Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

I can’t believe I actually said please.

The retreat continues, Emma shaking her head. “I’m sorry—let’s talk at the office, okay? First thing in the morning.” She reaches the door and disappears as lithely as a ferret down a hole.

I sit in her driveway for several minutes, letting the rage burn out. Eventually, the urge to grab a tire iron and mess up her new champagne-colored Camry passes. Why am I surprised by what happened here? What the hell was I thinking?

Driving home, I turn up the bass for the Slut Puppies. I find myself entertaining a ribald image of Juan Rodriguez trussed with silk scarves to the bedposts while being straddled boisterously by Emma.

Emma, with her goddamn two-tone jellybean toenails.

I live alone in a decent fourth-floor apartment not far from the beach. Three different women have lived here with me, Anne being the most recent and by far the most patient. A snapshot of her in a yellow tank suit remains attached by a magnet to the refrigerator door. Inside the refrigerator is half a bucket of chicken wings, a six-pack of beer and a triangular slab of molding cheddar. Tonight the beer is all that interests me, and I’m on my third when somebody knocks.

“Yo, Obituary Boy? You home?”

When Juan opens the door, I salute from the couch. He grabs a beer for himself and sits down in one of the matching faded armchairs. “The Marlins are playing,” he says.

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Where’s the TV?” Juan motions to the vacant space in the center of the wall unit. “Don’t tell me you launched it off the balcony again.”

That sometimes happens when I try to watch music videos. “It’s pathetic,” I say to my friend. “I’m not proud of myself.”

“Who was it this time?”

“One of those ‘boy bands.’ I don’t remember which.” I roll the cool sweaty bottle across my forehead.

Juan looks a little uptight.

“You’re how old now—thirty-four?” I ask.

“Not tonight, Jack.”

“You should be on top of the world, man. You’ve already hung in there longer than Keith Moon or John Belushi.” I can’t help myself.

Juan says, “Why do you do this?”

I put a Stones record on the stereo because you can’t go wrong with the Stones. Juan knows most of the songs, even the early stuff—he has fully acculturated himself since arriving in the 1981 exodus from the port of Mariel, Cuba. He was sixteen at the time, four years older than the sister who accompanied him on an old Key West lobster boat. They were with a group of thirty-seven refugees, among whom were a handful of vicious criminals that Castro yanked out of prison and shipped to Miami as a practical joke. Everyone at the paper knows Juan came over on the boatlift. What they don’t know is what happened forty miles at sea in the black of night—Juan told me the story after too many martinis. One of the convicts decided to have some fun with Juan’s sister and one of the others offered to stand watch, and neither of them paid enough attention to the girl’s skinny brother, who somehow got his hands on a five-inch screwdriver. Many hours later, when the lobster boat docked at Key West, the immigration officer counted only thirty-five passengers, including Juan and his sister in a ripped dress. The others said nothing about what had taken place on the voyage.

Juan takes a slug of beer and says to me: “Good piece today.”

“Come on, man.”

“What?”

“It’s a goddamn obit.”

“Hey, it was interesting. I remember hearing the Slut Puppies on the radio,” he says. ” ‘Trouser Troll’ was kinda catchy.”

“I thought so, too.” I’m eager to tell Juan about the Jimmy Stoma mystery, but I’m wondering if he already knows. If he does, it means he and Emma are tighter than I thought.

“Did she tell you?” I ask.

“Who? Oh—Emma?”

“No, Madeleine fucking Albright.” I set my empty bottle on the floor. “Look, I hope I didn’t interrupt anything this afternoon. Normally, I’d never—”

“You didn’t.” Juan grins. “I was helping with her computer. She got a new browser.”

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