FLORIDA

MAYBE you're dying and you don't care anymore.

In the nothingness, the gray, islands almost disappear into the water. Black ovals the shape of leaves hide the crumbling of the universe. Key West Islands disappearing into the ocean.

You don't have anything more to say. You don't know what to do. Your whole life has been a mess. Grabbing on to whatever romance came along and holding on to it for dear life until it went so sour you had to vomit and leave. Then you'd recover, just like you recover from a hangover, by grabbing the next piece of tail who came along and wasn't so helpless or so demanding she'd force you to perceive reality.

One cunt's like every other cunt. One ideal's like every other ideal. When one dream goes, another takes its place. You're sick of standing in this shit and so you step out.

At the end of the world. Almost no one living in this perpetual Florida grayness. It may not be paradise, but it doesn't stink of the shit of your dreams. Not much to set you dreaming in this grayness.

There's an old dilapidated hotel on the island. Some old croaker who wheezes instead of talking runs the spa. As far as you know, the croaker won't bother you, no one else's staying at the hotel, and room-and-board are cheap. You decide to stay for a night.

There's nothing else to say. You're a piece of meat among other pieces of meat. It's like when you were at the hospital. The doctor couldn't get the needle in your vein to extract blood. Every time he stuck the needle in your arm, the vein rolled away. You felt like a piece of meat and you didn't care. You saw that the doctor saw living and dying and screaming people and the doctor didn't care if you were dying or screaming. So you didn't care if you were dying or screaming.

You can't tell what matters anymore. Every day you look out at the ocean and you see a tiny boat going down that grayness. One dark tiny boat going down the turbulent waters.

You're gonna stick with him, not cause you love him, but you've gone this far. You've opened yourself to trusting him so deeply if you turn back now, you'll be throwing everything you've got away. The only thing you can call your life. You'll be left with a rotting carcass. Besides, he's not so bad even if he is a gangster. The dimple in his double chin.

He knows how to handle you. He's cruel to you just up to a certain point. He knows that point and he knows if he was one bit crueler to you, you'd leave him. He knows when to press you, when to be a little bit crueler, and when to leave you alone. He really cares about you because he bothers to know you so well. Other people he doesn't bother about, he just kills them. He's gotten into you and he knows how to manipulate your limbs with his big naked hands.

He's a killer. O my God, he kills people. You know you've got to get away from him.

You look up in the car, and there he is. Driving the car, as usual. Never looking at you.

Johnny's running away from trouble again. He's always more trouble than the trouble from which he's running away.

You're the big one. The big dingbat. The winner. You're in this little hick town, this island, and you're gonna take it over until the boat comes. As usual you've got everything arranged and under control. You know how to move the little people around so you can get everything you want.

It's quiet here, and gray. Layers of gray and layers of gray. Like a numbness you can slice with your hand. When the numbness separates, there's nothing. This's what you want.

The ocean waves're moving regularly up and down the beach. They leave lines of shells on the beach and sometimes large jellyfish. You can see the shells and the jellyfish only when the light manages to squeeze through the gray layers. Otherwise the shells and jellyfish look like darker gray blobs, then rows, on the gray.

The day gets darker. You see that the beach isn't the sea. The crummy wood boards that lead to the sea look wet. The whole joint's crumbling apart. How many more years does this hotel have? Three? One? One more hurricane? Maybe tomorrow. You can see the bones of the world.

Somewhere behind you, you hear a car stop and voices. You don't believe that you're hearing anything.

So now shitface is gonna take out his little gun. Order everyone around with his little gun, the old fuddy-duddy who doesn't keep up this palsied outhouse, probably pisses in his pants, and the doddering old man who's been the only hotel guest for the last twenty years. Phooey. Isn't Johnny tough? Johnny and his gun. You hope the hotel's got a bar cause you're gonna have to stick with Johnny until you can get out of this grayness.

You need another man. In this grayness it's easier to find a bottle of booze.

What man's gonna want you now? Once upon a time you were really hot stuff. With your blonde hair and big child's eyes, eyes so big and wide they denied the way your nipples got hard under your sweater, men were drooling after you. You could get anyone you wanted. For nothing. Now you get beaten up and shoved around. Every now and then you get a gun shoved in your mouth.

“OK. Everyone get your hands up. I'm taking over here.”

You walk into the dark inner space of the hotel. You're gonna show them who's boss. A trembling white-haired guy appears with his hands held up.

You're dreaming that you're wearing your white Givenchy dress and your white and brown shoes. You're wading through about two feet of mud and water. Your dress is getting filthy, but you don't mind. You're trying to reach an old deserted house. Your fiancé's waiting for you there. You lift your eyes and see a large dark structure.

“We're almost there, dear.” Your red fingernails carefully flick a cake-crumb off your summer dress.

You're still alone and with the grace of God you'll die alone.

Maybe you'll die soon and it'll all be over. No more fakes.

The ocean's calm. It's almost evening and it looks like dawn with that strange yellow sun, under the dark gray sky, making the lower third of the sky white-yellow-gray. Sending a triangle of yellow-white light out over the ocean.

The air's still and stinks of fish. You realize a storm's coming. One storm more or less don't make any difference to you. You walk into the dark interior of the hotel and see a gun pointed at your face.

“Back against the wall.”

I moved back against the wall. I didn't feel frightened, yet.

“All of you, back against the wall.”

The geezer who ran the hotel was already rubbing his back so hard against the wall, the wallpaper was crumbling. A dame with booze in her hand who was standing against the hotel register didn't move.

The guy with the gun walked over and slashed her face open with the point of his gun. She looked at him and walked over to the wall.

Lightning.

The hotel door flies open.

“OK Johnny. Men are for fucking and women for friendship. When I'm not fucking you, I'm your enemy.”

I ignored what she said. The storm was coming up hard and fast and there was nothing I could do about that. The boat wouldn't come and I'd be stuck with these pawns for days.

“I want you to understand I'm boss here. This storm”

“It's a hurricane.”

I gave the old guy a dirty look. “Hurricane. It's gonna be a while and I don't want trouble. As far as I'm concerned, you're pieces on a checkerboard that I'm moving around so everything's easiest for me. You're either on the board or you're off the board.” I moved my gun.

The hotel door swung open and shut. When the door swung open again, an old guy in a wheelchair and a tall woman dressed in a lightish dress were standing in the doorway.

I thought I was hallucinating.

“Excuse me. I need help for my grandfather, Senator . . . “

“We're . . .”

You'd think this was Palm Springs at Christmas. “Both of you. Get over here. No, you,” I pointed my gun at the hotel clerk. He should be doing his job. “Shove the wheelchair against the wall. No funny business.”

I looked at the girl. “You can use your own legs, I presume?”

The girl was a looker. Legs and class. I wouldn't go near her if she was coated with hundred dollar bills. I didn't have to go near her. Johnny, as his drunk girlfriend called him, would be doing all our movements for us.

Hotel lights go out.

Old geezer takes advantage of blackness to try to shove wheelchair with guy in it at me. I laugh and shoot geezer in arm.

“Looks like someone else is going to have to be hotel clerk for a while.”

There're no lights and there's this storm, a hurricane I think, and there's this gangster and I'm totally confused. This isn't the way things are back home. Mummy and poppa always kept a quiet home, and now that they're dead,—they must not have loved me as much as I thought cause they died,—grandpa, the senator, takes care of me. I wish we were back home.

Grandpa said that politics was getting so crooked, he had to get away for awhile. He's not running from anyone; he's just trying to figure out how he can fight the crookedness more successfully. I want to be like grandpa: I want to fight for a better world.

I wonder if there are any more men in the world like grandpa. “All of you. Get to your rooms. Remember that people die when they go out in hurricanes. The phone lines are dead. There's no way you can escape.

“Don't get any funny ideas. Brave pigeons become dead pigeons. Remember: to me you're just pieces of meat.”

We were pieces of meat who were still bleeding. The worst was: we might stop bleeding soon.

“In two hours you'll all come down here for dinner. If we can't find any food, we'll live on the booze. I like giving parties. I'll wheel the senator to his room.”

“Get upstairs like he says.” She looked like an outraged mother hen, only her baby was an old man in a wheelchair and she was probably a virgin. I put my hand on her arm. I didn't want her making more trouble for all of us.

“Wait a second.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look like . . . a reasonable man. Is that monster going to hurt my grandfather?”

“I doubt it. Your grandfather's probably too important a person.”

“I didn't ask you to be smart. We're in a terrible situation and we have to help each other.”

“The kind of help I could give you honey you wouldn't want.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“I can tell by looking at your fingers. Your left hand pinky's shorter than the finger next to it. Now will you be a good girl and get upstairs?”

“You're a man! You could overpower this gangster. You wouldn't have to kill him. Just knock him cold.”

“A woman friend once told me the only thing men are good for is fucking. I'm afraid that's true.”

“You're not a man. A man would realize that his and other people's lives are in danger. Even if he didn't care about the other people, he'd try to save himself. You're a flea, or some kind of . . . amoeba who just accepts things.”

“Listen. I'm not going to do anything. I don't care how I die, honey.” I started walking up the stairs.

I began remembering her long legs and regretting I was walking away from her.

I wanted to kill him. The only thought in my mind was that I wanted to kill him.

I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I know, I'm hearing these screamings and sounds of beating that make the old hotel seem like a flea-studded whorehouse:

“. . . keep your mouth shut.”

“Why don't cha beat me up again? Hurting me takes the place of sex these days.”

“I'm a businessman. I want you to remember. I'm a quiet businessman and I like my friends to be quiet about me.”

“The only friends you have are dead men.

“You're just a cheap dice man, Johnny. A cheap dice man who's running from the real crooks, the big crooks, and you think you can be a big guy to these crummy people in this crummy hotel.”

“I suppose the takeover of The Flamingo and Virginia Hill's ‘suicide’ are small-time bits to you?

“I shouldn't ever talk to you. I weaken myself when I talk to you.”

“Johnny, straighten out. You're nothing Johnny, like me.”

“You stinkin’ whore. I'm gonna kill you one of these days. “

“You're nothing like me.

“Get me another drink, please Johnny”

I wanted to find my grandfather. I left the little room at the end of the hall against which the wild wind was beating and the trees and the telephone poles, the only bit of safety I had left, and I started down the hall. I knew my grandfather was somewhere downstairs.

The hotel was dark, almost black. Walls seemed to drift into more and more corners and walls. Finally I reached the stairs.

Large dark shapes moved in and out of the corners of my eyes. As I walked down the stairs, I saw the walls move, bend and almost crack, as if they were bowing to me. I was walking down the endless stairs in my long white dress. The train of my dress was slowly draped upward behind me. I felt so tall and proud my head was almost touching the ceiling. Soon I would be a new woman.

All the people I had ever known were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. My mother was crying and even my father had tears in his eyes. I was so happy I was almost crying. Somewhere in that mass of people, my fiancé, soon: my husband, was waiting for me.

What was I thinking? I had to find my grandfather. I was in a hotel which was being, for some reason, run by a gangster and I had to find my grandfather before the gangster killed him.

I was standing at the bottom of that endless flight of stairs. I could see the hotel door flying open and closed, almost flying off its hinges but not quite, and I could see the winds wiping the panes of glass out of the windows and I could hear the palm trees break and fall against the old hotel. I wanted to run, but I didn't know where I could go.

I realized that I've always wanted to run and never have anywhere to run to. I had to find my grandfather quickly. There were rooms and rooms and most of the rooms were empty and my grandfather was in one room and the gangster was in another room. I could hardly tell the rooms from the doors cause the large dark shapes were moving in front of and away from my eyes.

I couldn't see but I had to keep going. I stuck my hands out in front of me.

I kept on moving. Something clattered to the floor, and I almost tumbled.

A hand grabbed my wrist.

I didn't want to, but I couldn't get those legs out of my mind. I looked outside my room and saw those legs again. I didn't want to, I must have stopped thinking, but I began to follow them.

Long white legs.

They led me through the hall, down the stairs, and into some large room.

I found myself looking into that man's eyes. The one who wouldn't help me. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“We've done all our talking. I don't want anything to do with men who are cowards.

“Excuse me, I have to find my grandfather.”

“You've done all your talking. I still want to talk to you.”

She tried to brush by me. I put my two arms around the sides of her body.

“What d'you want?”

“I want to find out who you are.”

“I'm in trouble. Or do you want the irrelevant details?”

“Let's say I want the irrelevant details.”

“When I was two years old, I refused to drink milk. My parents, they were still alive then, were scared I was going to die. My father started to take a camera apart. Only when he started to break the camera, would I drink the milk.”

“That's certainly irrelevant.”

“Is it? I want to stay alive, Mr. Coward. I'm only interested in people who are going to help me stay alive.”

“Aren't you being self-centered? Tell me about mom and pops. When did they die on you?”

“When I was eight. Just old enough to start feeling insecure and not old enough to know how to ask someone for help. My grandfather took me into his house and gave me what attention he could.”

“Could? You mean you were a lonely child who spent lonely days making up fantasies and living in them?”

“My personal history concerns only those people who love me. Excuse me please.”

“Tell me more about your parents. Did they love you a lot when you were a child?”

“I want to find my grandfather.” I was begging him to help me.

“If you care at all about me, you'll help me find him.”

“I didn't know I cared about you.”

“Help me.”

For some reason I wanted to hear the rest of her words, but I couldn't. I kept hearing that stupid popular song, bits of it, that everyone was singing back where everyone was still living and burning each other out.

Baby don't give, baby don't get.

When it's cold, baby gets wet.

When baby gets wet, baby gets weak.

Baby don't find, baby don't seek.

You want to know the story of this song

It's about a woman who loves to go wrong.

She gets contented like a big fat cat

Only when she's lying flat on her back.

Well, this woman fell in love with a man

Just like some women unfortunately can.