07 Welcome to Paradise by Laurence Shames

Author:Laurence Shames [Shames, Laurence]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

20

Alan Tuschman, fleeing everything and nothing, ran farther than he should have.

He ran till his saliva was all used up, till he could feel the separate, grinding pieces that comprised his knees, till small fillets of muscle began to quiver in his buttocks. By now he was way up near the airport. Absently he watched planes take off and land, thought about the passengers briefly trading one life for another, carrying in their luggage the people they might be if nobody they knew was watching. The sun grew higher, shadows seemed to evaporate on hot pavements. The breeze dropped and the ocean took on the fuzzy sheen of brushed aluminum. Fifi’s tongue hung down almost to the sidewalk, swung like a damp pink pendulum as she unflaggingly ran.

Just beyond the airport, the island curved, and there was a wide place in the promenade where people sometimes parked their cars, to fish, or windsurf, or just to look out at the Straits. Nearing that curve, sweat in his eyes and fog in his brain, Al saw something that at first glance made him smile. It was a new gray Lincoln, spotless but for the inevitable goo of squashed bugs on the windshield, and it had a New York license plate that said BIG AL.

Hmm, thought Alan Tuschman. Small world.

In the next heartbeat, though, something darker and indefinably discomfitting pressed in on him. He felt somehow crowded in his own skin. As if the basic fact of his uniqueness were being questioned. As though the borders of the little space he took up in the world were being suddenly contested.

He didn’t have long to think about it. After half a dozen more strides, he saw the tall woman he’d spoken with on the way to the beach. She was sitting on the seawall, wearing pink shorts and a lime-green top, looking out across the ocean. The big, drooling rottweiler that he’d first seen on Duval Street was lolling around her ankles.

Al stopped running. He didn’t exactly decide to stop. He just pulled up short, sucked in a breath, and yelled out, “Hi there!”

The woman turned toward his voice. It seemed to Al that she started to smile then caught herself. Her eyes flicked toward the Lincoln then back again. Blandly, uncomfortably, she said, “Oh, hi.”

Fifi ran over and started yipping at the rottweiler, crouching on her chicken-wing back legs and sticking out her flat and tiny face. Ripper quailed, retreated behind Katy’s slender calves.

Al Tuschman, proud of his dog, said, “Don’t worry. She won’t hurt him.”

Katy almost smiled before erasing it again, gave Fifi a quick pat on the head. Her face tightened and her hand pulled back as the Lincoln’s driver’s-side door clicked open.

Al Marracotta got out. He hadn’t previously seen the point of getting out to look at water that you could see just as easy through the windshield, but now he did. He was on the far side of the car, and could barely peek over its roof. He secretly came up on tiptoe to appraise this sweating palooka who was talking to his girlfriend.

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