Reunion Page 8

  Daniel said, “The old flame is Blue Reynolds.”

  “My father knows Blue Reynolds?” The name and reputation were familiar, though he couldn’t say he’d bothered to watch any of her shows even when he had access to a TV, which wasn’t often. Best he could tell, she and her daytime TV kin represented everything that was wrong with Western culture.

  His grandfather was explaining, “He knew her back when she was hardly more than a kid. They had a thing. We thought it might get serious.”

  “Really?” This was news … or was it? Hadn’t his mother once just about gone over the edge about his dad’s supposedly shameless affair with a teenager? “How old was I?” he asked.

  “Oh, nine or ten, I guess,” Daniel said. “I wonder if he still likes her.”

  Lynn scoffed. “Honey, even taking Brenda out of the equation, that was more than two decades ago.”

  “So? I loved you two decades ago, and I still love you today. Think of it, J,” Daniel said, his tone reminiscent of times when they’d be out kayaking through the mangrove islands and Daniel would get to talking about how pirates had hidden treasure among the tangled roots. “Your dad could pair up with a famous celebrity.”

  “Julian’s using international minutes,” Lynn said. “Now, Julian, when will we see you next?”

  “September. I have ten days left here, then I’ll be in Chicago briefly before Iraq—gotta stop in, water my plants before I go again.”

  “Good thing you don’t have a cat,” Daniel said.

  “Why would I need one when you’ve got six?”

  “Four,” Lynn said. “Say, do you want to talk to your dad? He’s just gone out to the car but I can grab him.”

  “Nah, I have to run. I’m on duty—wedding photographer.”

  “I’ll bet that makes a nice change.”

  “You know it.”

  Daniel said, “So I’ll keep you updated on the Blue Reynolds business,” and Lynn began chiding him about whose business he was supposed to mind.

  Time to get off the phone. “Listen, I love you guys. Send more brownies any time the whim strikes—just send ’em to Chicago, okay?”

  “I expect the whim will strike soon,” his grandmother said. “We love you, too. Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  He ended the call, holding his phone to his mouth for a moment before dropping it back into his pocket.

  Out ahead of him, bright security lights lit the admin compound, the collection of tents for sleeping, for showering, for treating the walking wounded and the sick. There was little activity at the moment; the clinic was closed and almost everyone except essential staff was gathered in the tent behind him. But in ten hours, the clinic tent would be surrounded again by a line of misery. Women and children, mostly, whose needs would overwhelm the available resources before noon. This was life in the world today; he could not get excited on his father’s behalf, especially over someone as superficial as Blue Reynolds.

  A shout of “Hey, where’s our photographer?” brought him back to the present.

  “Right here,” he said, stepping back inside. “Who’s got a smile for me?”

  ater, Julian lay on his cot, the drone of power generators all there was to hear now that the party had ended. He could hardly remember a night in recent months when a diesel engine wasn’t singing his lullaby. Rarely, though, did he have to hold on to his cot’s frame to keep it from spinning—well, seeming to spin. Those champagne cocktails Noor kept pushing on him had a surprising kick.

  Home was officially his apartment in South Chicago, not too far from where his mother was living—alone, still, and that seemed unlikely to change. How long since he’d spent a night in his own place, where the night sounds were of toilets flushing, of babies squalling, of couples arguing—or not arguing, the way Noor and Alec would be not arguing right now, alone together in her small tent at the edge of the compound.

  He stopped in at his apartment two or three times a year, ran the faucets, washed the windows. There were no plants (he’d been joking with his grandparents) and no pets. Nothing live or dependent, which usually felt like a good truth but right now made him sad. Too much champagne.

  The apartment was his property, free and clear—had been his mother’s parents’ home when they were living—and though people were forever telling him he should rent it out, he liked knowing it was always there waiting for him just as he’d left it. It anchored him, the way his Key West room had done throughout his teen years. If not for Daniel and Lynn and their willingness to take him in, who knew in what direction his life would have gone? He had been an angry kid, a confused, resentful one. If not for their patient support, the cot he was sleeping on now could be a metal one in a prison cell.

  Images of the just-finished party played in his mind. The happy couple. Erica and Cameron and Laticia and T.C. and Brandy (especially Brandy) in a kind of bump-and-grind conga line. He should’ve joined them. Maybe if he had, he’d be holding on to Brandy now instead of the cot frame. Maybe they, too, would be not arguing as the generators droned on. They’d be oblivious to the noise and the heat and the knowledge of how hard they would work tomorrow, in as good a way as he’d ever found.

  7

  rom a Key West guidebook Blue found, left behind on a stool at the hotel’s Sunset Pier restaurant where she was seated for lunch Saturday, came an entrancing description …

  The Florida Keys, it is said, are an island string of enchantments. Here, the daylight lasts a little longer, its light a little softer than in northern climes. Once-disenchanted women dazzle amidst vibrant blooms and clear tropical waters. Men who have forgotten how to breathe discover that their lungs and their tolerance have expanded. Nighttime brings skies strewn with glitter, and dreams so benevolent that you want them never to end. The tropical breeze, perfumed with frangipani and oleander, has been known to bewitch many an incautious visitor.

  She’d like to see that glitter-strewn sky. Maybe tonight she’d slip out and judge for herself. When had she last seen the stars? Chicago’s lights, New York’s, London’s, all attempted to steal the glitter for themselves. The cities’ lights pretended to be the equivalent of the heavens, keeping everyone’s eyes on their earthbound attractions. Trendy shops, restaurants, theaters, clubs, posh high-rises, light-strewn bridges, fountains, statues, all winking, Look at me! Why look upward when it’s all right here? If her hotel’s compound wasn’t too lighted, she might even have a good night-sky view from her patio, which in daylight gave her the most astonishing outlook over water so ridiculously turquoise that it was as if Walt Disney had concocted it. From where she was sitting now, near the end of the pier, at a lime-green table beneath a teal-colored umbrella holding a violet menu, the entire turquoise landscape—waterscape, rather—was like the crowning touch in a digitally enhanced movie scene.

  A sleepy-looking waitress, who Blue could tell didn’t recognize her behind sunglasses and with her hair pulled up, led Peter, Janelle, Marcy, and Stephen to the table. Blue slid the book into her bag, but not before Peter noticed it.

  He said, “I hope you’re studying up for Monday’s show.”

  Marcy sat down at Blue’s left and picked up a fuchsia menu. Janelle’s was lime green. Marcy said, “Or maybe she’s reading Find A New Producer in Only Twenty-four Hours!”

  The waitress pulled a fifth stool over to the table and said she’d be back for their drink orders. Blue waited until she was gone, then said to Peter, “Okay, bring it on: What do you want to know?”

  “Size of the island.”

  “Eight square miles.”

  “Length of the Keys string.”

  “One hundred thirty miles, give or take.”

  “Date of secession?”

  “What, you mean the Conch Republic business? I don’t know … 1984?”

  “Eighty-two,⃜ Peter said. “Ha!”

  Marcy rolled her eyes. “All right kids, let’s move on to the really important business, that being, are there daiquiris
on this menu?”

  Peter said, “We just got here, and already you’re partying?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “You are not on vacation. If memory serves, you have to liaise with that nice mayor at three o’clock. He’s put off bowling so he can encourage you to spend even more of the show’s money while we’re here.”

  “Yes,” Marcy said, reading the menu, “and to that end, I’ll pay the eight dollars for a daiquiri. I might even have two.”

  Janelle, long inured to what Marcy called Peter’s short-man attitude, asked Blue what her afternoon plans were.

  Blue said, “I’ll be reviewing my Key West factoids.” For two hours after lunch, she did just that, sitting on her suite’s ocean-front balcony with a docked cruise ship in sight and Peter’s extensive notes on her lap. History, legends, dates, names … when she was sure her eyes would cross and stay that way if she read another dry word, she put aside the folder and picked up the guidebook again.

  y four o’clock, street life had slowed to a strolling pace—even a napping pace for a few unselfconscious fellows. Venturing out from the hotel, Blue saw one man propped against a shadowed alleyway wall, another in the shade of bougainvillea that was thick with red flowers. Even with the late-afternoon languor, she was on the lookout for people who were themselves on the lookout. People well aware that you never knew when a celebrity would show up in a place like this. As a case in point, when Blue was chatting with the hotel clerk before setting out, the clerk reported that guests had seen Gloria Estefan, Leo DiCaprio, and one of the Hilton girls just in the past week. With colleges and universities all over the United States on spring break, the celebrity watchers would be thick, the clerk said.

  “I expect you’re right,” Blue had replied. “They’ll have a grand time this week: we’ve got Meg Cabot on the set Monday, Jimmy Buffett on Tuesday, and Ernest Hemingway on Friday.”

  The girl looked impressed, and then confused. “But—wait, are you sure? I thought Hemingway was dead.”

  The guidebook claimed that at this time of day, many tourists—celebrity and otherwise—lazed under thatched cabanas called chickees, or at the counters of tin-roofed bars like the one Blue passed a block from her hotel, where four shirtless men with crude tattoos on their backs were singing Jimmy Buffett’s “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere.” In Greenland, if she had her geography right.

  Dressed as she was, in oatmeal linen walking shorts and a white tank top, she could have been any woman with a ponytail and large dark sunglasses. By most external measures she was hardly different from the woman just leaving Fairvilla with two large bags. When Blue passed the store she saw in their display window, beneath lingerie-clad busts with prominent nipples, a sign declaring that no one under eighteen was allowed inside. Those bags, then, would be filled with lots of amusements for grown-ups.

  Okay, so she and the woman had less in common than she’d thought.

  Still, like that shopper, she was youthful-looking and slim in that way middle-aged women could be if they worked hard at it. Without the benefit of expert hair and makeup, she was average-looking, or perhaps a little prettier, but nothing more. If she were now, say, an English teacher vacationing in the Keys, teacher-Blue might get an appreciative look, maybe even a wolf whistle if she leaned over where a certain type of man could see her. That would be the extent of getting noticed. As it was? As it was, she would put money on there being a photo of her wearing oatmeal linen walking shorts and a white tank top, ponytail, sunglasses, posted on some celebrity gossip website before California’s sunset, and in glossy newsstand print before the week was out. Exposure came with the territory, the same way box seats at Wrigley Field did, and offers of exquisite jewelry for the Emmys, on loan. And how absurd was it that the very things a person with her income could afford were, in so many cases, the things she now got for free?

  With map in hand, she left Front for Simonton, stopping across from a building with a façade that reminded her of the Alamo. She read its sign, Blond Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory, perplexed as to what giraffes and key limes had in common. Whatever it was, Peter was sure to quiz her on it later.

  Farther up the street, she stopped in front of a small shop, an old cottage with pink clapboard that glowed neon bright in the afternoon sun. Arrayed on the tiny front lawn (a postage-stamp lawn) were metalwork birds in dazzling enameled colors: coral flamingos, posed in one-footed sleep; some black and white birds with large orange bills, prying at oysters; goldfinches perched on swaying daisies. Some were stylized, some realistic, and all of them were remarkable. She went up the short sidewalk and onto the porch, glancing inside through the open doorway. Smaller works were displayed on shelves and in cases, and hung suspended from the ceiling by fishing line. A bright, multicolored bird atop a pedestal display caught her eye and drew her inside.

  The shop encompassed the entire cottage, save for a small room at the back, probably what had once been the kitchen. The space was narrow and long, with only a few small windows. Underfoot were wood planks, freshly painted yellow to coordinate with the windowsills. Display cases and shelves held more birds, plus T-shirts and hats, jars of sauces, packages of candies, polished seashells, a vivid collection of dolls made entirely of fabric. She approached the display she’d seen from outside, noting with pleasure that she had the place to herself.

  Unlike the upscale shops she was accustomed to, no music played, no strategic spotlights lit featured items, and no one approached her with a too-eager inquiry on whether they “might be of assistance.” The companionable sound of wind chimes on the porch, ringing with the light breeze, was all she heard as she took a closer look at the sculpture.

  The bird was small—no larger than her fist—and made to sit on a branch, with deep green leaves offsetting it. Its shape was finchlike, but she’d never seen such a finch. Indigo head, scarlet breast, green wings, yellow back. A rainbow bird. A Gay Pride bird? A striking, appealing bird, at any rate.

  “Painted Bunting,” said someone from the back of the room, startling Blue. She looked that way and saw what she’d missed when she came in: a diminutive black woman seated in the corner behind a crowded table, most likely reading the book she was just setting down.

  “Oh. Thank you.” The feeling of solitude evaporated, and Blue smiled to mask her disappointment. “It’s beautiful.”

  The woman stood up and walked over. She moved with such grace it was as though the air around her didn’t stir. “You’ve never seen one?”

  “So they’re real? No, I haven’t seen one. Do they actually look like this?”

  “Oh yes,” the woman said. Her voice was low and warm, a calming voice to match her calming expression, and the calming earth-toned pants and woven shirt she wore. “If you’d come down a month ago, you might have caught a glimpse. This is the male. He is the most spectacular songbird you’ll find in the northern hemisphere.”

  “But I’ll guess not in Chicago,” Blue said. “I live in Chicago.”

  “Oh, hon, I know you do.”

  Of course she knew. “Are you the artist?”

  The woman nodded. “I come here from Dominica in, oh, 1963 I guess it was. My husband, he was a pirate.” She drew out the last word, pi-i-rate, reminding Blue of her mother’s warning from the night before.

  “No kidding?” Blue said, stroking the bird’s wing with her index finger. “I thought all that pirate business was finished in, you know, the nineteenth century.”

  “So it might seem,” the woman said. “But it’s still happening. People just don’t see things when they don’t want to look. Like little children, we cover our eyes and say, ‘I don’t see it, so it must not be there.’”

  “You have such beautiful things here,” Blue said, an attempt to change the subject. “You’re very talented. I’m going to take the Painted Bunting here home with me, and I want to look around some more—he might like a companion.”

  “Yes, he should have one,” the woman said, lifting the bird fro
m the pedestal. “We should all,” she continued as she carried it to the checkout counter. “Don’t you think?”

  What Blue thought was that the woman was striking nerves—proving what she already knew: that she, Blue, was stressed out and oversensitive, and needed a real vacation. Hiatus could not come too soon.

  As she browsed, she was aware of the woman’s steady gaze. Well, when didn’t people stare? She tried to ignore it as she moved from one sculpture to the next, considering whether she should buy one for her mother’s birthday in June—a job usually accomplished with a phone call to Marcy, like so many of her personal tasks these days. Years, more like. God.

  A Wading Heron? A pair of orioles on a copper birdbath? Or this, a large, regal red bird with a straw-like, curving beak?

  “You brought it all with you,” the woman said.

  “I’m sorry?” Blue looked up from the glossy, black-beaked bird, which was made to stand in a two-foot-wide cattail marsh.

  “All of it. You brought it here. Most don’t.”

  Blue fought off her initial reaction, that uncomfortable sensation that her thoughts were somehow discernible, that people could see through her mask of capability and accomplishment, see how weak and scared she was. She’d endured a lot of such moments in her life, enough to know that the feeling was only anxiety, that the woman was not referring to her burdened mind, but to the production crew with their cameras and cables and soundboards, the light towers, the reflectors—all the things that made Blue look and sound good when nature would have it otherwise. She said, “I guess I did. That’s the way it works, you know.”

  “Does it work that way?”

  Blue reached for her ponytail, took out the elastic, shook her hair, then began to bind it up again as she said, “What can you tell me about this bird? I’ve never seen one like it.”

  The woman stared a moment longer, lips pursed, then said, “I think your mother would enjoy that one, yes, the Scarlet Ibis; you decide, and I’ll go in back and find a box,” leaving Blue standing with her mouth open. She had not mentioned her mother.