A dim blue light seeped in between the slats of jalousie windows. He always liked it in the morning and wondered why he didn’t wake up earlier and avail himself to this still part of the day more often. It didn’t take long to figure it out. Most evenings Frank Deacon would find himself glancing towards the curvy vintage bookshelf clock perched atop his desk in the corner. Forgetting every time how his eyes were not what they used to be he inevitably lights his smartphone up instead. 9:36pm. 10:17. 10:40. “I’ll go to bed at eleven.” 11:06pm. 11:31. By now the melted ice would leave a final sip of whiskey flavored water in his glass. 1:42 am. Waking up on the sofa he initially sits up with the virility of a younger version of himself before lumbering off to bed.
This particular lambent morning he’s glad to have gotten to bed early the night before. He moved slow and quiet through the house. Frank made his coffee on the stove in a Moka pot; the way his mother used to when he was a kid and his folks would sit around the small kitchen table with their friends for coffee and cake. Sometimes he found himself doing that now and liking it and getting mad at himself for being older than his parents were in that memory.
In the front yard the sun had risen with a soft orange glow of a kind that only happens by the sea. It coated his face with a smile. He walked along the sidewalks outlined with thick sharply manicured St. Augustine grass on which sparkling droplets of dew held the scent of yesterday’s fresh mow. “Carlos did a good job. I’ll tip ‘im good this week.”
Mornings like this bred hope. “Blank page”, he thought. That was always his line to Mylessa. When Frank was a songwriter in Nashville he coined that refrain as his personal mantra, as well as a suedo get-out-of-jail-free card for any time he drew a blank in life. “Everybody talks about the blank page like it’s a bad thing. You have a piece of an idea, or someone brings you a line or a chorus, you’re tethered to building on or around that. Putting the pieces together is fun, ok, sure. But, the blank page”, he would say, “it’s like staring at an empty canvas when your mind paints any image it can imagine. I love a blank page because it can be anything. Then it’s our job to see if we can do half as good as anything. Sometimes we get lucky.”
He held that line close though his reality was pretty mundane. To live life like a song, once inferred romance. Now it more resembled a tired structure. Everyday was basically: Intro-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-fade. He wasn’t upset with his life. He’s smoked cigars in Havana, drank wine in Paris, and knew love when kissing his wife’s face while she slept in the morning. Another reason to like mornings. No, he wasn’t upset. Only tired. What do you do when you’ve filled life’s cup to the fullest but you're left holding a good bit more and nowhere to pour it?
^^^
Sufficiently caffeinated he started along the sandy sidewalks. Nothing is ever quite completely clean in a beach town. Some folks simply detest the bothersome little specks of sand which seem to permeate even the most unlikeliest of crannies. He was of the ilk that didn’t much mind it at all. In fact, he was often perfectly enthralled with the travels of each tiny grain as he walked. Did a tropical wind carry you from the beach to my doorstep? Perhaps you began in the sea, thrust ashore by a midnight crest? He would have said he loved them, but these days he was emotional and loving everything. It was all he knew how to do, out of fear, afraid someday it would be gone.
Bougainvilleas and red wine colored Cordylines decorated yards of thick grass like a bed for the radiant Queen palms, all overseen by ominously towering Sabal trees. People always want to make the tropics more tropical, their own personal paradise, but he admired it all the while. Walking these streets had become a pastime. Something different emanated today, though. Maybe it was the irregularity of waking up early mixed with a buzz from black coffee. Or maybe it was the strange and exciting feeling when morning turns to day by the ocean. The atmosphere seems to push its way back to life adding a sense of gravity to the air, proliferated by the golden curtain spread over that particular piece of Earth.
Perambulating with purpose and choosing the opposite way than usual he found himself curiously astounded by a street he hadn’t been down before. It’s a wonder, isn't it though, how a tiny beachside barony can keep such things? Then again, he'd formed a myopic life such to save himself the anxiety of unknowns.
A patchwork of milky clouds materialized as he stepped down this new path. A mid-morning tropical squall, no less, and nothing worth much mind at all. Along this road prodigious manor style homes spread further apart than the rest of town’s suburban sprawl. Broad lavish lawns diffuse with verdant mats of plush grass exhibited large elephant ears bobbing among yellow and green snake plants. Magnolia trees, their polished black-green leaves regal and still, made the whole scene reminiscent of a fish tank.
He could tell he had been walking for some time as the sun was now high above him. Like an oven getting up to temperature, the heat of Florida comes quickly. He was reminded of how age sneaks up on one like that, slowly till all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, it’s unavoidable. It was the perfect time for a place to stop and rest, preferably in the shade. What he needed now was an oasis.
That’s when he saw it. It was almost terribly too good to be true so much that he laughed in spite of himself as he approached the heavy bamboo door. Cocoasis, the sign read. After the darkness, for the room was so dimly lit it was hard to tell the layout, the first thing he noticed were the sounds. Somewhere between slow jazz and tribal pulsing with animalistic jungle cries. The vibe was inherent. Tiki totems, a large Easter Island head, prolific fan-like palm fronds bending like fishing poles and gently swaying in an indiscernible breeze. As his eyes adjusted, past low rattan table settings he saw green glow highlighting a bar. Stilt high stools stood on knobby legs of wood while low wicker backs rested like guarding shields.
Being simply past noon was no time to be tippling, but something cool and mild would reinvigorate him for the walk home. Surely. He perused the menu, the back, the front again. There was not much he recognized save a few faux-exotic concoctions made famous by the early 20th century tiki craze. He decided on one that looked familiar and ordered a Mai Tai. As a child he recalled his mother ordering Mai Tais at Chinese restaurants. It would come a pink-red hue and he imagined it tasting like the Shirley Temples his mother would order for him. He always got to have a Shirley Temple when they went to Chinese restaurants. Thinking of that memory now he tasted grenadine and the bright red maraschino cherry and missed his mother.
The drink he received was quite different. It came in a highly detailed tiki mug wearing a wide welcoming expression. A bushel of mint leaves sprouted from a lime wheel floated atop pebble ice. With a sip he was simultaneously surprised and put at ease. He was no stranger to a fine cocktail, tropical drinks simply never found their way into his sphere. But this, well this was a bit of intemperate metanoia, wasn’t it?
As the short rounded man behind the bar, with his handlebar mustache and loose cabana shirt, endeavored to explain the drink Frank descended deeper into his stool. The listless palm fronds breaking through corners of unassuming darkness, mysterious ambient sounds, the whole thing leaning obviously into kitsch.
“Rhum agricole.” The barkeep, Thomas, continued. “Is distilled from the juice of pressed sugar cane rather than molasses. That’s what gives it that grassy herbaceous flavor.”
“Oh, I see.” Frank, becoming more and less interested with each sip.
There was something about this place, even though he knew it was novelty. The scene and semblance inside Cocoasis raised anxieties of the unknown as well as offered a peaceful, what was the word….escape.
“Escapism, that’s all tiki bars are.” Thomas interjected. “Tiki isn’t a mock thatched roof over a patio bar by the beach. Tiki is exotic, seductively inviting, spooky even. Created by Don the Beachcomber in the 30’s. Rumor has it he traveled all around the South Pacific and Caribbean creating his own version of exotica. It’s really a world that doesn’t exist. It can be anything, that’s what makes it cool.”
“Like a blank page.” Frank Deacon had been to a lot of places, but he’d never been anywhere that didn’t exist.
^^^
He noticed things now that he hadn’t in the light of midday. Evening had casted a waning afterglow over Florida’s east coast. The sun may be on the other side of the state, but she leaves a beautiful threadbare pastel sky to let us know she’ll be back. He thought it was not unlike that morning he so admired. Except mornings meant hope while evenings mean hoping for morning.
Approaching the heavy bamboo door to Cocoasis this time he saw the flowering Crape Myrtle and Hibiscus bushes lining the outside walls. The sloped A-frame roof came to a point directly over the front entrance which was flanked by two stately Royal Palms that looked to him like Bishops on a chessboard.
The music was louder and more sensual than earlier. He passed couples dining on well garnished meals, carrying on in languid youth. He didn’t blame them, quite the contrary, something about this scene made him feel a bit like he hadn’t in years - good.
He sat a spot at the corner of the bar as an evening squall began dropping loud rain. Behind the bar there was a large crank window through which he became mesmerized by the deluge. Some people stare at fires, our man Frank loved downpours. He thought about his father in a folding chair in the garage. He would open the large door and take little Frank on his lap and they would watch the rain fall outside, safe and dry in his father’s arms. Rain now triggered a Pavlovian response in Frank to remember his father whom he missed very much.
“Hey, Frank!” The familiar voice broke his pensive reverie. “What’re you doing in a joint like this?”
He had known Ben for longer than either of them cared to recall. Ben simply never thought his buddy would be into a place like Cocoasis. Kitsch usually wasn’t his thing, and Frank still didn’t understand what pulled his ship back towards this strange port.
“Life isn’t just rainbows and rum drinks, Ben.”
“Surely, but let me order you one of these and rainbows will be the least of your worries. Tommy, two Zombies!”
Conversation is smooth and congruent in old friends, but eventually tongues tire of pleasantries and unfortunately the opposite is unpleasantry.
“Seems unlikely to find you in here, Frank? Twice in the same day, no less.”
“Curiosity brought me in. Intrigue brought me back. Truth is, Ben, there’s something oddly invigorating about the aura in here. It’s, I don’t know, fun.”
“That’s a word I haven’t heard you use since Mylessa passed.” Ben muttered solemnly.
Both men took a moment. “You know”, Ben continued, “It’s ok to be happy, every now and then. There’s nothing to be ashamed of a great life lived...”
“A life lived too short.” Frank snapped.
Between the two older men apologies were tacit acknowledgments.
“You simply must find something to make you happy, my friend. I worry.”
“I hope I can.”
“You’re on the right track. You have to have hope to have change.”
“It’s not ennui, Ben. I’m not bored or depressed. I like things. It’s just that everything I like has a memory tied to it.”
“If I may interject, gentlemen?” Thomas the barman solicited. “Sounds like it’s time to find a way to make new memories.”
“Not if I keep drinking these.” Frank attempted to defer the conversation under the guise of levity. But he knew his companions weren’t wrong. There sure was something weird about Cocoasis. The quixotic atmosphere had a way of conjuring things he hadn’t thought of in years. He pictured Mylessa sitting beside him, but that was a fake memory. Or, was it that she could be inserted wherever he was? He felt something he hadn’t in a very long time and he didn’t tell his friends, but only curled his lip a bit. He felt the blank page.
From then on the men enjoyed each other’s company and spoke only of lighter things. Such as the 151 rum in their drinks and how it cohabitated alongside nutmeg, cinnamon grapefruit syrup, and Falernum. The latter of which Frank was sure was a made up word and his friends were having a go at him. Ben, Thomas, and Frank shared stories and gave each other shit in that endearing way men do. By the time to call it a night Frank may have even relented to having a bit of a good time.
The walk home was guided by lamplight circles along sandy sidewalks. As he locked the door behind him the house was just as still as it had been that morning. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table beside his favorite glass. He didn’t notice it. He didn’t notice the open jalousie windows. He didn’t notice the late evening squall that had picked up outside or the moka pot on the stove. He didn’t even notice the time on the curvy bookshelf clock as he slid into bed. That night he had no trouble falling asleep.
^^^