Tourist Season

"Do you know Brian Keyes?"

"Sure," Wiley said, "we worked together."

"Was he a good reporter?"

"Brian's a good man," Wiley said, "but I'm not so sure if he was a good reporter. He wasn't really suited for the business."

"Apparently neither were you."

"No comparison," he scoffed. "Absolutely no comparison."

"Oh, I'm not sure," Kara Ly

"And I think you read too much Cosmo."Wiley wondered why she was so damned interested in Keyes.

"What about Je

"What is this, the Merv show?" Wiley ground his teeth. "Look," he said, "I'd love to sit and chat but it's time to be on my way."

"You're going to leave me out here in the rain? With no food or water?"

"You won't need any," he said. " 'Fraid I'm going to have to douse the fire, too."

"A real gentleman," Kara Ly

Wiley was about to pour some tea on the flames when he straightened up and cocked his head. "Did you hear something?" he asked.

"No," Kara Ly

"It's a goddamn boat."

"It's the wind, that's all."

Wiley set down the kettle, took off his baseball cap, and went crashing off, his bare bright egg of a head vanishing into the hardwoods. Thinking he had fled, Kara Ly

When she looked up, he was standing there. He folded his arms and said, "See what you did, you hurt yourself." He carried her back to the bed of pine needles and examined the burns. "Christ, I didn't even bring a Band-Aid," he said.

"I'm all right," said Kara Ly

"It was nothing," Wiley said, "just a shrimper trolling offshore." He tore a strip of orange silk from the hem of her gown. He soaked it in salt water and wound it around the burn. Then be cut another length of rope and retied her wrists, tighter than before.

The rain started again. It came in slashing horizontal sheets. Wiley covered his eyes and said, "Shit, I can't run the boat in this mess."

"Why don't you wait till it lets up?" Kara Ly

Her composure was aggravating. Wiley glared down at her and said, "Hey, Pollya

Kara Ly

They huddled under a sheet of opaque plastic, the raindrops popping at their heads. Wiley tied Tommy's red kerchief around the dome of his head to blot the rain from his eyes.

"Tell me about Osprey Island," Kara Ly

"A special place," he said, melancholic. "A gem of nature. There's a freshwater spring down the trail, can you believe it? Miles off the mainland and the aquifer still bubbles up. You can see coons, opossums, wood rats drinking there, but mostly birds. Wood storks, blue herons. There's a bald eagle on the island, a young male. Wingspan is ten feet if it's an inch, just a glorious bird. He stays up in the tallest pines, fishes only at dawn and dusk. He's up there now, in the trees." Wiley's ancient-looking eyes went to the pine stand. "It's too windy to fly, so I'm sure he's up there now."

"I've never seen a wild eagle," Kara Ly

"That's too bad," Skip Wiley said sincerely. His head was bowed. Tiny bubbles of water hung in his rusty beard. It didn't make it any easier that she was born here, he thought.

"It'll be gone soon, this place," he said. "A year from now a sixteen-story monster will stand right where we're sitting." He got to his knees and fumbled in the pocket of his trousers. He pulled out some damp gray newspaper clippings, folded into a square. "Let me give you the full picture," he said, unfolding them, starting to read. Kara Ly

"Welcome to the Osprey Club ... Fine living, for the discriminating Floridian.Makes you want to puke."

"Pretty tacky," Kara Ly

"A hundred and two units from two-fifty all the way up to a million-six. Friendly financing available. Vaulted ceilings, marble archways, sunken living rooms, Roman tubs, atrium patios with real cedar trellises, boy oh boy." Wiley looked up from the newspaper advertisement and gazed out at the woodsy shadows.

"Can't someone try to block it?" Kara Ly

"Too late," Wiley said. "See, it's a private island. After old man Bradshaw died, his scumball kids put it up for sale. Puerco Development picks it up for three mil and wham, next thing you know it's rezoned for multi-family high-rise."

"Didn't you do a column on this?" she asked.

"I sure did." One of Wiley's many pending lawsuits: a gratuitous and unprovable reference to Mafia co

"Back to the blandishments," he said, "there'll be four air-conditioned racketball courts, a spa, a bike trail, a te

Kara Ly

"Ferry," Wiley answered. "See here: Take a quaint ferry to your very own island where the Mediterranean meets Miami!See, Kara Ly

"It sounds a bit overdone," she said.

"Twenty-four hundred square feet of overdone," Wiley said, "with a view."

"But no ospreys," said Kara Ly

"And no eagle," Wiley said glumly.

He acted as if he were ready to leave, and Kara Ly

"Why did you pick me?" she asked.

Wiley turned to look at her. "Because you're perfect," he said. "Or at least you represent perfection. Beauty. Chastity. I

"That's enough," Kara Ly

"I take it you don't think of yourself as a precious piece of ass."

"Not really, no."

"Me, neither," Wiley said, "but we are definitely in the minority. And that's why we're out here now—an object lesson for all those bootlicking shills and hustlers."

Wiley crawled out from under the plastic tent and rose to his full height, declaring, "The only way to teach the greedy blind pagans is to strike at their meager principles." He pointed toward the treetops. "To the creators of the Osprey Club, that precious eagle up there is not life, it has no real value. Same goes for the wood rats and the herons. Weighed against the depreciated net worth of a sixteen-story condominium after sellout, the natural inhabitants of this island do not represent life—they have no fucking value. You with me?"

Kara Ly

"Now," Wiley said, "if you're the CEO of Puerco Development, what has worth to you, besides money? What is a life? Among all creatures, what is the one that ca