American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,10
stand up and shout: ‘I’m Noah and I fucked up and I don’t want sympathy, antipathy, hallelujahs, or condemnations. It is what it is, between a man and himself, a void to swim in until it’s a win-or-lose.’ ”
Zoe pulls the bottle from his hand. She slips the gold wedding ring from her finger and drops it into the empty bottle. The ring falls to the glass bottom with a clink. She hands the bottle back to Noah. “Congratulations, now you’re married to it.”
“And you’ve finally got what you want: you’re free to date the Big Conchs of this world. That’s why you still run a bar, so guys like Big can get drunk and hit on you?”
Zoe bites down on her lip, trying to suppress her fury, but she cannot. “That’s disgusting. You know good and well that I got into the bar business years ago only to support you through law school. Why do you try to hurt me like this?”
Noah picks up a cork from the tabletop. He pounds the cork tightly into the bottle’s neck. He holds the bottle up and shakes it. The gold ring trapped inside rattles. He stares through the glass at the ring. “Haitian rum. There’s a prize in each and every bottle.” He shifts his intense gaze onto Zoe. “You are still my prize. My dazzling angelfish, my resplendent butterfly fish, my gorgeous queen triggerfish.”
Zoe pushes up from the table. “I’m nobody’s fish. Stay here and drown in the drunken sea of self-pity you’ve created for yourself.” She walks out.
Noah does not move; he sits alone in the stillness. Through the open window from outside, the sickly sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine drifts in. The blood in his veins hums with the sugar rush of rum. On a moisture-slick wall, he watches a gecko make its slow, paranoid way until it senses him watching. The gecko’s ghostly-pale color flushes to a bright bold green; the blow bulge under its chin balloons into pulsating crimson. It pumps up on its short legs and puffs its three-inch lizard body into what it thinks is an intimidating size that will back Noah down from any hostile intentions.
Noah raises the empty rum bottle with the ring in it and salutes the gecko. “That’s right, buddy, you’re the man. You are the man. Don’t ever forget it.”
Eighteen miles up from Key West, on distant Sugarloaf Key, an eighty-foot-high pyramid-shaped wooden tower looms at the dead end of a gravel road. The moon’s glow reveals that the tower is surrounded by a putrid mangrove swamp of twisted trunks and gnarly branches. From the swamp’s brackish green water emerges what appears to be a human skeleton. The skeleton is a person totally encased in a full-body black rubber suit stretched tight and painted with luminescent white skeleton bones. A rubber skull mask covers the face and head. The skeleton rises out of the dark water onto the hard gravel road. A coiled rope is slung over its shoulder. The skeleton peers out from deep black eye sockets to see if anyone is watching. It reaches back down and hefts from the swamp’s mud-suck of water a heavy object wrapped and tied in a canvas tarpaulin. The skeleton slowly moves along the road, the gravel crunching beneath its rubber feet as it drags the heavy object behind. The skeleton stops and bends its head back, its skull face staring up to the top of the tower’s point.
In the blue light of a full moon, the skeleton continues dragging the object toward the tower.
Sharp morning sunlight glares off the pyramid-shaped wood tower surrounded by mangrove swamp. A tour bus travels on the gravel road leading to the tower. The bus’s high black rubber tires kick up a cloud of white dust. The bus rolls to a stop in front of the tower. The side of the bus is painted with bright green words: FLORIDA KEYS ECO-AWARE.
Ecotourists step out of the vehicle with eager purpose. Slung around the necks of the men and women are binoculars and cameras. They wear fashionable shorts and green T-shirts emblazoned with DON’T FOOL WITH MOTHER NATURE. They aim their cameras at the wooden pyramid tower.
The last person out of the bus is a tour guide with a tight expression of righteousness etched on her youthful face. She motions for the group to gather around her. The tourists snap to attention at her words. “Many years ago, a real-estate tycoon had a grand scheme. He wanted