The Sea Horse

Because the Murdos lived in 17 for over eight months now and that was so long in the transient world of The Sea Horse that they had become part of the atmosphere, like the drunken seadog fog that drifted in autumn nights from the bay across Pelican Avenue or the blue devil mosquitoes that whined and stung and tormented one and all by the pool late summer evenings. Sloop found himself behind the Murdos’ bathroom window, standing in the bamboo thicket. Through the glass he watched the woman turn on the shower and pull her dark hair back in a pony tail. The vanity-mirror light cast an aquamarine glow in the small bathroom as if she were a black velvet angelfish in an aquarium. She pulled her dress over her head. Sloop held his breath. He did not slap the mosquitoes biting his arms and neck.

The skin of her breasts and bikini strap lines glowed blacklight white against the rest of her tanned flesh, her nipples cinnamon and small and forbidden. She scratched her neck and looked at herself in the mirror, the water hissing in the shower, a faint steamy mist drifting out above the pole holding the shower curtain. She blew her nose. She stepped out of her striped panties and turned her back to Sloop. Her hips were wide and tan-lined, her cheeks round and dimpled pale in the greenish glow, cleft and curved like a pair of half-moons in twinned eclipse. While disappearing behind the goldfish-patterned shower curtain, she glanced in the direction of the window, of Sloop, her expression one of carefulness, of calmness, of a queer and curious relief.

Because the first two weeks he worked there Sloop didn’t hear her say a word until one day he was cutting grass behind their room and she came out to ask if he’d like maybe a lemonade or something. Her face looked a little off. It wasn’t until he saw her up close and personal that he noticed violet blotches on her cheeks and forehead. Her lips, puffy and cracked. Most days she wore a pair of huge dark oblong sunglasses that resembled the eyes of insects. She’d sit by the pool, her face resembling a giant wasp, smoking cigarettes and sipping cans of Diet Coke. If a car pulled into the driveway suddenly, she’d flinch.

Because her husband, George Murdo, drove a fabulous car. It was a Fifties-era Chevrolet Bel-Air. A wide and stylish four-door sedan, it had a curved bulbous windshield big as a truck’s, tall high fins on the fenders like a spacemobile in a Martian landscape, and a coyote skull hanging from the rearview. Its body was painted a fabulous deep sea green, the color of bottle glass licked by mermaids with bright pink tongues.

Sloop admired the car and frowned whenever he saw its rightful owner, who boasted he’d won it playing stud poker, walking toward it, dangling his keys at the ready.

Because behind the motel, behind the gray wooden slatted fence that encompassed the wild bamboo thicket clusters of banana trees and overgrown sward of St. Augustine grass that elbowed oppressively hot and mosquito-filled around the guest room patios, stood an abandoned convenience store gently rusting and rotting in the tropical heat and sun. The asphalt of the parking lot was cracked and full of weeds, littered with broken beer bottles. The windows were scrawled spray-painted ugly with graffiti, swastikas, elaborate leering wolf faces, and the romantic skills of a one Camille Ladoux. On the roof, the air was sea-soaked and balmy. In late afternoon it glowed with a tangerine light as the sun filtered through the rustling palms. In early evening the sky turned violet, the world filled with a smell of beached catfish, cut grass, and tar.

Because from there Sloop watched the Murdo’s bedroom and bathroom windows without fear of discovery, necessary in the hours after George had returned home from wherever he went each day.

Because from there he saw George Murdo...