Heart of Palm (12 page)

“You see they’re almost done framing that Publix on Seminary?” Mac said. He’d drained his first draft Bass of the night, then pushed the empty glass toward Frank by way of requesting another.

“I did see that, actually,” Frank said. How could he miss it? How could anyone in Utina miss the new Publix? The first trucks had pulled in a month or so ago—earth movers, a backhoe, and a whole fleet of black and red pickups driven by thick-waisted men in workshirts and blue jeans, leather belts too tight, cell phones clipped to their pants like parasites. The big oaks were the first to go, and then overnight it seemed the southeast corner of Seminary and Cooksey had been transformed from an untidy swath of palmettos and pines to a garish, wounded place, clear-cut in one afternoon to make way for the supermarket.

“Changing the face of this place, let me tell you,” Mac said. “And they’re fast. They’ll have that sucker finished and open in a couple of months, you watch. Publix in Utina? What’s next? Macy’s?”

“Yeah, right,” Frank said. “Nobody here even has enough money for the Dollar General.” He pulled the tap and filled a fresh glass of Bass for Mac, who accepted it gratefully.

“So we’re gearing up for preseason. Our Heisman boy is looking good for this year,” Mac said, moving quickly to his favorite topic—the Florida Gators—one he could focus on ad nauseam, much to the delight of nearly every man and most of the women in Utina. Jesus, Frank thought sometimes. If we put as much brain power into improving this town as we do into memorizing the stats of every Cracker running back to ever rush across the fifty-yard line on a hot afternoon in the Swamp, then maybe we’d actually get somewhere. But he took Mac’s bait.

“He’s up against the Warriors first game,” he said. “That team might take him down a peg.”

“Shit, you kidding me, Frank?” Mac said. His eyes were wide. “Frickin’ University of Hawaii? We’re national fucking champions, may I remind you.”

“Not this year.”

“We’ve got the Heisman winner, may I remind you.”

“A beauty contest.”

“Fuck you, Frank,” Mac said good-naturedly. “We got the Heisman.”

“Everybody’s expendable, Mac.”

“Who’s expendable?” The voice was Carson’s. Frank had not seen his brother come in, and he felt a familiar twinge of dismay at the sound of Carson’s voice. “We talking ’bout you, Mac?” Carson clapped Mac on the shoulder, pulled out a barstool to join him. “Or Frankie? Not Frank. This place would come crashing down without Saint Frank.”

Frank stared at him, wondering if he had the energy to engage in this decades-old battle today. Carson, at forty-two, was still handsome, always the most presentable of the Bravo boys, to be sure, with his dark hair cut short and severe, his jaw clean, his clothes crisp, everything about the man suggesting tidiness and grooming, characteristics that stood in sharp contrast to Frank’s ball caps and rumpled shirts. But Carson’s face, lately, had begun to exhibit some of the signs of his fondness for shots of Irish whiskey with a chaser or five of Heineken. Carson’s ability to drink anyone under the table, once a point of pride, was now becoming one of those things, like mullet haircuts and cow tipping, that wasn’t so funny anymore. The Bravo apple didn’t fall far from the tree, if you asked Frank, and he wondered, as he stood behind the bar, slinging booze to people who didn’t need it, whether he’d ever be the one apple that got away.

Frank looked past Carson, to where Elizabeth stood awkwardly, holding Bell by the hand.

“That how you treat your wife, Carson? Don’t even offer the lady a seat?” he said.

“It’s okay, Frank,” Elizabeth said. “We’re going to get a table. Bell wants to eat.” Elizabeth’s hair was the color of straw, and her face was still brushed with the same fine freckles Frank had first noticed across a Formica lunch table at Utina Elementary School. She looked like she’d lost weight recently. And she didn’t have it to lose.

Carson turned around, looked at Elizabeth for a moment, and then looked back at Frank. “What are you now, Miss Manners?” he said. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“Hey there, Belly-Button,” Frank said.

“Hi, Uncle Frank,” Bell replied, gazing at him with that same open, unabashed stare of her mother’s. But she didn’t say anything else. Not one for small talk. Frank smiled at her. Like mother, like daughter. Elizabeth led Bell to a table in the corner of the dining room, near the back windows, so Bell could look out at the water. Frank waved to Irma, who had given up on the bunting and was now clearing a table on the other side of the dining room. “Whatever they want,” he told her when she approached. He gestured to Elizabeth and Bell. “And a glass of the good Kendall for my sister-in-law.”

“Where you been lately, Carson?” Mac said. “You too good to come back to Utina now?”

“Hell,” Carson said. “Anybody’s too good for Utina.
Everybody’s
too good for Utina.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mac said. He tipped up his glass, approaching the end of his second beer. “Some of us like it here.”

“Actually,” Carson said. “That’s what I want to talk to Frankie-boy here about. Seems like some people are liking Utina more and more.” He looked at Frank pointedly.

Of course. Alonzo Cryder had gotten to Carson, pursuing the agenda of buying Uncle Henry’s and Aberdeen. Of course. And it hadn’t taken long. A few hours, maybe? Frank raised his eyebrows at Carson but otherwise didn’t bite. He salted two margarita glasses, then filled them to the brim with tequila and mixer for a pair of bosomy blondes at the end of the bar.

“Thanks, Frankie,” the prettier one said when he delivered the drinks. “You’re a sweetheart.” He couldn’t remember the women’s names, though they were frequent fixtures at the end of his bar. And he had a feeling he was
supposed
to remember their names—he just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, retrieve them from memory. Too many nameless blondes in the world. Too many lonely women. They made him sad.

“Happy Fourth,” the woman said, raising her glass. “Independence Day, Frank—and you look free to me. You gonna let freedom ring tonight?” She smiled suggestively.

“Not my favorite holiday,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t be a party pooper, Frank.”

Frank picked up their tip, a generous one, then returned to Carson and Mac, who were now arguing about Mac’s own decades-old stats as one of Utina High’s starting running backs. “I had the same rushing yards as Emmitt Smith his senior year in high school,” Mac said. “Exactly.”

“My ass,” Carson said.

“I did. You can look it up.”

“If that’s true, which I doubt, then it’s because the only teams we ever played were a bunch of pussies from Yulee and Ponte Vedra. You could run up and down the field all day long while they stood around doing their nails.”

“I coulda played for Florida,” Mac said.

“And I coulda run for president,” Carson said. “Just decided against it.”

Mac chuckled. “Good stuff,” he said amiably.

“I thought you said you could pick up Mom and Sofia on your way,” Frank said to Carson.

“So are you going to get me a drink, or what?” Carson said. “Do I have to come back there and pour it myself?”

“Carson.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you pick up Mom?”

Carson sighed. “Christ. I thought maybe I could actually unwind for five seconds, you know? Before the loony bin arrives? Is that a crime, Frank?” Frank turned away, pulled the tap, and drew a beer. He placed it in front of his brother.

“You’re such a martyr,” he said.

“Takes one to know one,” Carson said.

Frank picked up a rag, then threw it down again. “You want to come back here and fry shrimp and tend bar so
I
can go get them? Or you want to drive five minutes down Monroe Road and make life a whole lot easier for everyone?”

“Where’s that shitwit who lives there?” Carson said, referring, Frank knew, to Biaggio, who in Carson’s mind was an intellectually inferior specimen of humanity not worth giving the time of day, but who was nonetheless a perfectly good candidate when it came to shuttling his mother and sister along the sandy back roads of North Utina.

“Biaggio’s not coming,” Frank said. “And they’re not his responsibility.”

“Nor mine.”

“I think you’ve made that perfectly clear.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Mac said, holding up his hands. “I cannot stomach this horrendous bickering. Where’s the brotherly love?
Qua est philia?
” The fact that Mac was quoting Latin, a holdover from his law school days, meant that he was half in the bag already, and it was early on a holiday evening. Clearly he’d pregamed before even arriving at Uncle Henry’s, where so far he’d consumed only a pint and a half. It was going to be a long night. “I will go and fetch the fair damsels myself,” Mac said. He fumbled in his pocket for his car keys.

“Carson,” Frank said.

“All right, all right,” Carson said. “Sit tight, Mac-aroni. I’ll get them. They’re not your nutcases, they’re ours.” He drained his almost-f beer in one long pull.

“It would be nice if you didn’t refer to them as nutcases,” Frank said.

“Right,” Carson said. “They’re not our nutcases. They’re our freak show.”

He put the glass on the bar and stood up. “When I get back, Frankie-boy,” he said, pointing a finger in Frank’s face, “we’re going to have a little chat about our friend Mr. Cryder.”

Frank watched his brother leave the restaurant. What had happened to him and Carson? They used to be best friends. Now he could hardly stand to be in the same room with his brother. And it wasn’t just Elizabeth, though Carson didn’t deserve her, to be sure. There was more. A decades-old blame, malignant as catbrier.

Carson stepped out the front door but then held it open in a gesture of exaggerated chivalry for Susan Holm to enter. She wore a bright red sundress, her soft blond hair pulled up into a tight, high ponytail that looked a bit too childish for her age. She smiled at Carson, then headed directly for the bar. Frank sighed. “Here we go,” he said quietly to Mac.

“Boys,” she said, settling onto the stool vacated by Carson. It was her standard greeting.

“Hit me, Frank,” she said, tapping her long fingernails on the bar. Frank poured a glass of Shiraz and set it in front of her.

“Susan, you are a vision in red tonight,” Mac said. “Allow me to buy you that drink.”

“Not on your life, Mac,” she said. “Then you’ll think I owe you something.”

Mac clutched his hands to his chest. “Words wound, Susan,” he said. “Now come on. How come you never let me buy you a drink?” He’d begun to slur a bit. Frank made a note to start cutting Mac’s drafts with half O’Doul’s. It was a trick he’d learned years ago. If he let Mac guzzle enough undiluted Bass as a loss leader, he’d be unable to detect the switch as the night wore on. It was better for everyone.

Susan sighed. “We’ve been through this, Mac. Now don’t embarrass yourself.” She turned to Frank. “Where’s your big brother headed in such a hurry? He’s not staying for fireworks?”

“He’s off to get my mother and sister. And if things go the way they’re headed, there’ll be more fireworks in here than out there.” He gestured to the back deck.

Mac laughed. “Good stuff,” he said.

Susan sipped her wine and regarded Frank.

“So Frank,” she said. “I sold another property on your street.”

“I wish you’d quit doing that,” he said. He pulled two bottles of Heineken from the cooler, flipped the caps off in two quick movements, and handed the beers to Irma, who was waiting with a tray. “Gonna have me surrounded by yuppies before long.”

“They’re buying. What can I say? Nobody else is these days, but the yuppies seem to have no end of money.”

“Which property?”

“End of your road—on the south side. It’s a nice piece, but not as nice as yours. And no house on it yet. Want to know what I sold it for?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, and he meant it. He was getting tired of all these real estate people thinking money was the only thing they had to talk about to get his attention. Thinking he’d jump like a trained monkey if the price was right. Jesus. He knew the properties were worth money. Knew they were becoming more valuable every day. But he didn’t want a bigger house, or a newer truck, or—or what? What would he buy? He couldn’t even think of what people spent money on.

Susan looked at him, annoyed. “You can hold out as long as you want, Frank,” she said. “Just don’t make a dinosaur of yourself. The world’s changing all around you—you can’t hold it back. This place is on its way to becoming something else, like it or not.” She swiveled her hips around on the barstool, leaned forward. “Opportunities are presenting themselves to you—
good
opportunities”—she tipped her head down and looked up at him from under her lashes—“and you’re just being too stubborn, or too
whatever,
to consider them.”

“Why don’t you let me consider them for him?” Mac said.

Susan rolled her eyes. But he looked so hopeful and pained that she had to laugh, and Frank joined her, and then he poured a new Bass for Mac—full strength, last one, he told himself—and set it in front of him. A group of fishermen at the end of the bar were waving him over.