libation to the gods

        In blazing gotterdammerung the sun made its emotive exit from the stage. McEwan sat on a dock by Indigo Bay and watched the seaplane shuttle arrive from Florida. Awaiting it was the island taxi. A huge blue sedan manufacured in Detroit right after WW2. Fastidiously preserved.
        Beside it stood the driver. A tall black man, dapper in a white linen suit. McEwan knew him as Daddy Doc. Yoruba lineage. Very old, but straight of spine. Augustly mannered and regally reserved. Civil to everyone and professionally courteous. Most striking feature, an icy stare, hidden most of the time behind grotesque mirrorshades.
        McEwan watched a vacation couple alight from the plane and load themselves into the taxi. Giddy and gabby. Without speaking, Daddy Doc drove away with them. As the taxi passed by, McEwan waved to them and they waved in return.
        Wasn't life grand?


                                                                            *


        He decided to follow the taxi to the hotel. He walked along the causeway and thought about a play of his that was currently in troubled production in New York. He laughed. When wasn't there trouble?
        All of his plays, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway and Way Off Broadway, had been bleeding migraines. At the moment he was determined not to be involved in production. He had told the producer and director to consider the playwright dead. Deceased. Just like Shakespeare.
       Their silence was deafening as a dropped tray of dinner plates.
        "Figure out how you want to do it," he had cajoled. "Shanghai the cast. Sleep with all of them if you must. Get drunk, drive up to the Cape and fuck their brains out in P'town. But leave me alone. I'm trying to write."



                                                                             *


        The hotel offered a spiffy South Beach trattoria run by a Cuban couple from Calle Ocho in Miami, and he would have a cup off coffee and a saucer of sliced guava with cream cheese. Then he remembered that the new busboy there was his King Sailor lad. So he picked up the pace. He would get the lad's name and address and maybe buy him a small gift.
        Las Palmas was a neon jewel at the end of a long driveway flanked by white-painted royal palms.
Breezes off Indigo Bay danced in the washingtonia fronds. McEwan smiled. Landscaping had created a little piece of Henry Flagler's Gold Coast. Perhaps too stately for the poor island. But what the hell?
        McEwan strode inside. Polished brass and wood glinted, reflecting globular lighting from the ceiling fans. He could see himself in the blond hardwood floor leading into the trattoria. Lighting in there was subdued. Diffused luminescence leaked like ectoplasm from tubes behind the bar. The bartender's white bib apron glowed in the ultraviolet radience above the glassware. Each table owned its individual pool of light, cast by green-shaded brass lamps. Swank for the Go-Go '90s.
        The dress code was casual.
        McEwan wore a burgandy and white rugby shirt and khaki cargo slacks. He spotted the busboy, bent over a distant table and clearing away the bottles and slop for a party of five. The smug waiter swooped down like a raptor and snatched away the gratuity.
        McEwan sauntered to the deserted bar and from there he admired the firm buns of the lad. African buttocks drove him crazy. God, the lad is gorgeous!
       


                                                                           *


        "Serve you, sir?"
        The bartender startled the bejesus out of him!
        The Cuban was dark of groomed beard and swarthy. Crisp collar and cuffs. "Sorry. You're having--?"
        "Meyers on the rocks."
        "Very good."
        So much for coffee and guava with cream cheese, McEwan mused.
        When the bartender set down the rum and turned to go McEwan asked, "Excuse me. That busboy. What's his name?"
        "Jimmy. Jaime. Take your pick. He's a real scamp."
        McEwan slipped the bartender a New York fin.
        Two drinks later he paid the bar tab with his AMEX card. The receipt came with an additional piece of paper. In faint pencil: Jaime's home address.
        He went outside. There were iron tables on the flagstone patio overlooking the seawall. Not far to the East, foamy surf crunched upon coral battlements.
        An array of flambeaux flickered. The wind sighed in the Australian pines. He was quite alone. He sat at the table nearest the seawall. Opened his tote bag, withdrew a notepad and a Uniball pen.
        Then like the ancient Greeks in Homer he poured a sacrificial libation to the Gods.
        This ridiculous ritual cost him a modest amount of Planter's Punch. He laughed. No harm in a bit of honest superstition.
         He began composing a dramatic scene. Silver-tongued Calliope sat with him, singing strange exotic words, tapping her new tamborine.