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Dream Breakup in Key West
By Michael S. Walker




Ha Ha Ha, she said, falling, large pizzicato mosquitoes encrusting her stiff, hairy arms. We were in the Twilight Motel, it was midnight, sitting by the swimming pool, which was looking like some impossible, paradisal, fruity drink. A midget with a telephone kept popping up from nowhere, asking us if we needed to make a call. She shook her head a vigorous no, her eyes a tired flashing gray. The midget would disappear like a puff of genie smoke and appear again after two minutes or so, the same request in his hands.
Is something funny? I asked. To tell you the truth, I was sick of the girlof her humorous, languorous, berry mouth, of her penchant to recline and descend.
Not really, she said, lighting a cigarette with shaking, pink hands. Ho Ho Ho she added.
At that exact moment, Professor Harold Hill came goose stepping on to the scene, twirling a surgical steel baton and mouthing the words to But He Doesnt Know the Territory. It was the 12:15 show. We had already endured the 11:00 show, the 11:30 show, and the 12:00 show while sitting under the volcanic lava inertia of humid air, too much alcohol, and gurgling, illuminated pool waters.
Its the 12:15 show, she said. I couldnt hear her above the din of faux Hills Gilbert and Sullivanesque rant, but I knew what she had said, nonetheless. I had been with her three days now, longer than I had been with anyone else.
She blew a perfect smoke ring up into the illuminated skyfor a brief second a moving, ghostly circle of smoke framed the scarred full moon. A second of poetic happiness. Then, Professor Harold Hill came through, destroying smoke and satori.
Lets go for a walk, I said, rising slowly from my striped deck chair, feeling mortality/gravity in my complaining knees.
Ho Ho Ho, she said, batting her thick eyelashes in the direction of the sweating, mincing Hill.

We walked side by side down narrow, chaotic, mercantile, Beale Street, the mosquitoes following like a retinue of tiny, tinny kamikaze pilots. She dragged her flip-flops sullenly against the white salt of the pavement and I wanted to strangle her with each irritating scuff.
Nice night, she said. In the doorway of the Anthracite Hotel, its forty windows oozing amber light, a fat drag queen wearing a strapless black evening gown and a wreath of blue cigar smoke muttered her spiel to no one out of one corner of her wine dark mouth.
Shows about to start, Fat Drag Queen huffed. Best drag queens in the state. Madam Mimosa. Trixie. Paula Purebred and her dancing Russell Terrier. Got to see it to believe it. 2.50 cover. Step right up. All of this uttered as if she were a surgeon, prodding a nurse for hemostats and scalpels.
We walked by, heads bowed.
You wanna break up with me, doncha? she whispered, as we left behind the immensity of the Anthracite and reached a more sedate portion of Beale Street. The yellow palms of green palm trees slapped against the unforgiving white of the streetlights, trying weakly to extinguish them.
No, I said. I was lying. I had met her three days ago in the Miami International Airport. Her name was something that began with an M. Mary ModestMaximMaximillianIt wouldnt come to me. She had told me that she was from San Francisco where she worked for the Chamber of Commerce, writing PR material about Alcatraz and Candlestick Park. She and a mysterious boyfriend had flown first class to Florida, and then he had mysteriously disappearedleaving her to circle their luggage under the happy blare of safety announcements broadcast in continuous Spanish.
Its all right if you do. Happens to me all the time, she said. She extracted a white Marlboro Light from a white pack and buried herself under her thin t. shirt in order to light it. I didnt believe she was from San Francisco. I didnt believe that her name was M something. She looked like some runaway from Ohio, barely literate, out for the eternally shifting and treacherous Good Time. Fragile under bluster of jaded indifference.
Its all right if you do, she said, and a small pinpoint of reflected flame stained the cave of her t. shirt.
Lets just walk, I said, shaking my head. I want to look out at the ocean.
And for that, we miss the 12:15? she asked, emerging with a lighted cigarette between her perfect, clenched teeth.

In the art-deco claustrophobia of a double rooma cloister in the Twilight MotelI made love to her that very first night, both of us mildly drunk on Pena Coladas, the television set blaring the unromantic soundtrack of My Cousin Vinny. She shed her clothes to give me a guided tour of the gallery of her tattoos and piercings. A pouncing, Blakean, orange and black tiger surrounded her belly button. A diminutive palm tree on one skinny shoulder, finally home. Her left nipple was pierced and a thin gold hoop dangled from it. Her clit was pierced with a tiny silver stud.
She shivered in the cold of the coldest air-conditioner in Florida as my fingers set sail, a passage from goose bump to goose bump on one of her arms. I pulled her down on my bed, shedding my t. shirt and khaki shorts.
I beg your pardonthe two what? the T.V. said, far far in the distance.
The two yoothsThe two yoothsThe two yooths

Oh, after that we walked hand in hand down to a wooden pier where a techno Tea Party was going onmuscular, shirtless boys dancing with each other under strobe lights just seconds away from the absolute black stillness of the Atlantic Ocean, tiny stars of fishing boats floating on the omnipotent horizon. For just that minute, caught between the ecstatic, cold karate chop of the house music, the muscular bodies grinding against each other desperate for the Love and the Vision and the placid, mysterious ocean holding that Love and Vision jealously in its eternal depths, for just that minute I fell in love with her and I pulled her to me and I kissed the fragile warmth of her ear. She turned to me and smiled

I wanna go in here, she said, grabbing my arm, the first time she had touched me all day.
Where? I answered stupidly. I could smell the salt air of the ocean in my nostrils, like some primordial cellular aphrodisiac. I wanted to go there. I was feeling landlocked and old and this girl, whatever her name was, was becoming a bore.
Here, she said, with emphasis. We were standing in front of the glass and stucco faade of some head shop, its contraband illuminated by the ghostly radiation spilling from some television monitor. I could make out wooden boxes decaled with the likenesses of the Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa. A skull wearing a woolen Rastafarian skullcap grinned down at us from a velvety slope. A whole plumbing infrastructure of water pipes and bongs and gas masks. She wanted to go in here?
Here, she said, pulling me further in to the narrow recesses of the shops doorway. She turned me toward the single light of the television monitor.
Web cam, she said, pointing a finger at a boxy camera on a tripod, looking like something out of War of the Worlds. People all over the world can see us right now, she added, gravely. Break up with me here. You want to
I looked at our solemn faces in the murky, dirty Real Time of the monitor. Was there really anyone watching? Some sweaty, skinny geek in Palisades, New Jersey, bored with porn sites, bored with everything. Or maybe, the whole world was watching in ecstatic, expectant silence.
Come on, I want to go see the ocean, I said.
Ho Ho Ho she replied.

From the throne of a rotting picnic table that someone had locked the chassis of a rust-colored ten-speed to, we sat in silence watching the same lost stars of fishing boats as they drifted over the impenetrable waters. She smoked a thousand more cigarettes, waiting I guess for me to say goodbyefinal benediction. Behind us, a swank hotel, looking like some dry-docked ocean liner, twinkled and preened, and was just as deadly silent.
Look, she said, nodding her head toward a wooden pier, closed off for the night with official sign and steel chain.
Someone was walking down by the water. It was the late Professor Harold Hill, probably walking home, looking weary after the 1:00 show. His shako was still strapped firmly around his angular head, but he had shed the rest of his wool uniform in favor of t. shirt, shorts, and sandals. Behind him Monsieur the Midget traipsed, his rotary telephone still held close to the breast of his red velvet bellboys uniform. Occasionally, they would both stop and turn together, as if some silent command were being barked from somewhere else, and hold hands as they looked in utter stillness at the ocean.
Well, I guess its time to go, I said. Ill be seeing you, I added, stupidly.
Doubtful she said. Very very doubtful.
Ho Ho Ho, I said.

The End