Two Lucky

To prepare ourselves for the next round of therapy, and to escape the winter, Rusty and I decided to go on a short, one-week holiday.

We arrived in Key West, Florida, this afternoon. We will stay for three days, and then fly to Mexico for another four days of rest at a resort 20 miles south of Cancun.

As I step off the tiny plane into the sun, I feel immediately more relaxed. The locks fly open, my heart fills with the openness of the sky.

It is not long before we check into Big Ruby’s Guesthouse and find ourselves ensconced in the breezy comfort of the Conch Republic.

On the city’s bustling Duval Street, youth is spent like easy currency under the balmy sun. Shacks spill laughs, live music, breasts, and tout day-long Happy Hour, conch fritters, fish tacos and other colorful Caribbean flair, all in the same breathless stupor.

When night breezes in, one inroad off Duval has been cordoned off for an impromptu Oscar Night party. As golden statues get handed out on TV, college students trade iconic, rainbow-colored Mardi Gras beads on the streets.

Two doors down, a homeless Albert Einstein lookalike serenades passers-by with a broken, inelegant violin.

Here at Key West, my trained New York sense of self-important busyness is exposed discombobulated, sunless and naked. Slow down, stop, and have a mojito (”Or two - we have 24 different flavors,” our waitresses chime together).

In the end, we finally take our place on the island when we sit down on the steps of a Kohr Bros frozen custard shoppe. Holding a cone of old-fashioned vanilla custard between our hands, we take turns and eat in silence, like two well-schooled children.

In that moment, I briefly forgot my anger and smiled at Rusty. In that moment, sweetened by the rarity of street dessert, the same light that first revealed his face to me, shone in my heart again.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 1:57 am and is filed under New York, Couplehood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.