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by passing ships from miles out at sea. Take a look up and see how high this is—quite a feat.”
    The ecotourists bend their heads back and look up inside the soaring shaft. In a stunned moment of silence, their eyes widen as they are transfixed by the vision they see in the clammy darkness far above, at the tower’s point. Their sudden shouts and screams echo up the shaft in panicked horror. They turn and run between the tower’s massive support struts and back onto the road. They attempt to knock one another out of the way as they scramble toward the bus. The thin man with the tight green bandanna is pushed aside and falls onto the road; the gravel cuts into his knees, drawing blood. The tour guide yanks him up by the arm. He looks back towardthe tower and his body shakes violently. A spray of vomit shoots from his mouth and splatters at the tour guide’s feet. The guide tightens her grip on the wobbling man’s arm and runs with him toward the bus, where the others are cowering in their seats.

    L uz steers her white Dodge Charger down the skinny slot of Olivia Street. The street is crowded on both sides with century-old Cuban cigar-makers’ shacks, built when Key West was the cigar-producing capital of the world, rolling out a million smokes a year. None of the shacks retain their original bare-board anonymity, having been painted by affluent new owners to a pastel prettiness. Gone are the generations of Cubans who once stood on the porches calling out hot gossip to neighbors in hot weather. The humid air no longer carries the garlic scent of sizzling shrimp and the sweet aroma of Cuban bread. The white fences in front of the shacks have been trimmed of their overgrown red bougainvillea and riotous yellow allamanda blossoms. Everything is prim and calm, like a street in a proper New England port town, not the boisterous place where Luz grew up.
    Luz turns her car at the corner of Olivia onto wide Duval Street. She parks in front of one of the last Cuban expresso-
buche
shops on the island not retrofitted into a trendy franchise coffee palace. The shop is a nondescript narrow storefront with a slotted hole cut in a cementwall to pass the coffee through. Luz gets out of her car and orders her third
buche
double of the morning. She watches through the slotted hole as a broad-butted Cuban woman dressed in tight blue jeans works at the sputtering and hissing nozzle of a monstrous old burnished expresso machine. The woman turns with a triumphant smile and presents a cup of steaming
buche
to Luz, who cradles it in her hand.
    Sipping her hot caffeine nectar in the sun’s morning glare, Luz keeps her eyes on the Duval Street activity from behind her sunglasses. Packs of excited vacationers in shorts and flip-flops hurry by on the sidewalk, darting into gift shops, trying on T-shirts with tropical scenes silk-screened on them, and buying Key West’s two most famous postcard photos, the mile-zero sign at the end of Highway 1, and the tall bullet-shaped concrete monument at the Atlantic’s edge declaring SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.—90 MILES TO CUBA .
    From the open window of Luz’s car, parked at the curb, a police dispatcher’s radio voice drones. Luz takes another sip of
buche
as she listens to the bored voice announcing bicycle thefts, lost dogs, and jaywalkers. The voice is suddenly drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle. She turns to see Pat on her Harley-D jump the curb behind the Charger and come to a tire-burning stop on the sidewalk, scattering the startled tourists.
    Luz eyes Pat with mock discipline. “I could arrest you for that stunt.”
    Pat tightens her grip on the Harley’s chrome handlebars. She fixes Luz with a bold stare. “Oh, I want to be arrested. That’s my dream, one night locked up with you. I’ll lick all the brown sugar out of your bowl. You shouldjilt your girlfriend, Joan. Hop on my bike. We’ll never look back.”
    Luz swallows her coffee. “You still poaching endangered