Jack was full and a little drunk from dinner. He’d just eaten at a little restaurant on Duval Street, and his meal had been a couple big conch tacos and a few bottles of citrus beer from a brewery right there in the Keys, up north in Islamorada. His dinner done, Jack strolled through the nighttime crowds along Duval.
The smiling faces that passed by on the sidewalk were fresh college-aged faces, withered old faces, and middle-aged faces like Jack’s own. The nocturnal people of Key West seemed to be made up of every sort of character, and all these characters made their way to the southernmost point in the United States, the terminus of U.S. Route 1, to lose themselves … or to find themselves.
Key West was, in a way, the furthest fringe of American civilization, and despite the island’s grand hotels, expensive food, and idyllic tropical climate, it kept the gritty essence of a rough frontier town. It was a bikini-clad backwoods paradise that swarmed with iguanas, chickens, burn-outs, Cubans, and East Coast upper class tourists. Jack had no idea where exactly he fit in among the Key West set, but he nonetheless found himself there on vacation.
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