They straggled into the lobby of the theater, six potential moviegoers, sandaled and sunbrowned, some rolling bikes. The 7 o`clock feature: a grim documentary on Cuba. At 10: a love story. Guilty glances, a few sighs.
The owner–a sleek Danish woman with cornsilk hair–read the looks.
”Would you rather see the other film first?” she asked with a negligent shrug. ”I can switch them if you like.” She did, and the happy hedonists of Key West once again got what they wanted, when they wanted it.
For an American city, the attitude here is downright Caribbean. But the hedonism goes beyond the smell of coconut oil that drifts through bank lobbies and malls. Sure, it has something to do with the weather: The steady sun and sensual breezes do sap ambition. But it goes deeper than that, down to the very nature of the people who change their life course on the basis of climate –who believe man wasn`t meant to wear down.
Meet Daniel, for instance. Lean and bearded, leathery brown, a bandana tied pirate-style over his balding head; he lives on the sailboat he built of old parts, using his own bony hands. Old masts became hand-rubbed booms; the sails are secured with hoops as they were a hundred years ago. It`s a boat with rough beauty, dark and strangely ancient among the slick white yachts that cruise around him.
Daniel is an artist, and his work hangs in the cabin below deck among batik cushions, books and racks of herbs. The paintings are small, precise and mystical–children in diaphanous clothes under crescent moons. He also paints T-shirts to sell to the tourists who throng Mallory Pier at sunset.
When Daniel sails he doesn`t say much. Guests pitch aside when he stretches toward them to grasp a rope or hoist a sail; his brown toes grip the deck easily, his knees absorbing the shock of the waves. For lunch he cooks brown rice in the galley and serves it in thick, carved wood bowls; he eats with his hands, scrubs the bowls with sand and salt water.
When he does talk, he tells of storms that forced three days and nights of bailing. He mentions some land he owns in North Carolina and a home he is building in Maine; he sails between them when he chooses, he says. Only when he chooses.
There`s more than one way to live off the land in Key West. A few hundred miles south of Glengarry Glen Ross, Herb–in gold chains, Mexican wedding shirt and air-conditioned office–waits for visitors who dream of making Key West their home-away-from-home.
Lured by handouts thrust on them in the honky-tonk tourist parts (”$25 gift for a tour of our model home”), the gullible and cynical alike test the deal. Herb is ready for them with a firm handshake, good eye contact, a few jokes and a remarkable memory for names.
”You know, I was going to take you to a special party, but you two sure look like you`ve had enough sun today! Why don`t we sit here in the air-conditioning instead and get to know each other before I show you the place. Chicago? Oh, yeah? I went to Michigan State. You know, Moo U! The Udder College! How many times you been down here? What do you like about it? How much do you usually spend on a hotel? How much do you usually save for a vacation? Where are you staying while you`re here? How much are you paying?
Have you ever been married before? Do you two think you`ll ever get married?
Do you usually travel together? Can I buy you a beer?”
An hour later, in the luxury model suite against a peach-colored, greeting-card sunset, complete with silhouetted gulls, Herb spreads his arms with an ecstatic grin. ”Just imagine! Can you imagine? Would you like a view like that every night? And check out this Jacuzzi–dimmer switch, candles, a little champagne. Would you like that? Just think!”
Moving toward the offices to discuss the bottom line, Herb casts his eyes down and confesses. ”I love Key West. I wouldn`t want to live anywhere else. But I`m trying to make a living down here, and my wife just got laid off at Mercy Hospital; so it isn`t easy. I`m hoping to get some breaks in this business so the wife and I won`t have to leave, you know? I wouldn`t want to leave.”
Eleanor doesn`t feel such stress. Bearing her age with the nobility of her Philadelphia birth, she reigns over her cool, shuttered home like a Tennessee Williams matriarch. She moves slowly from room to airy room among Chinese tapestries, Spanish pottery and books signed by their authors to her seat on the arbored veranda, where breezes barely ruffle the bougainvillea overhead.
Eleanor`s children and grandchildren are Quakers, and Sunday mornings she offers her veranda for their silent meetings for worship. She insists only that they not call it ”worship,” but ”meditations and reflection” instead. As the friends wander in, both from the house and through the garden gate, she sits in her rattan chair, one hand on the beads at her throat, and asks cordially after children and ailments and jobs.
In come a tall sailor in shorts, a middle-aged couple, a gay retiree, a granddaughter with hair in her eyes. They sit in a circle, saving a special chair for a member with a bad leg. When she arrives, they join hands from chair to chair, and silence settles comfortably over the circle. The breeze is steady, and up the street, beyond the vine-smothered fence, a tinny brass band lurches softly through a march: a Bahamian funeral.
After an hour of silence, the friends drink juice; Eleanor adjourns to the dining room to pour her 11 o`clock brandy.
Down the road, a very blond, very tan bartender is pouring pina coladas at La Terraza de Marti, a sprawling, balcony-wrapped mansion where, in the 1890s, Jose Marti helped plan the Cuban Revolution. It`s a hotel, bar and disco now, nicknamed La Te Da, and gays gather there every Sunday for La Tea Dance, an orgy of dancing and drinking and impulsive plunges into the pool. The beat of ”Material Girl” pounds up and down the street, and from the sidewalk dancing bodies are visible on stairs, balconies, even the roof.
In the courtyard, everyone is lithe and brown; eyes and hands dart everywhere. Of three women among hundreds of men, one at the poolside strips down to a black maillot and swims underwater to the rhythm of the music, which hammers even through concrete. The dancers watch her from the balconies; the bartender doesn`t notice.
The La Te Da beat carries even to the southernmost point of the island where, 90 miles from Cuba, peace marchers gather by the water. They`re planning to walk to keep nukes off the Naval base–and, because they`re marching anyway, to keep the U.S. out of Central America. Ready to carry banners are natives, visitors, workers, retirees, yuppies, hippies and gays alike–with bicycles, Birkenstocks and Nikes to carry them.
A cheerleader sort with fiery red hair shakes her fist and shouts phrases to inflame the group. They shift their weight and look away. ”All we are saying . . .” she sings, waving her arms to lead them, ”is give peace a chance.” As they shift and move up the street, the redhead hands out helium balloons. ”When we get to the pier, we`ll let these go free,” she explains, walking backwards with a fierce smile. ”As free as we want the people of Central America to be.” The marchers look sheepish and do not sing.
When they get to the sunset carnival scene at the pier, they stand quietly with their banners; some straggle off to watch a juggler perform. When the balloons are set free, the woman leaps and cheers; the rest stand very still and watch the balloons scatter southward, toward Cuba.
At sunset outside Haagen-Dazs stands a mahogany-brown girl in a white sarong. Her hair is spiked high, her jewelry heavy gold. With the pouty lockjaw of the jaded resorter, she pops her gum. ”See, if I lived here, I`d have to work,” she explains to a cotton-clad friend. ”And I wouldn`t like that.”
But others find a way.
