Laurence Shames: Florida straits

They spent that night south of Miami so they could drive the Keys in daylight. Their motel room had a smell that would always be with them from then on, but which they would hardly ever notice again, it was so much a part of south Florida. The smell was a sort of far-off mildew mixed with salt, mixed with iodine, mixed with oysters choking on mud, mixed with a very fine dust of limestone that was always dissolving in the breeze. Rounding off the aroma was a hint of toasted sawdust, as if the termites cooked the wood as they ate it.

Joey and Sandra made love amid that Florida smell, then they listened for a few minutes to the locusts and the distant traffic, then Sandra started to cry.

"Hey?" said Joey. He touched her shoulder under the damp sheet.

"It's O.K.," she said. "It's O.K." She nuzzled her face into her pillow. "But Joey, aren't you even a little afraid we just won't like it here?"

He raised himself up on an elbow and breathed deeply of the dust, mold, and strange flowers closed up for the night. He'd never really thought about it quite that way. He'd decided he would like it, he didn't have to think about it. He was going someplace warm, to do some business, establish himself, launch an enterprise. The place had to be suitable, but beyond that? Did Al Capone like Chicago? Did Meyer Lansky like Las Vegas?

"It's gonna be fine," he said. "Terrific." He turned over and groped around in the dark to make sure his sunglasses were on the nightstand next to him. Then he fell asleep with just the haziest misgivings barely beginning to scratch at his brain.

"Islamorada," Joey said, pointing out the open window of the Cadillac at many millions of dollars' worth of gleaming boats. "That's where the President goes fishing. Also my Uncle Tony. He went fishing there once. Brought back this big stuffed thing, this fish with like a spike kinda nose. But the guy didn't stuff it right. Still smelled like fish. Then it rotted. Right up onna wall. Got all soft and started to drip. Uncle Tony was pissed."

Sandra rubbed sunblock on her pale arms and looked out at the bait shops and the seashell stores. Then she started smearing up her legs, and by the time she looked out the window again, the shops were gone, the palm trees were gone, everything was gone. "Joey," she said, "there's no land there." She grabbed her armrest.

"Ain't that something?" Joey said. "Yup. The Keys. Unbelievable. You ever hear of this guy-what was his name? Flagler. Right. This guy could organize. You see that other bridge over there?"

He pointed to an arc up on trestles that ran parallel to U.S. 1. Pelicans were perching on it, scratching their bellies with their beaks. Black kids were fishing, dropping hand lines into the shallow green water where the Gulf of Mexico met the Florida Straits.

"That was Flagler's railroad. Now get this, Sandra. Guy buys up all this land, dirt cheap 'cause you can't get to it. So he builds a railroad, which makes the land very valuable. He builds hotels, and he charges whatever he likes 'cause he's the only guy who's got 'em. It's like total control, and it's legal. Flagler needs cash, he sells a swamp somewhere for a few million. Oh, it's underwater? The land's onna bottom. Trust me. He puts up dog tracks, amusement parks. This guy had all the leverage. A genius."

Sandra looked over at the railroad trestle. "But Joey, there's big holes in it. I mean, places where it just stops."

And it was true that large stretches of shining water and empty sky could be seen through Henry Flagler's railroad

'Yup. That was the only problem. Hurricanes. Some trains blew inna water and it wasn't fun anymore, I guess. Well, you can't buy off a hurricane. At least this way boats can get through." He adjusted his sunglasses, wiggled the plastic earpieces through his hair.

Sandra watched him out of the corner of her eye. Joey was not usually so chatty, almost never before noon. Most days he woke up grumpy, his mood as rough as his morning stubble. Sandra wasn't crazy about that, but at least she was used to it.

"You say you've never been here before?"

Joey was too wrapped up in the scenery to notice that the question had a suspicious edge to it. True, there were things he didn't tell Sandra, though they were not the sort of things a girlfriend needed to get jealous about, just things it was better she didn't know. But he'd never been to the Keys before, and he said so.

"You seem to know a lot about the place."

He let go of the steering wheel and shrugged. "I know people who've been here."

"Like your Uncle Tony."

"Yeah, Uncle Tony. And my mother."

Sandra paused. She seemed surprised-not that Joey's mother had been to the Keys but that Joey mentioned it. His mother had been dead six years. Sandra had never met the woman, and Joey never talked about her if he could help it. Three, four times a year, she came up in conversation, usually around some holiday, when everyone was feeling lousy anyway. Not that Joey hadn't loved his mother. That was just it. He had, Sandra knew that. But Joey was not one of those people who managed to pull some sweet juice out of being sad. For him, to linger on a sad thing that couldn't be fixed was as pointless as sticking your finger in your eye.

"When was your mother down here?" Sandra ventured.

Joey looked away from her, out the window at the pelicans, and waited to see if he'd get the usual knot in his belly and if it would clamp his mouth. It didn't happen. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe just being away from Queens. "I think she was here a few times," he said.

Sandra stayed still and quiet.

"I never really got the story straight," Joey continued. "And of course I'm never gonna hear it from my old man. But as well as I can make out, what happened was like, if my father had business in Miami or Tampa or even Havana in the old days, he'd arrange for my mother to come down, and they'd have a few days together. You know. Some lobsters, some champagne, some dancing, some jazz, some walks onna beach. Pretty romantic, I guess. Then he'd go back to the wife and baby Gino, and my mother would ride home on a separate train."

He squeezed the steering wheel, pursed his lips, and tugged on an earlobe. "Fucking sordid, isn't it?"

"If they cared for each other…" Sandra began. But then, as though the notion didn't convince her, she let it trail off through the open roof. Joey flashed her a bent look that seemed to say, Thanks for trying, but the notion didn't persuade him either. He blew out a long breath, turned on the radio, and listened to static for a while.

"Reception sucks down here," he said.

It took Seven-Mile Bridge to pull him out of his sulk.

"Now this is really something, Sandra. Seven miles, nothing but water. How'd they do it? Like hammer some stakes innee ocean? I mean, this whole road is just like… like if they had a pier at Coney Island that ran practically to Sandy Hook. I mean, look at this!"

Sandra held on to her armrest and squirmed, as if trying to find a shady place in the roofless car. Pelicans scudded by, big and slow as clouds, and terns dove underneath the trestles. Joey clicked on the cruise control and half stood in the driver's seat to get a better view of the green water dotted with clumps of dusty mangrove and splotched with reddish patches of submerged coral. The salt wind steamed his sunglasses even though the air felt dry.

"You love it, huh?" Sandra shouted skyward.

"Love it," Joey said. "Feels like home."

He let the Caddy steer itself and spread his arms out wide, laying claim to the green water, the diving birds, the tinted sky. Sandra glanced up at him and tried to shield her sunburned forehead. All the sunblock in the world wasn't going to keep her from turning pink.

"I mean, Sandra baby, I got no waya being sure, but like, the way it feels, I think maybe I was conceived down here."