James Sheehan - The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

JANUARY 1986, BASS CREEK, FLORIDA

Lucy liked to fish in the daylight. She enjoyed seeing her prey, but it was even more important that they see her. Focus their eyes on the feast while she set the hook ever so gently. She hooked Rudy the first time she walked into his store in her dungaree short-shorts and tight tank top.

“Hypnotize ’em and hook ’em,” she would have told her class if she had taught the sport. Rudy could have been exhibit number one. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and he couldn’t hide it either. Luckily there was only one other customer in the store, an old man Rudy rang up without so much as a glance. Lucy could tell she had him without even looking.

“Weight on the line. That’s how you do it, ladies. It’s all feel. And be patient. Don’t yank too quickly or he’ll get away. Let him run a little till he’s out of breath. Then you’ve got him. Catch him first-you can always throw him back.”

Rudy could have done some fishing of his own if he’d known how. Unlike Lucy, who packed it all into a small, tight body, Rudy was tall, the olive skin of his chiseled face punctuated with fierce brown eyes and framed by thick, coal black hair that shone like silk-hair that women dreamed about for themselves. Lucy wasn’t the first woman who had tried to hook young Rudy. They came in every night to the convenience store where he worked, every shape and size and age, but Rudy had been oblivious until now.

Lucy did that to the men from the barrios wherever she went. This one was on the outskirts of Bass Creek, a small town in the central portion of Florida just north of Lake Okeechobee. It was populated by Mexicans, Colombians, Indians, Puerto Ricans-mostly pickers, mostly seasonal. They lived in single-wides or housing provided by the growers-cinder block shacks with running water.

But Rudy didn’t live in the barrio, he wasn’t seasonal and he wasn’t a picker. He had come to Bass Creek with his mother, Elena Kelly, when he was a boy. They had lived in a run-down motel for a while until Elena got a job as a maid at the Bass Creek Hotel, the largest hotel in town, located just under the new bridge over the Okalatchee River.

Everybody liked the idea of the new bridge when word got around that they were going to build it. The old drawbridge was ugly, slow and cumbersome and it caused backups every fifteen minutes as it raised and lowered for the steady flow of river traffic. The new bridge would be modern and sleek and high enough so even the largest sailboats could cruise by unimpeded. The new bridge was supposed to provide local jobs and money. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Outside contractors were hired for the construction and brought their own people. Those workers stayed during the week and filled up the hotels but they were a vile lot, drinking and fighting and abusing the town. Elena, who was probably the prettiest woman in Bass Creek, had to stay hidden behind a locked door after dark. Rudy saw the change in her but never really understood it.

When the bridge was finally completed, the workers left and the cars flew by in one continuous stream. No need to stop anymore to let the highway of sailboats pass. No need to pull into this little town to browse, or eat, or perhaps spend the night. Bass Creek had been a rest stop on a friendly stream for tourists on their way to Miami or Fort Lauderdale. The old bridge had been the comma that caused those tourists to pause. Now the pause was gone, and the folks of Bass Creek who didn’t own orange groves, who survived in the service industries, took the brunt of the loss.

Sure, they still had the fishermen, but the fishing on Lake Okeechobee was a far cry from what it had been fifteen, twenty years ago. Overfishing and pollution had taken their toll on the old lake. Elena had worked hard those first few years before the new bridge and she’d made good money. And Bass Creek had been a good town to live in. Now it had lost its vitality. Stores on Main Street had been forced to close. McDonald’s and Burger King had built out by the highway and lured back some, but few of them were trickling into town.

The Bass Creek Hotel stood a full three stories high, the largest building in town. Before the new bridge was built, its coat of bright yellow paint had shone like the sun itself in the afternoon light. Part of Elena’s compensation had been a room to live in and meals in the hotel dining room for her and young Rudy. After she had inherited the manager’s position when the old manager deserted the place, Elena took over the large apartment in the back, which had two bedrooms and a full kitchen, and both she and Rudy had loved it. But now the hotel lay hidden from the sun, separated from the rest of the town, a gloomy, desolate place.

“How much is this?” Lucy was leaning on the counter holding a liter of Diet Coke with the price tag clearly visible. Rudy tried to concentrate on her bright white teeth, which were wrestling with a wad of gum, but in her low-cut, body-tight top, Lucy was providing him with a glimpse of something much more exotic. He couldn’t help but steal a glance. The store was now empty.

“How much?” Lucy broke the spell momentarily.

“Oh. Sorry. Ninety-nine cents. It’s on special.”

“You’re sure? You’re not just giving me a special deal, are you?” Lucy leaned all the way over, and Rudy could see the full contour of her breasts. He was thankful the counter shielded him from the waist down, but Lucy knew anyway. The hook was in.

“No. No. That’s the price,” he answered, his voice cracking.

“Well, I don’t believe you.” She crossed her arms tight against her breasts as she leaned. Rudy thought they were going to pop out right there on the counter. His mouth hung open in anticipation. “I don’t take a favor without returning one,” Lucy continued. “You come to my trailer tonight. Forty-four Mercer Street. It don’t matter what time, I’ll be there.” Rudy just nodded. He was too far gone to speak.

As soon as she left he grabbed a pencil and wrote down the address. Rudy was handsome and his smile could light up a room, but he was slow. “Not retarded, just slow,” the doctor had told Elena when she took him to be tested at age four when he hadn’t spoken one word. There was some technical jargon about a lack of oxygen when he was coming down the birth canal but Elena had been too shell-shocked to take in the details. Eventually, she had learned to cope and taught young Rudy to do the same. Writing things down right away was one of his methods. Staying out of dangerous situations was another. Something inside him warned that Lucy was danger but the urgings from another part of his body were all that Rudy heard.

He closed up at eleven and practically ran over to Mercer Street. There were no street lamps and at first he couldn’t find Forty-four but then he saw it, set back from the street in the darker shadows.

As he stood outside her door and got ready to knock, Rudy was as excited as a kid on his first date, which wasn’t too far off. Sure, he’d been out with girls during high school, but there hadn’t been many. He knew why, too. He’d heard the all-too-loud whispers behind his back. Nobody really messed with him because he’d quieted the first couple of kids who called him “Dumbo” or “Dunce” or “Shithead” to his face, but the whispers had never stopped. In fact, Rudy had never even made it to the proverbial second base. It was a part of his life that he tried not to think about, that he kept sealed behind a locked door, a lock that Lucy had picked in a matter of seconds.

She was waiting for him but she didn’t answer right away. “Let the anticipation build,” she would have told her class. Lucy had a doctorate in the subject of men, or so she thought.