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Trekkers Over and Around 40 |
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| Floridaze
~ Buffett, Key West, & Things Parrothead |
The
Key West Foreign Legion |
Warren Zevon | Other Ports | |
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WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Amy When wind chimes sound, soft, delicate and teasing, where no wind chimes actually are, it's a sure sign that someone is nearby who probably shouldn't be. Max, the bottle held loosely in one hand and the other hand halfway to the cigarette in his mouth, froze. He looked up and down the street. At this time of the morning, the street, lined with shops, offices, and apartment buildings more bijou than habitable, lay flat on it's back, dead asleep and quiet. From the distant valley, closer to the heart of the city, the faint sounds of the early commute hummed. Every now and then the neighborhood birds piped up. Small, shiny black birds crowded street lamps and bitched; pidgeons hid away, unready to face the crystalline sunshine, and cried; and happy little songbirds swooped about and sang merrily despite the glares of their cousins and the distint lack of anything remotely leafy within five miles of the neighborhood. Other than the birds, Max saw no one. Yet. Max shook his head and hunkered back against the gated window of the pawn shop, where he waited for his pug-nosed boss to waddle down the street and unlock the door. He was not hungover; he was merely a bit fuzzy. Still, cotton mouth, wooly eyes, yawning stomach and deflated brain all added up to not in the mood for unexpected visitors. He examined the delicate little ship in the bottle he held and smoked and listened apprehensively to the non-existent wind-chiming float by on the breeze. Abruptly, the growl of small wheels speeding over concrete started at the end of the street. It sounded like an angry poodle, and irritated Max similarly. He looked up, fixed his green eyes on the small figure that resolved from a sort of heat-shimmering pillar of bright color into a boy on a skateboard, and willed the boy to go back where he came from. The boy didn't. Other than a few spritely hops over cracks and gouges in the battered pavement, the boy did no flash tricks on his way down the street. He watched the ground move beneath him intently, his stance knee-bent and shoulder-hunched; not that he had to worry about balance, even with one hand deep in a pocket of his baggy green pants and the other clutching a leather box tightly against his snug-shirted chest. Max didn't think he wanted to know what was in the box. To be frank, the "fair-faced boy" look had him a bit worried, too. The skater accoutrements notwithstanding, nor the profusion of earrings plus the stud noticeable in his tongue when he stuck the tip out in a sly smile, nor even the purple paint on his nails -- he was ruddy, exhuberant, beautiful youth personified. His round, wide-eyed face begged to be trusted, even when sporting a devilish gleam. He was lithe and tanned, and since his bowed, furred legs were nicely hid by the baggy pants, and his curly black hair spiked up nonchalantly to cover his pair of nubby horns, nothing about him suggested other than strength and vitality. He looked like the kind of boy men and women would either want or want to be. "Shit." Max said. He flicked aside his cigarette and tucked his ship-in-a-bottle safely under his arm as the boy skipped the skateboard up from the street to the pavement directly beside Max, and stopped. He propped the board up against the wall next to the pawn shop door, kneeled down, and plopped the leather box onto the ground. Whatever was inside it clunked and clattered. "No." Max ignored the fact that the boy had ignored him so far. "You don't. In fact, go away immediately." The boy smiled at him then with wide-set teeth and silver flickered in his mouth when he spoke. "I'll stay. This is a good spot." He popped open the leather box. "Relax, Max. I'm only here to play a little." The boy could have been referring to the modest little pan-flute that lay in the boxes velvet interior, but Max didn't think so. "Right, play, like last time? Really, Syl, fuck off." The last time the boy had come around, that time wearing the gaunt, battle-axe face of a middle-aged man, the street had been chaos come nightfall. From behind the barred windows, Max, his boss, and a couple of laughing customers had watched drunken revelry turn into window smashing, hand-to-hand combat, and eventually tear-gassing. All day, Sylvanus had hawked rumor-mongering newspapers on the street corner, newspapers full of half-truths penned and printed by Bacchus himself. Everyone bought the rags because the man selling them had looked so poor and sad and in need of a pick-me-up, and because he smelled good. Honestly, Max wouldn't have minded the mess so much if he hadn't got home that night to find that some of the would-be Bacchantes had broken into his ground floor apartment and taken his television, his couch, and all the beer and cheese from his refridgerator. He'd just got a new t.v., just been to the liquor store, and the landlord had only just replaced the cardboard over his window with glass, and Max didn't want any of Syl's tricks fucking the place up right now, however indirectly. "How's your friend next door?" "What?" Syl curled down into a cross-legged recline beside Max and pointed a thumb two doors down. "How's the girl at the bead shop? Melanie, or whatever? The one you spend days and days prowling through shops in town looking for those little bottled ships for." Max blushed and hated himself for it. "Valerie. And I don't spend days. I pick them up when I find them." "Ha! Took you three days and fourteen hole-in-the-wall dives to find that one." He lifted the flute to his mouth. His breath over the pipes made a sweet, mournful sound; unlike the phantom wind chimes, which had run Max cold, this sound lit a tiny flame in the pit of his stomach. The sound tried to make him relax, but he insisted on feeling unnerved. "Where'd you get that thing?" he demanded. Syl stopped his soft blowing and grinned, the tip of his studded tongue playing along his teeth. "Venus, eh?" Max's jaw unhinged. "What?" He stared, and couldn't deny the warmth that grew in him as Syl tried out a quick scale. "Why? Venus? Why?" Max was aware that his dumbfounded questions were empty. Obviously, Syl would borrow from Venus for one reason. He'd borrowed from Bacchus when he'd been in the mood for a party; apparently the damned woodland sprite had a jones to get laid. Wonder why he mentioned Valerie, Max thought. Grimly. He looked again at the beautiful boy beside him. Playing an instrument made by the goddess of love specifically to inspire desire. Who had mentioned Valerie just a moment ago. People were beginning to filter into the neighborhood; Max realized this when he heard the sharp crack of a deadbolt being drawn nearby, and looked up to see that the coffee house across the street had lights on inside, and that Mrs. Plummer was disappearing through the door of her clock repair shop. A couple people Max knew walked past them and ignored him while they gazed at the boy beside him. And that was Max's problem. He knew he was plain to look at, while the Syl's fair-faced boy was enchanting. Ex-girlfriends had always said he had beautiful eyes, and a stunning smile, but what was that next to Syl? And there was that whole thing with Syl mentioning Valerie, out of all the men and women on this block -- "Max!" Syl flicked Max's ear with his fingernail and Max nearly dropped the bottle swatting the hand away. "What the fuck --" "Come to, man. I'm not after your Valerie, so stop plotting my gory death, as if you could manage it." "Oy, I wasn't -- how the hell -- dammit, I told you to leave, didn't I? Read the sign --" he pointed above his head to a metal sign reading 'No loitering.' "-- you can't stay here. My boss'll chase you off anyway. And I haven't got a chance with Valerie, so why would I have been worried about you being after her?" Syl ignored him. "Actually, I'm after the chap who works in the cafe." He nodded at the coffee shop, and Max caught a glimpse of red-haired Kevin pulling up the bamboo shades in the front window. "But you know me. I get what I want, but I spread it around. I intend to have people shagging in the streets by midday, not the least me and Kevin. And you and Valerie, if you're lucky and you stop farting around with ships and make a move on her for once." Max glared at Syl, because Syl's plans always ended in a mess, and also because Syl's plans worked out exactly as Syl wanted. And today he wanted to get laid, and for everyone else to get laid, and for Max to get laid, with Valerie. Gentlemanly concerns notwithstanding, Max wanted that last as well. "Hey, Max! Good morning." Max twitched. Speaking of. He leaned forward, peering around Syl who, the bastard, began to play a soft but jaunty tune. "Morning, Valerie. I...." She was wearing red, a fitted short sleeved red shirt and a slim, gauzy red skirt; her lips were red; the sun painted ginger-red highlights in her blond hair. Max's cotton mouth came back. "I found another one." She glanced over as she opened her shop door. "You did! Man, you're good." She ducked into the shop and returned with the carved wooden 'Open' sign, which she hung on a wall peg. Then she came around Syl with a friendly "Hello," and knelt in front of Max. Jasmine. She always wore jasmine. Max gave her the bottle while Syl piped on. She said something about it looking old, and being impressed that he'd gotten hold of it, but he couldn't get his mind off jasmine. The scent was filling his mind with thoughts of flowers and how trite but terribly appropriate it was to think of firm, silky flower petals while examining the curve of her neck. He noticed she was looking at him. Not in the normal way. Or rather, in a heightened form of the normal way. More bright-eyed. Lips parted, just so. Expression friendly...plus. Go away, Syl, you damned trouble-making sprite! yelled the stubborn little man who lived in his conscience. Shut the fuck up! the rest of his brain replied. Valerie smiled again. "Why don't you come over and tell me how much I owe you? Maybe have a cup of earl grey, if you think you have time?" They stood. As they stepped to Valerie's shop, she said to Syl, "That's really lovely music." Max had sudden fleeting visions of returning home that night to his new window broken and piles of strange naked people sprawled on his rug, and froze. Syl's plans generally ended messily, after all. Then he noticed that the pedestrians he had to dodge to follow Valerie were holding hands. Across the street, Kevin came out of the coffee shop and looked across the street at the music-maker. And Valerie had taken the 'Open' sign from it's peg and was carrying it inside with her. Through the narrow eave window in the warm back room, a breeze carried in the piping song as it tumbled and twined with the rising daytime noise.
A newsboy and a peanut-girl from Pan in Wall Street, by Edmund Clarence Stedman THE END
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