him.
The beer wasn’t appealing anymore. I took a shower.
Chapter Five
Mallory Square faces the sunset. A lot of places do, even in Key West. But through some loony magic you can only find here Mallory Square has become the capital of sunset.
It’s not much to look at in daylight. It’s no more than a parking lot with a deepwater dock on the far end. Cruise ships have started tying up there in the last few years. There are desiccated cigarette butts stomped flat and patches of ancient gum with all the sticky pounded out of them. There are oil stains and empty beer cans and weeds growing up in the corners.
The area closest to the water is concrete and slightly raised. Originally built as a wharf, it now provides a natural stage about twenty feet wide. Every night the stage fills with street performers and tourists and as the sun goes down they celebrate.
Maybe Key West, or what Key West has turned into lately, doesn’t need much excuse to celebrate. Maybe the party would happen even if the sun didn’t go down. It’s still called sunset and it’s still the biggest single draw in town. There are theaters, museums, shops, restaurants and bars, T-shirt emporiums, biplane rides, strip joints, and whorehouses on the island. People come to see the sunset.
Even in Los Angeles we’d heard of Sunset at Mallory. I thought maybe Roscoe would go there. He might want to see it since he’d come all this way anyhow. He might figure the place would be so full of people nobody would notice him. Anyway, it seemed like a good place to look for him.
By the time I got to Mallory the carnival was going full blast. Considering the savage mood all that carefully packaged gaiety was putting me in, I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Roscoe. If Roscoe was here—I only had a half-hunch to go on, a little rabbit of an idea that poked its head up and then disappeared. Since there was nothing else to tell me where Roscoe might be, I followed the rabbit. Sometimes these ideas are right, for whatever subconscious reason.
Sometimes they’re wrong, too. I let the crowd push me all the way through the open-air nuthouse one time; past the fire-eater, the jugglers, and the cookie lady, all the way down to the far end of the dock where a guy in a kilt stood torturing a bagpipe. Then I worked my way back again, back towards the big stucco wall that keeps the peasants away from the pool at the Ocean Key House. I saw no sign of Roscoe. There was no reason I should have, just this feeling I’d had as I stood there in the shower and realized I had to try to find him.
Finding somebody in Key West isn’t easy. There are too many hotels and they aren’t generally crazy about giving out too much information. By the time I could call around to the likely ones Roscoe might be gone. Other than that, I wasn’t sure where to look. If you can spare the time, the best way to find somebody is probably to stand on the corner in front of Sloppy Joe’s, and sooner or later whoever you’re looking for will pass by.
I didn’t have the time. I didn’t really know why, but I was in a hurry. Somehow I felt like my problem was linked to Roscoe’s. There were two dead kids, his and mine. I was feeling an urgent need to find Roscoe fast, almost as if finding him might bring the kids back from death. It wasn’t rational, I know, but it had gotten hold of me. I could feel my hands quiver with the need to find Roscoe and talk to him.
I still didn’t have any idea what I would say if I found him. All I had was a bad taste in my mouth at the way our talk had ended. I wanted to make him see that I’d help him if I could but there was nothing I could do. No hard feelings.
But mostly the encounter had left me on the edge of paralysis again, on the shore of that dark sea where I’d floated for seven months, and the thought of swimming there again filled me with a nervous energy that was almost desperate. I couldn’t go back there. I’d never get out a second
The beer wasn’t appealing anymore. I took a shower.
Chapter Five
Mallory Square faces the sunset. A lot of places do, even in Key West. But through some loony magic you can only find here Mallory Square has become the capital of sunset.
It’s not much to look at in daylight. It’s no more than a parking lot with a deepwater dock on the far end. Cruise ships have started tying up there in the last few years. There are desiccated cigarette butts stomped flat and patches of ancient gum with all the sticky pounded out of them. There are oil stains and empty beer cans and weeds growing up in the corners.
The area closest to the water is concrete and slightly raised. Originally built as a wharf, it now provides a natural stage about twenty feet wide. Every night the stage fills with street performers and tourists and as the sun goes down they celebrate.
Maybe Key West, or what Key West has turned into lately, doesn’t need much excuse to celebrate. Maybe the party would happen even if the sun didn’t go down. It’s still called sunset and it’s still the biggest single draw in town. There are theaters, museums, shops, restaurants and bars, T-shirt emporiums, biplane rides, strip joints, and whorehouses on the island. People come to see the sunset.
Even in Los Angeles we’d heard of Sunset at Mallory. I thought maybe Roscoe would go there. He might want to see it since he’d come all this way anyhow. He might figure the place would be so full of people nobody would notice him. Anyway, it seemed like a good place to look for him.
By the time I got to Mallory the carnival was going full blast. Considering the savage mood all that carefully packaged gaiety was putting me in, I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Roscoe. If Roscoe was here—I only had a half-hunch to go on, a little rabbit of an idea that poked its head up and then disappeared. Since there was nothing else to tell me where Roscoe might be, I followed the rabbit. Sometimes these ideas are right, for whatever subconscious reason.
Sometimes they’re wrong, too. I let the crowd push me all the way through the open-air nuthouse one time; past the fire-eater, the jugglers, and the cookie lady, all the way down to the far end of the dock where a guy in a kilt stood torturing a bagpipe. Then I worked my way back again, back towards the big stucco wall that keeps the peasants away from the pool at the Ocean Key House. I saw no sign of Roscoe. There was no reason I should have, just this feeling I’d had as I stood there in the shower and realized I had to try to find him.
Finding somebody in Key West isn’t easy. There are too many hotels and they aren’t generally crazy about giving out too much information. By the time I could call around to the likely ones Roscoe might be gone. Other than that, I wasn’t sure where to look. If you can spare the time, the best way to find somebody is probably to stand on the corner in front of Sloppy Joe’s, and sooner or later whoever you’re looking for will pass by.
I didn’t have the time. I didn’t really know why, but I was in a hurry. Somehow I felt like my problem was linked to Roscoe’s. There were two dead kids, his and mine. I was feeling an urgent need to find Roscoe fast, almost as if finding him might bring the kids back from death. It wasn’t rational, I know, but it had gotten hold of me. I could feel my hands quiver with the need to find Roscoe and talk to him.
I still didn’t have any idea what I would say if I found him. All I had was a bad taste in my mouth at the way our talk had ended. I wanted to make him see that I’d help him if I could but there was nothing I could do. No hard feelings.
But mostly the encounter had left me on the edge of paralysis again, on the shore of that dark sea where I’d floated for seven months, and the thought of swimming there again filled me with a nervous energy that was almost desperate. I couldn’t go back there. I’d never get out a second
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