18
From the San Carlos Institute, it was a quick walk to the Tennessee Williams Museum on Duncan Street, but Leo was in no rush
to leave. There’s something here, he thought, breaking away from the group to tour the rooms on his own. The beginnings of an idea. The history trapped within
the walls spoke to him. A fire? Arsonists dispatched from Spain? The spark of revolution. The influence of José Martí. Doom,
destruction, and conspiracies . . . if he couldn’t spin a story out of that yarn, he ought to sell Toyotas.
Instinctively, Leo looked around for Jules, eager to share. He moved away from the marble statue of Martí, an ordinary man
with an impressive mustache, immortalized with an arm raised, finger extended. Jules was in the library, a clothbound book
in hand, trying and failing not to look suspicious. She whipped around so fast, he concluded she was spying on him. He took
a step in her direction and stopped. Mind your fucking business. The line was drawn in blood. He wouldn’t cross it. But it didn’t help that she looked so unhappy. In the reading garden at
Bishop House, she’d sat apart from the group, surrounded by tropical plants, beautiful and untouchable, isolated in her inner
world.
Leo turned away, but it cost him. It felt strange and unnatural to walk away from her. He had been moving toward her for so
long.
The breakup with Francesca was the first domino to fall.
It prompted him to leave London, return stateside, buy the car and crisscross the country, visit just about everyone except for his family, until a last-minute invitation brought him to Key West. Each fallen domino had led him to her.
And now what? He didn’t know what to do with himself.
Now that he’d held her and tasted her, there was no forgetting her.
Not ever. Again, the question: Now what?
Vicky offered some guidance.
On the walk over to Duncan Street, among a swirl of fresh tourists, still disoriented and confused over the idiosyncrasies
of Duval during the day, Vicky peeled away from Matty’s side and caught up with him. “Hey, handsome.”
“Hey, you.”
“We don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick.”
“God, I’ve always wanted someone to say that to me,” he said. “What’ve you got?”
“Some insight on my best friend. I see you’re struggling.”
“Vicky . . .” he said. “It’s complicated.”
“You have no idea how complicated it is,” Vicky said.
“Alright. Enlighten me.”
“Here’s how I see it.” She linked an arm around his. “She likes you, but she’s scared. Don’t take it personally.”
“It’s hard not to.”
“Since she lost her mother, she’s been trapped in grief,” Vicky explained. “A part of her died, too.”
Leo understood grief, but he was certain there was more to it than that. Only it felt wrong to discuss with Jules’s friend
topics that they hadn’t even touched. Yet, he pressed on. “Is she seeing anyone?”
He hated himself for asking, but the question was there, impossible to ignore, like a bug on butter.
“There was this one guy, Bobby . . .” she said.
The name dropped before his feet, a log on the road. He nearly tripped and smashed his face.
“Don’t worry. It wasn’t serious,” Vicky assured him. “It’s over. She hasn’t mentioned him in weeks, not since the apartment fire.”
“Tell me about the fire. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
“Really?”
Vicky launched into the story of a housewarming party gone awry, which ended with Bobby staying over. Whatever she said after
that, Leo didn’t hear it. He wasn’t a violent guy, and he’d never wanted to punch anyone until now.
“Is that what’s troubling her?” he asked. “The damage to the new apartment?”
“Jules couldn’t care less,” Vicky answered. “She’s been dragging out those renovations. It’s like having bought the place,
she doesn’t want to live there. I feel bad because my parents encouraged her to be a homeowner. But you can’t do anything
before you’re ready.”
Leo was glad to learn that they had one thing in common: They were both adrift like deadwood, washed up in Key West.
“None of that is important,” Vicky said, refusing to be dragged off topic. “Here’s what I want you to know. Jules had it tough,
she can’t take more letdowns. If you’re not ready for the uphill climb, walk away. It’s okay if you’re not up for the challenge.
No one will judge you.”
That sounded judgmental as hell to Leo, but he, too, wouldn’t be dragged off topic. “Tell me what you mean by ‘had it tough.’”
She’d lost her mother, but what else?
“Can’t get into it,” she said. “And it’s not really the point. I want you to know that she’s more fragile than she looks.”
They walked in silence for a bit while Leo categorized and filed away in emotional pockets everything he’d learned. “Alright,”
he said, finally. “Since we’re trading in information, I should tell you something about Matty.”
Vicky crinkled her thin brows as if to say she knew everything there was to know about Matty and there was nothing he could tell her that she hadn’t already cataloged in the database of her mind. But she played along. “Okay, tell.”
“He doesn’t think he deserves nice things. And you’re the nicest thing of them all.”
“I’m a thing? What a sweet compliment!”
“No, I meant—”
“I’m screwing with you, Leo. Thanks.”
They laughed together, comrades in the struggle.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“That’s it.”
“Good talk,” she said. “Carry on, soldier.”
She dismissed him and returned to Matty’s side. He pinned her close to him and they continued in lockstep. “What was that
about?” Leo heard him ask.
Their easy intimacy pierced him.
Jules marched ahead of the pack with Daphne, her back straight, unreachable.
The Williams exhibit featured a collection of the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer’s playbills, first and foreign editions of
his published works, a collection of photographs and paintings, and his upright typewriter, as striking as Hemingway’s. A
faithful replica of the playwriter’s former Key West residence was displayed under glass. The simple white house with traditional
red shutters had all the trimmings of a party house, including a gazebo, deck, and pool. Williams’s photos and drawings suggested
that he and his partner hosted the best parties in town.
From the cottage the poet Elizabeth Bishop shared with her partner to this careful re-creation of Tennessee Williams’s party
house, Leo was tempted to believe that his journey might end here, at Mile Marker Zero.
Sebastien paused before a portrait of Williams, reclined in the buff in a yard chair. “Hemingway’s home didn’t do it for me,” he said wistfully. “Too many displays of bravery and machismo. But, man, this is my scene.”
“It’s everybody’s scene,” Matty said. “I’d win a couple Pulitzers, too, if I could hang out here to write all day.”
“Maybe the true legacy of Bishop, Williams, and Hemingway is that leisure can lead to greatness,” Ayesha said, fanning herself
with a copy of The Glass Menagerie that she’d picked up at the gift shop. “For that alone, I’d extend my stay.”
The crushing awareness that this night was their last hit them at once.
“We can’t lose this,” Vicky said, panicked. “What if we pooled our resources and purchased a bungalow? We could come to hang
out together or alone to write.”
“Or when we want some peace and quiet,” Ayesha said with a sigh.
“Or when we don’t know where to go,” Leo added.
Jules gazed longingly at the case-enclosed mini paradise. “We’d need a pool.”
Leo wanted to give her that exact pool and anything else she might need to be happy in this world.
“Too bad I can’t afford to chip in,” Matty said. “Otherwise, it’s a fantastic idea.”
“What about the Operon money?” Leo asked.
His friend made a face. “I might have to pass on that.”
That statement earned him a collective gasp.
“I’m not saying no or never,” he assured them. “It depends on how flexible they are. I want time to pursue the doll thing.
I know! You think it’s dumb, and overdone, but I have an idea and it’s itching the brain.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb.” Vicky went to him and circled her arms around his waist. “Even if every horror writer of our generation writes a stupid doll story, yours will be unique. It may be the work of your life, or it may not amount to anything. Either way, you’d have put it out there.
We’ll treasure it because it’ll always bring us back to this time. ”
Well, damn, Leo thought. If love wasn’t in the air, it had to be weed.
“Beautifully said!” Ayesha cheered.
Sebastien looked crestfallen.
Jules turned away.
To lighten the mood, Leo clasped Matty’s shoulder. “Now you better write it,” he said. “And don’t be a dick. Mention us in
the acknowledgments.”
“One Dick is enough,” Matty replied. “And he gets honorable mention.”
Vicky sighed. “Dick jokes never get old.”