Maybe I could say Santa Claus left the bale of pot in the living room closet. My middle-class Midwestern parents would believe me if I told them Santa dropped it off by mistake, right?
Yeah, right.
Or maybe I could disguise it by wrapping it in giant sheets of holiday paper, adding a super-sized bow, and saying it was a Christmas gift for a friend — an oddly fragrant gift, though it didn’t smell like holiday evergreens.
Or I could just track down my wayward live-in boyfriend, who had promised to remove the bale several days before Christmas Eve but somehow never got around to it.
Instead, the evidence of his buddy Steve’s “profession” was still in our closet 45 minutes before my parents’ flight was due to land at the tiny Key West airport. The late-afternoon weather was rainy and damp, so they would undoubtedly be wearing jackets — jackets that, since they were staying with us, they’d expect to hang up in the living room closet.
My boyfriend (who we’ll call Paul) was nowhere to be found and probably out drinking. Steve had blithely gone away for the holidays, leaving his burlap-wrapped “product” stored with us despite my parents’ imminent arrival.
As well as their first trip to my beloved Key West, this visit would be their introduction to Paul. Though now living an island-hippie life, I was still a Midwestern people-pleaser when it came to my parents. I wanted their visit to be perfect.
Having a bale in the closet was far from perfect — but the damned thing was too big and unwieldy for me to move by myself.
In those days before cell phones, most Key West bartenders operated a helpful “locator service” for local women seeking their wandering mates. Before leaving to meet my parents, I picked up the phone and activated the “service” in a last-ditch effort to find Paul.
“No, he’s not here,” said John, the bartender at the Full Moon Saloon. “He left half an hour ago — pretty sure he was going to the Hukilau.”
“You just missed him,” the Hukilau bartender reported. “He and Mikey Dare were headed down to the Chart Room.”
But the Chart Room bartender hadn’t seen him, and I was out of time.
My parents greeted me at the airport with enthusiastic hugs, seemingly unfazed after their flight in a nine-passenger plane, and accepted my statement that Paul was out finishing holiday errands. Their carry-ons were full of wrapped presents, and they were indeed wearing jackets.
Until the bale was gone, I couldn’t take them home. But as we walked to my blue Toyota truck, the rain intensified from drizzle to downpour. With it came the inspiration for a delaying tactic.
“Since you guys are wet and probably chilly,” I babbled to my parents, “before we go to the house, we’ll stop at the Full Moon for a Christmas Eve drink to warm you up.”
The catchphrase “it takes a village” probably didn’t originate in Key West, but in those days it defined Key West — and my best friend Vic Latham, a silver-haired rogue who was part-owner of the Full Moon, was an unofficial village elder.
Walking into the Moon, with its wide horseshoe bar and clientele of friendly renegades, I spotted Vic and towed my parents over to introduce them. As a waitress led them to a table, I pulled him aside.
“You have to help me,” I hissed. “I can’t take them home — Paul disappeared somewhere, and there’s a BALE in my living room closet!”
That’s when the “villagers” mobilized. Vic ordered Jamaican coffee for my parents, with substantial shots of dark rum and coffee liqueur, and sat down with us and started telling stories. Former Chicago Tribune journalist Phil Caputo, another good friend and the celebrated author of “A Rumor of War,” joined us — enthralling my father, who was an advertising writer and veteran of Chicago’s outlaw literary era.
An ongoing procession of colorful characters dropped by the table, warmly welcoming my parents and enfolding them in the magic that characterized Key West at its best.
When the third round of Jamaican coffee arrived, just as Vic ended another improbable story with his infectious laugh, my father turned to me.
“I see why you love this town so much,” he said. His words felt like a benediction.
Shortly after that, Paul ambled into the bar looking indecently cheerful. He kissed me (I may have growled under my breath in response), greeted my parents, and sat down at our table.
“I finished those last-minute clean-up chores at the house,” he said, winking at me before turning to my slightly tipsy parents. “Shall we all go home and decorate the tree?”
