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Chapter One

Things were not going well that last slow month of summer Business had fallen to an all-tiust People still ca Instead, they would aawk, scratch their necks, and ask, how much? And when I told them 450 a day sorin strangely, and some would just stare, and then they would all look behind them, take a funny little step to the side, and wander aith a shy half glance over their shoulder like they were hoping I hadn’t noticed them

Art, the 350-pound ex-biker dockmaster, said it was the same with people who called his shack on the phone They would clear their throats three or four tiht back to him, but they never did

Art said things would get better soon, but Art always said that I guess he felt like he had to keep up the uides that worked out of his dock

It wasn’t working My morale was bad, and it wasn’t all because business was slow

Things were not going any better away frohts to BATTLE, a lush 54-foot Alden sailboat I had taken froht he was the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler He was dead, blasted to bits by lightning, and nobody else had come forward to claim the boat So I could count on a nice chunk of money when I sold it That should have solved a lot of problems But there seems to be a special rule of life that whenever you have , and it all did

Nancy hadshe just needed so, but we both knew it did

She hadas a nurse in a shetto clinic had started to turn her sour—and because, I still thought,

And maybe we had We had tried hard to ether, it had worked e, there was roo we needed because ere in love Or at least, we thought ere in love, anduntil the fairy dust wears off

There is nothing quite like being in love in Key West Just walking down Duval Street can make you feel more alive than you have ever felt before, like God loves youyou do will always turn out all right You can alin to believe that you are Gene Kelly

And when the fairy dust wears off there’s nothing worse than love dying in Key West On the passionate canvas of the tropics the brush strokes are brighter, harder-edged They hurt more Everyone holds hands in Key West, and if your hand is empty you feel it more

But Nancy and I had not broken up; we had siether, and Nancy still kept some of her stuff in a closet at reed it was over I could get on with life Instead, the ending was dragging on indefinitely as the relationship twitched into te the illusion of hope into a thing that was already as dead as it could be

The illusions didn’t last long The final killing blow caht not have been able to happen at all, except in that searing, stupefying August heat

• • •

The Moonlight Room was a back street dive Every waterfront town has one There are no signs posted to tell you, but it’s for members only To be a member you have to live in town and work the boats

The ht Rooood handful of the couides, charter captains, irlfriends, and families If an outsider wandered in by e quickly and wander out again If they didn’t take a hint they’d better either buy a round for the house or kno to use their fists

You alh the door Once inside you were never sure it orth it There were three sh-backed booths, and a row of stools along the bar At the back was a shter deeper than a brooarette machine, and a unisex restroom

I don’t knohere the term “Happy Hour” co and pathetic Happy Hour at the Moonlight Rooht have been a Norman Rockwell, if Rockwell had ever painted All-Anation A handful of idle captains, mates, and retired drunks sat on stools and in booths and just drank with a concentration you could almost call sober

With Nancy avoidingthe last of the late afternoon heat in the dark and moldy coolness of a booth After the first few ti atto fit in I wasn’t sure how to feel about that