Darryl moved to a chair moist with dew. He looked up at the stars and over at the lurid night sky above downtown Miami. He felt better than he had in a long while. Getting out of the house and away from the telephone and making love to Caroline in the moonlight had brought him to a place of balance between the ever-tightening inner craziness of the last few weeks and a sense of future possibilities. He felt refreshed. Hopeful. He loved his wife and he loved his children. He stretched, feeling sexy and content and not at all drunk. He knew he could solve his problems. He was ready to fight the fight. “Fucking rock music,” he muttered, staring at his neighbor’s house. How could old Dominguez stand that shit? Was he deaf?
“That client — the one who’s been threatening you?” Caroline was coming back up onto the deck.
Darryl sighed.
She peered up at the sky and began to pick up her clothes. “What are you going to do?”
“Make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I’ll make them happy. I’m thinking of a way to pay them back.”
She stopped dressing and stared at him. “Them?”
“Yes.” He looked at her. “I told you that.”
“You did?” She began crying.
He touched her, but she moved away. He opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. He pulled on his shorts and T-shirt.
She zipped up her shorts, weeping. “What are we going to do?”
“I borrowed some of their money.”
“Borrowed?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, for God’s sake, give it back.” Her head emerged from her T-shirt.
“I don’t have it right now.”
“What have you done with it?”
“It’s gone.” He opened his hands. “I’m in a deep hole.”
She wept again. “Oh, tell them — anything.”
“I’ve been doing that.”
She hugged herself. “This is too much.”
“It’s business. I can’t panic, or they’ll be on me like sharks.”
“Aren’t we talking about your life — our lives? Is it all some kind of a game to you?”
“No.” He felt her receding from him and he wanted to set things right between them. He told her that he loved her, and he embraced her, breathing in her smell, waiting to feel her soften. She didn’t, so he stepped back and willed a smile onto his face. “Look,” he said, “I screwed up, but I know a way to get out of it.”
“How?”
“My luck’s got to hold out a day or so, and then I’m clear. I want a different life. I can’t go on like this. And that’s a definite promise. We’ll sit down and you’ll tell me what you want and we’ll make a plan.”
She stared at him. “You’re never going to change, are you?”
He remembered the flour in his hair and felt self-conscious. He must look absurd. “I’m changing,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“My biggest worry at the moment,” he went on, rubbing his head, “is how I’m going to get this gunk out of my hair. Go back to the house and round up the kids and we’ll go out to Dairy Queen. I’ll use the boat dock hose and be right there.”
She climbed down onto the concrete edge of the canal, and then looked toward their house. It was dark and silent. Compared to the Dominguezes’, so bright, throbbing with music and energy, her house seemed like the negative of a house. The children, she thought, were being unusually patient and quiet. She looked up at Darryl. She was angry at him and disappointed. “Oh, hurry up,” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
She gazed up at him, then turned and started into the darkness. Darryl tried, and failed, to find something reassuring to call after her.
He stepped into the cockpit, groped around, found a key, fitted it into the ignition, and tried to start the twin diesel engines.
The Lay-Z-Girl was Darryl’s province, one in which Caroline was not interested. She hated fishing, and she complained about sunburn and seasickness.
The Lay-Z-Girl badly needed repairs. Now the main engines wouldn’t start. He couldn’t work the radio. The gauges for the three fuel tanks were hovering near empty. He gave out a deep sigh. How he had loved this boat. And what a mess his life had become. He had told Caroline the truth. He wanted to change. But what was he going to do about Narciso? A solution seemed impossible but at the same time close, very close.
On his way back to the railing, he almost tripped over the sheets that Caroline and he had shed on the deck. He threw them over his shoulder, climbed down onto the concrete dock, turned on the hose, then changed his mind and turned it off.
He’d seen the Dominguezes’ lawn explode into low fountains of water. Their automatic sprinklers had come on. In the light from their porch, Darryl saw droplets sparkling on their grass. It was a strange and beautiful sight. His own lawn was dark. So was the house. Caroline hadn’t turned on the lights. He halted, uneasy, and stared at his house and around his backyard. He felt that something was wrong with it all, but he didn’t know what it was.
His house was perfectly quiet. Darkness seemed to flow out of it toward him in dense waves. He felt a spurt of anxiety and fought to control it. Where was Caroline? Where were the kids?
“Caroline?” he called. There was no answer. He thought that he glimpsed a dark movement behind the sliding glass door to the living room. “Caroline?” he called again. Why didn’t she answer?
Darryl studied his house. For some reason, it didn’t look like his home. It seemed alien. He didn’t like it. He glanced with irritation at all the bright lights illuminating the Dominguezes’ house, and he wrestled down his anxiety.
He made up his mind: he’d had enough paranoia for one day. He was tired and he wanted this game to be over. There was, he decided, only one reason for the silence in his house. His family was waiting inside in the darkness to surprise him. Well, he’d play along, even though the notion of moving into that darkness gave him the creeps.
He wanted to be greeted by warmth and light and happy children. He had a vision of them standing just inside the door, holding their breath, waiting to switch on the lights and yell, “Boo!” That vision propelled him forward, smiling.
Perhaps, he thought, as he walked up the lawn, rubbing the flour from his hair, perhaps when they got back from Dairy Queen, he’d switch on his porch lights and turn on his sprinklers and show the kids how beautiful water can be, even at night.
Part IV
Gators & Ghouls
Gators
by Vicki Hendricks
The Everglades
(Originally published in 2000)
It was a goddamned one-armed alligator put me over the line. After that I was looking for trouble. Carl and me had been married for two years, second marriage for both, and the situation was drastic — hateful most times — but I could tell he didn’t realize there was anything better in the world. It made me feel bad that he never learned how to love — grew up with nothing but cruelty. I kept trying way too long to show him there was something else.
I was on my last straw when I suggested a road trip for Labor Day weekend — stupidly thinking that I could amuse him and wouldn’t have to listen to his bitching about me and the vile universe on all my days off work. I figured at a motel he’d get that vacation feeling, lighten up, and stick me good, and I could get by for the few waking hours I had to see him the rest of the week.
We headed out to the Everglades for our little trip. Being recent transplants from Texas, we hadn’t seen the natural wonders in Florida. Carl started griping by midafternoon about how I told him there were so many alligators and we couldn’t find a fucking one. I didn’t dare say that there would’ve been plenty if he hadn’t taken two hours to read the paper and sit on the john. We could’ve made it before the usual thunderstorms and had time to take a tour. As it was, he didn’t want to pay the bucks to ride the tram in the rain — even though the cars were covered. We were pretty much stuck with what we could see driving, billboards for Seminole gambling and airboats, and lots of soggy grassland under heavy black-and-blue-layered skies. True, it had a bleak, haunting kind of beauty.