Native Tongue Part 4

"It's me."

"G.o.d, I need to talk to a real man," she said. "I had a fantasy that got me so hot. We were on the bow of a sailboat. Making love in the sun. I was on top. Suddenly a terrible storm camea""

"Nina, it's me!"

"a"but instead of hiding in the cabin, we lashed each other to the deck and kept on doing it in the lightning and thunder. Afterwards the warm rain washed the salt off our bodies...."

"For Christ's sake."

"Joe?"

"Yeah, it's me. Why don't you ever listen?"

"Because they don't pay me to listen," Nina said. "They pay me to talk."

"I wish you'd get a normal job."

"Joe, don't start."

Nina was a voice for one of those live dial-a-fantasy telephone services. She worked nights, which put a strain on her personal relationships. Also, every time Joe Winder called, it cost him four bucks. At least the number was easy to remember: 976-COME.

Nina said, "What do you think about the lightning-and-thunder business? I added it to the script myself."

"What was it beforea"something about whales, right?"

"Porpoises, Joe. A school of friendly porpoises leaped and frolicked in the water while we made love. Our animal cries only seemed to arouse them."

Nina had a wonderful voice, Winder had to admit. "I like the new stuff better," he agreed. "The storm idea is gooda"you wrote that yourself?"

"Don't sound so surprised." She asked him how his day had gone, and he told her about the stolen voles.

Nina said, "See? And you thought you were going to be bored."

"I am bored. Most of the time."

"Joe, it's never going to be like the old days."

He wasn't in the mood to hear it. He said, "How's it going with you?"

"Slow," Nina said. "Beverly went home early. It's just me and Miriam."

"Any creeps call in?" Of course creeps had calleda"who else would bother?

"The usual j.a.c.k.-.o.f.f. artists," Nina reported. "They're harmless, Joe, don't worry. I just give a straight read, no moans or groans, and still they get off in about thirty seconds. I had one guy fall asleep afterwards. Snoring like a baby."

Sometimes she talked about her job as if it were a social service, like UNICEF or Meals on Wheels.

"When will you be home?" Winder asked.

The usual, Nina said, meaning four in the morning. "Want me to wake you up?"

"Sure." She had loads of energy, this girl. Winder needed somebody with energy, to help him use up his own. One of the drawbacks of his high-paying bulls.h.i.t PR job was that it took absolutely nothing out of him, except his pride.

Hurriedly Nina said, "Joe, I got another call waiting."

"Make it short and sweet."

"I'll deal with you later, sailor boy."

And then she hung up.

Winder couldn't sleep, so he put a Warren Zevon tape in the stereo and made himself a runny cheese omelet. He ate in the living room, near the speakers, and sat on a box because there were no chairs in the apartment. The box was filled with old newspaper clippings, his own, as well as plaques and certificates from various journalism awards that he had received over the years. The only important journalism award that wasn't in the box was the single one that impressed anybodya"the Pulitzer Prize, which Joe Winder had never won.

When he was first interviewed for the publicity-writing job at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills, Joe Winder had been asked if he'd ever gotten a Pulitzer. When he answered no, Charles Chelsea had threatened to put him on the polygraph machine.

"I never won," Winder insisted. "You can look it up." And Charles Chelsea did. A Pulitzer on the wall would have disqualified Joe Winder from the PR job just as surely as flunking a urinalysis for drugs, "We're not in the market for aggressive, hard-bitten newshounds," Chelsea had warned him. "We're looking for writers with a pleasing, easygoing style. We're looking for a certain att.i.tude."

"I'm flexible," Joe Winder had said. "Especially my att.i.tude."

Chelsea had grilled him about the other journalism awards, then about the length of his hair, then about the thin pink scar along his jawline.

Eyeing Winder's face at close range, the publicity man had said, "You look like a bar fighter. Did you get that scar in a fight?"

"Car accident," Joe Winder had lied, figuring what the h.e.l.l, Chelsea must've known the truth. One phone call to the newspaper, and any number of people would've been happy to drop the dime.

But Chelsea never said another word about the scar, never gave a hint that he'd even picked up the rumor. It was Joe Winder's journalism achievements that seemed to disturb the publicity man, although these concerns were ultimately outweighed by the discovery that Winder had been born and raised in Florida. The Publicity Department at the Amazing Kingdom was desperate for native talent, somebody who understood the mentality of tourists and crackers alike.

The Disney stint hadn't hurt Joe Winder's chances, either; he had worked among the enemy, and learned many of their professional secrets. So Charles Chelsea had set aside his doubts and hired him.

That was two weeks ago. It was still too early for Winder to compare the new job with the one at Disney World. Certainly Disney was slicker and more efficient than the Amazing Kingdom, but it was also more regimented and impersonal. The Disney bureaucracy, and its reach, was awesome. In retrospect Joe Winder wasn't sure how he had lasted as long as he did, six months, before he was caught having s.e.x on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and fired for not wearing his ID card. Winder felt especially bad that the young woman with whom he'd been dallying, a promising understudy to Cinderella, had also been dismissed over the incident; she for leaving Main Street during Mickey's Birthday Parade.

During the job interview at the Amazing Kingdom, Charles Chelsea had told him: "You work for us, you'd better keep it in your pants, understand?"

"I've got a girlfriend now," Joe Winder had said.

"Don't think you won't be tempted around here."

Winder hadn't been tempted once, until today. Now he was thinking about Carrie Lanier, the fearless beauty inside a seven-foot racc.o.o.n suit.

This is what happens when you turn thirty-seven, Winder thought; the libido goes blind with fever. What else could explain his attraction to Nina? Or her attraction to him?

Being a newspaper reporter had left Joe Winder no time for such reckless attachments. Being a flack left him all the time in the world. Now that he was forbidden to write about trouble, he seemed determined to experience it.

He finished his omelet and opened a beer and slumped down on the floor, between the stereo speakers. Something had been nagging at him all afternoon, ever since the insufferable Chelsea had drafted him to help with the robbery crisis. In the push toward his deadline, it was clear to Joe Winder that none of his writing skills had erodeda"his speed at the keyboard, his facile vocabulary, his smooth sense of pacing and transition. Yet something from the old days was missing.

Curiosity. The most essential and feral of reporters' instincts, the urge to pursue. It was dead. Or dying.

Two strangers had invaded a family theme park in broad daylight and kidnapped a couple of obscure rodents from an animal exhibit. Winder had thoroughly and competently reported the incident, but had made no effort to explore the fascinating possibilities. Having established the what, he had simply ignored the why.

Even by South Florida standards the crime was perverse, and the old Joe Winder would have reveled energetically in its mysteries. The new Joe Winder had merely typed up his thousand words, and gone home.

Just as he was supposed to do.

So this is how it feels, he thought. This is how it feels to sell out. On the stereo, Warren Zevon was singing about going to the Louvre museum and throwing himself against the wall. To Joe Winder it sounded like a pretty good idea.

He closed his eyes tightly and thought: Don't tell me I'm getting used to this G.o.dd.a.m.n zombie job. Then he thought: Don't tell me I'm getting drunk on one lousy beer.

He crawled across the carpet to the phone, and tried to call Nina at the service. The woman named Miriam answered instead, and launched into a complicated fantasy involving trampolines and silver ankle bracelets. Miriam was struggling so valiantly in broken English ("Ooooh, bebee, chew make me comb so many time!") that Joe Winder didn't have the heart to interrupt.

What the h.e.l.l, it was only four bucks. He could certainly afford it.

FOUR.

On the morning of July 17, Danny Pogue awoke in a cold sweat, his T-shirt soaked from neck to navel. He kicked the covers off the bed and saw the lump of gauze around his foot. It wasn't a dream. He limped to the window and from there he could see everything: the Olympic-sized swimming pool, the freshly painted tennis courts, the shady shuffleboard gazebo. Everywhere he looked there were old people with snowy heads and pale legs and fruit-colored Bermuda shorts. All the men wore socks with their sandals, and all the women wore golf visors and oversized sungla.s.ses.

"Mother of Christ," said Danny Pogue. He hollered for his partner to come quick.

Bud Schwartz ambled in, looking settled and well rested. He was spooning out half a grapefruit, cupped in the palm of one hand. "Do you believe this f.u.c.king place?" he said to Danny Pogue. "What a gas."

"We gotta get out."

"How come?"

"Just look." Danny Pogue pointed out the window.

"So now you got a problem with senior citizens? Whata"they don't have the right to have fun? Besides, there's some young people that live here, too. I saw a couple a hot ones out by the swimming pool. Major t.i.tties."

"I don't care," mumbled Danny Pogue.

"Hey," Bud Schwartz said. "She shot your foot, not your weenie."

"Where is she?"

"Long gone. You want some lunch? She loaded up at the Publix, you should see. Steaks, chops, beera"we're set for a couple a weeks, easy."

Danny Pogue hopped back to the bed and peeled off the damp shirt. He spotted a brand-new pair of crutches propped in the corner. He said, "Bud, I'm gonna split. Seriously, I'm taking off."

"I can give you ten thousand reasons not to."

"Speaking of which."

"She's bringing a grand for each of us, just like she promised," said Bud Schwartz. "Good faith money is what she called it."

"Invisible is what I call it."

"Hey, lighten the f.u.c.k up. She's an old lady, Danny. Old ladies never lie." Bud Schwartz lobbed the grapefruit skin into some kind of designer wastebasket. "What's wrong with you, man? This is like a vacation, all expenses paid. Look at this freaking condoa"two bedrooms, two bathrooms. Microwave in the kitchen, Cinemax on the cable. Say what you will, the old geezer knows how to live."

"Who is she?" Danny Pogue asked.

"Who cares?"

"I care. She shot me."

Bud Schwartz said, "Just some crazy, rich old broad. Don't worry about it."

"It's not you that got shot."

"She won't do it again, Danny. She got it out of her system." Bud Schwartz wiped his hands on the b.u.t.t of his jeans to get the grapefruit juice off. He said, "She was p.i.s.sed, that's all. On account of us losing the rats."

Danny Pogue said, "Well, screw that deal. I'm leaving." He made a move for the crutches but faltered, hot and dizzy. Molly McNamara had fed him some pain pills late last night; that much he remembered.

"I don't know where you think you're going," said Bud Schwartz. "The truck's history."

"I'll hitch," said Danny Pogue woozily.

"Look in the mirror. Your own mother wouldn't pick you up. The h.e.l.l's f.u.c.king Angels wouldn't pick you up."

"Somebody'll stop," Danny Pogue said. "Especially with me on them crutches."

"Oh, sure."

"Maybe even some girls." Danny Pogue eased himself back on the pillow. He took deep breaths and tried to blink away the haze in his brain.

"Have another codeine," said Bud Schwartz. "Here, she got a whole bottle." He went to the kitchen and came back with a cold Busch.

Danny Pogue swallowed two more pills and slurped at the beer can noisily. He closed his eyes and said, "She ain't never gonna pay us, Bud."

"Sure she is," said his partner. "She's loaded, just look at this place. You should see the size of the TV."

"We better get away while we can."

"Go back to sleep," said Bud Schwartz. "I'll be down at the pool."

The Mothers of Wilderness met every other Tuesday at a public library in Cutler Ridge. This week the main item on the agenda was the proposed bulldozing of seventy-three acres of mangroves to make room for the back nine of a championship golf course on the sh.o.r.e of North Key Largo. The Mothers of Wilderness strenuously opposed the project, and had begun to map a political strategy to obstruct it. They pursued such crusades with unflagging optimism, despite the fact that they had never succeeded in stopping a single development. Not one. The builders ignored them. Zoning boards ignored them. County commissioners listened politely, nodded intently, then ignored them, too. Of all the environmental groups fighting to preserve what little remained of Florida, the Mothers of Wilderness was regarded as the most radical and shrill and intractable. It was also, unfortunately, the smallest of the groups and thus the easiest to brush off.

Still, the members were nothing if not committed. Molly McNamara steadfastly had refused all offers to merge her organization with the Audubon Society or the Sierra Club or the Friends of the Everglades. She wanted no part of coalitions because coalitions compromised. She enjoyed being alone on the fringe, enjoyed being the loose cannon that establishment environmentalists feared. The fact that the Mothers of Wilderness was politically impotent did not diminish Molly McNamara's pa.s.sion, though occasionally it ate at her pride.

She ran the meetings with brusque efficiency, presiding over a membership that tended to be retired and liberal and well-to-do. For its size, the Mothers of Wilderness was exceedingly well financed; Molly knew this was why the other environmental groups wooed her, in hopes of a merger. The Mothers had bucks.

They had hired a hotshot Miami land-use lawyer to fight the golf course project, which was called Falcon Trace. The lawyer, whose name was s.p.a.cci, stood up at the meeting to update the Mothers on the progress of the lawsuit, which, typically, was about to be thrown out of court. The case was being heard in Monroe Countya"specifically, Key Westa"where many of the judges were linked by conspiracy or simple inbreeding to the crookedest politicians. Moreover, the zoning lawyer admitted he was having a terrible time ascertaining the true owners of the Falcon Trace property; he had gotten as far as a blind trust in Dallas, then stalled.

Molly McNamara thanked s.p.a.cci for his report and made a motion to authorize another twenty thousand dollars for legal fees and investigative expenses. It pa.s.sed unanimously.