Life and Island Times July 5 2016 – Embraceable You

Gentle readers, this is a continuation of the In Search of Lost Time epistles that your scribe penned during the past decade about island life. This one dates from 2013.

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Marlow awoke last night with a start at 215 AM with a volcanically bad stomachache caused by his chronic reflux disease and a shredded foot courtesy of one of the black cat’s mistimed leaps into his tall bed. After swallowing a large handful of Tums and applying Bacitracin to his stinging toes, he hobbled out to the second floor apartment’s screened porch. He decided sit a spell in soft pink light up in trees since the antacids and antibacterial cream would take some time to do their work.

Earlier the previous day, Marlow and the W had gone up the Keys to a small place for lunch. Its tattooed owner had created two very successful restaurants – one on Key West’s Duval Street and the other on Stock Island’s waterfront – after decamping Lake Tahoe after too many winters back in the 70s. The seven hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 had worn her out with the constant struggle of post storm repairs that she finally got out of the business in 2006.

The food business had a strong embrace on her. So three years later she bought a working Gulf-side dock and small set of decrepit buildings just north of Mile Marker 25 on Summerland Key and created a fish house called the Wharf. Serving craft beers, local seafood and “grab and go” hard liquor out of wall mounted lobster traps to its customers was making her fulfilled and her customers full. Their fried Key West pink shrimp and Apalachicola oyster baskets were quickly dispatched with Monk in the Trunk and Milk Stout beers.

Marlow’s apartment is the upper right one

While perched in his porch chair nursing his aches and pains, a late model red American sedan rolled slowly to a curb stop across the street. Its heavy passenger door opened and someone commenced clearing their stomach contents of that night’s Duval Street bars into the gutter. This wrenching cleansing ended after several minutes. Sixty seconds after the last basso profundo guttural hurling, the idling car went lights out and its occupants exited and headed towards the white stucco apartment building across the street. A tall man wearing a white shirt assisted his wobbly date dressed in a black and white dress into the apartment.

Minutes later, the dulcet tones of Dean Martin crooning Embraceable You wafted across the street from the apartment building. When Marlow retired at 330 AM, the jury was out whether this music selection was driven by lust, extreme sensitivity or humor. Seeing if they exited the apartment together in the afternoon sun or which person drags out a large yard trash, body bag should settle the issue.

Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you
Embrace me, my irreplaceable you

Just one look at you
My heart grows tipsy in me
You and you alone
Bring out the Gypsy in me

I love all the many charms about you
Above all, I want my arms about you

Don’t be a naughty baby
Come to daddy, come to daddy do
My sweet embraceable you

I love all the many charms about you
Above all, I want my arms about you

So don’t you be, a naughty baby
Come to papa do
My sweet embraceable you

Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat