Ann Beattie - Another You

Marshall was walking fast to keep up with him. Past Faustos, Gordon had turned right, onto Simonton. The conch train passed by, filled with tourists. Alongside it, a one-armed boy on Rollerblades kept pace. They caught up with him at the next red light, wheeling in backward circles.

“Do you wish you knew more?” Marshall said.

“More?” Gordon said. “Do I wish I knew more? No, I don’t wish I knew more.”

“Don’t think it would help you sleep?” Marshall said.

“Maybe it would. Never thought about it.”

“But you don’t wish—”

“There was more to know. I realize that,” Gordon said. “You know what I think? If I knew that stuff, there’d still be more to know. I talk to Beth more than I’ve ever talked to every other woman combined, and you know what? I will never know it all. I’ll know what she says that day. I’m not saying she’s a liar, or that she doesn’t want to talk to me. She’ll talk till she’s blue in the face most of the time. But every time she surprises me, I realize that I am simply never, ever going to have enough information to predict what she’ll do. Here in the Conch Republic, there’s a tradition I’ve come to depend on. Stand down at Mallory Square, or anywhere the tourists are, and when the sun sinks below the horizon line, everybody claps. I take it as a sign that people like a grand finale, but when they’ve had one, they’ve had one. Something like the sun gradually sinking is very distinct. You figure things out about people when they rush off or you see them stick around to see the sky get more colorful, because that’s what happens. The colors deepen. It gets orange and bright blue and battleship gray. It gets real pink, and sometimes the pink’s shot through with lavender. A pink and purple sky. If you applauded all the while that spread out above you, you’d never get to drink your drink.”

A cat tried to rub against Gordon’s leg. He raised a foot in its direction, and it darted away.

“Fuck, man, you just got here, and look what I did. We missed sunset,” Gordon said, pushing open the front gate. “Can’t have you missing dinner, too. Hey, babe! How are those coals coming?” Gordon hollered.

They had burned to ash, they saw, but Beth, still meditating, had not restarted the fire.

HE SAT IN A canvas butterfly chair behind the dive shop, waiting for Gordon to get off the phone. The phone was a cordless, and Gordon kept wandering in and out of the store, so there wasn’t any way to tell from his end of the conversation whether Gordon was pleased or displeased by what Mr. Watanabe was saying. Marshall picked up Gordon’s sunglasses from the seat of another butterfly chair, put them on, and looked at the water, and the boats docked nearby, through the yellow lenses. The dive shop was closed for the day while Gordon’s partner, Hank, took inventory. Altiss, the Trinidadian roofer, was installing a skylight in the loft above the store. Mr. Watanabe had called from Fort Lauderdale and would not be coming to have dinner with Gordon that night — that much Marshall had understood.

“This is the good life,” Altiss said to Marshall, climbing down to get a cold drink from his Styrofoam cooler that sat near the cluster of butterfly chairs. “I recommend to you the profession of roofing. Very good money, and not as dirty as plumbing. I go once a month to Orlando to Walt Disney World, where there is always work to do on the roofs in the Magic Kingdom.” Altiss wore khaki shorts, a red T-shirt, and a many-pocketed vest. He also wore argyle socks and purple basketball sneakers. He grabbed his boom box and took it with him when he climbed the ladder to the roof.

Four days spent driving to Key West; three in Key West, four days until he would be home again in New Hampshire. Today, day three, when he had just begun to unwind, was his last day in what was alternatively referred to as Paradise or the Conch Republic. There had been a sunset sail planned with Mr. Watanabe, but when that plan fell through Gordon had rented the boat to a Texan and his girlfriend. Though the store was officially shut, Gordon hadn’t been able to resist answering the door when the man knocked, grinning from ear to ear and holding up his wallet, pointing his thumb in the direction of the boats moored off the dock. His wife or girlfriend had flirted with Gordon as Gordon pointed out the reef on the navigational map. “Check his bank balance before you turn your attentions, sugar,” the man had said, cupping his hand over her ass. It was all good-natured: the flirting was as obvious as her sparkling gold jewelry. The woman had been surprised when she couldn’t draw Marshall in. He had never liked being the object of someone’s flirtation. It usually had an edge he distrusted. He remembered Cheryl Lanier, drinking his Jack Daniel’s as he talked to Sonja on the telephone. If it was McCallum she’d been interested in, why had she bothered to flirt with him? Maybe he had been a backup flirtation. Or a flirtation within a flirtation, like a play within a play. A sailboat with PUCK written in fancy calligraphy had caught his eye, making him think of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . As he watched the boats bob, he realized he’d been wrong: it was a too fancily drawn L , not a P. What did that mean, he wondered — that the person who owned the boat had good luck, or that the person hoped to invoke it?

“He’s going to buy this place. I really think he is,” Gordon said, sprawling in the chair beside Marshall. “Apparently his secretary wants him to buy a Thai restaurant in Fort Lauderdale instead, but I said to him, ‘Why would you listen to your secretary?’ He’s Americanized enough to be pussy whipped. Thinks her opinions are as interesting as her snatch.”

“What’s the first thing you’re going to buy when you get rich?” Marshall asked.

“Ticket to Hawaii,” Gordon said.

“Two tickets, I presume.”

“You hinting?” Gordon smiled.

“No, not for myself. For Beth,” Marshall said.

“You think I got it right this time?” Gordon said. “I don’t know. I sure am fond of her, but I don’t know if she’s the lady I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“You’re kidding,” Marshall said.

“I’m serious.”

“Does she know it?”

Gordon shrugged. “She likes more action than she gets with me. I’m fourteen years older than Beth, you know. I shouldn’t be so cocksure she’ll always be around, even if I want her to be.”

“I thought you two were really in love,” Marshall said.

“Who’s really in love past the age of twenty? You and Sonja really in love?”

“We haven’t had a very good year,” Marshall said.

“I haven’t noticed you burning up the phone lines,” Gordon said.

“I’ve spoken to her,” Marshall said. “I called her before I got here.”

“Yeah? What did she say? Missing her hub and sorry she wasn’t in the Florida sunshine? Sonja doesn’t like me,” Gordon said. “She thinks I’m a lowlife.”

“She does not,” Marshall said.

Gordon lowered the yellow aviator glasses dangling from a red cord around his neck, raising one eyebrow. “I hereby indicate skepticism about what you just said,” Gordon said. “I also ask you to look at me impartially. I am a lowlife. I drink too much, I take a shower once a week, maybe twice, I skip out on work whenever I can, sit around topless bars out on the highway, and if I sell this damn business I’m out of here. I’m going to be draping orchids around my neck and dunking my butt in picturesque swimming holes below cascading waterfalls, attended by dark-haired Hawaiian beauties who live to give head. It’s the American Dream, bro: going to the westernmost point in America. Fuck this southernmost point in the United States bullshit. I want what’s across the water, and I am not talking Fidel Castro.”