sporty perforated shoes and tan silk socks. He was sort of cute.
At first he said he had no English. Jill picked up the phone to request a bilingual Delray Police officer and he said wait, some English was coming back to him. He said perhaps he was suffering from amnesia. He remembered dressing to go to the jai alai, but must have forgotten to put his clothes on. He said this is the fronton where they play, isn’t it? Jill told him they played just about everything in here except jai alai. She left him for a minute and he wandered through the offices, God, with his limp dong hanging free. The new girl, Mary Elizabeth, said wow, she had never seen one like that before, so dark compared to the rest of him. The drunks opened watery eyes to watch without comment. What else was new? Walter, who had not yet been shipped off when Geraldo arrived, asked him if he had ever seen an eagle. The Cuban said yes, in fact his mother was an eagle. He said he had been stolen by an eagle when he was a small baby, taken to its nest and fed the regurgitated meat of rabbits. They wrapped the Cuban in a sheet, which he seemed to like, rewrapping himself different ways until he settled on leaving one arm free, toga-fashion. He seemed to quiet down.
Then their twenty-year-old potential suicide, manic depressive, climbed up on a file cabinet and punched through the screen to shatter the glass of the ceiling-high window in the main office. They brought him down bloody, blood smearing the wall, an arm gashed from wrist to elbow. Sometime while the paramedics were taking him out to the van, the naked Cuban disappeared.
They called Delray Police to report a missing consumer who might or might not be running around their catchment area wrapped in a South County bed sheet and might or might not answer to the name Geraldo. They would take him back whoever he claimed to be.
There was no positive response from the police.
About five o’clock, when first Jill fantasized going home at a normal hour, seeing herself barefoot, alone, sipping chilled Piesporter, she discovered her wallet and ring of something like a dozen keys missing from her bag. The only person she could think of responsible was the naked Cuban.
Mary Elizabeth left about 6:45. She came back in with Jill’s ring of keys and wallet, the wallet empty. Found them, she said, right out in the middle of the parking lot. She had kicked the keys, in fact, walking to her car.
Something was strange. Jill had looked outside earlier, front and rear. If the keys and wallet weren’t there a few hours ago, how could they be there now?
Well, if the guy was chronically undifferentiated enough to walk naked into South County thinking it was a jai alai fronton . . . yes? . . . play with a bed sheet, rip off her wallet and keys . . . who knows, he could have sneaked back during a lucid period, basically a nice guy, thoughtful, knowing she would need her keys, her driver’s license . . .
It was a guess that she could accept.
Until she was driving home to Boynton Beach—FM top-forty music turned low, the dark, the muted sound relaxing—and began to wonder if there might not be more to it.
What if that whole number, the guy walking in naked, had been an act? To get her keys, find out where she lived . . . imagining the naked, possibly-undifferentiated Cuban now as a thoughtful burglar. Did that make sense?
None.
Still it was in her mind, the possibility, as she mounted the circular cement stairway to the second floor, moved along the balcony walk past orange buglights at the rear doors of the apartments and came to 214.
Would it be cleaned out?
Jill held her breath opening the door. She had paid almost seven hundred for the stereo and speakers, God, over three hundred for the color television set. Her two-hundred-dollar bike was on the front balcony . . .
The apartment was dark. A faint orange glow in the kitchen window showed the sink and counter. She moved past the kitchen, along
At first he said he had no English. Jill picked up the phone to request a bilingual Delray Police officer and he said wait, some English was coming back to him. He said perhaps he was suffering from amnesia. He remembered dressing to go to the jai alai, but must have forgotten to put his clothes on. He said this is the fronton where they play, isn’t it? Jill told him they played just about everything in here except jai alai. She left him for a minute and he wandered through the offices, God, with his limp dong hanging free. The new girl, Mary Elizabeth, said wow, she had never seen one like that before, so dark compared to the rest of him. The drunks opened watery eyes to watch without comment. What else was new? Walter, who had not yet been shipped off when Geraldo arrived, asked him if he had ever seen an eagle. The Cuban said yes, in fact his mother was an eagle. He said he had been stolen by an eagle when he was a small baby, taken to its nest and fed the regurgitated meat of rabbits. They wrapped the Cuban in a sheet, which he seemed to like, rewrapping himself different ways until he settled on leaving one arm free, toga-fashion. He seemed to quiet down.
Then their twenty-year-old potential suicide, manic depressive, climbed up on a file cabinet and punched through the screen to shatter the glass of the ceiling-high window in the main office. They brought him down bloody, blood smearing the wall, an arm gashed from wrist to elbow. Sometime while the paramedics were taking him out to the van, the naked Cuban disappeared.
They called Delray Police to report a missing consumer who might or might not be running around their catchment area wrapped in a South County bed sheet and might or might not answer to the name Geraldo. They would take him back whoever he claimed to be.
There was no positive response from the police.
About five o’clock, when first Jill fantasized going home at a normal hour, seeing herself barefoot, alone, sipping chilled Piesporter, she discovered her wallet and ring of something like a dozen keys missing from her bag. The only person she could think of responsible was the naked Cuban.
Mary Elizabeth left about 6:45. She came back in with Jill’s ring of keys and wallet, the wallet empty. Found them, she said, right out in the middle of the parking lot. She had kicked the keys, in fact, walking to her car.
Something was strange. Jill had looked outside earlier, front and rear. If the keys and wallet weren’t there a few hours ago, how could they be there now?
Well, if the guy was chronically undifferentiated enough to walk naked into South County thinking it was a jai alai fronton . . . yes? . . . play with a bed sheet, rip off her wallet and keys . . . who knows, he could have sneaked back during a lucid period, basically a nice guy, thoughtful, knowing she would need her keys, her driver’s license . . .
It was a guess that she could accept.
Until she was driving home to Boynton Beach—FM top-forty music turned low, the dark, the muted sound relaxing—and began to wonder if there might not be more to it.
What if that whole number, the guy walking in naked, had been an act? To get her keys, find out where she lived . . . imagining the naked, possibly-undifferentiated Cuban now as a thoughtful burglar. Did that make sense?
None.
Still it was in her mind, the possibility, as she mounted the circular cement stairway to the second floor, moved along the balcony walk past orange buglights at the rear doors of the apartments and came to 214.
Would it be cleaned out?
Jill held her breath opening the door. She had paid almost seven hundred for the stereo and speakers, God, over three hundred for the color television set. Her two-hundred-dollar bike was on the front balcony . . .
The apartment was dark. A faint orange glow in the kitchen window showed the sink and counter. She moved past the kitchen, along
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