“We watered it!” my father says, shouting now. “I had the guy water it every goddamn day! And now you tell me it’s dead?” The man doesn’t reply. My father sees me. “Hey there, buddy!” he says heartily. “Be with you in a minute.”
The man with the leak begins explaining his trouble to my father. In the middle, my father stops him. Pointing at the tree surgeon, he says, “Judy, pay this bastard.” Then he goes back to listening to the man’s story. When the man finishes, my father offers him his money back and a free room for the night.
Ten minutes later, in the car, I learn the outlandish story. My father fired Buddy for drinking on the job. “But wait’ll you hear how he was drinking,” he says. Early that morning, he saw Buddy lying on the floor of unit 106, under the air conditioner. “He was supposed to be fixing it. All morning, I kept passing by, and every time I’d see Buddy lying under that air conditioner. I thought to myself, Jeez. But then this goddamn crook of a tree surgeon shows up. And he tells me that the goddamn tree he’s supposed to be curing is dead, and I forgot all about Buddy. We go out to look at the tree and the guy’s giving me all this bullshit—the climate this, the climate that—until finally I tell him I’m going to go call the nursery. So I come back to the office. And I pass 106 again. And there’s Buddy still lying on the floor.”
When my father got to him, Buddy was resting comfortably on his back, his eyes closed and the air-conditioner coil in his mouth. “I guess that coolant’s got alcohol in it,” my father said. All Buddy had to do was disconnect the coil, bend it with a pair of pliers, and take a drink. This last time he’d sipped too long, however, and had passed out. “I should have known something was up,” my father says. “For the past week all he’s been doing is fixing the air conditioners.”
After calling an ambulance (Buddy remained unconscious as he was carried away), my father called the nursery. They wouldn’t refund his money or replace the palm tree. What was more, it had rained during the night and no one had to tell him about leaks. His own roof had leaked in the bathroom. The new roof, which had cost a considerable sum, hadn’t been installed properly. At a minimum, someone was going to have to retar it. “I need a guy to go up there and lay down some tar along the edges. It’s the edges, see, where the water gets in. That way, maybe I can save a couple of bucks.” While my father tells me all this, we drive out along A1A. It’s about ten in the morning by this point and the drifters are scattered along the shoulder, looking for day work. You can spot them by their dark tans. My father passes the first few, his reasons for rejecting them unclear to me at first. Then he spots a white man in his early thirties, wearing green pants and a Disney World T-shirt. He’s standing in the sun, eating a raw cauliflower. My father pulls the Cadillac up alongside him. He touches his electronic console and the passenger window hums open. Outside, the man blinks, trying to adjust his eyes to see into the car’s dark, cool interior.
*
At night, after my parents go to sleep, I drive along the strip into town. Unlike most of the places my parents have wound up, Daytona Beach has a working-class feel. Fewer old people, more bikers. In the bar I’ve been going to, they have a real live shark. Three feet long, it swims in an aquarium above the stacked bottles. The shark has just enough room in its tank to turn around and swim back the other way. I don’t know what effect the lights have on the animal. The dancers wear bikinis, some of which sparkle like fish scales. They circulate through the gloom like mermaids, as the shark butts its head against the glass.
I’ve been in here three times already, long enough to know that I look, to the girls, like an art student, that under state law the girls cannot show their breasts and so must glue wing-shaped appliqués over them. I’ve asked what kind of glue they use (“Elmer’s”), how they get it off (“just a little warm water”), and what their boyfriends think of it (they don’t mind the money). For $10, a girl will take you by the hand, past the other tables where men sit mostly alone, into the back where it’s even darker. She’ll sit you down on a padded bench and rub against you for the duration of two whole songs. Sometimes, she’ll take your hands and will ask, “Don’t you know how to dance?”
“I’m dancing,” you’ll say, even though you’re sitting down.
At three in the morning, I drive back, listening to a country-and-western station to remind myself that I’m far from home. I’m usually drunk by this point but the trip isn’t long, a mile at most, an easy cruise past the other waterfront real estate, the big hotels and the smaller ones, the motor lodges with their various themes. One’s called Viking Lodge. To check in, you drive under a Norse galley, which serves as a carport.
Spring break’s more than a month away. Most of the hotels are less than half full. Many have gone out of business, especially those farther out from town. The motel next to ours is still open. It has a Polynesian theme. There’s a bar under a grass hut by the swimming pool. Our place has a fancier feel. Out front, a white gravel walkway leads up to two miniature orange trees flanking the front door. My father thought it was worth it to spend money on the entrance, seeing as that was people’s first impression. Right inside, to the left of the plushly carpeted lobby, is the sales office. Bob McHugh, the salesman, has a blueprint of the resort on the wall, showing available units and timeshare weeks. Right now, though, most people coming in are just looking for a place to spend the night. Generally, they drive into the parking lot at the side of the building and talk to Judy in the business office.
It rained again while I was in the bar. When I drive into our parking lot and get out, I can hear water dripping off the roof of the motel. There’s a light burning in Judy’s room. I consider going up to knock on her door. Hi, it’s the boss’s son! While I’m standing there, though, listening to the dripping water and plotting my next move, her light goes off. And with it, it seems, every light around. My father’s timeshare resort plunges into darkness. I reach out to put my hand on the hood of the Cadillac, to reassure myself with its warmth, and, for a moment, try to picture in my mind the way up, where the stairs begin, how many floors to climb, how many doors to pass before I get to my room.
*
“Come on,” my father says. “I want to show you something.”
He’s wearing tennis shorts and has a racquetball racquet in his hand. Last week, Jerry, the current handyman (the one who replaced Buddy didn’t show up one morning), finally moved the extra beds and draperies out of the racquetball court. My father had the floor painted and challenged me to a game. But, with the bad ventilation, the humidity made the floor slippery, and we had to quit after four points. My father didn’t want to break his hip.
He had Jerry drag an old dehumidifier in from the office and this morning they played a few games.
“How’s the floor?” I ask.