Free Nine Island by Jane Alison

and imagine swirling ocean depths.
    Could look out at the ocean and imagine the same.
    Could look down from this balcony to where boys shout Fuck .
    Could look down down down to nada.
    Sudden flare of blue light at my hand!
    The Devil.
    Might have business in that glam Miami of yours. Working on a deal with the Miami Heat. Not that you want to see me, but. I promise to be nice.
    The problem with the Devil is that he was always good at sex.
    Had a sudden full sense of his slick lips I used to like to slip my tongue between. And the way his tongue and all shot back, alive. No getting up from that bed.
    Had to put down the cell and look at the sky for a minute.
    NO , wrote K. Do not answer that message. Delete it. That man is poison. Your other old deadbeat is heartbreaking but this one is only poison.
    Not a good idea , my thumbs said to the Devil.
    Of course it is , his thumbs said back.

T HIS EVENING I brought a dish to fill from my water bottle, as well as a baggie of Grape-Nuts. Set dish near the duck’s shrub and strewed cereal near my feet. Her black-bead eye looked at this but she didn’t move. So I stepped back, and after a moment she waddled out of her shrub, first pecked cautiously at the nuggets, then gobbled. I crouched, balancing on my heels, and watched. When I thought I might touch her black barnacled head and tried, she shivered and scooted off fast. Left her searching for nuggets in the grass and walked the Venetian, timing walk to end when the board meeting began. Then snuck into the Bay Room.
    The five board members sat at a long table facing the residents, glass wall of the bay and Star Island behind them. I’ve never got their names straight, although I’ve seen them in the lobby and elevators looking stuffed with import. The chair was droning into a microphone about contractors, as people in the audience muttered and stirred, when in the middle of a handout, Lino came in. He wobbled forward in his white linen shirt and white pants and white hat. He got halfway up the aisle, then stopped and waved his cane.
    You, Harry! he shouted. You’re a crook and a thief and you know it. Don’t anyone believe a word he says!
    Lino twirled around unevenly, still shaking his cane. Time for a new board! Call an election!
    Lino, said one of the board members into his microphone, Lino, we’re having a meeting here.
    Same with you, Tom! Liars and cheats, all of you! Call an election!
    Lino, said Tom. Calm down.
    Don’t tell me to calm down! Don’t tell me to calm down! You’re planning a heist while you’re still on top, and if you do I tell you what I’ll do—
    Lino . . .
    â€”I’ll have you killed!
    Two of the board members stood up. That’s enough, Lino, said one, and then the other was suddenly rounding the table shouting, You get the hell away from my wife!
    Lino had veered toward a seated woman with a yellow bow on her head looking fiercely up at him.
    You and your wife! Lino said. Have you all rubbed out!
    All right, that’s it, said Harry and banged his gavel, and in came the head of security, Virgil—his name really is Virgil—who is two feet taller and broader than Lino and very dark, with dark, sad eyes. He cupped Lino’s elbow and steered him gently out of the Bay Room.
    All right, said Harry.
    Then the board went on with its business, Chairman Harry telling us all that was wrong with the pool and garage and koi ponds and jungle, the unsoundness of the concrete, the fact that cracks weren’t just in the surface but symptoms of deep erosion, that the whole thing was about to collapse, taking koi and palms and gumbo-limbos and sunbathers and swimmers down with it, and as he spoke, an evil tiny smile on his face, it felt as though a tunnel were opening up and we were streaming into it, tumbling down into darkness, little naked Bosch figures, animals pitched from a sinking, split ark.
    Two years of smashing and dust and blistering noise