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The Green Parrot Bar on Sunday nights is a sleepy saloon catering to a handful of locals and a couple of diehards playing pool. The familiar sounds of cracked billiard balls and a baseball game on a television near the small stage bolstered the room.

I had followed Jankowski to the Green Parrot. He parked his car on Whitehead, me on Southard. Seated at a high-top table near the door, I watched him enter. Jankowski sat at the bar and lingered impatiently for someone to take notice. I bummed a cigarette from the guy at the table next to me. Key West was one of the last places in America where you could still smoke in a bar.

Working behind the stick was a chrome dome with bushy gray eyebrows, and a pig nose. That’s being kind. The dude wasn't anything to look at if you could help it. As he replaced a keg, Jankowski tired of waiting.

“Excuse me,” Jankowski said. Pig Man looked up. “Stacy working today?”

“Stacy?” he said. “She'll be right out.”

The island was getting smaller by the hour. First Carl Polk, now Stacy. Who was next, Javier? I don’t like small worlds. I like a big world where people are spread out far and wide. I’m okay with not seeing a familiar face for a while. I like being surrounded by strangers. In a strange world, a man can be anyone he wants to be.

Jankowski fidgeted, leaned on the bar top, and waited. Pig Man asked if he wanted a drink and Jankowski shook his head no. The pool players were in an argument over the finer rules of snooker, and I sucked down the last of my cig.

A toilet flushed and after a few minutes, the women's bathroom door swung open, and Stacy walked out. Jean shorty-shorts, black Green Parrot tank top, just how she was when we first met. Her hair was wild, combed but not styled. It went well with the easygoing lifestyle of the Keys. Stacy saw me and smiled. I was still in good graces. She made a beeline for me at my table, wrapped her arms around my neck, and squeezed. A nice surprise.

“Hey, you. Where've you been? I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to see you again.”

“I was taking in the sights.”

“I'm glad you came back.”

Those cotton candy lips smiled for me again, her clover eyes bright and cheery. She smelled like coconut.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I said.

“I have my moments.”

“What was up with the cops? Already causing trouble?”

“It was nothing. I fit the description. You know, black.”

Stacy smirked and slapped my shoulder.

“Stacy,” Pig Man squealed.

“Duty calls,” she said, and she walked to the bar.

Pig Man said something to her, and Stacy looked past him to Peter Jankowski. She then looked back at me and smiled again. I do have my moments, I must admit. And apparently Stacy—I still didn't know her last name—had some Cutter fever. It happens. Not often enough, but it happens. Women have been known to fall under my spell when it matters, even when it doesn’t. I’ve been known to dispel those feelings by opening my mouth, though. I smiled back at her and waved.

She winked at me and took her post behind the bar. When she stood in front of Jankowski, he leaned close to her and talked low so no one could hear what he had to say. She shook her head no. He pressed on. Stacy shrugged, and Jankowski glared at her.

“You’re lying!” Jankowski shouted.

He slammed the palm of his hand on the bar top for effect. Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing and looked. Stacy didn’t miss a beat.

“Hey, buddy, you got a problem tell it to your psychiatrist, or have a drink. I recommend the drink, it’s cheaper.”

She turned away from him, but Jankowski wasn’t done. He reached across the bar, grabbed Stacy by the arm, and jerked her back to him. His face was as red as a baboon’s ass and twisted together like dirty laundry.

“Where is it?” he shouted.

Stacy pulled her arm away, then threw a drink in his face. I was falling in love. The pool players burst into laughter. Other patrons were more subtle in their amusement. I was on my feet and at the bar in two steps, but Jankowski quickly exited.

“Don’t come back, asshole!” Stacy shouted. She turned and gave me a look, then laughed. “Were you coming to rescue me?”

The girl cut deep. She didn’t need my help. She took care of the situation herself. Probably dealt with people like Jankowski all the time, probably had been taking care of herself long before I came ashore. Embarrassed, all I did was grin like a schoolboy.

“Yeah, I guess I was.”

“You really are a cowboy, aren’t you?”

I shrugged and looked out the doors that opened to Whitehead Street. Jankowski’s Porsche drove by and that ended my stakeout.

Stacy poured some Don Julio over rocks and gave it to me without asking. I was falling in love, all right. She lightly brushed my cheek and went back to work. I sipped my tequila and had adult thoughts.

We barely knew each other, but we had a connection. Of course, sex has that effect on people. But I felt our connection was something more than that. Maybe it was the way she scoffed at my jokes or the way she looked at me. Her eyes were hypnotic. There was nothing pretentious about her. She was the genuine article, which was more than I could say about myself.

I tend to dance on the fringes. Keep people at arm’s length. Get too close and pain is sure to follow. I’ve spent a lifetime cornered in a confrontational world. I avoid as much of it as I can now. It’s a lonely life, but life is nothing but confrontation, sometimes good, sometimes bad. You take your chances just being alive. But Stacy stirred a purpose in me, beyond sex, something more. I began to wonder what that something more was. I decided I would learn Stacy’s last name and then go from there. What the hell, I was on vacation.

Pig Man said, “Do me a favor, Stacy. Don’t throw drinks on the customers.”

“You got it, boss.”

She looked back at me, and I saw a twinkle in her eye, and I smiled.

“What?” she said.

“Hey, how'd you like to go sailing tonight?”

She pursed her cotton candy lips and considered the idea of sailing the Florida Straits with a man she knew intimately but who was still a stranger.