Killer Move

“Battery’s nearly dead,” I said. “And I’m . . . It would just be good if it didn’t run out right now.”

“You want a charge?”

“You can do that?”

“Well, duh. Do I look Amish?”

I stared at her owlishly, wondering how exactly she could achieve this outside a bar. She laughed.

“You would need to take a short walk back to my apartment. Where I have a USB charger cable for a phone such as yours, along with many other technical goodies and gewgaws.”

“Is it far? Actually, I have a car with me.”

“I’m sure you do. But—and please don’t take this personally—I’m thinking some foot-based locomotion would be a smart tactical choice for you right now. Certainly before attempting to steer a large chunk of metal back to the mainland.”

I thought for a moment. Okay, weird idea, but she was right—I was too drunk to drive, however slowly and methodically. Short walk, charge phone, get car, head home. That could work. It even kind of rhymed.

“That would be great,” I said.

I went indoors and found my waitress, paid. I caught a glimpse of the other waitress, the one from our anniversary night, on the other side of the room. She recognized me and gave a small, distracted nod. I thought about making my way over and asking if she’d seen my wife—you know, the woman I had dinner with upstairs the other night—but the room was crowded and I knew it would look drunk and strange, so I did not. I thought I’d got the drunk/strange look nailed pretty well already, without going to any extra effort.

Cassandra was standing on the sidewalk under a streetlight. She looked like the cover from some 1950s novel about an innocent in the big city, or would have if the Circle looked even slightly urban, and if they’d had emo chicks back in those days.

“Follow me, sire,” she said.

We walked up the road onto Lido Key. From there it was a long straight stroll along Ben Franklin Drive, past the car park for the beach and the looming hulks of condo developments. Lido is small, intimate, with a crescent moon of white sand beach about half a mile in length. At the far end, the key abruptly becomes much wilder, acres and acres of trees, bush, and near swamp around a couple of large, natural (and hence flyblown and unattractive) stretches of water. One day the whole key would doubtless be covered in opportunities for fractional ownership, but for now the southern quarter wasn’t that much different from the way it had been when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It was dark, but the air felt soft and warm. At one point, halfway along the drive, I stopped for a moment, frowning. I turned around. I almost always did this when I came along this way, but had never been able to work it out before.

“Aha,” I said, however, feeling a flip of recognition deep in my gut. “This is it.”

“Yeah, I heard they kept the secret of life along here somewhere. So you found it, huh?”

“The Lido Beach Inn,” I said. “That’s where it was.”

“Excuse me?”

I turned to look at her, feeling old. “We came to Florida a couple times when I was a kid,” I said. “We always used to stay on Lido Beach. Back then this key wasn’t so developed, in fact it was the budget option—though it had been a big deal in the distant past. There was a huge old hotel back on that last corner, where the Sun Palms is now, but it was abandoned all the years we came. And along here . . .”

I indicated the row of finished and nearly finished developments that now lined this stretch. “I think there were already a couple of smaller condos back then, but it was mainly old motels. They’re all gone now, but every time I’ve been along this road since we’ve lived here, I’ve tried to work out where the Lido Beach Inn was. And I’ve finally realized, it’s here. Or it was.”

I pointed into the heart of a small, upscale development, and suddenly I could actually feel it, situate myself on the planet and in my memory and know this was the spot that had held a scruffy old U-shaped motel where you drove under an awning and turned right or left to park in front of two parallel blocks of rooms. There were perhaps a dozen rooms on each of the two levels, a swimming pool in between—and a walkway that led out to the beach. The motel had a laundry room, a Ping-Pong area with a table whose net never stood up, and whirring ice and soda machines. No restaurant, no bar, no store, no child-care facilities or concierge service. Just a place for families to hang out while they soaked up some rays (back in the days before it was determined that sunlight was cancerous poison and to be avoided at all costs). For a moment it all seemed totally real, as if those family vacations had been only a year or two ago.