Rescue

the Cuban tobacco people moved there a long time ago to make cigars. He was really struck by the look of their houses, and when he got finished working for Mr. Flagler’s railroad, he built this place to retire to.“
    “Mr. Flagler’s railroad?“
    “Yes. Mr. Flagler was an oil man, built the line from the mainland all the way down to Key West . But the railroad got destroyed in the hurricane of 1935. Two-hundred-mile- an-hour winds, eighteen-foot tidal wave—“
    “Eighteen feet?“
    “Yessir. That’s how this Key got its name.“
    “Mercy, you mean?“
    “Right. Used to have an Indian name. When the storm came up, the railroad sent a train down the line to try and rescue some workers, but everything except the engine car got washed away. The people who made it to here, though, they lived through the storm, because parts of Mercy are, like, twenty feet above sea level, highest ground in all the Keys,“
    “And so the survivors renamed the place ‘Mercy.’ “
    “Uh-huh. Also did some fancy construction. Come on, I’ll show you.“
    Adair slid open a pocket door in the patio wall of the house. We entered a small kitchen, and a beetlelike thing that looked like a cockroach on steroids skittered across the floor in front of us.
    “What the hell was that?“ I said.
    “Palmetto bug. You don’t want to step on them, the air’ll smell like spoiled almonds for days.“
    Past the kitchen was a living room area, with throw pillows and sectional furniture and a ceiling fan. The ceiling over the living room was an atrium, plants hung from the exposed beams.
    “This is really nice, Dawna.“
    A wink. “Wait’ll you see the upstairs.“
    I followed her toward a narrow staircase, like one to an attic. I thought Adair was accentuating her hip movements a little on the steps, but that may just have been me.
    We crested at a half loft, more plants hanging from staunch collar ties spaced only three feet apart, again secured to the angled roof beams by railroad spikes. The spike motif continued with the wall-covering bookcases, the spikes being laid at the diagonal in right-angle bookends. The books themselves included some Danielle Steeles and Sidney Sheldons, but many by Joyce Carol Oates, John Edgar Wideman, and even Brontë and Dickens, what looked like grammar school awards of some kind here and there. Only one window, at the back over a small table with a hurricane lamp on it.
    I said, “Very nice.“
    Dawna had moved to her bed, a brass curlicue painted white, sitting on it. “And built to last. Grandpa saw what happened to the houses on the other Keys from the hurricane so he gathered up as many of the railroad spikes as he could find—said to me, ‘I helped build that damn railroad, girl, seems to me I can unbuild it as well’-—and he used only Dade County pine. It’s a kind of wood, when it gets older, the resin hardens as it dries. I tried to have that window there enlarged so I could fit an air conditioner? Forget it. Jay broke five saw blades before he quit.“
    “Your ex-fiancé.“
    “Uh-huh. I think he has some kind of complex.“
    “I believe you could say that.“
    Adair reached down to pull her jersey up and over her head, the midriff top riding north with it a bit as the neck cleared the top of her head. “I mean, when we were together, he was kind of a funny mixture, you know? One minute he’d be so confident, a girl’d tell him she has a boyfriend, Jay figures she’s just letting him know she’s not a lesbian. Other times, he’d be real insecure, like on account of his name.“
    “His name?“
    “Yeah. He once said to me, ‘It’s just not much of a name, Dawna. It’s, like, just one syllable. Only a letter, really, “
    Somehow Jay didn’t strike me as the type to use the word “syllable“ in a sentence. “How long were you two together?“
    “Not so long.“
    “But long enough to get engaged.“
    Adair reclined so her elbows were resting on the bed, like a woman sunning on the beach and propping herself up to take a look around. “That’s the one downside of the Keys, John.“
    “What is?“
    “The kind of person who’s attracted here. Not exactly bums, but kind of... misfits? People who didn’t like who they were or what they did or how they lived somewhere else, so they come down here for vacation or something, and the Keys kind of... speak to them, capture them somehow.“
    “Poetic.“
    A frown. “You’re making fun of me.“
    “No. I was