When Sandra and Joey emerged onto the sidewalk, the sign said seventy-six degrees and a moon just shy of full was throwing a cool white light that broke into red and blue fragments in the smashed glass of the Eldorado's windshield.
"Beautiful out," said Sandra.
"Drive to the beach?" said Joey.
The Caddy's top had not been up in weeks, and the open car held the smell of sunshine and limestone dust. Through what was left of the muffler, baritone pops issued forth, steady as the beating of a drum. Joey slipped through the narrow residential streets and onto A1A, the fabled road that traces out the very rim of Florida, separating land from water with a line hardly more substantial than a layer of skin. He drove past the Paradiso condominium, almost to the airport, then pulled off the pavement on the ocean side and pointed the car toward Cuba.
Sandra slid closer and put her hand on Joey's knee. The feel of it made him realize that they hadn't touched much lately. "It's been tough for you, huh?" he said. "With the move and me not earning and all?"
"A little. I'm O.K."
For a while they sat in silence. Traffic zipped by behind them, and ahead moonlight played on the shallow water, tracing a rippled white line from the horizon to the seawall in front of them.
"You know what I love about moonlight on water?" Sandra said. "No matter where you are, it points right to you, like the moon knows you're watching and is picking you out for something, something special."
'Yeah, but it points to everybody," Joey said.
"O.K., O.K., but I don't have to think about that. I just see it pointing to us. Look. Right at us."
Joey put his arm around her. Sandra usually wore clothes that puffed her up-fuzzy sweaters with big outlines, blouses with built-in shoulders-and after almost four years, Joey was still sometimes surprised to feel her narrow bones and thin skin in his hands. He squeezed the small knob at the top of her arm, rubbed the spare flesh between shoulder and elbow. "Sandra," he said softly, "what if I just can't do it?"
"Do what?"
"This job." He took his arm away, put both hands on the steering wheel, and looked absently at his zeroed-out speedometer. "I mean, Sandra, I think I'm pretty bright. I got confidence. But I also got this lousy feeling, it makes me mad, like there's all kindsa things that everybody else knows and I don't. Dumb stuff. Filling out forms. What ya say onna telephone. When ya use a paper clip and when ya use a staple. I mean, these stupid little things that people know if they have a job. Me, I've never done that. To me it's like a big mystery."
"You're a little scared, Joey. That's O.K."
The word was like a lance, and after the flash of pain and the squelched rage of denying it was so, there was relief. Joey stared out across the flat and moon-shot water of the Florida Straits and let out a long breath that whistled slightly between his teeth.
"You can do it, Joey," Sandra said. "I know you can. Things are gonna get better for us."
— 12 -
Zack Davidson was thirty-two, had sandy-brown hair, hazel eyes widely spaced, horn-rim glasses held on with an elegant elastic cord, and Joey Goldman hated him on sight. He hated the way his hair fell onto his forehead in a seemingly casual yet perfect arc, like a spent wave crawling up a beach. He hated the confident pinkness of his knit shirt, the perfect way the ribbed cuff neither hung loose nor pinched his arm. He hated the cheap but perfect cotton belt holding up his khaki shorts, and the conceited inexpensiveness of his Timex watch. Everything about him said yacht club, golf course, prep school, WASP, and gave Joey a feeling in his gut as if a hot fist were yanking at the inside of his navel. It didn't help at all that Zack had right away gone into the question of Joey's sunglasses.
"Eye contact is real important," he was saying.
"Tough shit," said Joey. "The glasses stay."
He said it as if throwing a punch, and like a punch, the remark caused the receiving party to pause and reconsider who he was dealing with. Zack put down the pencil he'd been twirling and stared at Joey across the narrow desk. They were sitting in the downtown office of Parrot Beach Interval Ownership Associates, next to a scale model of the development. Immaculate under Plexiglas, the model featured pastel duplexes with dainty shutters, feathery plastic palms, Barbiesque figures on tiny lounge chairs around a pool whose water was made of blue Saran Wrap. A toy boat was pulled up on a real sand beach.
"Joey," Zack said at last, "you got a lousy fucking attitude. I like that in a person. Shows spirit. But you have to make it work for you, not against you. I can train you or I can train the next hard-on down the line. So you want this fucking job, or what?"
Now it was Joey's turn to ponder. He hadn't expected to hear such blithe obscenities from Zack Davidson's well-formed lips. Then again, all of this was new to him, he had no idea what to expect. Stalling for time, he studied the miniature development, the tiny hedges, the teensy people. He found it spooky. Life sometimes seemed small enough without suggesting that you could boil it down, stick it under glass, and take the whole thing in in a single look.
"Yeah," said Joey, "I want the job, but I ain't gonna let the job make me crazy."
"Good answer," said Zack. "So what you do, you put your craziness into the job. You see what I'm saying?"
Joey didn't.
"Best OPC we ever had," Zack continued, "was a total lunatic. His name was Whistling Freddie. Failed comedian. He'd stand on the corner on a washtub, whistling Mozart. When people stopped to listen, he'd start talking at them like the guy in the Fed Ex commercials. Then he'd go into impersonations, foreign accents, dick jokes. By the time ne got around to selling the tour, people were helpless. People can't say no when they're laughing. Remember when you were a kid, somebody tickled you and it took all your strength away? Same thing. And you know where Whistling Freddie is now? In the Virgin Islands, on top of a hill, on three acres of his very own."
Zack ended with an emphatic nod, and it very faintly dawned on Joey that he had no idea if he should believe a single word. It was all so neat with Zack. You cursed, he cursed; suddenly you're on the same side. You mention craziness, he jumps in and makes it sound like craziness makes you rich. What if it was all bullshit? Then again, what if it wasn't? What if having a straight job meant that you unleashed your rotten attitude, gave vent to your personality defects, made an ass of yourself in public, and the upshot of all this legitimate embarrassment was that you ended up a substantial property owner with money in the bank?
"Look," Zack resumed, "this business is about one thing and one thing only. Human nature. It's all a question of reading people. Who's our best prospective customer? We have two. A dumb guy who thinks he's smart, and a cheapskate who thinks he's a sport. Why? Because the dumb guy who thinks he's smart figures, Hey, why should I spend a hundred fifty bucks a night in a hotel when I can spend thirty thousand on a time-share and save money? The cheap-skate who thinks he's a sport, he wants to let people know he's a player, he's in the market to buy, but the thought of a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house makes his bowels loosen. So O.K., how do we recognize these people?"