It don’t take more than that to get shit started.
“Hey,” I shouted. “Come on back here!”
She glanced at me over her shoulder, her grin shining under a moon fresh out of hiding, then she skipped off behind some scrub palmetto. I was trying to recall her name as I ran, then a frond whacked me in the face and I slipped to a knee in the soft sand. I spotted her moving along a rise, framed by low stars. “Hell you going, girl?” I said, coming up beside her.
She slapped at a skeeter on her neck and said, “Lookit there.”
The land was all dips and rises, an old dune top gone nappy with shrubs and beach grass, but down below was a scooped-out circular area, wide and deep enough to bury a mini-mall in. Dead center of it stood a ranch house with cream-colored block walls and a composite roof and glass doors. If it was a giant banana, I couldn’t have been more startled.
“I heard about there was a house here,” she said. “But I swear I didn’t believe it!”
We scrambled down the slope and tromped around the house, peering in windows. Some rooms were empty, others were partly furnished, and though I wouldn’t have figured on it, the sliding door at the back was unlocked. I shoved it open and she put her hands over her head and got to snapping her fingers and hip-shaked across the threshold. A big leather sofa stood by its lonesome in the middle of the room. She struck a pose beside it, skinned off her jeans and showed me what I wanted. Wasn’t long before we were sweating all over each other, grunting and huffing like hogs in a hurry, our teeth clicking together when we kissed. The cushions got so slippery, we slid off onto the floor afterward and lay twisted together. The moon came pale through the flyspecked glass, but it wasn’t sufficient to light the corners of the room.
“God, I could use something to drink,” she said. “I know there can’t be nothing in the kitchen.”
My carpenter’s pants were puddled at the end of the couch. I undid the flap pockets and hauled out two wine coolers. “What you want?” I asked. “Tropical Strawberry or Mango Surprise?”
“I can’t believe you carrying ’round wine coolers in your pocket.”
“I hooked ’em off a truck when I was coming outa work.”
We unscrewed the caps, clinked our bottles and drank.
“My name’s Leeli, she said, sticking out her hand. I’m sorry but I forget yours.”
“Maceo.”
“That a family name? It’s so unusual!”
“It’s for some guitar player my mama liked.”
“Well, it’s real unusual.”
She seemed to be expecting me to take a turn, so I asked what a house was doing out there setting in a hole.
“Beats me. Government bought up all the land ’round here years ago. To keep people away from the Cape… ’cause of the rockets, y’know? But I never knew nothing was here. My ex, his friend runs a helicopter tourist ride? I guess he saw it once.”
“Maybe they opened it up for development,” I said. “And this here’s the model home.”
“Y’know, I bet you’re right!” She gave me a proud mama look, like My-ain’t-you-smart!
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I went to loving her up again. She started running hot and came astride me, but before she could settle herself, she let out a shriek and crawled over top the couch. I rolled my eyes back to see what had spooked her, said, “Shit—Jesus!” and next thing I was hunkered behind the couch with Leeli, my heart banging in my chest.
Two men and a woman were hanging by the glass doors, nailing us with a six-eyed stare as clear in its negativity as a NO TRESPASSING sign. The men were young, both a shade under six feet, dressed in slacks and T-shirts. A blond and a baldy. They had the look of fitness sissies, like they might have pumped some iron and run a few laps, but never put the results to any spirited use. The woman wore cutoffs and an oversized denim shirt and carried a bulky tote bag. She was fortyish and big-boned, with wavy dark hair, and her body had a sexy looseness that would still draw its share of eye traffic. Her face was full of bad days and wrong turns, the lines cutting her forehead and dragging down her mouth making it seem older than the rest of her. Way the men tucked themselves in at her shoulders, you could tell she was queen of the hive.
Leeli clutched at my arm, breathing fast. Nobody said nothing. Finally I came out from behind the couch and tossed Leeli her panties. I stepped into my pants and feeling more confident with my junk covered, I said, “Have yourself a show, did ya?”
“Have yourself a show?” the blond man said, mocking me, and the baldy sniggered like a kid who’d seen his first dirty picture.
I pulled on my shirt. “Y’know this here’s government property? Y’all be in deep shit, I turn your asses in.”
“You saying you the government?” The woman’s voice was a contralto drawl made me think of a dollop of honey hanging off the lip of a jar. “You the first government man I seen got jailhouse ink on his arms.” She turned to Leeli, who was tugging the tank top down over her breasts. “How’s about you, sweetcheeks? You in the government, too?”
Leeli snatched up her jeans. “You got no more right being here than we do!”
The woman sniffed explosively, like a cat sneezing, and the bald man said, “You can’t get much more government than we are. Government’s like mommy and daddy to us.”
Leeli piped up, “Well, whyn’t you show us your ID?”
The flow of feeling in the room was running high, like everyone was waiting for a direction to fly off in.
“Screw this,” said the woman. “We was just going for a drink. Y’all wanna come?”
I was about to say we’d do our own drinking, but Leeli said, “It’s Margarita Night over at the Dixieland!” and soon everybody was saying stuff like, “Looked like you was gonna fall out” and “God you scared the hell outa me” and telling their names and their stories. Though he didn’t seem up to the job, the blond man, Carl, was the woman’s husband. Her name was Ava and she owned a club in Boynton Beach where the bald man, Squire, worked as a bartender. I knew a kid name of Squire back in high school who was accused of having sex with a neighbor’s collie. Much as I would have enjoyed bringing this up, I kept it to myself.
We piled out through the glass doors, both Carl and Squire heading toward the water. “Fuck you think you going?” I asked.
“Ava got her four-by-four parked down on the beach,” Squire said.
I was staring at Ava and Leeli, who were still back at the glass doors. Leeli had her head down and Ava was talking. Something didn’t sit right about the way they were together.
“Government don’t care what goes on at the house no more,” Squire said, apparently thinking I was off onto another track. “We been partying here for years.”
You know that kid’s toy ball you can bounce and instead of coming straight back to your hand, it goes dribbling off along the floor or kicks off to the side? My expectations of the weekend had taken just that sort of wrong-angled bounce. After Leeli and I broke in the leather couch, I assumed we’d be heading over to my place, maybe coming up for air sometime Sunday. A shitkicker bar had for sure not been part of the plan.
The Dixieland was down on A1A, a concrete block eyesore with a neon sign on the roof that spelled the name in red and blue letters, except for the N was missing, which might have accounted for the gay boys who occasionally dropped in and left real quick. All the waitresses were decked out in Rebel caps and there were Confederate flags laminated on the table tops. The Friday night crowd was men in cowboy hats who had never set a horse and women with flakes of mascara clinging to their lashes and skirts so short you could see the tattooed butterflies, roses, hummingbirds and such advertising their little treasures whenever they hopped up onto a barstool. Some country & western goatboy was howling on the jukebox about the world owed him a living, while a few couples dragged around the dance floor, Ava and Leeli among them. Their relationship appeared to be deepening.