Tourist Season

"The last of the Malthusians," Keyes said.

"Hell, Malthus only dreameda nightmare like Interstate 95. He never had to drive the fucking thing."

Keyes thought: He seems to have his mind made up. Maybe I'll have to kill him after all. Certainly not now, not on a crowded beach in the afternoon. But maybe soon.

Wiley propped his fuzzy chin on his knuckles and grew silent. He watched the arrival of a gleaming cruise ship across the harbor. Its alabaster decks were lined with bright specks of tourists snapping pictures and flailing idiotic hellos toward the peddlers on the dock. Wiley looked quite amused. Brian Keyes wished he could penetrate his old friend's twisted swamp of a brain; he felt more helpless than ever.

Wiley said: "I suppose you want to hear what's next."

"You bet."

"It's a real beaut."

"Let's have it."

"Okay," Wiley said. "We're going to violate the most sacred virgin in all Miami."

"Can you be a little more specific?"

"Fraid not, Brian. You're a bright young man, you figure it out."

"When you say violate, you mean rape."

"No!" Wiley was indignant. "I can't believe you'd think such a thing. All the years we've known each other—Christ, do I look like a rapist?"

Keyes didn't answer because sometimes Skip Wiley didlook like a rapist.

"The word 'Violate'—"

"Dust off your dictionary, Ace. We're going to desecrate an immaculate princess. That's all the clues for you."

Wiley dug into his jeans and came up with a silver traffic whistle, which he blew three times, loudly.

"What the hell is that?" Keyes asked, realizing that it was too late.

"Time for you to say good-bye to Goombay-land."

Keyes caught sight of four starch-shirted Bahamian cops ru

"Oh shit," Keyes muttered.

"Look at them move," Wiley marveled. "Isn't bribery wonderful?"

Keyes quickly reviewed his options. Physical resistance was out of the question; the policemen looked like four scowling black locomotives. Ru

"Take it easy, men," Skip Wiley said, unfurling from the beach chair. "He's obviously harmless."

Eight rock-hard hands clamped onto Brian Keyes.

"I guess this means you and Je

"Fraid not, Brian." Wiley yawned, stretching his ropy brown arms. "Have a safe trip home."

"When am I go

"Soon," Wiley said. "On national TV. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my windsurfing lesson."

"Kara Ly

"Yes, Mr. Mayor."

"What do you think about famine?"

Kara Ly

"World famine," the mayor said, "in general."

"Well, in general," Kara Ly

"If you were selected our Orange Bowl queen," the mayor went on, "would you work to end world famine?"

"Tirelessly, Mr. Mayor."

The other judges nodded approvingly. They liked Kara Ly

"How would you do it?" the mayor asked.

"Do what?" Kara Ly

"Stop famine."

"I didn't say I could stop it," Kara Ly

"But I'd certainly try," she said, softening. "As you know, I'm majoring in public relations, Mr. Mayor, and I could use those special skills to bring the world's attention to the plight of its starving children. I would consider that my first priority as Orange Bowl queen."

The mayor beamed. Kara Ly

"Thank you, Kara Ly

"Thank you, Mr. Mayor," Kara Ly

And now, she thought, you can all go back to the Hyatt and whack off.

Kara Ly

It was her father's fault. He was the one who'd made her learn "Eleanor Rigby" on the French horn. "The judges'll love it," he'd said, and they always did.

It was her father who made her, at age six, change her name from Karen Noreen because "Noreen belongs in the 4-H, not Atlantic City."

It was her father who dragged her to Geneva, at age nine, to be ministered by "the greatest ambidextrous orthodontist in all Europe."

Kara Ly

It was her father who'd mailed off a stack of bikini Polaroids to Playboymagazine, then to Penthouse,then Oui,and after countless rejections a

One afternoon, a few months before the Orange Bowl pageant, Kara Ly

"Well, what do you think?" her father had asked.

"No sweat," the surgeon had said. "B-cup, or C?"

"Stay away from my tits!" Kara Ly

"But, buttercup, I'm only trying to help."

"They're my tits, Dad. You stay away!"

"Forty million people watch that parade on New Year's Eve. Don't you want to make a good impression?"

Kara Ly

"Your father just wants the best for you," she'd said. "What's so wrong with that?"

"Mother!"

"It'll be a lovely Christmas present."

"But I don't want new boobs for Christmas," Kara Ly

On the night of December 16, Kara Ly

"You just want a blow-job," Kara Ly

Kara Ly