The Keys were overrun with iguanas. They ate her hibiscus; every once in a while she caught one of the smaller ones with the pool net and stuck it in her freezer for a few days. This was supposedly a humane way of dealing with iguanas. You could even eat them, although she did not. She was a vegetarian.

She put out food for the bigger iguanas when she saw them. They liked ripe fruit. She liked to watch them eat. She knew that she was not being consistent or fair in her dealings, but there it was.

men unlucky at cards

Lindsey’s job was not a particularly complicated one. There was an office, and behind the office was a warehouse full of sleeping people. There was an agency in D.C. that paid her company to take responsibility for the sleepers. Every year, hikers and cavers and construction workers found a few dozen more. No one knew how to wake them up. No one knew what they meant, what they did, where they came from. No one really even knew if they were people.

There were always at least two security guards on duty at the warehouse. They were mostly, in Lindsey’s opinion, lecherous assholes. She spent the day going through invoices, and then went home again. The wolf man wasn’t at The Splinter and the bartender threw everyone out at two a.m.; she went back to the warehouse on a hunch, four hours into the night shift.

Bickle and Lowes had hauled out five sleepers, three women and two men. They’d put Miami Hydra baseball caps on the male sleepers and stripped the women, propped them up in chairs around a foldout table. Someone had arranged the hands of one of the male sleepers down between the legs of one of the women. Cards had been dealt out. Maybe it was just a game of strip poker and the three women had been unlucky. It was hard to play your cards well when you were asleep.

Larry Bickle stood behind one of the women, his cheek against her hair. He seemed to be giving her advice about how to play her cards. He wasn’t holding his drink carefully enough, and the woman’s neat lap brimmed with beer.

Lindsey watched for a few minutes. Bickle and Lowes had gotten to the sloppy, expansive stage of drunkenness that, sober, she resented most. False happiness.

When Lowes saw Lindsey he stood up so fast his chair tipped over. “Hey, now,” he’d said. “It’s different from how it looks.”

Both guards had little conical paper party hats on their heads.

A third man, no one Lindsey recognized, came wandering down the middle aisle like he’d been shopping at Walmart. He wore boxer shorts and a party hat. “Who’s this?” he said, leering at Lindsey.