Nine Island by Jane Alison Page A

a line. This time, an Italian restaurant and sports bar up the Beach. The owner, I’ve noted in reconnoitering, is tall and slim and has the face of a panther and a lustrous gray-black mane. As I walked in tonight he was speaking closely with a high-hoofed girl, twenty to his fifty, beneath a frangipani tree.
    Frangipanis are so nice. They bear flowers before leaves: five smooth petals of coral or lemon pinwheel from branches that look like burnt bones.
    Walked through the table-set garden, lights strung between branches as they’d been strung along the decks of the cruise ships, and took a seat at the bar inside, a U-shaped bar made of something like Bakelite, smooth and cool, soft greens and reds from a Latin sports station glowing on its surface, how nice to lay your cheek down and sleep. The bartender, I’d noticed earlier, rode a motorcycle with another woman stuck to her back. Low jeans, tough-boy T-shirt, slick dark hair, rough voice.
    Dimmi , she said.
    Ordered a truffle pizza and prosecco, leaned back, crossed slippery legs. A woman sat two stools down, her hair highlighted and cotton-candied like mine, skin damp on her upper lip.
    She grinned at me, crooked. Howdy, she said. I’ve been here since five—and her foot skidded off the stool rung.
    That’s a good long time, I said. Having fun?
    Oh, she said, oh, if you’d been here at six, was it six? Maybe six. A soccer team was here. Italian. Don’t know why they were here but I have never, ever, seen such men. I’m hoping they’ll come back. Do you think?
    She swung her head toward the door, clutching the edge of the bar for balance. Just checking! she said, her face reeling back my way.
    Not yet, I guess, I said, and looked at her pale pink fingernails and the smudged gloss on her lip.
    But really, she said in a lower voice, really I just come for him—and she nodded toward the panther.
    Yeah?
    Oh, absolutely, she said. I’m here every day. Every night. And I know, she said in the same low tone, that he’s got a thing for me.
    At that moment he was consulting with one of the cooks, knuckles on his square linen hips. The high-hoofed girl sat outside at a table, staring at her cell, lovely olive face aglow, black hair a glossy stroke. The panther went gliding out with a glass he placed before her.
    He does? I asked my bar-mate.
    Well, yeah! she said. He always gives me special drinks and a discount on whatever I eat. Wait. Have I eaten? No—I mean, have I ordered anything? Giovanna!—she waved her pink nails at the bartender. Am I eating?
    Of course you are, M. We always make sure you eat.
    See? said M, and bobbed her head.
    My pizza came, and M’s tagliolini, and she told me she worked at the convention center and came here because she was sick of the other places on the Beach and besides: the owner. At some point a man came in, a conventioneer, and stood between the garden and bar, looking unsure where to sit. The panther glided over to him, glanced at the room, then smiled and led him to the bar and placed him between M and me.
    I knife-and-forked my pizza and sipped prosecco, neck stiff because now I couldn’t face M and had to stare straight ahead. Big screens silently showed young men in red, green, and white running. In the garden, the panther sat with his girl, long fingers stroking the table. At the next table, beneath the lights strung from slim Manila palms, a plump older man with a cigar leaned back and eyed three young women in short dresses sipping red drinks. Between his table and theirs, among the philodendra and citronella candles, a small furred face appeared.
    I leaned forward: not a rat—too big. Not rabbit or raccoon, something cartoonish about it. Eyes too large for the face, and face too large for the body, which was the size of a puppy and ended in thin tail. The creature nudged between philodendron leaves, nudged near a woman’s pearl-toned heel, came close to having its