and girls playing pool in the back room. Harvey swallowed his first drink in a single scalding gulp, quickly followed by another, then sat nursing the third, trying to focus on the taste, avoiding all other thoughts. The double doors opened, admitting fresh air and street sounds along with a new arrival. A dozen empty stools stood at the bar, but the newcomer chose the one next to his. Harvey knew who it was before he looked up.

“Fancy seeing you here.” The man in the yellow sweatshirt grinned.

Harvey squirmed, trying to look casual, his stomach churning. “Just testing the waters again.”

“Me too.” The man paused and lit a cigarette. “I can only take so much culture before I have to roll in the shit.” He looked at Harvey. “They say it’s the first drink that gets you drunk.”

“I’m on number three.”

The barkeep hovered expectantly. “J.D. neat,” said the newcomer. “And hit my friend here again.” He studied Harvey’s glass, then raised hooded eyes as cold-blooded and hard as a snake’s. “What is that?”

“Stoly’tini, twelve to one.”

“I like talkin’ to a man who speaks my language.” The big man in the yellow sweatshirt flipped a twenty onto the bar as their drinks arrived.

Harvey wondered if he could make it out the door if he decided to run for it. He might make it out the door, but not into his car. Was the killer armed? Would he pause to pick up his change before he came charging after him? If Harvey did make it to his car, the man would surely see what he drove, and his tag number — if he didn’t already have them. Had he been followed? Or had the big man methodically checked every bar in the neighborhood? At this hour, Harvey’s little Geo could easily be forced off the road with no witnesses. He could call the police, but how would he explain why he was at the murder scene? He would probably rot behind bars longer than the killer.

The big man sighed aloud in gratification after knocking back half his drink. “The program really tends to ruin your drinking, you know?”

Harvey did not answer, his mind racing. The man half turned to him. “You were starting to share back at the meeting,” he said carefully, “think you said something happened tonight, then you bolted like a deer who just saw Bigfoot. What the hell happened?” He waited for an answer.

“Nothing,” Harvey said weakly. “Nothing that a few more of these won’t cure.” The man wasn’t as handsome up close, he realized, raising his glass. His skin was rough and craggy, a small scar bisected one eyebrow, and there was a mean curl to his thin upper lip.

“A woman,” the man persisted, a knowing undertone to his voice. “Has to be. I bet that’s it.”

Yeah, Harvey thought. It’s a woman. The problem is, her lips are blue, she’s dead, and you killed her. He nodded, unable to trust his voice. He felt his eyes tear and looked away.

“They drive us all nuts. Yeah,” the man continued philosophically, “we all have our addictions, our weaknesses, that’s why it’s lucky that we all understand and support each other.” He took another gulp of his drink, then peered closely at Harvey. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere, other than a meeting? I’m sure we’ve crossed paths, I just can’t place it.”

“I don’t know,” Harvey croaked. “I’m not good at faces.” He cleared his throat and got to his feet.

“You live somewhere around here?” the man persisted. “Hey, where ya going?”

“Gotta go drain the lizard, be right back. Order us a coupla more. I shall return.”

Leaving his change on the bar, Harvey strolled past the rowdy pool players to the men’s room, trying to look casual and nonchalant.

He had remembered correctly. There was a pay phone in the men’s room and it worked. He punched in the familiar number, willing his sponsor to be home, willing him to answer.

“Thank you for your call,” the machine’s robotic message began.

“Phil, pick up, pick up, for God’s sake!” Harvey muttered, glancing at the door behind him.

“Harv, that you? What happened at—”

“Thank God you’re there, Phil. No time to talk, I need your help.”

“Where are you?”

“Never mind, Phil. That tall guy in the back tonight, by the coffee urn, the one in the yellow sweatshirt. Do you know him? Who is he?”

“Sure,” Phil said slowly. “Quiet, intense type o’ guy, shows up sporadically at the Garden Avenue meetings and the group over at St. John’s. Left right after you did.”

“What’s his name? What’s he do?”

Harvey gasped as the door opened, nearly dropping the phone, but it was only one of the pool players, a bone-thin Oriental with dyed-blond hair and a nose ring. The man went to a urinal, ignoring him.

“Where the hell are you, Harv?”

“Who is he?” Harvey hissed, his voice frantic.

“Calm down, calm down, son. Some kinda general contractor, he builds houses. Name is Ray, drives one o’ them pickups, big blue one, a Cherokee, I think, with the company name on the doors. Can’t think of it off the top of my head.”

“Ray. A contractor. Thanks, Phil. Later.”

“Wait a minute, Harv. Where—”

Harvey hung up. When the pool player left, he unlocked the narrow window and struggled to open it. His hands were sweaty and slippery. It had been painted shut and wouldn’t budge. Panic-stricken, expecting his drinking companion to burst in at any moment, he upended a wastepaper basket and, ankle throbbing, climbed atop it to gain better leverage. With a desperate wrench he threw open the window, grasped the sides, pushed off with his good leg, and managed to half drag and half hoist himself through. He tumbled forward and landed on his hands and knees in the alley.

He lurched to his feet, wincing at the pain from his ankle, and tried to catch his bearings. The blanket of stars overhead earlier had vanished, and the night looked as murky and unpromising as Harvey’s future. How had an evening he had looked forward to so much ever come to this? Tears flooded his eyes, but no time for regrets. The big man had to be wondering where he was. He would check the men’s room any minute now. He would see the open window.

Harvey half ran, half limped to the parking lot behind the building. There it was. A blue Cherokee, RAYMOND KARP CONSTRUCTION lettered on the side. A built-in toolbox rested in the bed of the truck, double locked, then secured by a padlocked chain. Harvey memorized the tag number and the wording on the door, then scrambled into his Geo. As he looked back he saw no one.

He drove aimlessly, focused on the rearview mirror. Not until certain he was not being followed did Harvey head home. He knew the big man could track him down, but it would probably take him a day or two. Harvey parked two blocks from his own place anyway, then walked cautiously to his apartment, scanning the darkness. Safely inside, he felt weak with relief.

His locks were the best — he had installed them himself — but straining and grunting, he pushed his mother’s old china cabinet against his front door, just in case. He then lined up his coffee mugs and mismatched jelly-jar drinking glasses along the windowsills, and balanced saucers on a kitchen chair placed against the back door. He took a ball peen hammer from his tool shelf to bed with him, then tried to sleep, his throbbing ankle elevated on a pillow. But he was still wide awake as the sun rose, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sounds of breaking glass or china crashing to the floor.

Before brewing his morning cup of English breakfast tea, Harvey channel-surfed the early-morning news. They all had the story. The murder was apparently the most newsworthy of that day’s three Miami homicides. Channel 7 aired footage of the shrouded corpse being taken away. Harvey shuddered, the remote in his hand, watching as they wheeled her out and down the stairs on a gurney, an inanimate form beneath a blanket. He remembered her energy, her spirited and distinctive walk, and heard her name for the first time: Sandra Dollinger, twenty-four years old, receptionist at a South Beach photo studio. Somebody’s daughter, somebody’s child. Harvey wanted to weep, overwhelmed by mixed emotions. Why did he ever go there? Why hadn’t he gone sooner? Had he been first, she would have been cautious, frightened, more security-conscious. Perhaps the killer never would have gotten to her. Never again, Harvey swore, if somehow he got through this, he would never again risk his life, his freedom, everything. Nothing was worth this.

“I can’t believe it,” a woman neighbor was saying in the Channel 10 report. She looked pale and near tears. “We’ve lived in this building for five and a half years, and nothing like this ever happened before. We didn’t know her well. But she seemed nice, always said hello, always friendly.”

She and her husband heard the killer flee, the reporter said. “I looked out, almost got a look at him,” said the husband, a chunky fellow wearing a mustache and a gold chain, “but he ran, and by the time I pulled some pants on and got out there, he was driving off. We didn’t know yet it was a murder.” They rapped on their neighbor’s door but there was no answer. Her sliding glass door stood ajar. They alerted the manager who found the body, they said.

The victim’s sister and best friend were assisting detectives in determining what was missing from the murder scene, a police spokesman said on camera. Harvey felt a thrill of fear at his words. Asked if robbery was the motive, the spokesman hinted that certain items might be missing, but he was not free to divulge what they were since it was crucial to the investigation.

“Do you think this could be linked to other cases?” a reporter asked. The spokesman lifted a meaningful eyebrow. “No comment at this time.”

Harvey knew then what he had to do.

He limped into the kitchen first, to prepare his usual breakfast — two poached eggs, whole wheat toast, orange juice, and tea. He had no appetite for anything, not even the high-heeled red sandals. He looked at them and felt only sadness. He forced himself to nibble at his meal the best he could. Maintain regular habits, he told himself, do not become overwhelmed by stress and fear. This was no time to go haywire. He stacked the breakfast plates in the dishwasher, then called in sick to his job as inventory clerk at Federated department stores. He had injured his ankle in a fall, he told them. No lie there.

Raymond Karp Construction was listed in the yellow pages without a street address. The man must work out of a home office, Harvey thought. He tried the number, carefully preceding it with star sixty-seven to block caller ID.

“You have reached the office of Karp Construction, please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

It was the big man’s voice. Harvey hung up.

He stopped at a drugstore to buy an elastic bandage for his ankle and at 10 a.m. walked into the building department at city hall. He wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, and carried a notebook. His elderly mother was planning renovations, he explained, and he wanted to check out a potential contractor. A smart move, said the friendly clerk who confirmed it was all a matter of public record and helped him access the computer database.

By noon he cruised his newly rented Ford Taurus past the modest ranch-style home of Raymond Karp Construction. The blue truck wasn’t there. He found it at the second of three permitted projects Karp had underway, a two-story corner house on Northeast Ninety-third Street. The next forty-eight hours became a recon mission, as Harvey observed Karp from a distance, day and night, recording in his notebook where the contractor parked at each stop, and for how long. Karp seemed preoccupied during the day. He looked guilty, it seemed to Harvey, but, he reasoned, Miami contractors were notorious for their shoddy work and greedy post-hurricane rip-offs of helpless homeowners. They probably all looked guilty, or should.

Karp attended AA meetings at night, though, Harvey noted, he never stayed long and went from one to another, as if looking for someone.

Harvey arrived home late. Headachy and hungry, he popped a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, then checked his message machine.

“Where ya been, Harv?” Phil’s friendly voice sounded concerned. “Is everything okay? That fellow you mentioned, Ray, the contractor, he’s been asking around about you. What’s going on?”

The clock was ticking down, no time left for further recon. Harvey set his alarm for 3:00 a.m. Somebody once wrote that it is always 3:00 a.m. in the dark night of the soul. He tried to remember who it was, before napping fitfully, anticipating the alarm.

When it sounded, he arose and reluctantly began to gather his collection. He cleaned out his closets, removing other souvenirs from beneath his bed, touching them longingly, reliving the special moments evoked by each one. The Salvatore Ferragamo slingbacks that had hugged the long narrow feet of that tall blonde with the swanlike neck and high cheekbones. He had trailed her from Saks Fifth Avenue all the way home to Coconut Grove. The soft suede loafers had been well worn by that long-haired young woman he had followed home from the library, and the black and white mules with their pointed toes and open heels unleashed a rush of memories. He had shadowed them all the way down Lincoln Road as she strolled, window-shopped, and chatted with friends. She seemed demure, so shy, so quiet, but screamed loud enough to wake the dead when she woke up as he fondled her feet.

He included the anklets, stockings, peds, and house slippers, all the little bonuses picked up along the way. He nearly forgot the silvery thong sandals tucked between his mattress and his box spring and had to go back for them. Finally he had dropped them all — the battered running shoes, the bejeweled evening slippers, the rubber flip-flops — into the maw of a big, black plastic garbage bag.

Each was a part of his life, he would miss them, but never again. The AA counselor was right, it was easy to replace one addiction with another, but now it was over. He wasn’t going back to booze either. If he got out of this, it was time to exert some control over his life. His firm resolve felt good. He pulled the rental car up to his front door, checked the street, then carried the bag to the car. This would be his final caper.

The brisk Miami winter night was splendid, the temperature sixty-five, a star-studded sky, and the moon nearly full. The blue Cherokee was exactly where he expected to find it, parked in the driveway of the modest rancher. The house was dark. He stopped on the street near the foot of the driveway and wondered if the sleep of the man inside was as troubled as his had been.

Harvey sat in the car, watching, listening. He thought about prowlers gunned down by irate homeowners and trigger-happy cops on patrol. Even fifteen-year-olds had been shot for stealing hubcaps.

He wondered what this town was coming to.

As high-flying clouds obliterated the bright face of the moon, he made his move, melting like a shadow into the bed of the truck. There was an alarm on the cab but nothing in back. His penlight clenched between his teeth, he worked methodically on the padlock, then on the toolbox. It didn’t take long. He cautiously lifted the creaky lid, then stopped to listen. A dog barked in the distance, but the house remained quiet and dark. The box was half full of tools, with rolled sets of plans on top. Harvey removed the plans and the tools, then replaced them with the shoes and other intimate items of footwear. He kept only a single red high-heeled sandal. He replaced the plans, closed the box, chained and padlocked it, sighing with relief as the lock snapped shut. He wrapped the tools in the empty garbage bag, scanned the street, then carried them back to the rental. He was about to start the car when he saw approaching headlights and crouched, holding his breath.

A Miami prowl car, two officers in the front seat. Harvey whimpered, some neighbor must have made a prowler call.

He thought he would faint when he heard the two cops talking companionably as their car pulled abreast of his, then rolled by, ever so slowly. He fought the urge to jump out, hands in the air, to surrender before they pulled their guns. But they kept moving and turned right at the end of the block. He must have a strong heart, Harvey thought, unlike his father. If ever he was to succumb to a heart attack, it would have been now.

He continued to crouch, body limp, heart pounding, until he was convinced they were gone, that no SWAT team was surrounding the block, then started the car, rolled a few hundred feet, switched into second gear, and turned on the lights.

He went to an all-night Denny’s, suddenly ravenous, and ate a hearty breakfast. He read the morning paper as he devoured a stack of pancakes, syrup, and bacon, food he usually never ate. There was nothing more in the paper about the murder except a short paragraph and a telephone number, asking that anyone with information call Crime Stoppers.

At precisely 7:28 a.m. he was parked near the expressway entrance ramp three blocks from Karp’s rancher. Karp passed by behind the wheel of the blue Cherokee at 7:31 a.m., on the way to his first jobsite stop of the day.

Harvey’s next step was more tricky. Neighbors were up and about, getting their children off to school. He approached on foot from the block behind the house and pushed through a thick hedge into the backyard. The back door lock was a good one, an inch-long solid steel dead bolt that would take a lot of tedious time and work. He skirted the house and was thrilled to find the kitchen entrance, an old-fashioned jalousie door. It takes no smarts or training at all to simply remove a jalousie, reach in, and turn the knob. The kitchen was a mess. Dishes in the sink, a cardboard pizza box, empty except for a few gnawed crusts, a nearly empty Jack Daniel’s bottle on a counter. The garbage can was overflowing. The living room was no neater. Neither was the bedroom. Harvey took the remaining high-heeled red sandal from inside his shirt, tucked it between the rumpled sheets of Raymond Karp’s unmade bed, then left the way he had come, replacing the jalousie on the way out. He left Karp’s tools just inside the door, still wrapped in plastic.

He called Crime Stoppers from a roadside pay phone.

“I believe I have some information,” he began. He told the volunteer he had overheard a stranger in a bar brag to a companion about the murder. The stranger also commented that he had to get rid of some evidence he had hidden in his vehicle. Later, he saw the man drive off in a truck. Just this morning he had spotted the same man, in the same truck, at a construction site. Harvey gave the address and a description of the truck and its driver. He was only a good citizen doing the right thing, he said, and was uninterested in any reward. Being a family man, he was reluctant to become further involved. Harvey hung up and went home.

As he heated some tomato soup for lunch, the Channel 7 news on the tube, a bulletin announced a breaking story, a police chase in progress. Harvey stepped away from the stove to watch. Police were in hot pursuit of a man they had approached at a building site that morning. The newsman said the suspect had given police permission to examine the contents of his truck, but when they found something suspicious, he had struggled with them, broken away, leaped into his truck, and fled. The station’s eye-in-the-sky chopper crew was bringing live coverage from Interstate 95, where it was now reported that the fleeing driver was the suspect in a homicide.

Harvey turned off the burner under the soup and watched. How lucky, he thought, that Karp had made a run for it. How incriminating.

The chase was frightening. Other motorists were being forced off the road. Harvey’s heart was in his throat. It looked to him as though the fleeing driver was headed home. Sure enough, the Cherokee sailed down the exit ramp into his neighborhood, trailed by wailing police cruisers. More were waiting. Karp’s Cherokee skidded into a patrol car, then sideswiped a cement truck.

Harvey couldn’t stay away, he had to see for himself that it was over. Galvanized into action, he dashed out to the rental.

The scene was chaotic, traffic was jammed. News choppers throbbed overhead, on the ground were sirens, camera crews, and a growing crowd. Just like an action movie, but this was real life.

Thrilled, he watched from a distance as Karp, dazed and bleeding from a gash on his head, was led away in handcuffs, Justice had triumphed, Harvey thought, justice for Sandra Dollinger. The police spokesman had convened a press conference and was addressing reporters. Microphones bristled, cameras zoomed in. Harvey edged up front, into the crowd.

The man arrested, the spokesman said, was the chief suspect in the murder of Sandra Dollinger. Physical evidence had been discovered that detectives believed would not only link him to the homicide but to a frightening rash of assaults on women — and identify him as the notorious serial shoe thief. Reporters gasped.

“Another classic case,” the public-information officer said wisely, “of a deviate whose sex crimes continue to escalate in violence until culminating in murder.”

Puleeze, Harvey thought as he walked away. Whatever. He was free, he thought jubilantly. It had all worked. He smiled, safe at last, no cops, no killer on his trail. No drinking in his future, no more women’s feet. This experience had turned him off both for good. He was free at last.

His smile lingered and caught the eye of a passing police officer. She smiled back. “Helluva story, ain’t it?”

“It sure is,” he said. “What a town.”

She turned to direct traffic away from the scene. She wore the crisp dark-blue uniform of the department and was attractive, in an athletic sort of way, her sandy hair pulled tightly back from her fresh scrubbed face. But that was not what caught his attention. Harvey’s eyes were focused on her thick, shiny leather gun belt and holster. He heard it creak faintly as she walked. He breathed deeply and imagined how it smelled. Clipped to one side were an intriguing pair of black leather gloves, probably for manhandling suspects when necessary, he thought, and little leather compartments probably full of shiny metal bullets.

Harvey followed, longing to stroke the smooth leather and bury his face in her belly to inhale its aroma mingled with her perspiration. His face flushed, his knees felt weak. She turned, still smiling, and motioned the vehicles forward with a broad wave, raising her right arm, giving him the perfect opportunity to read her name off the metal tag pinned to her shirt pocket.

Tahiti Junk Shop by Les Standiford

North Miami Beach

(Originally published in 1999)

“It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

Guerin didn’t have to look up to see who was speaking. It was a favorite trick of Adele’s, shadowing him down to the mailboxes. He stood in a peeling little alcove off the shabby main lobby of their Hallandale building — a testament to the better intentions of another South Florida era. He studied the wall cracks that radiated out from the bank of brass boxes in the pattern of a giant spiderweb. In a moment, she’d deliver one of the incessant invitations to her apartment, for coffee, for cake, for a “little chat,” as if they’d just happened to bump into one another.

He folded the letter and put it in the breast pocket of his coat, a smoking jacket he’d salvaged from the effects of his father decades ago. Adele watched him, practically gloating. Maybe she’d been reading over his shoulder.

“Investments,” he said, affecting a philosophical tone. “One accepts the bad with the good.” In truth, his heart had turned to lead.

“Sinking good money into a snow pea farm in the desert is not an investment,” she said.

So she had been looking. He glanced about the tiny mailroom. Adele, no giant, nonetheless blocked his way to the door.

“You look a little gray,” she said in a softened voice. “How about some chicken soup?”

“I have business,” he said.

“There’s always time to file bankruptcy,” she sniffed. “Besides, I wanted to tell you. The Centurion Village representative is coming to talk today.” She produced a colorful brochure from behind her back. He’d seen it before, littering the tables of the common rooms. It was full of pictures of oldsters biking, swimming, dancing, and shuffleboarding, cavorting in the Florida sun and enjoying the “golden years.” Just looking at all the activity made him feel tired.

He took the brochure and pointed at the immense condominium building that was featured in almost every shot. “They ought to put some bars over all these windows,” he told her. “Because none of these people will ever get out.”

She snatched the brochure back. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “This is a place where you could put what you’ve got left. It’ll do you some good.”

Guerin saw that her eyes were starting to water. He knew what she wanted. They should pledge all their assets, turn over everything to this coven of the dead and dying, and move in together. Wait hand in hand in a wallboard cave for the inevitable. He had to admit, they were clever, these Centurions. Just give up everything you have and they guarantee you peace of mind for as long as you live, and pray that it’s not too long.

“That Centurion thing’s a scam.” It was a new voice echoing about the gloomy mailroom. Guerin and Adele spun about. A shambling man, who might have been in his fifties — wearing a checked sport coat and white shoes and belt — had appeared in the doorway.

He indicated the brochure in Adele’s hand. “You give ’em everything, including your Social Security, and sign a blanket power of attorney. They got you by the cajones for the rest of your life, which probably ain’t too long given the quality of the food I hear they put out.”

A white ring of fury had come to outline Adele’s lips. “Who are you,” she demanded. “How did you get in here?”

The man tipped an imaginary hat and smiled grandly. “Jack Squires, ma’am.” He glanced at Guerin. “With Astral Investments.” He broke off to consult a well-worn spiral notepad. “Came to see a Mister Gunderson who answered one of our ads: a little risk, a lotta return...”

“Oh, my God,” Adele breathed.

Squires glanced up. “Something wrong?”

Guerin spoke up. “It’s me,” he said. “I’m Gunderson.”

Squires grinned and snatched up Guerin’s hand. “Imagine that,” he said, pumping it vigorously. “Running into you right here.”

“Not so strange,” Guerin said, looking at Adele.

“Let go of his hand,” Adele said.

“It took me awhile to get back to you,” Squires said, still pumping, “but now that I’m here, we’re gonna roll.”

“I’m calling the police,” Adele said, making a tentative move for the door.

Guerin felt a warmth growing in the hand that Squires held. It was probably just the exercise. He couldn’t remember a more vigorous handshake. Yet there seemed to be something more that coursed up his arm from Squires’s big paw.

Guerin felt Adele’s gaze burning upon him. “I’m a man of... some years,” he said. “I need something solid.”

Squires nodded, finally releasing his hand. “I couldn’t agree more.” He glanced at his notebook and shook his head. “Chinchillas, zoysia plantations, Mojave snow peas.” He clucked his tongue in sympathy. “That’s a tough run of luck.”

“That’s idiocy,” Adele said.

“I need to be certain of my future. Take the downside into account for a change.”

Squires nodded. “I know just what you mean. I’ve got a place for your cash.”

“You don’t give him a cent!” Adele’s voice had risen to a shriek.

Squires put his hand on Guerin’s shoulder. “Now, tell me. What kind of property is it you’re most interested in? What is it you really want?”

Adele tried to jockey herself in front of Squires. “He wants some peace of mind. Not jackals trying to steal his money.”

“Adele.” Guerin tried to restrain her, but Squires was unfazed. He had not taken his eyes from Guerin.

“What is it that you really want, Mr. G?”

Guerin’s eyes locked in on Squires’s. He looked down the man’s gaze until his head was swimming. He was on the staircase of their once-grand building, his legs limber, his flesh glowing, ascending the steps toward a glorious field of light. At every landing, well-wishers whooped and urged him on: forty-niners with panning kits slung to their backs, men holding strange machines and hopeless patent applications, little girls in ballet dresses, a huge rabbit with a replica of a human foot hung around its neck for luck, thumping him with its paw...

Guerin pulled his glance away at last. Adele stared at him in concern. He nodded reassurance to her, then gathered himself to speak.

“Well, Mr. Jack, I’ll tell you. Forty years I work, no union, no pension, but I put what I can aside, and I make investments...”

“Investments?” Adele cried.

“...so that someday, I don’t have to work for somebody anymore, and maybe, if things work out, I could retire,” he looked sheepish, “in Tahiti, I think.” He cleared his throat then and his face fell. “But, things, they don’t work out so well.” He threw up his hands.

Adele seemed relieved. She turned to Squires, vindicated.

“If you’ll pardon us,” Adele took Guerin’s arm.

Guerin held back, looking at Squires in appeal. “So, to answer your question, if I had just one more chance to make it happen, I’d want a little carryout market, maybe. Nothing fancy, but on a good corner. Enough business so in a year or two, I sell out and go to Tahiti, unless you know someplace better.”

Adele turned, astonished. Guerin avoided her, and shrugged at Squires, who had, after all, asked.

Squires did not hesitate. “I can do it for you.”

“Throw this crook out,” Adele wailed.

“I don’t need your money, Mr. G. This is one man of vision to another.” Squires bent to jot a note on a slip of his pad. He stood and stuffed it into Guerin’s pocket. “I’ll be at this address at four. You think about it.”

He slipped his pad into his pocket, nodded a goodbye to Adele and clapped Guerin on the shoulder as he left. “You got a spirit I like.”

Guerin pulled out the paper and took a look at the address. Adele stared up at him, anxious. Finally, Guerin turned to her.

“An honest face he had, don’t you think?”

“Oh, my God,” she wailed, as she ran out the door. “Oh, my God.”

As he moved farther and farther inland from his building and far from anyplace he knew, Guerin reassured himself that finding opportunity was, for one in his position, a matter of trusting one’s intuitions over what others might call logic. There was the known path, and the other path. And he was destined to be an adventurer.

He was passing now through an area of ramshackle shops, including a laundry so filthy he wondered how anything could be cleaned there, then a liquor store with a row of swarthy men hunkered in a row beneath its front window. The proprietor stood near the barred doorway with a pistol in his hand and glared at Guerin as he passed.

In the next block, all the shops seemed closed, except for a balloon and message service from whose entry issued a blare of music he could not begin to identify. Outside, a van with gay balloons stenciled on its side sagged at the curb, its two right tires gone flat. Guerin peeked inside the shop and saw a young man with the made-up face of a woman standing bare-chested behind a counter. He was staring into a mirror and was sawing intently at his front teeth with a heavy file. Guerin staggered back into the street and hurried on, thinking that there were perhaps limits to adventure.

Soon, he had passed into a district of warehouses and storage yards interspersed with vacant lots. It was there that he heard the first sound behind him. He spun about to check, but there was nothing but empty street to be seen. He paused, then forced himself onward. When he heard the sound again, he did not turn but walked more quickly to a corner ahead and ducked around the edge of a shuttered moving and storage building to wait.

As the footsteps neared, he thought of various assaults upon the unwary he might copy from his nights of television viewing, but then he thought of his dry and brittle bones snapping as he struck, and there was nothing to do but wait.

Shortly, his pursuer was upon him. He took a deep breath, stepped forward boldly... and caused Adele to shout her violent surprise into the calm of the deserted street.

They stood staring at each other for a moment, searching for words, two people met accidentally in hell. Finally, Adele surveyed their surroundings and sniffed, “This is not a neighborhood for decent people.”

While Guerin considered what to say, a bag man pushing a grocery cart laden down with things that looked furry and once-alive jostled past them. Adele fell toward Guerin with a yelp. Shaken himself, he offered her his arm, and they hurried on.

The shadows had begun to lengthen when they reached the last possible block, another assemblage of broken buildings on a street that died against the high wall of an abandoned factory. At the corner, Guerin checked the address once more and shook his head. They stood in front of a grimy storefront where a sign dangled from a single bolt: ROGOVIN’S TRASH AND TREASURES, it read, rocking slightly in a breeze that skirted dust and yellowed newsprint pages at their feet. A wino snoozed in the shop’s entryway.

Guerin turned glumly to Adele. “Let’s go home,” she said, quietly, and tugged at his arm.

Behind them came the tap of a car horn. They turned as a black limousine, its windows heavily smoked, purred up to the curb and Jack Squires danced nimbly out from the rear.

“You folks made the right decision,” he said, extending his hand to Guerin. Adele huffed. Guerin studied the impressive car for a moment, then turned back to the junk shop, where the wino stirred, annoyed at this interruption of his nap.

“I thought we were talking a market,” Guerin said.

Squires threw up his hands. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. G. The only market I had in your price range was in a bad neighborhood.”

Ignoring Adele’s gasp, Squires took Guerin by the arm and steered him toward the entrance of the shop, shooing the wino off with a wave of his hand.

“Market, schmarket...” Squires said.

He unlocked the door and led the way into the place, flipping on a light switch. He turned, radiant with anticipation as Guerin and Adele followed him in, blinking in the dim light.

“This, Mr. G,” he said, sweeping his arm about, “is the answer to your dreams.”

Guerin stared. Instead of the vacant shop he expected, he found before him a rabbit warren of aisles toppling toward one another, jammed with junk store flotsam and jetsam. Here was a pile of army helmets, there a stack of 78 records. One aisle was a tunnel through thick walls of magazines and newspapers. Nearby lay an ancient Coca-Cola tray atop a tumult of faded clothing. Adele glanced about distastefully, running her finger through a thick layer of dust on the front counter.

Guerin found himself drawn into the dim recesses of the shop, past banks of battered toasters, mixers, and blenders, beyond shelves full of cracked and mismatched china. At a twist in an aisle that seemed to dive off the face of the earth, he stumbled over a cobbler’s anvil and found himself face to face with an Indian in war paint and headdress, a tomahawk raised to brain him. Guerin staggered backward and a hand fell upon his shoulder.

“You’re a very lucky man,” Squires said. “The place has been tied up in probate for months. You get first crack.”

Guerin stared, recovering from his fright. “But the price. Surely the three thousand I have is not sufficient.”

Squires waved his concern away. “The old boy who ran the place croaked awhile ago, and his heirs are back east. They don’t know junk. I told ’em it’ll cost two grand just to haul the stuff away and they begged me, ‘Sell. Sell the junk?’”

He patted the wooden Indian on the cheek and took Guerin back toward the front. “So you get all this,” he continued, “and ten more years on the original lease.”

They emerged into the light where Adele waited impatiently by the door. Squires ran his hand over an old brass cash register as he moved behind the counter to sweep aside a curtain there. He pointed in at a small room, where the corner of a single bed was visible. “There’s even a living quarters here in the back.”

Adele’s mouth fell open. “What? Live in this rat’s nest?” She hurried to Guerin’s side. “You don’t know what’s going to crawl out of there in the night... and who’s going to cook for you?”

Guerin patted her hand, then moved forward to peer into the tiny room which contained, besides the bed, a kitchenette, a small table, and a battered easy chair with a reading lamp beside it. He stepped inside and turned a knob on the stove. A jet of blue flame leaped up from a burner. He tried the sink faucet, and a stream of clear water gushed out. He turned to face Adele and Squires.

“This is a come-back neighborhood,” Squires said. “It’s a steal for a man of vision.”

Guerin found himself nodding. “I used to have vision,” he said, softly.

“Guerin!” Adele cried.

Squires nodded, waving his notepad. “I know, Mr. G. We checked you out.”

“This place has a nice feeling,” Guerin said, warming.

“It’s where you belong,” Squires said.

Guerin nodded thoughtfully. “A market probably is a great deal of trouble.”

Adele’s eyes had begun to glaze. “He’s lost his mind,” she wailed.

“I took your best interest to heart,” Squires said, stepping forward, his hand outstretched.

Guerin hesitated. His gaze went upward, to a shelf where a dusty candelabra stood, its cups cast in the shape of cherubs, which seemed to dance in the glint of the stove’s blue flame.

“I’ll take it,” he said, and felt Squires’s large hand envelop his. Adele stood weeping in the doorway.

Guerin stood outside his shop in the balmy air of a fine spring morning, nodding approval as the sign painter he had engaged leaned from his ladder for one last stroke. TAHITI JUNK SHOP, it read, with Guerin’s name in script just to the side and the replica of a tiny island with a palm tree added for a logo.

Guerin motioned the man down and handed him some bills, then went back inside his shop. Caruso opera issued scratchily from an ancient Victrola placed beside the front counter. Behind the counter he had hung a thermometer-like sales chart with the legend $10,000 — Off for the Islands scrawled at the top. He smiled and moved to lift the needle as the music stopped.

Behind him the doorbell of the shop tinkled and he turned to greet his first customer... only to find Adele advancing upon him, her face gray and sunken.

“Adele,” he said, hopefully, “you’ve come for a little shopping.”

She patted at her cheeks with a handkerchief. “I came to talk sense to you. Did you sign anything yet? Tell me it’s not too late.”

Though he felt impatience, her despair was disarming. He took her hand reassuringly. “Adele, a little less gloom, if you please. I am a proprietor now.”

A thump sounded at the front window then and they turned to see the wino glowering in at them. Adele banged her purse against the glass and the man slunk away. She turned back.

“Wonderful. A roomful of junk, in the middle of hell. That’s what you’ve got.”

Guerin took a deep breath, determined not to argue. While he understood the necessity of risk, he could not expect Adele to sympathize. He took her arm and drew her down the aisle.

“Let me show you something,” he said, taking her around a dark turn and snapping on a light. They were now in a room larger than the first, and even more crowded with aged merchandise.

“Look,” he said, waving his arms. “Anything you want, you could find it here.”

She stared about at piles of old coats, at paintings in bad colors in splintered frames, at shaky stacks of ancient saucers, and her lower lip began to quiver. “What are you talking about? These are things people threw out because they didn’t want them.”

She stared plaintively at him, but his attention had been drawn by a sled with wooden runners that leaned against the nearest wall. He shook his head — he had not noticed it before. Adele came to pull him back down the aisle.

“Listen, I had my nephew Myron, the attorney, do some checking. He found out the previous owner, God rest his soul, just disappeared last year, without a trace.”

Guerin looked over his shoulder toward the sled. “Maybe he had something better to do,” he said, turning to her with a smile. “A trip to the islands maybe.”

She huffed on toward the front, unamused. Guerin stopped to stare down at a wooden chest, another thing he had missed in all the clutter. A satin gown, glittering with sequins, trailed out of the partly opened lid. He found himself wondering if Adele had ever worn such a thing. Then she was back, pulling him impatiently along.

“I see these bums around here with their fires going and their cooking in the vacant lots. They probably took his money and his clothes and then they ate him.”

At the counter, she turned to face him. She took a deep breath, her gaze faltering for a moment. “Guerin, come away from here. I want you to come with me to the Centurion place Myron found. I can cook for you. I’ll take care of you. I have enough money for both of us.”

She glanced away as she finished, and Guerin felt something knot in his throat. After a moment, he moved forward and took her shoulders gently.

“Adele, please. Try to understand. All my life I work for somebody else and try to get ahead and it never works out. Now I got this place that is mine. A market it isn’t, but it’s okay.” He broke off and managed his broadest smile. “And God willing, I’ll save my money and someday I’ll go off to Tahiti.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her. “It’s a nice dream, Adele, and I don’t want you should give me such a hard time about it, okay?”

She stared at him, her face falling into inestimable sadness. “I knew you wouldn’t listen,” she said. “Oh, it’s so awful to get old.” Her eyes had begun to fill, and she turned quickly for the door. When he tried to follow, she pushed him away.

“Stay here, then. Stay with your junk.”

The door slammed behind her and Guerin stood staring uncertainly after her. Finally, he moved back behind the counter and sank glumly into the easy chair he had dragged out for better light, staring up at his bulletin board and his thermometer for success. He picked up an edition of Gaugin prints he’d found in the stacks and began to flip listlessly through the pages.

Shortly, his hands lay atop his favorite of the painter’s illustrations, innocent natives awaiting a ship’s arrival on their unspoiled beach. In this version, however, it was Guerin himself who stood at the prow of the vessel that was bound for the island port, the salt spray cool in his face and his eyes fixed upon a lovely maiden tying up her hair at the shore. Though it seemed impossible, and she was certainly younger and more carefree here, it was unmistakably Adele in the colorful sarong who awaited him. Even more astonishing than that was the happiness he felt as the ship moved inexorably toward the shore.

The doorbell of the shop sounded then, interrupting the snores of dreaming Guerin. He started awake, the book slipping to the floor, his gloom swooping back upon him as he stood to assume the role of proprietor.

It was a blond woman wearing large-lensed sunglasses who came through the door, urging along her husband, a balding man in walking shorts and golf shirt, sporting around his neck a gold chain the thickness of Guerin’s little finger.

“Oh, we’re soooo glad to see you’re open again, Mr. Rogovin. We just love your place,” she cooed, already heading for the stacks.

The woman’s husband came to clap him heartily on the shoulder. “Been out buying, have you? You must have scads of new things.” He gave Guerin a wink and dove into the aisles after his wife, who had already begun squealing at some find.

As Guerin stared into the depths of the shop in befuddlement, there came the sounds of something heavy being dragged across the planked floor toward the front of the shop. Finally, the couple emerged, wrestling with a fortune-telling booth from a carnival arcade. The thing, the size of a phone booth, held a dummy gypsy wobbling over a cloudy crystal ball. Guerin clutched hold of the counter for support.

The wife motioned her husband forward with an unspoken command. The man affected unconcern as he approached Guerin. “Say, we’ve found something we might be interested in.”

Guerin shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen that before...”

The man turned to his wife, who frowned and lifted her chin in a commanding motion.

“So, we’d be willing to go... say, a hundred and a half.”

“Charles!” his wife whispered.

Charles shrugged. “I meant to say two hundred.”

“Two hundred dollars?” Guerin repeated, dumbfounded.

The woman drew her husband aside. “I want it,” she hissed. Charles turned back to Guerin and slapped some bills into his palm. “Look, we’ll go four hundred dollars, and not a penny more.”

Guerin stared at the hundred-dollar bills in his hand, wondering if he was still dreaming. The woman motioned to her husband, and they began wrestling the thing toward the door. “We just love it,” she smiled, with a sidelong hateful glance at Charles. “You’d have to shoot us to stop us now.”

“Shoot?” Guerin repeated. “Four hundred dollars?”

“Ciao!” she said, heaving the booth on out the door toward her husband.

He followed the pair outside and watched as they lifted the booth into the back of a Cadillac converted to a short-bed pickup, then returned the couple’s wave as they sped off into the evening shadows.

He checked his watch and walked back into the shop, turning the window sign over and shooting the door bolt home. Through the glass he thought he saw the wino watching him from a storefront opposite, but when he blinked to clear his eyes, the vision was gone. He went quickly to the counter, certain that the cash too would have vanished, but it was still there, four crisp bills that marked the first notch upon his sales thermometer.

That night, though he did not dream, he awoke once with a start, certain he’d heard the sounds of thunderous surf about to crash down upon him. When he leaped from his small bed to investigate, he found that one of the paddle fans was rustling a grass skirt atop one of the stacks of papers. Guerin moved the skirt, then staggered back to bed and lay for hours, unable to sleep.

At eight the next morning, an insistent knocking roused him. He swung out of bed and drew on a satin dressing gown he’d scavenged from the stacks — it seemed like something his father would have fancied. If it were Adele come to pester him again, he’d offer her a gift, a gesture of peace, perhaps the sequined dress from the wooden chest.

When he opened up, he found instead two youths in ragged tennis shoes and jeans staring up at him warily. The taller youth stepped forward.

“We been looking for a basketball,” he said, peering over Guerin’s shoulder.

Guerin hesitated, doubtfully following the boy’s glance. The shorter boy tried to pull his partner away. “I told you this ain’t no place for a basketball.”

The tall one restrained him, and looked impatiently at Guerin. “Well, you got a basketball?”

“I don’t think so,” Guerin said, stepping back. “But you’re welcome to look.”

The tall boy nodded and started inside, pulling his reluctant partner along toward the stacks. Guerin rubbed his face and stared out into the brilliant morning. He was about to step out for a breath of air when he heard the unmistakable thump, thump, thump of a ball being dribbled along the wooden floor behind him.

They had found the ball atop a wooden chest, they said, and professed no knowledge of a big man named Squires who wore white shoes and rode in a limousine: “A limo in this neighborhood, man?”

Though they offered fifty cents, Guerin would take only a quarter. He watched the two leave, passing the battered basketball back and forth on the pavement, then turned back into the shop.

As he entered, he heard once more the unmistakable sounds of crashing surf. He hesitated, then drew his robe tightly around him and moved steadfastly into the shadows.

When he reached the wooden chest where Adele’s dress had been, he froze. On the floor nearby lay a child’s beach pail and shovel, and next to those, a battered beach chair with sailcloth seat and wooden frame. The sounds of the surf had died away. Uncertain, he extended his hand toward the chest. The lid was locked, or swelled shut, and the sequined dress was nowhere in sight. He grasped one of the heavy brass handles on the chest, to pull it toward the front, but the thing would not budge. He straightened and looked warily about the darkened aisles. “Mr. Jack...?” he called, but there was no answer. And then the doorbell began to ring in earnest.

It was nearly closing time when Adele did show up, her nephew Myron in tow. The pair had to stand aside at the doorway to let a stream of customers past. One man carried a huge moose head over his shoulder, followed by a couple toting an intricately molded brass bed. Next came a cigar-chewing man carrying a barber’s pole, then a stylishly dressed couple pushing a jukebox out atop a dolly. The man winked at Adele, patting the jukebox with one hand: “Everything Ella ever did is right in here.”

Guerin waved at Adele and Myron from his place in the canvas beach chair. He’d found an old-fashioned, knee-length bathing suit with a striped top and was basking in the glow of a battered sun lamp.

“I thought you said the place was belly up,” Myron said.

Adele bit her lip and turned upon Guerin. “So this is how you wait on customers?”

Guerin rose amiably from his chair and snapped off the light. “I had an inspiration.” He gestured at his trunks. “Goes with the name of the shop, don’t you think?”

Myron nodded. “Business is looking up, I take it.”

“Plenty of traffic. But I don’t drive a very hard bargain, I’m afraid.” Guerin swept his arm toward the dark aisles. “Have a look around. Maybe there’s something you need.”

Adele stepped impatiently between them. “Myron has come here to help you. He can get your money back.”

Guerin looked at her in disbelief.

Myron cleared his throat. “I put together a group looking for a public housing site; now I find out this whole block’s available. You sign over your lease, I’ll get you three thousand up front. Once the buildings go up, you get an override. In the long run you could clear some real coin.”

“Clear some coin?” Guerin repeated. He gave Adele an exasperated look, then turned back to Myron. “I’m sorry you went to this trouble, Mr...”

“Myron’s fine.”

Guerin nodded. “Well, Myron, do I look to you like a man concerned with the long run?”

Myron smiled tolerantly. “I heard you were tough. Tell you what. Being as you are a friend of the family, so to speak, I think we could go five thousand up front.”

Guerin felt very tired. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to sell.”

Myron shot an inquiring glance at Adele, who silently urged him on. “Uh, yes,” Myron continued, looking at the toe of one soft leather loafer. “Well, my people have authorized me to offer ten thousand dollars.”

Guerin took Adele by the arm and began to guide her sadly toward the door. “Take your nephew and go home,” he said.

She stared at him, speechless.

“This is a rare opportunity,” Myron protested.

“Take him home, Adele.” Guerin ushered her out the door.

Myron hesitated at the threshold. “I don’t get it. You could go to Tahiti the long way for ten thou.”

Guerin stared at him steadily. Finally, Myron’s gaze faltered. Guerin put a hand on his shoulder. “Come back someday on your own. We have nice things here.” He smiled and closed the door.

It was dark and he was finishing a can of soup at his tiny kitchen table when he heard the tapping at the outer door.

“Please. I’m afraid out here.” Adele’s voice was muffled by the glass, but her fear kept its edge. He sighed and opened up.

“I thought you’d take the money,” she said, sinking with exhaustion into the canvas beach chair.

Guerin turned over the beach pail and sat down stiffly on it.

“You shouldn’t have come here this late by yourself.”

“You could have gone to Tahiti, if that’s what you wanted.” She shook her head sadly.

Guerin reached for her hand. “That was a very generous thing you did, Adele. A very kind and noble thing.”

She looked at him tearfully. “Did you know it was my money Myron was talking about? Is that why you wouldn’t take it?”

He shook his head. “Maybe I don’t want to go anywhere after all.”

She gave him an uncertain glance.

“You see, I am making some people very happy with the ‘junk’ they find here.”

“But what about Tahiti?” Hope had entered her voice.

He paused, his gaze faltering for a moment. Finally, he rose and walked to the bulletin board. He turned to Adele with a wan smile and reached to take down the sales thermometer. Quickly, he tore it in half and dropped it into a trash bin.

“Tahiti was a dream, Adele. A dream like you need to get you through the days when other things are not the way you want them.” He drifted off for a moment but caught himself and turned back to her, gesturing. “I’m very lucky to have found this place. I’m becoming important to my neighborhood.”

She stared back at him, dumbfounded. “You really do want to stay here, don’t you? I’d rather have you go off to that idiot island.” She fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief and began to dab at her eyes.

Guerin came to take her by the shoulders. She stared up at him, uncertain. “Tell me, Adele, are you happy?”

She swallowed, drawing back from his touch. “Happy? I’m as happy as you can be at my age.”

“And what does that mean?”

Her mouth drew grim. “It means that I’m old, and I’m going to die soon, and nobody is going to give a damn, that’s what it means.” She tried to meet his gaze defiantly, but turned away suddenly. Her shoulders began to heave, and then she was sobbing.

Guerin stared down, gauging the depth of her despair. He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s that bad for you, isn’t it?”

She nodded as she blew her nose into her hanky, and Guerin sat down beside her, brushing his hand at her tears. “You know, Adele, if you’d just learn to dream a little, maybe you and I...”

She looked up as he faltered. “Maybe you and I what?”

He felt his impatience growing and sighed. “Nothing. You don’t understand. If a man can’t go out and make something decent, what does he have to offer?”

“Is that it?” Her voice rose. “You think you have to be rich to make me happy?” She reached for his hand.

He drew back. “It’s not rich I’m talking about, it’s something else, it’s...” As he struggled for the right words, the door swung open behind her and the wino from the streets entered, his hand shakily outstretched, waving something in the dim light.

Guerin stood. “Can I help you...?” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the pistol that the man held, at the wild glint in his bloodshot eyes.

“Hit the register, old man. You had a great day. Now it’s my turn.”

Adele did not hesitate. “You march right out of here...” She rose, swinging at him with her purse. The man ducked, then backhanded her into the beach chair.

Guerin made a dive for the pistol. The man stumbled back, clubbing Guerin to his knees, and the gun went off with a tremendous roar.

A mounted hawk above the counter exploded in a flurry of feathers and stuffing. The man trained his pistol on Guerin. “I won’t ask again.”

“For God’s sake, give him the money.” Adele wiped at her bloody lip and scrambled for the cash box that lay near the deck chair.

The man’s eyes glittered as he snatched the box from her frightened hand. He riffled through the thin stack of bills, then turned upon Guerin with menace. “I saw what walked out of here today. Where’s the rest of the cash?”

Guerin shook his head helplessly. “It’s all I asked for,” he said.

The man didn’t bother to argue. He swung his aim to Adele. “It’s your last chance, Pops. I’ll blow her away in a heartbeat.”

Adele whimpered. Guerin scanned the shop, searching for a weapon, a miracle, a policeman... and froze when he beheld it.

Not ten feet away, at the mouth of an aisle, sat the chest he had tried to drag forward earlier. He could swear he heard the faint sounds of pounding surf, and if he were not mistaken, the heavy box swayed slightly with the rhythm of the waves.

As Guerin pulled his gaze away, he found the man smiling slyly at him. “So open it up, old man.”

Guerin shook his head in protest. “You don’t understand. There’s no money there.”

He broke off as the man snatched Adele roughly by the hair, holding the pistol to her face.

Guerin, growing dizzy, found himself at the top of an endless staircase, winded, beaten, facing a doorway that opened upon an empty room. All the former well wishers stood below on a vast landing, breathless, waiting for his move. Inside the room, a figure stirred in a darkened corner — a woman, he saw, as she came toward him, her hand outstretched, her face a mask of anguish. “Adele?” he said...

...and stepped forward to the chest. The top swung easily open at his touch, and Guerin stared down in disbelief at stacks and stacks of cash that neatly stuffed the box.

The man gave him a murderous smile and pushed Adele roughly aside. “You old son of a bitch,” he said, amazed. He plunged his hand toward a stack of bills, keeping his pistol trained on Guerin. “You found a fortune.” He riffled through a thick packet of cash and shrugged. “Too bad for you.”

And indeed, Guerin thought, it was too bad, but then what good thing had he ever had that hadn’t been taken away?

The man trained the pistol on Adele, who stirred groggily on the floor.

“Just take the box,” Guerin cried. “It has everything you want.”

The man sneered. “Nice of you to offer,” he said, and cocked his pistol.

As the cylinders of the gun fell into place, Guerin beheld the instantaneous, sorry history of his hopeful life: withered fields of once-grand snow peas, zoysia sod farms that had started out strong but found the wilt, sullen cages full of molting chinchilla with no interest whatever in sex, a panorama of exotic failure, of promise gone wrong, capped by this last swell joke, a shop full of magic that would lead him to his death. And not, incidentally, lacking company for the trip.

He stole a glance at devastated Adele, felt his heart give, and, with nothing of his own to lose, took fate into his own hands. He ducked under the swiveling aim of the thief and drove him backward into the chest. The man’s legs folded up as his knees caught the edge of the box, and he pitched over backward into the maw full of cash.

A great cloud of dust billowed up from the chest, driving Guerin away. The thief coughed wildly inside the pall and wilder still as the dust grew thicker, obliterating him finally from sight.

“What? Hey... HEY!” The disembodied screams lingered for a moment, and then there was a thud as the pistol fell to the floor and skittered to Guerin’s feet, followed by another thump, which was the lid of the chest slamming down.

As quickly as it had sprung up, the cloud of dust drifted off, and Guerin and Adele were left to stare wonderingly at each other in a silent, vacant shop.

A muffled whining sound came from the chest and Guerin edged cautiously toward it, the pistol wavering in his hand. Adele clutched his arm as he tried the lid. He gave her a look, then flipped the top all the way up. Inside, where a fortune had momentarily gathered and where there should have been a man, was now a skinny mongrel in an otherwise empty box. The thing cowered at their gaze, its tail curled through its legs in terror.

Still groggy, Adele stared down in surprise. “Why, the poor thing. How did he get in there? Do you suppose he scared that man away?”

Guerin stared into the depths of the shop. There were the far-off strains of Polynesian music sounding in his ears, but Adele seemed to hear none of it. “Something like that,” he said. He ignored her perplexed stare to bend and pet the dog. The mutt whimpered and licked wildly at his hand.

“Do you think he’s gone?” Adele peered anxiously into the dim recesses.

Guerin stared at the terrified animal. “Yes,” he said finally, lifting the dog from the chest. “I’m sure of it.

She took his arm. “You saved my life,” she began, and Guerin had started an embarrassed shuffling when there was a sudden crash of surf roaring at them out of the depths of the shop and Adele screeched, clutching him in terror.

Guerin’s mouth fell open as a wave of golden sunlight burst upon them, washing out of the aisle, and the glitter of light reflected from the water began to dance across their faces.

They stood transfixed as the shimmering landscape lay itself open before them, paradise where once aisles of stacked junk had lain.

Adele’s lip trembled. “He shot us after all. This is how you die.”

Guerin shook his head. “I don’t think so...” He stepped forward, feeling his foot sink into sand. He held his face up to the sun and felt the warmth soak his ancient cheeks. Though the brightness blinded him, he could sense that the beach stretched endlessly, and he could hear the rustle of the tall palms just above his head. He whistled, and the dog bounded in after him.

He smiled and turned back. “It’s been here all this time, Adele.”

He felt the old promise stirring within him, in the tang of the air that filled his lungs. And yet there was this one last, important thing, without which intuition and persistence and even dreams did not matter, without which he could not go forward. He held out his hand, which glowed with the beach’s gleam.

“Come, Adele, don’t be afraid,” he said, warmed by the tropic sun. “Don’t be afraid of your dreams.”

She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at the dark shop and the dark street that stretched beyond. She turned back. She met Guerin’s hopeful eyes. Finally, she took his hand and stepped forward.

Outside the shop, Jack Squires stood, listening with satisfaction to the faint sounds of crashing surf and the shrieks and whoops and yaps of creatures frolicking somewhere on a happy beach.

He passed his hand before the entrance glass in greeting, perhaps, or was it bon voyage? CLOSED FOR VACATION, read the sign that appeared there, just below the rendering of a little island and its palm tree that Guerin, in his perpetual hopefulness, had sketched beside his name.

Ghosts by David Beaty

South Miami

(Originally published in 1999)

It was just before sunset in Biscayne Estates, and the Armstrongs were safe at home. Darryl paced around his study, sipped Scotch, and listened on his cordless telephone as a client screamed threats at him in broken English. Finally, he said, “Narciso, old buddy, stay calm. This is a temporary setback.” He kept his voice reasonable but firm. “You’ve been going on about killing me all week. What good would that do you?”

Darryl cleared his throat. He said, “And believe me, I understand your anger. Nobody likes to lose money. But you wanted to play with the big boys, remember? Then the market went limit down three days in a row.” He paused, not certain of what he’d just heard. “What? Simultaneous buy and sell orders? Who told you that? That’s a lie. I don’t care who told you. I’ve never dumped a bad trade in your account. That one? You gave me a direct order. Well, no, I can’t play it back for you because your order came over my untaped line.” He winced and said, “Hey, c’mon, you’re calling me at home.”

He took a greedy swallow of Scotch and said, “Stop it. That’s enough. I need a vacation from hearing about how I’m going to die. I’ll hang up now, okay? But call me if you get any more crazy ideas. Don’t sit there obsessing. We’re going to work this out. You have my word on that, okay? Bye-bye.” He lowered the telephone into its cradle.

While Darryl talked in his study, his wife Caroline drifted among the racks of clothes and shoes in her walk-in closet, searching for a simple blouse to wear. She wondered at the forces in herself that had driven her to buy so many bright, costly things. Who was the woman who’d chosen them? Where was the exhilaration and hope they’d represented? She couldn’t visualize herself in them now. The sight of them embarrassed her. When she looked around the closet, she imagined an aviary of tropical birds.

Caroline had recently turned thirty-three, and now, with a rueful laugh, she told friends that she was quickly closing the gaps: next year she’d be eighty-eight! Last week she’d resigned from her civic committees, her charities, her mothers’ groups: places where she’d been spinning her wheels. She felt herself changing. She was tired of people who thought about money and not much else — and that included herself. She yearned for a more spiritual life. She wanted to break free.

At the moment, however, she felt blocked. A free-floating gloom seemed to hang over her life.

The telephone was driving her crazy. It started ringing as soon as Darryl came home from the office. When she answered it, the caller hung up, but he stayed on if Darryl took the call. Then Darryl would hurry into his study and shut the door. He pretended that everything was fine, but she knew better. Worrying about it — and how could she not? — kept her under the thumb of depression. Caroline turned again in her closet, sorrowing over the constant losses, the daily disconnections from hope, that seemed to define her life now.

Darryl, forced out of his study by the need for more Scotch, signaled his availability to Kyle, age nine, and Courtney, age eleven, by cracking open a tray of ice in the bar. They appeared behind him in the doorway, energetic and needy.

He wondered when Narciso would call again. Silence was a danger signal. Silence meant: Grab your wallet and go out the window! Darryl poured Scotch over the smoking ice in his glass. He had to keep Narciso talking, had to draw off his anger, like draining pus from a wound, or God only knew what that maniac might do. He wondered, But what if my luck has deserted me?

He fled onto the patio with the children chattering at his heels like dwarfish furies. He sagged into a white plastic chair and tried to quiet Courtney and Kyle with the promise that if they ate all the food on their plates and didn’t give Mrs. Hernandez a hard time, they’d get a big surprise after dinner.

“Oh, what surprise?” Kyle said. Feeling full of the idea of surprise, he danced around the patio. Courtney, who liked to mimic adults, folded her arms on her chest, struck a pose, and said, “Daddy, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Something of interest to you, my little madam.” He talked to distract them, afraid that they could hear the voice of Narciso raging and threatening in his head. His children circled him — his fragile offspring, driven by such blatant needs. He felt the spinning pressure of their love. What have I done to them? he wondered, and abruptly closed his mind against that thought. He offered them a face all-knowing and confident. “If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise. Wait until after dark.” He drank deeply.

“After dark!” Kyle shouted. “Wow!” Making airplane noises, he skimmed away. He ignored a barrage of furious looks from Courtney and settled into a holding pattern around the patio table. Courtney said, “But Daddy, you didn’t answer me.”

Daddy’s attention, however, had been captured by the sapphire beauty of his swimming pool, and by his trim green lawn, where sprinklers whispered chuck, chuck, chuck and tossed quick rainbows in the evening light, and by the Lay-Z-Girl, his sixty-foot Bertram yacht, which seemed to bob in polite greeting from its mooring on the canal. It was a typical view in Biscayne Estates, just south of Miami, and fragrant with the odors of damp earth and thrusting vegetation and the faint coppery tang of the ocean, but this evening its beauty and the achievement it proclaimed seemed like a trap to Darryl. Like one of those insect-eating flowers, but on a huge scale.

At one time, this life was all Darryl had hoped for. Now the prospect of working to sustain it made him think of a photograph he’d seen in National Geographic, of Irish pilgrims crawling on their knees over a stony road in the rain.

He felt, on his eardrums, the light percussion of rock music from next door, where Mr. Dominguez, a successful importer of flowers, fruits, and vegetables from Colombia, lived with his young wife, Mercedes, and a son Kyle’s age, a sweet boy named Brandon. There was another son, from his first marriage, Jorge, a seventeen-year-old monster with shocking acne, who lived there too. Jorge was forever wounding Darryl’s sense of neighborliness with his sleek red Donzi speedboat, his roaring Corvette, his end-of-the-world music, and his endless succession of guests, who used Darryl’s lawn to drink and drug and screw and then left their detritus for Courtney and Kyle to puzzle over. Whenever Darryl trotted next door to complain, Mr. Dominguez laid a manicured hand over his heart and said, “I sorry, I sorry,” and somehow managed to imply that he was apologizing for Darryl’s bad manners, not Jorge’s.

Jorge was a painful reminder that there were millions of teenagers out there having a high old time with their parents’ money. Meanwhile, Darryl’s resources dwindled away. If only he could get a tiny slice of what those parents were wasting on their kids. The idea of offering an Armstrong Education Fund shimmered in his mind, then faded. The word slice had turned his thoughts back to Narciso and his death threats.

Darryl didn’t want to think about Narciso, so he let himself get angry with Jorge Dominguez. A door cracked open in Darryl’s mind, and Darryl scampered down the rough stone steps to the dark arena where he played his special version of Dungeons & Dragons with his enemies. There, in his imagination, he passed a few delightful moments clanking around, teaching Jorge Dominguez to howl out his new understanding of the word neighbor.

And then, from somewhere close by, Darryl heard the sounds he’d been dreading. He raced up from his mental dungeon to see the water empty from his swimming pool, and the swimming pool float into the sky and join the other clouds turning pink in the evening light. After that, the noises of a chain saw and a wood chipper came growling toward him and his gardenia bushes, hibiscus, sea grape, the low hedge of Surinam cherry that separated him from the Dominguezes, and all of his palms fell over, crumbled into mulch, and blew away. His lawn burst into flame and burned with the fierceness of tissue paper, exposing earth the color of an elephant’s hide, dusty and crazed with cracks. The Lay-Z-Girl popped her lines and fled down the canal into Biscayne Bay. Behind him, Darryl heard glass shattering and sounds of collapse and rushing wind, and he knew that if he turned around he’d find empty space where his house had once stood. His world had vanished. Ashes filled his heart.

Then it was over. His vision cleared. He lifted his shaking hand and glanced at his watch and guessed that no more than half a minute had passed. He took a swallow of Scotch and saw, with gratitude, Kyle circling the table and Courtney staring at him.

He looked away from them and regarded the Lay-Z-Girl. Another broken-down dream. At first, Darryl had retained a full-time captain, but when that became too expensive, he’d found someone less competent who was willing to work part-time. Now he couldn’t even afford that. A week ago, without telling Caroline, he’d fired the man. Yesterday he’d called a yacht broker and put the Lay-Z-Girl on the market.

Tonight, however, he dreamed of sailing away with his family to a new life. Tortola. The Turks and Caicos. A home on the ocean wave. Yes. He said to Courtney, “Mommy knows I’m here?”

“Mommy knows,” a voice behind them said. Caroline, barefoot, dressed in designer jeans and a white linen blouse, closed the sliding glass door on the greenish talking face of the television news announcer and stepped onto the patio, darting shy, uncertain glances at Darryl.

He said, “Baby, you look great.”

She brightened and gave him a smile and a kiss.

He sniffed the air between them. “Love the perfume too.”

The children cut across their current, clamoring for attention. A moment of plea bargaining with their mother ensued, after which Kyle and Courtney trudged away toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Hernandez, a smiling Nicaraguan who was going to apply for her green card any day now, stood ready to dish out their supper before she began her trek out past the guardhouse and estate gates to the bus stop, and her night off.

“Any better today, sweetness?” Caroline asked, sitting down and taking a joint from her jeans pocket and lighting up.

The phone rang inside the house. Darryl lurched to his feet, saying, “I did okay in coffee. Made a buck or two. But I got hammered again in currencies. Big time.” He stepped into the house, carefully closing the sliding glass door behind him.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Caroline muttered, watching him pick up the phone in the television room. She took a hit off her joint. When she exhaled, it sounded like a sigh.

She smoked and watched Darryl waving a hand and talking. Behind him, the colors on the television screen changed into electric blues, greens, and reds, and became a map of Israel, Jordan, and Syria, which was replaced by the image of a handsome young man in a safari jacket talking into a microphone in a desert. Caroline wondered, Would he find me attractive? The correspondent’s eyes narrowed, as if he were thinking it over. Then his hair lifted, like the wing of a bird, revealing a bald spot the size of Jordan. Caroline shouted with laughter.

Darryl paced around the television room: tall, red-haired, muscular, dressed in chinos and a blue Izod shirt, moving his right arm as if he were conducting the conversation. Still handsome, Caroline thought. She’d fallen in love with him when she was sixteen years old and he was twenty. He desired her still. She was as certain of that as she was of anything else in this darkening world. Lately, though, he had been making love to her with such a blind, nuzzling intensity that she felt herself recoiling from him. His need frightened her. At the same time, her response left her feeling inadequate and guilty.

Well, she would get him a nice safari jacket for his birthday. She watched the frown on his face and drifted into a fantasy: Darryl was talking to the correspondent in the desert. Together they were solving a knotty international problem. I told Arafat that he better cut the crap. Something like that.

Darryl slid open the door and returned to slump into the chair next to her.

Caroline glanced at him. “What’s happening, Mr. A?”

His face looked drained. “That client keeps calling to say that he’s going to kill me.”

Dread thumped on Caroline’s heart. She blinked and fingered a button on her blouse. “Have you called the police?”

“It’s under control.”

“Control?” She sat up and flicked away her joint. “Whose control? He’s calling you at home?”

“Well, he’s upset.”

“And you’re not? He should be locked up.”

“I’ve got to keep him talking. Calm him down.”

“So, are we in danger? And damn you, Darryl, don’t you lie to me.”

“He’ll calm down. And there’s a guard on the gate and police on tap. We’re safe.”

“I don’t feel safe. I mean — you’re going to do nothing?”

“I’ve just got to live with it for a while. It’ll blow over. Someday I’ll kick his ass. He’s a jerk. The market turned against him and he started hollering that I’d robbed him.”

Caroline asked where this client was from, and Darryl said that, as far as he could make out, he’d begun in Ecuador but had ended up in Panama. Darryl shrugged. “He uses a Panamanian passport. But who knows? He hangs out on Key Biscayne when he’s not in Panama.”

“He’s the only one complaining?”

Darryl looked darkly at her. “In a down market, everybody complains.”

“But he says you clipped him? Why would he think that?”

Darryl shrugged. It wasn’t what she thought. This guy loved playing the commodities market. Darryl had made a lot of money for him in the past. Last week, however, he’d lost big time — stopped out, three days in a row. Darryl had told him, “Cool off.” But he was hot to jump in again. Well, he’d lost again, big time. Now he claimed it was Darryl’s fault. He wanted his money back.

“And the threats?”

“You want his actual words?”

She looked away. She didn’t want to hear the threats. “Well, anyway, this isn’t Ecuador, or wherever he’s from.”

“Oh, no. Thank God we live in little old Miami, where everybody fears God and pays their taxes.” Darryl nodded over his shoulder. “Like that nice Mr. Dominguez.”

“This is not a sane way to live.”

“Well, my choices are limited at the moment.”

Caroline asked if maybe, just maybe, Darryl was getting too old for the commodities game?

Darryl bristled. “You don’t like the style of life we have down here? I do it for you and the children. You want to go back to Chunchula, Alabama?”

She gave him a troubled smile. She told him that she surely loved him more alive than dead. And his children did too.

“Lover,” he said, calming down. He took her hand and kissed it and admitted that maybe his life was a little too exciting now. That happened in his business. It was part of the adventure. As soon as he was clear of this little problem, they would think about changing things. Right now, he had to sit tight and roll with the punches.

Darryl told her a story about how Napoleon interviewed officers slated for high rank. The last question Napoleon asked was: Are you lucky? If they hesitated, or said no, he didn’t promote them. Darryl grinned. “I damn well know what I would’ve told him.”

Caroline had heard the story before. Tonight, it lacked its old magic. An aggressive attitude to luck might help on a battlefield. But in business? She worried that Darryl bragged about luck just to keep himself moving through the scary scenarios he seemed bent on creating for himself these days. Maybe bragging was a fuel. Or a mantra. Or a charm. He’d always been addicted to danger, to the edge, to the thrill of winning big. A little impromptu craziness had made life interesting for him. It used to refresh him. Now it seemed to her as if something else was going on.

She worried about Darryl’s attitude toward other people’s money. She used to love hearing him romance a client: his voice had carried a weird and beautiful music, rich and deep and sexy — a “brown velvet” voice, somebody had once called it. But over the years she had identified new sounds, less beautiful. Now when the check changed hands, the music suffered a modulation too. She heard dry notes of contempt in Darryl’s voice. Darryl acted as if the client had signed away his rights over his own money, and Darryl resisted with bewilderment and outrage any client’s attempts to withdraw his account. He acted as if the client were trying to weasel away his, Darryl’s, property.

Caroline worried that Darryl was growing addicted to the stronger jolt, the darker thrill, of losing big. She had been trying to identify the signs. Was she seeing another example tonight? She wasn’t sure. He’d deny it, of course. Could she tell before it was too late? The fragility of their life worried Caroline, but it seemed to excite something in Darryl.

“Lover?” he said. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m thinking of making some big changes.”

“When?”

“Well, as soon as I get clear of these problems.”

They looked at each other, and then away, toward the canal, where the Lay-Z-Girl gently chafed at its moorings in the evening breeze.

Courtney and Kyle returned to the patio just as the telephone rang again. Their father went into the television room and returned immediately, shaking his head at their mother.

“So, Daddy,” Kyle said, “what’s the big surprise?”

His remark startled his parents. They stared at him.

“Surprise?” Caroline said, reaching up to finger the button at her throat.

“Daddy,” Courtney said, “you promised a surprise.”

“Oh, that surprise.“ Their father put his face in his hands and choked with laughter, and his neck flushed bright pink. When he didn’t stop laughing, the children grew uneasy. They looked to their mother for guidance and saw her staring at the top of their father’s balding head, as if there were something wrong with its color or shape. The phone rang and both parents moved, but their father was faster. His absence left everybody on the patio wordless and uneasy.

He was back in a moment. As he came out onto the patio, Darryl breathed out sharply, clapped his hands, and shouted, “Ghost!” That got everybody’s attention. He said, “We’re playing Ghost tonight. That’s the surprise.” He waited for the confusion to subside. They’d played it once before: after their dinner, Mommy and Daddy had turned out all the lights and come searching for Courtney and Kyle.

Caroline said, “Not tonight.”

Courtney said, “I hate that game.”

Kyle said, “What’s the prize?”

“Something really nice,” Darryl said. “Now listen up.”

They’d play for only an hour. Kyle giggled and said, “I’ll hide at Brandon’s house.” No, Darryl told him, nobody could leave the house. Whoever remained free, or was the last to get caught, won the game.

“What’s the prize?” Kyle said.

“It’s a su-prize,” Darryl said. The children examined this statement and rejected it as adult nonsense.

Kyle gasped, “We’re staying up late,” and his mother said, “Not too late. School tomorrow. Tonight’s special.” Why was it special? the children wanted to know, and their mother directed them to their father for their answer. He winked and said that it was a secret. “Why is everything a surprise or a secret?” Courtney said.

“Is this necessary?” Caroline said. She sensed her evening sliding toward a dark corner. But she knew that marijuana stoked her paranoid tendencies, and she was confused about what she really felt, so she went out of her way to enunciate her doubts in reasonable tones. “Do we really need this tonight, honey?” They were eating on the patio. The children had been banished to the television room. Caroline served the food that Mrs. Hernandez had prepared — pork chops and rice, a salad of crispy greens, and a bottle of Chilean cabernet — and then she brought out the portable television so she could keep an eye on a rerun of Star Trek while she ate.

Darryl had drunk himself into a mood where he found life piquant. “C’mon,” he said, “I need a little lighthearted fun. It’s just a game.” He laughed. “It reminds me of what my daddy said to me at his own daddy’s funeral: ‘These are the jokes, so start laughing.’”

“Stop.” Caroline put down her fork.

The image of Mr. Spock came on the television screen and said, “Irritation. Ah, yes. One of your earth emotions.”

“Darryl, this just doesn’t sound right.”

He shrugged. “Isn’t it like life? You’re in your house and it feels safe, but suddenly it’s dark as Hades, and out there are people who are coming to get you.”

“I forbid you to talk like that.” Caroline blinked at the pale light coming down over the canal and felt a heavy downward drop in her emotions. “Let’s just take the kids to Dairy Queen, okay?”

They wrangled quietly. “I was joking,” Darryl said. “The kids were bugging me. We’ll play for an hour.”

Caroline, unhappy and distrustful, looked over at the portable television. Mr. Spock, wearing earphones, said, “This must be garbled. The tapes are badly burned. I get the captain giving the order to destroy his own ship.”

Caroline told Darryl that she’d think about it. She busied herself with her dinner, even through she wasn’t hungry now, and pretended to concentrate on Star Trek. Captain Kirk was ordering a twenty-four-hour watch on the sick bay.

And then she thought, Maybe I’m not being fair to him. Maybe I’m not being helpful. He’s so edgy tonight. He needs to play more than the kids do. She wavered and then gave in. “Okay. Okay. But only for an hour.” He brightened immediately. She looked away, feeling slightly creepy.

“Let’s do it right this time,” Darryl said. They discussed ways to turn themselves into ghosts.

“We need sheets,” Darryl said.

“You’re not cutting my good sheets,” she said.

“I’m talking about old sheets,” Darryl said.

Caroline said that all their sheets were new. She said, “Everything in this house is new.”

“But what’s a ghost without a sheet?” Darryl said.

From the television, Mr. Spock shouted, “We’re entering a force field of some kind! Sensor beam on!”

“Hold it!” Caroline shouted. “We’re almost ready. But not yet, so you can’t come in.” Courtney and Kyle wouldn’t stop tapping on the locked bedroom door, so their mother, whose hair had suddenly turned white and who was wearing the palest makeup she could find, burst out of the bathroom in her bra and panties, trotted across the bedroom, and shouted through the door for them to knock it off. The telephone rang and she picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?” She waited, and when nobody spoke she muttered, “Oh, fuck you,” and dropped the receiver into the cradle and walked to her dressing table and looked at the image of herself with white hair. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and sighed. She felt exhausted.

She reached into a drawer and retrieved a small vial. She dipped her finger, applied it to each nostril and inhaled, rubbed the finger around her gums, and then replaced the vial and went back into the bathroom, where Darryl waited nude in the shower stall singing an old Pink Floyd number about money, and she finished powdering his hair with flour.

She wiped the flour off his shoulder with a towel, kissed him on the lips, tweaked his nipples, and fondled his penis. She stepped back, her eyes hard and sparkling, and considered her handiwork. From the shower stall, Darryl, smiling, red-faced, and drunk, blew kisses at her.

“Hmmmnnn,” she said.

“Hmmmnnn what, baby?” he said.

She said, “I just wanted to see how you’d look as an old white-haired cracker with a hard-on.”

The children rushed through the doorway and halted just inside the bedroom and almost fell over with fright. In front of them, holding hands side by side on the bed, sat two laughing ghosts with pale, shiny faces, chalky white heads, and bloodshot eyes. They wore flowing white sheets. The ghosts raised their hands in the air, flopped them around and wailed, “Whooooooooo!” and Kyle turned and ran into the doorframe.

A ghost jumped up and took Kyle’s face in its white-dusted hands and said, “Honey, you all right?”

Kyle looked up with one of his eyes shut and said, “Mom?”

The ghost nodded.

Kyle said, “You scared me.”

The ghost bent back Kyle’s head to examine the bump over his eye and asked, “You sure you’re all right?”

Kyle nodded.

“You want to play the game?”

Kyle nodded again. “I guess so.”

“It’s only for an hour,” the other ghost said, and Courtney said, “Kyle’s so spastic.”

“So, if we’re all okay...” Darryl said. He reminded them that no lights or flashlights were allowed during the game.

“And Kyle better find his own hiding place,” Courtney said.

Darryl told them that the ghosts would wait in this bedroom, then come out and search for the children, ha ha ha.

Courtney pressed her hand to her forehead and said, “Dad, you’re weird.”

Darryl, noticing a look on Kyle’s face, said, “And you can’t just give up. If you’re caught you’ll have to wait in the TV room — with the TV off. Under no circumstances can you go outside the house. Okay?”

Kyle nodded and touched the bump on his forehead and said, “But what’s the prize?”

“A Peanut Buster Parfait at Dairy Queen,” Darryl said.

“Tonight?” Kyle said, in a rising voice.

Darryl nodded.

“Wow!” Kyle said, and even Courtney forgot herself enough to show enthusiasm.

“So, we’re ready?” Darryl asked.

From where the children waited in the TV room, they caught glimpses of the ghosts floating around the house, turning off lights. They heard, in the gathering darkness, one ghost remind the other about the alarm system. Then the ghosts returned to the doorway of their bedroom, their sheets billowing behind them.

Darryl called out, “Children, can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” the children shouted.

They had ten minutes to hide themselves, he announced. “From now.” He slammed shut the bedroom door, and he and the other ghost groped toward the bed and lay down side by side in the darkness.

He said, “Lordy, think of them creeping around out there like mice.” Caroline said she didn’t know if she had the energy to spend an hour chasing the kids around a dark house, and Darryl reached over and touched her nipple and said, “Who says you have to do that? I’ve got a great idea. Want to hear?”

“Hmmmmnnn — probably not,” she said. “But tell me anyhow.”

As he began to speak she sat up, moved off the bed, and found her way over to her dresser. She quietly opened the drawer, found her little vial, and applied some of its contents to her nostrils and gums, and when her husband paused to ask what on earth she was doing at her dressing table, she sniffed and told him that she was looking for her eye drops, because flour from her hair was irritating her eyes.

“I’ll take some,” Darryl said.

“Some what?” she said.

“Eye drops,” he said, and she said, “Coming right up!”

A moment later she started swearing because, she said, she’d just dropped the container on the shag carpet and now she couldn’t find it.

Kyle couldn’t find a place to hide. Every spot he chose turned out to be too obvious, or it bothered Courtney, who seemed to be playing a game of her own, popping up behind him in every room he went into and hissing at him to go away. He finally returned to the living room and squeezed himself under the sofa. Kosmo the cat came over to keep him company and interpreted all of Kyle’s efforts to shoo him off as invitations to play, and just when Kyle realized that he’d picked another stupid place to hide, he heard his parents’ bedroom door open. His father’s voice called out, “Ten minutes is up. This is now officially a ghost house. Only ghosts live here. Watch out, heeeeeerrrre we come!”

From under the sofa, Kyle looked over and saw the two ghosts standing in the doorway of his parents’ bedroom. He whimpered when they laughed like those jungle animals from Africa he had seen on TV. As they began searching through the house, flapping their sheets and making terrible noises, Kosmo finally ran away, and Kyle squeezed himself into the tiniest ball he could imagine and tried not to think about the throbbing bump on his forehead, or about all places on his body that itched, or the fact that he badly needed to clear his throat, at least once. An hour seemed like forever.

The game glided over Caroline’s imagination with the sinister smoothness of a dream bird. She felt more energetic now, and she put her best effort into it. Action kept her paranoia — the panic feeling that she was wavering like an old quarter around the edge of a bottomless pit — far enough away to be bearable.

They swept through the house making ghostly noises, and the first place they looked for Kyle was under the living room sofa, because they both remembered that when Kyle was a little younger he loved to crawl under this sofa and declare himself invisible. Caroline spotted one of his feet and pointed it out to Darryl, who nodded. They circled the sofa, moaning and flapping their sheets, and went on in search of Courtney.

Caroline’s senses twitched when they passed the broom closet just off the kitchen, and they stopped and flapped their sheets outside that. While she was dancing around and tapping on the freezer next to it, Caroline felt a stronger twitch of intuition, and she led Darryl to the linen closet by the laundry room. She had remembered that Courtney loved the floral smell of the sachets slipped between the laundered sheets and towels to keep out the smell of mildew. The ghosts wept out her name, and Caroline rattled the linen closet doorknob and felt a sudden pull from the other side. She pulled harder, but the door wouldn’t budge. She pictured Courtney obstinately hanging on to the doorknob, and a wave of irritation rose up in her, and she felt a wild urge to yank open the door and strike terror into her daughter’s heart, and then she felt ashamed. She loved Courtney. Why should she want to terrorize her? Caroline was appalled at herself. This game had gone too far. She turned away and signaled urgently to Darryl. They made one last sweep through the house, then silently departed through the sliding glass door to the patio and fled across the lawn.

Courtney sat on a pile of towels in the linen closet and hung on to the doorknob with both hands. She wept as silently as she knew how. She had felt, through the door, the force of her mother’s anger, and it had shocked her. What had she done to deserve it? She knew she was overweight and unlovely, but she couldn’t help it. Her father was acting so weird too. She cried harder now, because she wanted to love him but he wouldn’t let her, and she felt so alone.

Kyle strained until he thought his ears were going to pop, but he only heard the thumping of his own blood. He waited and waited and waited for the ghosts to make a noise, and finally he just had to move his legs, and then he had to scratch all his itches, and after that he couldn’t stop himself and he cleared his throat. Time dragged by. He couldn’t remember the house being this quiet, ever.

Caroline and Darryl threw cushions down on the dew-dampened afterdeck of the Lay-Z-Girl and tore off each other’s sheets, T-shirts, shorts, and underwear, and made love in the silvery light of an almost full moon, as if they were young again and back in a field outside Chunchula, Alabama. Ah, it was sweet and powerful, the best ever, they told each other afterward. Sweaty and relaxed, they dozed for a while, until the crisp growl of twin outboard engines, approaching in the canal from the direction of Biscayne Bay, awakened them. The outboard engines shut off close by, and they looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Jorge?”

“Jorge.”

Both of them had thought the same thing: young Jorge Dominguez was returning home. Darryl got up into a crouch, looked over the railing, and glimpsed two figures moving across the Dominguezes’ lawn. He lay back down again next to Caroline. They decided that Jorge had taken his girlfriend out in his boat, to smoke a joint or fuck in the moonlight.

“Someday,” Darryl murmured, lying on his back and tracking the blinking lights of a passing airplane, “I’ll get me a sweet little .357 Magnum and take Jorge’s heart for a spin over the red line. I surely will. I swear it on the grave of my Aunt Alice, who always had a strap handy for uppity children — I’m not joking,” he said, turning toward Caroline.

“You’re my big strong hero,” she said, fondling him. “Sure you are.”

Kyle flitted from room to room, growing more and more upset. He was alone, all alone in this dark house. They’d gone away and left him. Even the cat was gone.

Or maybe they were playing a joke on him? Yes, that was it, he thought with a burst of blistering hatred, because Courtney was a bully and she always got what she wanted and she loved to gang up on him, and now they’d taken her side. Now they were all together someplace, laughing at him. They were waiting for him to act like a baby. Well, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t call out or turn on any lights.

But what was he supposed to do? Where was everybody? He’d checked everywhere — now he was coming out of his parents’ bathroom, leaving a safe zone of damp towels and reassuring smells, the scent of his mother’s perfumed powder, his father’s cologne. He walked through a house now unfamiliar, pretending not to notice how the walls bulged out at him. It was hard not to shout with fear when he saw the dark hairy animals that had taken the place of the chairs and sofas he had known. He pretended he didn’t see them, and the animals stopped breathing and watched with glowing eyes as he passed. He heard their hearts beating; they gave off a rank, rotten smell as they inched nearer in the darkness, on every side. He knew that they longed to touch him.

He slipped into the kitchen, quietly closing the door behind him, sniffing the air and finding faint traces of the pork chop and rice Mrs. Hernandez had served him for supper. He missed her and her kindly, rough hands. He felt so alone. He fetched up in front of the refrigerator, pondering his father’s last words: This is now officially a ghost house. Was that a secret message which Courtney had understood, but which he, Kyle, had missed? Would it be a ghost house forever? Did they have to abandon it? As Kyle repeated his father’s words in his mind, they became alien and threatening. He opened the refrigerator door. The light was wonderfully bright and warm. He reached in, grabbed four slices of bologna, shut the refrigerator door, and stuffed the bologna into his mouth. He stood there in the dark, chewing.

The more Kyle thought about it, the more he grew convinced that they were all someplace together, Mom, Dad, and Courtney. Well, if they weren’t inside, they weren’t playing fair.

They were together outside. That had to be it. He pictured them sitting together on the back terrace, near the pool, waiting to see how long it would take dumb Kyle to figure out their big joke, and because this picture was the brightest thing in his world at the moment, Kyle accepted it as the truth. Courtney had gotten hold of his mom and dad. Now they were on her side.

So now he’d leave the house too. He’d sneak around to the terrace, where they were sitting around playing their big joke on him, and he’d leap out of the bushes and give them the fright of their lives. Ha ha ha! he’d yell. He’d beat up Courtney. He’d wipe everyone out, pow pow pow. Then they’d be sorry. Boy, would everybody be sorry when Kyle the Avenger jumped onto that terrace. They’d see how Courtney had lied to them and they’d never ever play a stupid joke on Kyle again.

He grinned as he opened the kitchen door, slipped into the night, and began trotting toward the back of the house and the terrace. He was playing that scene over again in his mind, the one where Kyle the Avenger jumps onto the terrace and frightens the willies out of everybody, when he heard a noise behind him. He dropped down on the ground and froze against the side of the house. He looked back and saw two figures in dark clothes detach themselves from the Surinam cherry hedge. They had come from the Dominguezes’ yard. They walked directly over to the kitchen door and opened it, silently entered the house, and just as silently closed the door behind them. Kyle stared at where they’d been. They’d moved so smoothly, so quickly, so quietly. Like ghosts. For a moment, Kyle found it hard to breathe. He felt dizzy and light-headed; he wanted to clear his throat, but he fought against it, and then he began to gag.

He jumped up and plunged through the Surinam cherry hedge and landed on his hands and knees in the Dominguezes’ yard, where he quietly vomited up the bologna. He wiped his mouth with his hand and flopped onto his back in the grass and lay shaking in the darkness. Music poured from the Dominguezes’ house, and it felt soothing and familiar to him. Dad hadn’t told him there were other people playing the game. Where’d they come from? Why were they wearing dark clothes?

Lying in the Dominguezes’ yard, Kyle looked up at the moon and thought of the ghosts in dark clothes. Boy, were they scary. He never wanted to play this game again. He closed his eyes and saw stars and felt dizzy, so he opened his eyes and stared up at the sky and wondered how long he’d have to wait until the game was finally over and he could go home and fall asleep in his own bed.

“Christ Almighty, would you listen to that racket?” Darryl said when the heavy metal rock music started up at the Dominguez house. Darryl and Caroline had dozed off again; the music had awakened them.

“I’m going to the head,” Caroline muttered, “and then let’s collect the kids. Don’t forget we’ve got to take them to Dairy Queen.” She kissed him, then groaned as she got off the deck. “I’m getting old, sweetness,” she said, descending the stairs. “Old.”

Darryl moved to a chair moist with dew. He looked up at the stars and over at the lurid night sky above downtown Miami. He felt better than he had in a long while. Getting out of the house and away from the telephone and making love to Caroline in the moonlight had brought him to a place of balance between the ever-tightening inner craziness of the last few weeks and a sense of future possibilities. He felt refreshed. Hopeful. He loved his wife and he loved his children. He stretched, feeling sexy and content and not at all drunk. He knew he could solve his problems. He was ready to fight the fight. “Fucking rock music,” he muttered, staring at his neighbor’s house. How could old Dominguez stand that shit? Was he deaf?

“That client — the one who’s been threatening you?” Caroline was coming back up onto the deck.

Darryl sighed.

She peered up at the sky and began to pick up her clothes. “What are you going to do?”

“Make a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I’ll make them happy. I’m thinking of a way to pay them back.”

She stopped dressing and stared at him. “Them?”

“Yes.” He looked at her. “I told you that.”

“You did?” She began crying.

He touched her, but she moved away. He opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He pulled on his shorts and T-shirt.

She zipped up her shorts, weeping. “What are we going to do?”

“I borrowed some of their money.”

“Borrowed?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, for God’s sake, give it back.” Her head emerged from her T-shirt.

“I don’t have it right now.”

“What have you done with it?”

“It’s gone.” He opened his hands. “I’m in a deep hole.”

She wept again. “Oh, tell them — anything.”

“I’ve been doing that.”

She hugged herself. “This is too much.”

“It’s business. I can’t panic, or they’ll be on me like sharks.”

“Aren’t we talking about your life — our lives? Is it all some kind of a game to you?”

“No.” He felt her receding from him and he wanted to set things right between them. He told her that he loved her, and he embraced her, breathing in her smell, waiting to feel her soften. She didn’t, so he stepped back and willed a smile onto his face. “Look,” he said, “I screwed up, but I know a way to get out of it.”

“How?”

“My luck’s got to hold out a day or so, and then I’m clear. I want a different life. I can’t go on like this. And that’s a definite promise. We’ll sit down and you’ll tell me what you want and we’ll make a plan.”

She stared at him. “You’re never going to change, are you?”

He remembered the flour in his hair and felt self-conscious. He must look absurd. “I’m changing,” he said. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“My biggest worry at the moment,” he went on, rubbing his head, “is how I’m going to get this gunk out of my hair. Go back to the house and round up the kids and we’ll go out to Dairy Queen. I’ll use the boat dock hose and be right there.”

She climbed down onto the concrete edge of the canal, and then looked toward their house. It was dark and silent. Compared to the Dominguezes’, so bright, throbbing with music and energy, her house seemed like the negative of a house. The children, she thought, were being unusually patient and quiet. She looked up at Darryl. She was angry at him and disappointed. “Oh, hurry up,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

She gazed up at him, then turned and started into the darkness. Darryl tried, and failed, to find something reassuring to call after her.

He stepped into the cockpit, groped around, found a key, fitted it into the ignition, and tried to start the twin diesel engines.

The Lay-Z-Girl was Darryl’s province, one in which Caroline was not interested. She hated fishing, and she complained about sunburn and seasickness.

The Lay-Z-Girl badly needed repairs. Now the main engines wouldn’t start. He couldn’t work the radio. The gauges for the three fuel tanks were hovering near empty. He gave out a deep sigh. How he had loved this boat. And what a mess his life had become. He had told Caroline the truth. He wanted to change. But what was he going to do about Narciso? A solution seemed impossible but at the same time close, very close.

On his way back to the railing, he almost tripped over the sheets that Caroline and he had shed on the deck. He threw them over his shoulder, climbed down onto the concrete dock, turned on the hose, then changed his mind and turned it off.

He’d seen the Dominguezes’ lawn explode into low fountains of water. Their automatic sprinklers had come on. In the light from their porch, Darryl saw droplets sparkling on their grass. It was a strange and beautiful sight. His own lawn was dark. So was the house. Caroline hadn’t turned on the lights. He halted, uneasy, and stared at his house and around his backyard. He felt that something was wrong with it all, but he didn’t know what it was.

His house was perfectly quiet. Darkness seemed to flow out of it toward him in dense waves. He felt a spurt of anxiety and fought to control it. Where was Caroline? Where were the kids?

“Caroline?” he called. There was no answer. He thought that he glimpsed a dark movement behind the sliding glass door to the living room. “Caroline?” he called again. Why didn’t she answer?

Darryl studied his house. For some reason, it didn’t look like his home. It seemed alien. He didn’t like it. He glanced with irritation at all the bright lights illuminating the Dominguezes’ house, and he wrestled down his anxiety.

He made up his mind: he’d had enough paranoia for one day. He was tired and he wanted this game to be over. There was, he decided, only one reason for the silence in his house. His family was waiting inside in the darkness to surprise him. Well, he’d play along, even though the notion of moving into that darkness gave him the creeps.

He wanted to be greeted by warmth and light and happy children. He had a vision of them standing just inside the door, holding their breath, waiting to switch on the lights and yell, “Boo!” That vision propelled him forward, smiling.

Perhaps, he thought, as he walked up the lawn, rubbing the flour from his hair, perhaps when they got back from Dairy Queen, he’d switch on his porch lights and turn on his sprinklers and show the kids how beautiful water can be, even at night.