Gold Coast

“Oh. Lesley.” That was one thing about girls, women, he’d never understand. How they could read your mind. “Lesley’s”-what was she?-“sort of spoiled. She pouts, puts on this act if she doesn’t get her way. Or, she’s arrogant, very dramatic, and you have to wait around for her to come back to earth.”

“Do you go out with her?”

“Well, I have. She’s the one who lives next door. In fact it’s her aunt’s place, the Casa Loma. She got me the apartment. It’s an efficiency really.”

“Oh,” Karen said.

“That’s all. I ride to work with her.”

“She’s a cute girl.”

“I guess so. If you like that type.”

“Do you picture her pubic hair?”

Jesus Christ-

“No. She’s not the type I picture. She’s more what they’re turning out today. Not a lot of individuality, but a lot of hair and a cute ass. If that turns you on, fine.”

“Does she turn you on?”

“Lesley? I ride to work with her, ride home. We talk once in awhile.”

“But does she turn you on?”

“The only reason you pick her, you happened to’ve seen me with her.”

“Are there many others?”

“No, what I mean, it’s like if I picked out Roland because we were talking about him and I ask you, when he jumped in bed with you, did it turn you on?”

“He jumped on the bed.”

“Yeah, but did it?”

“We sound like we’re married,” Karen said.

“This is what it’s like, huh? I always wondered if I was missing something.”

She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “I think you were miscast. You should’ve been something else.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“I haven’t decided yet. But-you would’ve ended up in prison. You’re smart enough to know that.”

“That’s why I got out of it.”

“No, I think you’re out of it because you finally realized you never should’ve been in. That’s what I mean you were miscast. Some wild idea influenced you.”

“Money,” Maguire said.

“See, you pretend you’re cynical, but you’re not. It wasn’t just money. Maybe the risk, or the excitement.”

“Maybe,” Maguire said. “I remember telling Andre I could do without anymore thrills. Yeah, maybe you’re right,” his tone thoughtful, going back in his mind and begi

Looking at him lying next to her in her bed she could say to herself, My God, who is this guy? Or she could say, Somebody I’ve known for a long time. She said to him, “You feel it, don’t you? You said you felt close.” Putting her hand on his hand.

“Like the other night was years ago,” Maguire said. “Even di

“That’s what I’ll tell Marta, we’re old friends,” Karen said, and smiled. “Why do I worry about Marta? Even with Frank, I was never afraid to stand up to him.”

“I guess you did,” Maguire said.

“But I was always worried-not worried, concerned, with what the maid thought of me.”

“Because you think of her as a person and not just a maid,” Maguire said. “Talk about miscast, the lady of the house. I don’t see you that way at all. A lady, yeah, I suppose, the way it’s used. But I don’t see you just sitting around pouring tea.”

“How do you see me?”

“Well, like in a sweater and jeans, doing something outside.” He paused. “You want me to tell you, really?”

“Yes, I’d love to know.”

“I see us,” Maguire said. “I see us driving through Spain. I see us at a sidewalk table, place with a red awning. I see us looking at somebody, like some tourist, and nudging each other and laughing.”

She turned to him as he spoke, moving closer and laying her hand on his chest.

“I see us picking up our maps and a couple bottles of red wine to take with us.”

“What kind of car do we have?”

“Alpha Romeo. Convertible, with the top down.”

“Where’re we going?”

“Madrid to the Costa del Sol. And if we don’t like it, we’ll go to some other costa.”

“I think we’ll like it,” Karen said.

She thought, briefly, But who’s paying for it?

Then put it out of her mind. She felt safe. For the time being, she could close her eyes without imagining something happening to her. She could picture herself doing whatever she wanted. She tried to imagine the sidewalk cafe and the Alpha Romeo. But she saw herself coming out of a shop on Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, putting on her sunglasses, and someone saying, That’s Karen DiCilia.

11

“THEN THEY GO BACK TO HER HOUSE,” Jesus Diaz said to Roland. “Then, you know, after awhile, he goes home.”

Roland was down on the floor in his undershorts doing pushups, red-faced, tight-jawed, counting, “Ninety-five… ninety-six… Where’s he live?” straining to say it.

Like the time on the toilet, Jesus Diaz thought. The time Roland, sitting on the toilet, grunting, making noises, had made him stand in the doorway of the bathroom while Roland talked to him.

“He lives up by Northeast Twenty-ninth Street, in Fort Lauderdale.”

“One hu

“You tell me she met him at the place. So then they both drive to her house?”

“No, he went in the car with her, the Mercedes.”

“Then how’d he get home?”

What was printed on Roland’s shorts, was Home of the Whopper. Jesus Diaz said, “He drove her car home.”

“She let him use her car?”

“I guess so. He drove it to where he work, that place, Seascape.”

Roland squinted. “Seascape? The fuck is Seascape?”

“That kind of porpoise place. They have the shows there.”

“Jesus Christ,” Roland said. “Seascape, yeah. I believe Dorado owns it, or did. What’s he do there?”

“The tricks, you know, with the porpoise. Make them jump up, take a piece of fish out of his mouth. All like that.”

“Well, you go on back and see him,” Roland said. “Take somebody with you to hold his arms.”

“Today you mean?”

“I mean right now, partner. Get on it.”

“Man, I’d like to get some sleep first.”

“What you need sleep for? Didn’t you go to bed?”

“I’m just tired,” Jesus Diaz said, and left to go do his job, tired or not.

Do it right or Roland would chew his ass out, tell him to quit chasing that Cuban cocha. Stay in shape like him.

Sure, but if he’d said he was awake all night, except for dozing off-sitting in the mangrove bushes across the street so the security car wouldn’t see him-then Roland would say, All night? You mean to say the dink spent the night? Then Roland might go over there and do something to the woman again.

Man, he was tired though.

Go home, get the Browning to put under his jacket, just in case. Pick up Lionel Oliva at the Tall Pines Trailer Park; pull him out of bed. Hey, Lionel, you want to beat up somebody for a hundred dollars? How big? Not big. Shit yes, he’d jump in the car. It shouldn’t be hard. The porpoise man didn’t look very strong. Also he’d be tired out after his night in the two-hundred-year-old bed.

Marta had said, handing the early-morning cup of coffee to him out the side door, “If it wasn’t broken before, it is now.” Saying it, not as a truth, but because she was happy for the woman.

Jesus Diaz was happy for her also. It was too bad he had to do this to her old friend.

Maguire said to the crowd on the top deck of the Flying Dolphin tank, “There’s the trick it took us eighteen months to teach him. He lays on his side, raises one flipper and… that’s it. You can see why we call him Mopey… Dick. Let’s give Mopey a hand. That must’ve worn him out.”