to drain this mangrove swamp and build a city here. But first he had to eradicate the mosquito population that swarms by the billions from this swamp. So the clever developer built this eighty-foot-high wooden tower to house thousands of bats. The plan was that at night the bats would fly out from the tower to eat the mosquitoes. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an army of bats gobbling up bloodthirsty mosquitoes.”
The ecotourists groan their disapproval of the developer’s scheme.
A thin young man wearing a green silk bandanna tight around his forehead speaks up. “Are the bats still inside? I’d just like to—”
A ruddy-faced Australian cuts off the question with his thick accent. “Hell, mate, if the bats are inside, all the bloody buggers will be hanging upside down asleep. Maybe Count Dracula is in there with them. Spoookyyy.”
The thin young man looks nervously at the tower. “That’s not funny, dude!”
The guide raises her hand for quiet and continues her story. “The developer’s grandiose mosquito-eating scheme didn’t work. The bats flew away and never returned. The guy went belly-up, lost all his money, and slunk back to where he came from.”
The ecotourists give a congratulatory cheer.
The Australian chimes in. “Bloody hell, that served the greedy grubber right.”
The guide looks out across the surrounding fetid mangrove swamp of tangled tree trunks and branches. “The Florida Keys are a one-of-a-kind unique and fragile environment which we all must respect and protect. What is the lesson that I’ve been teaching you on this tour?”
The ecotourists chant in unison: “Don’t fool with Mother Nature or Mother Nature will fool with you!”
The guide beams her approval. “Let this tower stand as a living lesson to all those who want to come to our paradise and try to rip it off.”
The ecotourists pump their fists, shouting, “Don’t fool with Mother Nature!”
“Good. Now, let’s take a closer look at this tower and witness one man’s folly.” The guide leads the group across the crunchy gravel road. She stops beneath the tower’s base of massive wooden support struts. She beckons the tourists to gather around. “At one time this was the highest structure in the Florida Keys between Miami and Key West. The tower could be seen by passing ships from miles out at sea. Take a look up and see how high this is—quite a feat.”
The ecotourists bend their heads back and look up inside the soaring shaft. In a stunned moment of silence, their eyes widen as they are transfixed by the vision they see in the clammy darkness far above, at the tower’s point. Their sudden shouts and screams echo up the shaft in panicked horror. They turn and run between the tower’s massive support struts and back onto the road. They attempt to knock one another out of the way as they scramble toward the bus. The thin man with the tight green bandanna is pushed aside and falls onto the road; the gravel cuts into his knees, drawing blood. The tour guide yanks him up by the arm. He looks back toward the tower and his body shakes violently. A spray of vomit shoots from his mouth and splatters at the tour guide’s feet. The guide tightens her grip on the wobbling man’s arm and runs with him toward the bus, where the others are cowering in their seats.
Luz steers her white Dodge Charger down the skinny slot of Olivia Street. The street is crowded on both sides with century-old Cuban cigar-makers’ shacks, built when Key West was the cigar-producing capital of the world, rolling out a million smokes a year. None of the shacks retain their original bare-board anonymity, having been painted by affluent new owners to a pastel prettiness. Gone are the generations of Cubans who once stood on the porches calling out hot gossip to neighbors in hot weather. The humid air no longer carries the garlic scent of sizzling shrimp and the sweet aroma of Cuban bread. The white fences in front of the shacks have been trimmed of their overgrown red bougainvillea and riotous yellow allamanda blossoms. Everything is prim and calm, like a street in a proper New England port town, not the boisterous place where Luz grew up.
Luz turns her car at the corner of Olivia onto wide Duval Street. She parks in front of one of the last Cuban expresso-buche shops on the island not retrofitted into a trendy franchise coffee palace. The shop is a nondescript narrow storefront with a