Adios, Iguana

I turned the corner at Green Street today and -- there it wasn't.

I fell in love with the Iguana the first time we went there -- a little lunch-counter sort of place across the street from Captain Tony's, with an old-style wood front that swung up to make a canopy over the sidewalk. There were a few high tables there and only 8 or 10 more jammed into the tiny inside. Behind a slim front part, there was an open-air section built around a tree, and then a wee kitchen in back. The floors were uneven, and there were terrariums behind the cash register with dusty faux iguanas.

If it started raining while you were eating, you did your best to scootch into the perimeter of what would only pretentiously be called the atrium.

It seemed less to have been built than to have happened, a great Key West relic. And once you'd snared a table, you never, ever, felt any pressure to leave. Stay, savor, read the paper, ogle the street traffic and groove to the live music from Tony's.

Of course, groove on the food, too. I loved the patty melt with curly fries, and I mean loved; Robert's favorite was the grilled fresh tuna sandwich -- the best on the island, he said. Even more delectable was the owner, little Ino, with all the passion and flash of her homeland, Spain.

Then after Wilma, we noticed 2-by-4's across the front, and when I ran into Ino at Publix early this year, I asked her what was going on. "Oh, the hurricane," she said. "It did so much damage, and the landlord doesn't know what he wants to do."

I know what I want to do. I want to cry.