Key Dali
Robert Tacoma
Key Dali
Key Weird #6
2011, EN
Key West was never so weird as when seen through the eyes of a young street artist with charity in his heart and an errant cellphone in his head. The artist has nearly nothing himself, yet pledges to help those who have even less. His plan is noble but soon at risk from a beautiful woman with the most innocent eyes and a bank that sees more condos as the answer to any question.
Table of contents
1: Key West
2: Dream
3: Grunts
4: Old Town
5: Mallory
6: Stoney
7: Socks
8: Performance
9: Green Motel
10: Laundry
11: Fishing
12: Duval
13: Mallory
14: Kid
15: Work
16: Stoney’s
17: Pillows
18: Marina
19: School
20: Salad Days
21: Marina Check
22: Mallory
23: Sneak
24: Going In
25: Decompress
26: A New Day
27: News
28: Stoney
29: Bank
30: Orphans
31: Mallory
∨ Key Dali ∧
1
Key West
Some look, some even stare, but no one seems to recognize me as I find myself back once again in the carnival atmosphere of Key West’s Mallory Square.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been away for a while, or because of the spectacular fire-red sunset lighting up the entire western sky, but most likely it’s because of this rubber Wicked Witch of the West mask I’m wearing. Whatever the reason, it’s nice sometimes not to be recognized since when people don’t see you, you can often see them more clearly.
I know most of the vendors and performers here at the historic dock area. There’s Hooman making change for a tourist. The tourist is wearing shorts in spite of the cold breeze coming off the water. In the winter it’s easy to spot the locals, but the same weather that has them digging out sweaters and jackets doesn’t seem to have much affect on the constant hordes of shorts-wearing tourists from all over the world who come here.
The man in the loud, new tropical shirt looks anxious to receive his change from Hooman and get to more important business. Like snapping pictures of the sun setting over the heads of other tourists standing along the area between the row of booths and the edge of the water. Many of the tourists are already holding up cameras with little lighted color screens showing miniature flaming sunsets. As the tourist rushes away Hooman cracks a smile, which reminds me to never get change from Hooman.
And there’s my old friend, Juan Ponce, casually juggling cats while a blonde hottie watches closely from a few feet away. Looks like since I’ve been gone Juan has yet another new girlfriend – cats aren’t the only things that dude can juggle.
RING!!!
I step quickly behind a lamppost and give myself a covert pop to the side of my head and the ringing stops. No time for distractions – I’m on a mission.
Snowy Joey is taking a picture of the colorful sunset from his Sno-Cone stand as big, bald Ted, who looks like an extra in a bad biker movie, puts the final delicate touches on a caricature of a woman holding a cell phone. It seems she’s giving the folks back home a blow-by-blow of the beautiful sunset in progress. There’s a drink in her other hand and every third word is, “awesome.”
Who is this? Someone I do not know! A very fine young lady wearing stripey knee socks and a ball cap sitting with some locals on a bench across the plaza. She’s giving me a curious look. I give her one back but she can’t see because of the mask. I must remember to trade this mask. Must remember my mission.
Oops, here’s a cop looking my way – a big, young cop I also don’t know. But I’m cool, at least I think I am. Let’s see, I stashed my traveling satchel of questionable contents in my secret hiding place on the way from the bus station just now, so I only have what’s in my pockets: an orange, a first-aid kit, a can opener, several plastic bags of sand, leaves, and trash, a lump of orange chalk, a handful of silver dollars, and a chrome .357 Magnum.
Wait! I traded the .357 to that little Cuban dude on the bus for the cool mask I’m wearing. I love to trade, and I found out on the bus that another of the secrets to smooth and successful bartering is proper presentation, especially if you’re the one with the gun.
But now I have a mask, so I smile at the cop and wave. He can’t see my smile under this mask, and just gives me a hard look before going back to checking out the good-looking tourist women.
RING!!!
I make sure no one sees me pop the noggin again to stop the ringing. I see a young woman dumping buckets of what looks like broken glass on the ground and walk over that way for a closer look. Now what is she doing? She can’t! She is! She’s walking barefoot on the glass! A couple of tourists look away from the burning star disappearing into the sea just long enough to snap a picture of the girl walking slow and careful on the glass. I can’t look, but I do. She gets to the end and I pull the first aid kit from my pocket to bandage her bloody feet. But somehow her feet aren’t bloody, and she smiles at the first-aid kit in my hand.
“Don’t worry, I’m a professional.”
She flips over an empty bucket and sits. I get down on my knees and closely examine the glass shards, then the bottoms of her feet. If I had my satchel I could use the magnifying glass.
I am flummoxed speechless at her lack of injury. She smiles again while putting on her shoes and socks – stripey knee socks! I see now it’s the same girl! A small but growing grain of lust compounds my flummoxedness, as I am a hopeless sucker for knee socks. I am still kneeling in front of her as I finally manage to croak out a weak, “How?”
She gives me a heart-melting smile and tilts her head to the side. She’s about to say something when a big blond guy wearing a nearly-black tropical shirt and a frown appears and says, “Come on, Carla, let’s go.”
The girl stands obediently and starts sweeping up the broken glass and collecting the tips from her ball cap on the ground without giving me so much as a passing glance. The big guy scowls in my direction, which I take to mean it’s time to move along.
So I do.
There’s my friend Sammy, the talented black acrobat dude, banging on a drum and shouting to the crowd now that the sun has gone down and the lights are on.
“A show, over here!”
Sammy innocently asks for volunteers and cleverly baits a few self-important victims from the crowd to humiliate during his show. I catch his eye and flash him the Vulcan hand sign for prosperity but he doesn’t respond. I am obviously still wearing this silly mask. But why? Now I remember.
Through the crowd I spot a cluster of psychics and palm readers. They aren’t nearly as much fun since they all had to join the Teamsters. As a responsible adult of just over thirty years of age, I don’t believe in psychics. However, I do take considerable stock in the wisdom of palm readers. I slap a silver dollar down on the table in front of a reader with seriously droopy eyes that I don’t know and ask for a full dollar’s worth of guidance. He looks unsure, but after inspecting the coin and testing it with his teeth, shrugs and sagely delivers, “Timing is everything.”
I can’t wait to share this incredible insight with my all my friends, but I need to remain anonymous, at least until the mission goes down.
Over there is Weird Nancy, the old artist babe with her brightly colored prints and crazy eyes. Her flat butt and saggy boobs look surprisingly better when I remember that she lives alone in a house on the water and that I have no place to stay.
“I’ll give you this rare and valuable mask for this one here – signed.”
He gives me an inebriated, suspicious look, but goes for it. I knew he would as soon as I saw the mask on the Cuban kid on the bus.
He speaks as he signs the book. “There’s a character in here called the Wicked Witch of the Key West.”
I say nothing, as I am so close now and don’t want to pooch it. He lights up his writer smile and holds out the precious book in one hand. His other hand opens for the mask.
RING!!!
The worst timing in the world! The palm reader was right! I cannot slap my head to stop the ringing for Robert would instantly know who’s behind the mask!
RING!!!
I panic but somehow recover enough to grab the book and throw the mask in Robert’s face as I bolt from the table.
RING!!!
I give myself a good shot to the side of the head as I sprint through the crowd and across the plaza holding the book tight like a running back on fourth and long. Behind me I hear Robert eloquently cursing my name. I duck behind Hooman’s booth and giggle like a schoolgirl.
Hooman notices me and quickly concludes a transaction with a tourist buying a framed fish skeleton.
“Dali! When did you get back?” I am still lost in a giggle fit but manage to triumphantly flash my treasure. “Whoa! Don’t tell me you got Robert to sign it?”
I nod and giggle and smile.
Hooman looks at the book again. “So you have them all? Signed?”
I recover enough to speak. “Yes! The whole set! Now, if he ever gets famous I can trade them for incredible riches!”
Hooman looks dubious, but I slip into another gaggle of giggles. I am so elated from at long last having my very own complete set of signed first edition books by a famous unknown writer that I’m about to wet myself. What can life possibly hold for me that could be any better?
As this last thought sinks in the giggles begin to sputter, then stop. Maybe this is as good as it gets, and it’s all downhill from here? A cold, damp gust of sea air brushes my face, and I feel a dark cloud slowly seeping into my subconscious. There is great emptiness. An abyss opens before me, and I look down into it while Hooman explains to a tourist couple the artistic significance of an avocado seed with seagull feet and sprinkled with dried rat turds. I feel the overwhelming pull of the abyss and begin to lean forward.
RING!!!
I automatically give my head a hard pop.
Too hard.
My vision goes fuzzy for a few seconds, but then things clear and the abyss is gone. I remember the other, greater undertaking ahead of me still. The glimpse into the dark void has reminded me of the importance of always having a goal – a mission.
I take a moment for reflection on the next, greater task. Though it is a worthy quest, it is not without peril, and enough of an undertaking that I should seek council from someone more attuned to the ways and dangers of the world. Preferably someone who does not have a defective cell phone in his head.
When I look up I see the girl in the stripey socks alone and pushing a cart filled with buckets of broken glass across the plaza towards the darkening streets of old Key West.
∨ Key Dali ∧
2
Dream
Ten thousand trumpeters with elastic faces and wooden crutches herald the opening of my new art museum as nubile, naked, sixteen-year old virgins toss rose petals into the air. The mayor with the face of a fish is wearing a tropical shirt covered with melting clock faces and palm trees, but his speech is thankfully hard to hear over the drone of beating wings as the air fills with hummingbirds and pterodactyls. The virgins break into celestial song as the mayor’s speech ends, and the ribbon is cut with a pair of rubber scissors the size of a Buick. I float to the slowly opening front doors of the museum and bow deeply in my supreme moment of glory as millions cry out “DALI!” and ten thousand cymbals crash, and then crash again.
For a moment I think I am suffocating but then realize it is only a pillow over my head and I’ve been asleep and dreaming. I should have known it was a dream when the sixteen-year old virgins showed up.
The cymbals crash once more, and I know then that Weird Nancy’s dog must have gotten into the trash again and is scattering empty tin cans across the kitchen floor. Somehow this will all be my fault.
I leap from the bed and fall directly to the floor. I am naked and remain on the floor while I check myself for injuries. Nothing broken, but my ankle is scratched. Now I remember the night before – making it with Weird Nancy on the bed, while her yapping dust mop of a dog bit me on the ankle before staging a preliminary assault on the kitchen trashcan.
So I get the broom and rescue the tin cans from the pillaging dust mop by opening the back door and dispatching the yapper with one clean sweep. Now he is yapping outside.
I stumble back to the bedroom to put on my clothes and go before Nancy comes back from wherever it is that weird, sex-starved old ladies go in the morning. I pause briefly to gather a few dried flies from a windowsill. Flies make great numbers on melting clocks.
I’m out the front door into cool air and warm, mid-morning tropical sunshine and take a deep breath to savor the fragrant ocean breeze. This is why I keep coming back to Key West. Well, that and the grunt fishing.
Luckily, Ms Nancy’s house is only a few blocks from my secret hiding place. Once there, I nonchalantly case the area before carefully stepping into the bushes by an old warehouse on a quiet side street. I check the area for lurking iguanas before bending down and opening a big plastic trashcan I buried once while trying to work off some kind of weird drug Stoney gave me. Inside I find my satchel and secret cache of personal items. Here is my signature Dali Cape which no one would ever suspect is actually an old plastic florescent orange rain poncho I salvaged from a dumpster. Down deeper is my damp and stained but still wearable signature Dali Fedora. Now dressed stylishly for any occasion, I twirl the ends of my signature Dali Handlebar Mustache before digging into my satchel for the Pocket Fisherman. I kiss my first-edition book acquired just the night before and carefully put it with its triple-bagged kin before grabbing a few plastic sandwich bags for my pocket. After carefully securing my secret cache, I set out onto the streets of Key West in search of adventure and grunts.
While walking the streets of Old Town, I dig into my pocket for a breakfast orange. I eat the orange but save the peel for later. On Duval Street I see the historic old homes and the restaurants and bars and shops pretty much just as I left them months ago. It’s late enough in the morning for the joggers and street cleaners to be gone and the first waves of tourists to appear in the bright sunlight, just as they do everyday. The air is filled with the smell of Cuban coffee, and in the distance I hear the whine of scooters and the clanging bell of the first tourist trolley of the day.
I stop in front of a drugstore window and check my person in the reflection. Satisfied with my dark eyes, strong brow, and crooked smile, I take a step back on the sidewalk to get the full effect and am almost run over by a waitress. She’s obviously on her way to work, all dressed up wearing stockings and heels and riding a skateboard. She gives me the finger without looking back and runs the light at Angela Street. A local on a bicycle out in the light of day looking to make a semi-honest buck calls out and waves.
“Hey, Dali!”
I throw a small wave his way before ducking down an alley. I’m delighted to find my favorite unlocked dumpster patiently awaiting my return.
“Hello, my old friend.” I give the lid an affectionate pat and take a look. Five minutes later I am on my way to the Secret Grunt Spot that few know of, and only one other frequents on a regular basis.
∨ Key Dali ∧
3
Grunts
I pass by a young black man selling seashells and make a quick detour to a small beach for a few handfuls of sand. When I arrive at the Secret Grunt Spot that few know of and only one other frequents, I see that someone is there.
But it is the other who frequents, so no big; there’s plenty of room and grunts for two on the little pier.
“Hey, Dali. When did you get back in town?”
I remove my hat and bow deeply, for there is great camaraderie among fisherman.
“Only yesterday evening, Taco Bob. Tell me, amigo, are the grunts biting today?”
My tall, thin, middle-aged acquaintance smiles and proudly shows me several handsome grunt fillets already in his small ice chest. I am impressed and politely ask for his expert advice on the latest grunt catching techniques, for fisherman would rather talk about fishing than anything, except for perhaps gas-mileage or available women.
I bring out my Pocket Fisherman and offer him some of the half-eaten shrimp cocktail from the dumpster. He readily accepts the primo bait and we both bait up and fish in silence to better concentrate on the business at hand.
The tropical winter sun warms the day nicely, and before long there are several more freshly cleaned grunt fillets in the cooler. Only then do I dare speak again, and then softly, as grunts are known to bite better when there is silence.
“How are things with you, Taco Bob?”
“I’m right as rain, Dali.”
“Do you still live on a houseboat?”
“Sure do. You still have a phone in your head?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I kinda figured as much, what with the way you pop yourself in the head every once in a while.”
“Yes, it helps with the ringing. Sometimes it’s not so bad, but lately it is. It will stop again soon, it always does. But I don’t want to talk about phones, my friend.” I have to ask this next without letting Taco Bob read too much interest in my face, so I hold the brim of my hat down while I’m talking. “How expensive are those houseboats?” By his slight hesitation I suspect he has glanced my way.