But for Joey, wearing new tennis shoes purchased with his own earned money, the torturing surface of Smathers Beach was no more a problem than the hot sidewalks of Duval Street. His feet were comfy. His feet had adapted to where he was. Too bad it wasn't as easy for the rest of him.
He scanned the beach, looking for his friend. The sun was low, and the western horizon had taken on that perfectly neutral color where you can no longer tell if it's cloudy or clear, whether the sun will douse itself in the ocean or vanish in mid-sky, slipping into haze as modestly as a letter slides into an envelope. Joey saw no one except one guy with a metal detector and another flying a kite.
Then, finally, he spotted Bert. Bert was sitting in a beach chair, far out on a finger of crumbly gray rock that jutted into the green ocean. His back was to the land, and he was recognizable only by his bronze- white hair; that, and the canary-yellow polka-dotted silk of his shirt.
"Hello, Joey," Bert said when the younger man was still half a dozen steps behind him.
"How'd ya know it's me?"
"Dog twitched," said the Shirt, turning slowly, "so I knew it was someone. That it was you, that was a percentage play. Ya know, kid, it's not like I'm really that popular. But how are ya?"
"Not bad, considering I saw my asshole brother today."
Bert shook his head slowly. Family feuds saddened him, but not because he regarded them as unnatural. Just the opposite. What was more natural than that disappointment, rage, and the sense that you were being gypped should start at home? The family was where you really took a beating. You looked to the outside world for comfort not because the outside world was kinder but because it mattered so much less, it couldn't get under your fingernails. "Joey," Bert said, "lemme ask you a question. Is he really an asshole, or does it just look that way to you because of, ya know, the situation?"
Joey looked at Bert, and at Don Giovanni nestled in his lap. The dog really did seem to be savoring the sunset. Twin orange disks were reflected in its glassy, oversized eyes, making it look like some diminutive species of hellhound. "Bert, I've had a lot of time to think it over. As God is my witness, he's really an asshole."
Bert just nodded and never took his eyes off the sky. The sun was almost on the horizon now, at the point where its reflection seemed to jump out of the ocean to rejoin it, making it look not like a sphere but a cylinder, a giant candle slipping away.
"And what's going on," Joey resumed, "I really don't like it. It's the exact same bullshit as in New York. The lying. The hiding things. All the time having to wonder who said what to who. Who's clued in, who ain't. It's like ya can't open your goddamn mouth without worrying ten different ways if you're gonna say somethin' ya shouldn't say. I mean, Bert, life shouldn't be that fucking complicated."
Bert the Shirt, his long face rosy in the last red rays, smiled the inward smile of a patient teacher whose lesson is at last getting through. "No, it shouldn't be." He didn't want to say I-told-you-so to Joey, so he spoke to his dog instead. "Ya see, Giovanni, now he's starting to talk like Florida."
"Yeah," said Joey, "but now I got my brother here, and he talks like the gutters of Astoria."
"That's a problem," the old man conceded. He lifted the chihuahua off his lap and gently placed it on the warm gray rock. Then he plucked a real or imaginary dog hair from the belly of his splendid yellow shirt. "So kid, let's think this through. First off, why do you really think your brother is here?"
Joey gave a mirthless snort of a laugh that had to do only with what he saw as the ridiculous obviousness of the question. "Bert, lemme put it this way. I can't think of one fucking time my brother ever crossed the street to say hello to me, let alone went fifteen hundred miles. So it ain't a social call. Vacation? Nah. He hates gays, he's with a broad who all she wants to do is shop-he wouldn't come to Key West for vacation. It's gotta be this bullshit with Charlie Ponte."
"Awright," said Bert. "We agree. Now, does he know you know about Ponte, about the emeralds?"
"No."
"You sure?"
Joey glanced off toward the west, at the underlit pink clouds whose edges were already dimming out to purple. "Yeah, I'm sure."
"You tell anybody in New York?" Bert pressed.
"One guy. My buddy Sal."
A look of concern flickered across the old man's face, and the look triggered in Joey an instant of doubt followed by a moment of anger toward Bert for being the agent of suspicion. Mistrusting Sal would be about as painful as any possible consequence of being let down by Sal. If you couldn't rely on your family, then you could not afford to doubt your friends. "Sal's solid," Joey said, and there was defiance in his voice.
"O.K., O.K." The Shirt raised a pacifying palm. "So what're you gonna do, kid?"
"About Gino? I'm gonna do what I always do with Gino. I'm gonna try to stay outta his way and hope I don't get steamrolled."
Bert reached down and absently stroked Don Giovanni behind the ears. "Well, your brother knows who I am. He knows I'm here. Maybe he'll look me up, maybe he won't. I hope he doesn't."
Joey could not help laughing. "Ain't it great what a popular guy my brother is, the way he's always spreading sunshine?"
'Yeah, it's great," said Bert. "But listen, kid, if you want my advice, or even if you don't, play as dumb as you can for as long as you can."
Joey looked down at his feet and kicked lightly at a knuckle of coral. "That'll be easy. I mean, that'll just be acting like he expects me to act."
"And Sandra? What'll you say to Sandra?"
"As little as I can," said Joey. He hadn't really thought about it, but he knew the answer that was expected of him. "I don't want her involved."
The old man nodded his approval. "Best that way," he said.
Joey nodded back, glanced briefly at the vacant western sky, and for just an instant felt as empty as the place the sun had been. "Best that way."
"So how'd it go with Gino?"
Sandra was standing at the stove, watching macaroni boil. She wasn't a bad cook, just a nervous one, an Irish girl making Italian food for a half-Jewish boyfriend who'd grown up with the finest pork products Queens had to offer. In her efforts to be organized, precise, she meddled too much with the food. She was always poking at cutlets, stirring things that didn't need stirring. She memorized recipes and timed things on her watch.
"Went O.K.," Joey said. He was looking for some orange juice and his head was in the fridge. "He's got a new girlfriend with him."
"What's she like?" Sandra bothered the broccoli.
By way of answer, Joey held his hands about a foot and a half out from his chest.
"He's consistent," said Sandra.
"Give him that," said Joey.
There was a pause. A lid lifted softly from a sauce-pan, then settled back down. Sandra had an instant's panic that the red sauce was scorching. It was not. She stirred it anyway. "Joey, why's he here?"