looking forward to it.
Then she hangs up her cheap-shit burner phone and stretches one last time before dropping her sore butt back into the Red Rocket.
The journey continues.
TWELVE
LIKE MOSES IN A RED FIERO
Driving through the Keys feels like threading a needle.
Ahead of her, a ribbon of asphalt: sun-bleached, sand-blasted, salt-brined. In some places, the ocean is ten feet to one side of the road, and ten feet to the other. To her right, Florida Bay, to her left, the Atlantic Ocean, and she’s carving a line right between them, a finger tracing the windowpane between two sheets of emerald glass.
Palm trees sway. Flocks of pelicans cross the bruise-dark sky like something prehistoric – a cabal of pterodactyls out of their time. Few beaches. Lots of boats. Old motels with their old motel signs: The Sandpiper . The Sunset Cove. The Coconut Cove. Smuggler’s Cove. The Lookout Lodge. The Drop Anchor Inn. The Pelican. The Pines. The Conch Out. Big tall signs out of the 1950s. Some gone dark, half-collapsed. Others dirty, half-wrecked, but still lit: red light painting vacancy, vacancy, vacancy in the deepening night.
Tiki bars and marinas. Ramshackle stands selling fish tacos and homes hidden behind the palms. Men and women walking in the coming dark with fishing rods and bait buckets. Powder blues. Coral pinks. Green trees. Smeary neon.
It’s a kind of dipshit, half-ass, hillbilly paradise – lazy and sunburned and swaying in the wind like the palms on both sides of the road.
This isn’t my place , she thinks.
Then again, what place is?
She drives down through Key Largo, through Tavernier, through Islamorada, through Marathon, threading the needle and stitching together tiny islands. It all feels poorly held together by the white bones of various causeways, like all it would take would be one hard wind blown from the puffed cheeks of a drunken god to scatter the islands to the corners of the map.
Speaking of the map: she looks at the one open on the passenger seat next to her, a map nested in the remains of snack food bags and energy drink cans and cigarette packets. Miriam realizes the Keys look like a fingernail bitten most of the way off – but still hanging there at the tip of Florida’s broken finger.
A hangnail , she thinks.
It’s all one big hangnail.
She feels that way sometimes. Like a hangnail that won’t come off.
And suddenly she wonders if the Keys are her kind of place.
She keeps driving. Down through the Middle Keys. Over the seven-mile bridge that rises like a hump over the water. Like she’s driving over a dead dinosaur’s bent back.
She fumbles for a drink in the cup holder–
Something stirs in the passenger seat.
A crow. Too big to be a crow. A raven. Black feathers wild and bristly like the mane of a tarred lion. Ink-dark beak clickity-clacking.
“Almost there,” the crow says in Louis’ voice. “Killer.”
It stoops its head and pecks bits of something spongy and gray off a purple handkerchief beneath its talons. Peck. Peck. Peck-peck .
She throws an empty Red Bull can at it.
The can rebounds off the inside of the passenger side door.
The bird is gone.
And ahead, a sign: Big Torch Key .
THIRTEEN
TORCH KEY
The Fiero drives under power lines. She follows the road that turns off toward the gulf side of Middle Torch Key and winds its way through a salt marsh of scrub and stunted palm. The air conditioning in the Fiero suddenly grumbles, vibrating like a paint-shaker, before giving off a cough and a burning smell.
She curses under her breath. Fiddles with the knobs. Slams the vents with the heel of her hand before finally rolling the windows down.
The humid air crawls in. A few cool breeze streamers come with it.
Bats dip and dart overhead. Shadows blacker than the night, flitting after mosquitoes.
Another bridge from Middle Torch Key to Big Torch Key.
Along the way she passes a shirtless man on a rickety bike. His skin glistens in the yellow of
Then she hangs up her cheap-shit burner phone and stretches one last time before dropping her sore butt back into the Red Rocket.
The journey continues.
TWELVE
LIKE MOSES IN A RED FIERO
Driving through the Keys feels like threading a needle.
Ahead of her, a ribbon of asphalt: sun-bleached, sand-blasted, salt-brined. In some places, the ocean is ten feet to one side of the road, and ten feet to the other. To her right, Florida Bay, to her left, the Atlantic Ocean, and she’s carving a line right between them, a finger tracing the windowpane between two sheets of emerald glass.
Palm trees sway. Flocks of pelicans cross the bruise-dark sky like something prehistoric – a cabal of pterodactyls out of their time. Few beaches. Lots of boats. Old motels with their old motel signs: The Sandpiper . The Sunset Cove. The Coconut Cove. Smuggler’s Cove. The Lookout Lodge. The Drop Anchor Inn. The Pelican. The Pines. The Conch Out. Big tall signs out of the 1950s. Some gone dark, half-collapsed. Others dirty, half-wrecked, but still lit: red light painting vacancy, vacancy, vacancy in the deepening night.
Tiki bars and marinas. Ramshackle stands selling fish tacos and homes hidden behind the palms. Men and women walking in the coming dark with fishing rods and bait buckets. Powder blues. Coral pinks. Green trees. Smeary neon.
It’s a kind of dipshit, half-ass, hillbilly paradise – lazy and sunburned and swaying in the wind like the palms on both sides of the road.
This isn’t my place , she thinks.
Then again, what place is?
She drives down through Key Largo, through Tavernier, through Islamorada, through Marathon, threading the needle and stitching together tiny islands. It all feels poorly held together by the white bones of various causeways, like all it would take would be one hard wind blown from the puffed cheeks of a drunken god to scatter the islands to the corners of the map.
Speaking of the map: she looks at the one open on the passenger seat next to her, a map nested in the remains of snack food bags and energy drink cans and cigarette packets. Miriam realizes the Keys look like a fingernail bitten most of the way off – but still hanging there at the tip of Florida’s broken finger.
A hangnail , she thinks.
It’s all one big hangnail.
She feels that way sometimes. Like a hangnail that won’t come off.
And suddenly she wonders if the Keys are her kind of place.
She keeps driving. Down through the Middle Keys. Over the seven-mile bridge that rises like a hump over the water. Like she’s driving over a dead dinosaur’s bent back.
She fumbles for a drink in the cup holder–
Something stirs in the passenger seat.
A crow. Too big to be a crow. A raven. Black feathers wild and bristly like the mane of a tarred lion. Ink-dark beak clickity-clacking.
“Almost there,” the crow says in Louis’ voice. “Killer.”
It stoops its head and pecks bits of something spongy and gray off a purple handkerchief beneath its talons. Peck. Peck. Peck-peck .
She throws an empty Red Bull can at it.
The can rebounds off the inside of the passenger side door.
The bird is gone.
And ahead, a sign: Big Torch Key .
THIRTEEN
TORCH KEY
The Fiero drives under power lines. She follows the road that turns off toward the gulf side of Middle Torch Key and winds its way through a salt marsh of scrub and stunted palm. The air conditioning in the Fiero suddenly grumbles, vibrating like a paint-shaker, before giving off a cough and a burning smell.
She curses under her breath. Fiddles with the knobs. Slams the vents with the heel of her hand before finally rolling the windows down.
The humid air crawls in. A few cool breeze streamers come with it.
Bats dip and dart overhead. Shadows blacker than the night, flitting after mosquitoes.
Another bridge from Middle Torch Key to Big Torch Key.
Along the way she passes a shirtless man on a rickety bike. His skin glistens in the yellow of
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