The Garden of Last Days Read online

  She squeezed the money tighter and made her way past the blue light of the VIP bar and into the white shadows of the main floor. A third of the customers were gone, though the ones left, the last-call lonelies, the drunk and horny assholes, were yelling it up, standing to watch Renée be a naked ice queen or sitting back with their arms crossed, their feet on an empty chair, their chins low. One or two eyed her buttoned blouse, her breasts, her face. One reached for her, his fingertips grazing her arm, and Lonnie Pike was already moving toward him from the Amazon Bar, his eyes on hers just a second before he picked up his speed. She felt like she’d been gone a long while. Her mouth was dry, and she had to pee again. Her head felt heavy then light. Louis was up at the bar and had a drink in his hand–always a Captain Morgan’s and Coke with two lime wedges, the lights from the show reflecting off his glasses. He could be looking at anyone, though it was probably her. She was going to have to deal with him, wasn’t she? Find a way to shut him down without getting fired. She was anxious to see Franny. She almost wanted to show her all this money, show her how good fortune had finally come their way, that somehow by putting one foot in front of the other and doing what she had to, her number was really coming up. Not the big one, but still, a little luck like this felt like bait for bigger luck.

  She moved around the stage. The music blasted so loud from the speakers she could feel it in her temples. The cigar smoke was thick here and somebody had thrown up, that sour-gut smell, and April hoped Tina wouldn’t put her back into rotation right away, that she’d give her a chance to check on Franny and store her money and go to the bathroom, then the makeup mirror to freshen up.

  She tried to step carefully over the new rubber mats with the holes in them, but still, her heels slipped into each one, then another, and she wanted to unstrap them and go barefoot, but Louis was up at the Amazon and he’d see her and she wouldn’t hear the end of it.

  Fucking Louis. She yanked her heels one at a time from the holes till she was through the first black curtain, then the second. Through glass windows in the doors was the pale fluorescent light of the kitchen that made her squint. It was strange to see Tina and Zeke standing near the screen door, Zeke’s arms crossed, looking down at Tina and shaking his head at whatever she was saying. In this light she looked old, her bleached hair dry and frizzy, her boobs ridiculously large. April pushed open the doors and let them swing shut behind her, Tina jerking her head toward her. Her lips were set in a straight line, like when she was pissed off, but her eyes were soft-looking. Afraid.

  “What’s the matter, Tina?”

  And from Tina’s red lips came the words April already knew and the floor seemed to drop away and she was falling, falling into a dark and empty sky.

  HIS TRUCK’S AC had always been too strong. He turned it down so she wouldn’t get cold in those thin pajamas. Poor little thing had cried only fifteen or twenty minutes before she whimpered herself asleep in Cole’s car seat, her head at a bad angle against her shoulder, her hair lying across one eye and her parted lips. He finished his beer, dropped the empty onto the passenger seat, and disciplined himself not to have another.

  Once again he was driving north into the darkness up Washington Boulevard. Just the hum of his V-8, the muffled whine of rubber on asphalt, the low rattle and purr of his AC, the child’s breathing behind him he couldn’t hear. He glanced back at her in the rearview, felt in the way he tilted his face up to do it just how many times he’d checked on Cole like that. It was good doing it again, to be watching over a little one like this. His wrist and arm were one massive ache, no more throbbing of sharp peaks with less painful valleys, just one long mountaintop of hurt. Still, he didn’t care. He couldn’t remember the last time he got to do something so pure for somebody else, to do something this good. Shaved cunt. He kept hearing one of them say it, and the memory of that and her crying there alone in the Puma’s kitchen, the drunken noise behind her, then the driving away with her buckled behind him, felt like a calling of some kind. He’d rescued this child.

  It was eleven past one on his truck’s digital, three minutes slow. Almost a quarter after. The club closed in forty-five minutes but after seeing the T-bones—so high-strung—looking for the girl, they’d surely been looking for a while and would’ve called the law by now. There were those key-jangling corporate boys under the canopy, how they’d looked over at him when the girl started screaming. His back windows were tinted so they didn’t see anything, but who knows what they could’ve said to who by now?

  Way off to the west in the wire grass were the twinkling lights of a trailer park. Mostly old people. This whole damn state full of them. Like God picked up the country and shook it and all those who weren’t nailed down with jobs and commitments slipped right out of their houses, their card games and visits with grandkids, their nine holes of golf and double dates with other old people who’d lived long enough to make it to dinner one more Saturday night—every year more and more of them just slipped out of their lives and fell to Florida.

  And now Mama was one of them, though she’d lived her life here doing what only the Cuban women and the Asians and the blacks did now—cleaning up after other people who came down here just to flash money he never saw any of, her either. All those years cleaning motels on Longboat Key, St. Armand’s, the Lido. Pushing her cart loaded with scrub brushes and cleanser, sealed bars of soap and tiny bottles of shampoo, fresh folded towels, sheets and pillowcases, wrapped rolls of toilet paper. His mama in her white sneakers, black nylons and skirt and white apron. The chain of keys she carried in the front pocket. Her hairnet and red lipstick and how she was always smoking and would unlock one of the motel’s doors and leave her cigarette burning outside in a coffee can of sugar sand from the beach. She’d balance her cigarette across the tin lip and let it burn.

  And how many no-count sonsabitches had played possum when she knocked on the door and let herself in only to see a man with his johnson hanging out or sticking straight up? Acting surprised to see her or not surprised at all—and really, what’s a son ever to know for sure? When he had to come along, when he played on the floor under a window with his plastic Transformers, he’d never seen her do anything but work quick and efficient, sometimes humming a tune from before his own birth, just aiming to get done and back out to the hallway with the ash can and her smoking cigarette—but who knew later, when he was off to school or working with Eddie, if she didn’t let a high roller pay her? There’d been those late-fights with Eddie, AJ lying in bed in the dark, the window open, the smell of their orange tree blossoming in the air, the smell of escape.

  “Don’t you lie to me, Virginia. Don’t you goddamn lie to me. I heard some talk, damnit. I heard some goddamn talk.”

  A hundred yards up ahead the dented sign for Myakka City called to him, his headlights glinting off it like a turn east was possible. The look on Deena’s face when he’d knock on the door holding this baby girl. He’d stand out there tired and hurt and tell her he had no choice but to help, but how could he do that without tipping his hand about the Puma? About his expensive habit there? About Marianne? And even if she took the girl in for the night—he knew her—she’d worry about the girl’s mother and call the law. No matter how bad it might make him look, she’d call the police and wash her hands of it. But it was too late now. He couldn’t turn around and drive back to the Puma, try and convince some county sonofabitch he’d probably saved this kid from the kind of man they’d take him for. And he still hadn’t forgotten the two who’d come when Deena called, the way they took her words like they were straight from the Bible and pinned his face to his own wall, handcuffing him in front of Cole, standing there so damn quiet. It almost would’ve been better to hear him cry than hear that quiet coming from where he’d stood in front of the TV in his shorts and T-shirt stained with peach juice.

  “It’s okay, Cole. Daddy’s comin’ right back.”

  “You shouldn’t lie to him like that.” The big one had jerked his cuffed wrists behi
nd him and shoved him out of his home, Deena just as quiet, standing off in the bright kitchen with her bruised cheek he didn’t mean to color at all and you could almost call it an accident, his arm flying out from his side just to stifle her bad attitude, just to get her to back away from him one damn minute, that’s all—and it was like watching somebody else’s arm fly out and catch her across her cheek and nose as she seemed to lift up and fall from some force that couldn’t be just him.

  Like Deena was some perfect mother. How many times he catch her locking Cole in the car when she ran into the drugstore or 7-Eleven to get something? Cole said: I wanted to go with Mama, Daddy. But Mama said she’s coming right back. She always comes right back, Daddy. How many times she check on him at night before they went to bed? Never. AJ’s the one always walked in all soft on his feet, Cole’s covers kicked off, his pillow half off the bed, his neck bent in a bad way. So he’d gently lift him and set him in the middle of the mattress, raise his head and adjust the pillow, pull the covers up over his chest and shoulders, bend down and kiss his forehead. Leave him, his son, to his dreams.

  Close to one-thirty now. In five hours he had to be in that ditch on Lido Key. His stomach burned from the Tylenols and his mouth was dry and he fought the urge for just one more cool beer. He’d already had way over his personal limit for driving a child. With Cole, he never drove him after more than two beers. If they went out to eat and he had three or four, Deena drove. If she didn’t feel like it, she knew to tell him before his third and he’d switch to water or Coke. These little things that never came up before a judge who’d write an order on you locking your ass out.

  His eyes burned slightly. He could feel himself hunching over the wheel. He was just so damned tired. When he got that Caporelli money, he was going to rent a cabana out on Longboat Key, open the windows and sleep in a Gulf breeze for days or weeks. Then he’d wake up, shower and shave, go take that anger class he promised Deena he would. She’d let him move back home and they’d both work hard not to fall back to how it used to be. He’d pay off all those credit cards and layaway accounts, maybe sell their place off Myakka City Road for one closer to the water. Not the lake and Deena’s folks, but the Gulf. One of those creamy-looking condos on sugar sand, a place where Cole could play and swim. He and Deena watching. A place with a view of the sun sinking into the sea every night.

  But then he saw him and Marianne there. The two of them making love on a moonlit blanket.

  He’d never been one for lying or cheating or stealing. Never. Even running Walgreen’s late at night. How easy it would’ve been to skim here and there. Mess with the merchandise inventory figures. Pocket the difference. But they trusted him and he wasn’t about to make them regret it, and what he was planning to do now was hardly even a bad thing. Caporelli had the insurance. He wouldn’t lose anything from his own wallet and anyway he needed a good kick in the ass for neglecting his equipment. Leaving that and too many other damn details to his piece-of-shit son. And it wasn’t like he’d be stealing from an insurance company either.

  Well maybe he would be. But a hundred grand was a quarter down a street drain to those fuckers and, man, anyway it was his turn, damnit, A.J. Carey’s turn to cash in on nothing but hard work nobody ever really seemed to appreciate.

  Why hadn’t he thought about it like this right away? Because you have always thought small, that’s why. You have never thought big. Always happy just to have twenty or thirty bucks in your pocket and the bills for the month paid and something good to eat and cold Millers in the fridge. A woman to love him. A boy to hold. Maybe Deena tossing your ass out was the best thing could’ve happened, AJ. Shock your sorry ass out of the small and into the big. Time to goddamn think BIG.

  With his new money he’d encourage her to go get some hobbies, maybe join that World Gym in Samoset, take a night class somewhere. He’d build onto the house, add a second floor with a master bedroom and a deck overlooking the pines. They’d make love again, have another baby, a little brother or sister for Cole to play with. At night, after the kids were asleep, they’d sit out on the new deck under the constellations, get a book and learn their names. Deena’d be happy and forget she was ever disappointed in him and that he’d done to her what he did; maybe he’d be happy, too. Whatever that was. Maybe happiness was just not being hungry or thirsty for anything much anymore. Satisfied to pull your boat into the slip and tie it off for good.

  A boat. How many years had he wanted a boat? His whole life on the Gulf Coast and he’d been as locked on the land as a man in Iowa. How many hours of his life had he dreamed of owning something sleek and white and fast he could live on? That’s one thing Eddie did. He did do that. Took him out four or five times on a charter boat down the Intracoastal Waterway between Sarasota and Venice. A lot of fathers and sons, a few women, fishing for snook and sheepshead, mangrove snapper, pompano, and amberjack. Eddie, lean and red-faced and unshaven, would crack his first Miller about thirty feet out, laughing it up with some other rummy drinking before 8:00 a.m. too. But it was good being out in the green-blue water, the early sun and salt wind in AJ’s face, speeding by all the big homes on the beaches with their clipped bahia lawns and royal palm trees, like he could just reach out and pick one for himself. Then later, round noon, the sun high overhead, everybody chatty and relaxed, catching something or happy just to sit there in the gentle rock of the waves and wait. Off to the west and south, where the green haze of the water met the pale blue sky, there’d be boats, all kinds, some with tall sails filling and snapping in the breeze. There’d be speedy outboards hauling water-skiers. Big inboards with a fly bridge and a sunning deck on the bow, a kitchen and sleeping cabin below. Even then that’s what he liked the most. The fast ones you could live on. Where all you needed was gas and maintenance money, a slip to dock it. If you lived on it, that couldn’t be much money, could it? Maybe Deena would go for that. But the thought died in his head before it could take root. She didn’t even like going out on the lake in her old man’s outboard. She said it was boring and made her feel sick. And she wouldn’t let Cole live on a boat. Be near all that water all the time. He saw his son falling overboard, him abandoning the wheel to dive into the white wake of his own motors, blinded by the salt water, swimming hard for what he could only pray was his boy’s bobbing blond head.

  He passed the sign for Oneca. The road was dark and empty, the occasional flash and glitter of broken glass in the gravel on either side. No, if he was real careful and made that bucket-drop look as bad as he could, made Caporelli look even more negligent than he was, he might get enough for his house and a boat. Daddy’s boat. Something for at night and the weekends, a small cruiser. What was wrong with that? A little something to lighten his load. A place to go clear his head.

  It’s how the Puma felt at first. The first half hour of the first night before the first dancer came over and tried to hustle him for a twenty. Before that, there was just his drink and the soft, blue light, the good music, a naked woman with black hair and blue eyes dancing up there just for him. He knew she wasn’t but that’s what it felt like. How she’d let him look at whatever he wanted. The way she turned and arched her back to give him a better view. That little smile. Marianne.

  In the rearview the child’s cheek was touching her shoulder. He should pull over and adjust her head so she won’t get a crick in her neck. But he might wake her up and then she’d get all confused and scared and start crying again. And how about when he got to Mama’s? He couldn’t leave the girl with her while he was gone for—what?—maybe half the day? He tried to calculate it: thirty minutes to the job. Another thirty or forty to put a tear in the bucket line and then crawl down and wedge his hand under it. That’s an hour and ten minutes. Another twenty or thirty for Caporelli Jr. to drive up and get the bucket off him and take him to the emergency room. Two hours already. Add another two or three for X-rays and a cast and a call to a lawyer. A good half day before he could get back.

  By then something might
be on the TV Mama kept on all day long. Maybe they’d flash a picture of the girl. And even if that didn’t happen just yet, even if the little girl wasn’t so scared waking up to his old mama that she cried till neighbors called the law, even if Mama and the girl somehow got along for the morning, what was he going to do when he got back? Drive the child back to the Puma in the midday sun? Bring her back to the same damn place he’d rescued her from?

  No, he shook his head and accelerated toward the dim lights of Bradenton miles ahead: he was going to have to drop her off somewhere tonight, a place she’d be safe and he could keep an eye on her till the law came, a place he’d be close enough to her he could jump in if some sonofabitch approached her but far enough away the law wouldn’t notice him as he pulled away. But what was to keep her from taking off? Or stepping into the road? Or coming back to his truck or pointing him out to some county badge happy to do him harm?

  Deena one morning last year. She’d taken that liquid Benadryl and squirted a stopperful into Cole’s juice for their long ride to her cousin’s wedding in Jacksonville. Four and half hours and he slept through the entire drive. But even after AJ got some into this little one, where could he leave her? It couldn’t be just anywhere. And why didn’t he search through Spring’s glove box for her registration and address? He could lay the girl down on her own front stoop, ring the bell, then gun it out of there. But what if nobody was there?

  A cool sweat had broken out across his forehead and upper lip. He reached over and turned the AC up just a bit. Getting close to two now. 301 curved off to the west, the neon lights of sleeping Bradenton coming closer. This was a good dry stretch and he wanted to push a wave of gas through his engine, not because he wanted to get there faster but because he wanted to feel the force and power under his foot and fingertips, this steel cage of his flying through this Gulf Coast September night like it was any other and he was in control and knew just what he was doing and what he should do next.