nice and easy

     "Balls!" It was a diurnal curse at oneself.
     Cassidy slid into the booth where I was camping with a pint of Bass Ale and my Toshiba laptop. Her hair was so black obsidian that it flashed blue under certain lights. One side was bobbed, the other buzz-cut, framing her white Kabuki face. Her indigo lipstick matched the indigo of her arm tattoos. At a nearby table were two horsey women with deep-sea tans. Wearing tennis togs and drinking bloody marys. They ogled Cassidy with bourgeoise disdain.
       "Balls what?"
       "Somebody stole my newspapers."
       "Bought one and took the rest. Sorry, Kid."
       I'm a 30-year Air Force retiree with a website. Not much action there. Maybe ten hits a day. What the hell? It gives me an excuse to call myself a bookseller. My military career stationed me around the world. I own about a thousand rare paperbacks, some in German and Japanese. At the moment I was composing business letters. The ale loosened me up to creativity.
        When I left Miami I thought I would never return. But here I am, and the place is going nuts over a little Cuban kid. You've heard of him. The world has. Elian Gonzalez.  My minisucle condo apartment is located on the 79th Street Causeway midway across Biscayne Bay. An easy stroll from where a famous nightspot used to be. Jilly's. Swank and exclusive. We townies crashed it once or twice before going to Vietnam and other scenic places. Two of my buddies were drafted into the Marines and got blown to pudding. Wo, stop me. This ain't a war story.
        I can imagine Cassidy in Jilly's. Some kind of Holly Golightly in black turtleneck and pedal-pushers. She ambushes Frank Sinatra, handing him a zen poem wrapped around a long-stem hibiscus.
         And he would turn and ask with a twinkle, "What's this, Doll?" Blue eyes.
        "Oops," the clunky thing dropped her cigarets and matches.
        Clove cigarets and box matches. The floor must have eaten them. When she looked they were gone.
         Barely audible. "Back in a minute."
         "Where're you going?"
         "Buy smokes."
         Ain't that a kick in the head? I struggle for years to give up the damn things and kids today go for them fast as you can say Joe Camel.
         I watched her clomp across the hardwood floor in her Doc Martens. She was totally noir, wearing a black muscle-shirt and a black floral grannyskirt that swished in her wake.
         She returned with a pack of Camels and a borrowed book of matches. Memory flash. I asked her, "What happened to the Zippo I gave you?"
         "Godawful thing torched my nose."
         "In The Nam that was its beauty."
         She drilled me with a plume of smoke and showed me her teeth. She needed a chimney-sweep, not a dentist. Winsome smile. Goth mouth.
         She reminded me of Morticia. Or one of the erotic dead.
         Cassidy earned rent money selling out-of-town newspapers from vending machines.She said she lived in a roach-hotel with pink stucco walls and red spanish tiles. The good thing there was a terrazzo patio with a PVC plastic table-and-chairs under a bright Cinzano umbrella.
         "So," I asked. "How's work coming along?"
         "Bought an SUV Lexus."
         "You frigging yuppies."
         She returned my smirk.
         Don't laugh when I tell you how we hooked up. In the library, at a lonelyhearts book club social. We read"The King In Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers.
         Yeah, I like wierd tales. Believe me, she has a wierd tale of her own.
         The place we were in now was called a brasserie. Up-scale bar & grill. What would normally be a cheap-eat cost a ten-spot. The array of available drinks, micro-brews and unheard-of imported liquors, was the main draw. Lots of brass fixtures and mirrors. On a Saturday night, with stand-up comics and lounge-crooners, the place could pass for a New Jersey roadhouse.
        The morning manager was a scheisskopf. His family named him after his papa in Cuba, so everybody called him Segundo. He sat like a manatee behind a baroque cash-register, ringing up breakfast sales.
        He gladly waited on diners, unctuously schmoozing them and snapping his fat sausage fingers for table help. He didn't attend to booths like mine, staying as far from daylight boozers as he could.
         I asked him for another Bass.
         "Fresh out. You drank the last one."
         "Whitbread, then."
         "I'll look."
         Swarthy, paunchy. Segundo had lustrous wispy fine hair the color of brown shoe polish all over his body, it seemed, except where it would matter the most for a thirty-year-old swinger: on the crown of his dull head. He wore khaki cargo shorts and navy knitted shirts like a uniform. Must have owned a dozen sets. Nike sandals. Wild and crazy guy.
          He gave me a Whitbread and wrote it on my tab.
          His place was the San Souci. Rose and aqua neon sign.
          "Know what you need here, Segundo? You need shirts with a logo."
          Frowning. "What kind of logo?"
          "A Sans Souci logo. Whatever you like."
          "Like maybe a sailfish leaping out of the water?"
          "Miami already has the Marlins."
          "Don't mention those putas in here."
          "Wo, sorry." I remember hearing he had lost a bundle on them through a Las Vegas bookie on the internet.
           With his nose solidly out of joint, he decided to quiz me. "You happen to know what Sans Souci means? Eh, flyboy?"
            I grinned, all toothy. "Without a care. That's why I drink in your brassy establishment. I COULD carry my business to that trendy Art-Deco trattoria down the street. If that would suit you."
            "As if. Now go away with your drink."
            I began to go, then I said, "Seriously, if you want somebody to design a logo for you, Cassidy over there can do it. She's an artist."
            "The vampire girl with a ring in her belly-button?"
            "You should see her tattoos."
            "Beat it."
            Cassidy had already smoked two cancer-sticks. Her elfin nose was buried in a paperback book. "Lost Souls" by Poppy Z. Brite.
             "Ho, gorgeous!" That irritated her, but she let me get away with it because the last thing she wanted to be was politically correct. I simply couldn't help myself. She was the most wonderful thing in my life.
             "Yew tawkin t'me?"
             "Excuse me, Travis." I sat down.
             We shared a relaxed silent time. We watched the morning crowd come and go. The vegetarian bagel people. The Sante Fe omelet people. The hungry-as-a-truckdriver-chickenfried-steak-with-gal-gravy people.
              Segundo fed them all. His favored customers, of course, were those who spent the least time eating. They were those smart professional people in a hurry to be somewhere vital. Slim, manicured officer-types. Suits ordering breakfast Continental.
              Segundo must have thought their glow of success would rub off onto him.
              Cassidy toyed with my Panama Hat. It was part of MY uniform of tropical shirts, faded blue jeans and blazingly white Reeboks. Same lazy threads I wore mufti while on leave.
              She was a true creature of the night. Her affected visage was of chalky ennui. I had seen others from her nether-realm with similar masks.
               Were we lovers? I may have fantasized a May-September affair. But Cassidy didn't have a romantic molecule in her body. We were two outsiders. Lonesome chums in a foxhole.
               Like the bourgeoise dames drinking bloody marys, I too had a deep-sea tan. I had undergone more than one melanoma scare. An Air Force surgeon cut a chunk out of the bridge of my nose. The restructuring work gave me a tough, hard-bitten pug look. Believe me, it wasn't a mask.
               Chief Master Sergeant Ted Carmody.
               Aircraft Refueling Specialist.
               Active duty: Vietnam, Turkey, Japan, Germany and Air Force One, Randolph AFB.
               "How do you like my buzzcut?" I asked her.
               She stroked the gray stubble on my head like she would the M or W on a tabby cat.
               "It's still geezer. You gonna dye it?"
               "Yeah. Same color as Warhol's wig."
               "Well," she chuckled. "Keep it under your hat."
               Segundo was glaring at us.
               "I think he wants us to leave."
               Her shrug was profound. "Fuck him."
                "Let me look for cloves." I wrangled down beneath our table. Found them.
                "Oh, thanks!" She smiled with sincere appreeceation. Then: "Have you heard of Antonin Artaud?"
                "As a matter of fact, I have. His contemporaries were surrealists and nihilists. There was Dada and the Theatre of the Absurd. His was the Theatre of Cruelty. He went insane. Why the interest?"
                 "I have this old CD. Bauhaus."
                  I almost launched into an interminable oration on the Bauhaus school of architecture. Caught myself.
                  "My knowledge of rock music is nil. I'm a jazzbo."
                 Jazz, and the Heart of Darkness. Poetry of the Cosmos. Gutsy, raucous, chaotic disharmony that made sense. Be-bop, Bossa-Nova. Steel mills and quiet surf. My greats were Trane, Monk and Mingus. Jobim, Baden-Powell, Bonfa and Gilberto. Balm to my soul.
                  I looked at Cassidy. She was amazing. Both slinky and clunky. I was hoping she would pass through this Goth phase and, like a chrysalis, morph into something vibrant and even more beautiful.
                  She was about to begin her voyage of discovery and I wanted to impart to her my zest for life and love of learning. The pursuit of knowledge and understanding should be never-ending. The goal is but a tiny teardrop of wisdom.
                  "You know a lot of stuff," she said.
                  "Some people would differ."
                  "No doubt. Does it matter?"
                  "Not in the slightest."
                  "Good. Let's blow this joint."
                  Segundo could not conceal his jubilation as we departed the Sans Souci.
                  The autumn sun touched our faces kindly. A breeze from the bay rattled the fronds of coconut trees.
                   We walked to a man-made cape that served as a boat-launch for townies. Saltwater Crackers. I remembered it well. From there we used to crank up our Evinrudes and zoom off, slappity-slap, to V-hull paradise.
                   What the hell were we doing? When she took my hand and squeezed it, I nearly died.
                   "You never married. Why?
                   "Didn't want to. Didn't want kids."
                   "Bet you got laid a lot."
                   "All of them strangers."