It's a hyperbolic and fecund place, a mere 2-by-4-mile sliver of history and fantasy, but large enough to contain painters, crooked politicians, cigar makers, lawyers, transvestites, developers and owners of far too many T-shirt shops.

In the summer there's something in the air here, a sultry heaviness, a let's-go-back-to-bed languorousness both sinful and irresistible. Key West, anchored at the southernmost tip of the continental United States, is an endlessly strange and surprising place where spectacle is necessity.

Put another way, Key West, like a narcissistic and stunning model, is anything you want her to be.

I wanted the island to be restorative, relatively inexpensive and swooningly romantic. Make that swelteringly hot and occasionally inexpensive, and off-season Key West delivers all three.

Madeline, the psychic ($28, which includes a tape of the session) said I needed a rest, that the spirits told her I did something creative and very stressful for a living --writing. "What do you write, honey, fiction or unfiction?"

Madeline, who has been supporting herself through the spirits in Key West for 40 years, gets understandably testy when wealthy clients transplanted from stressful environs like Manhattan ask her for winning lottery numbers. "Honey, do you think if I knew that I'd be living in a trailer?"

In Key West, where trailers are dream homes and all things are akimbo, fiction and unfiction are interchangeable.

Every Sunday, for example, the gay 801 Bar irreverently offers "Southern Baptist Bingo." A comedian dressed as a nun calls out letters while players drink frothy, frozen drinks and her 9-year-old son tries unsuccessfully to con the bartenders into sneaking him a beer.

Then there's the tourist-driven reality in which a crowd of sunburned and inebriated visitors gather at Mallory Dock to applaud the setting sun. The fiery sunball sinking into the water is a magnificent sight, but not without competition from sword swallowers, contortionists, tightrope walkers and T-shirt hawkers.

While many audience members evinced gasping noises and harsh judgments, Deb Skipper, from Largo, Fla., couldn't get enough of the Hungarian circus performer whose act involves lifting heavy objects with his mouth. "I am going to lift all of theeze," he announced daringly, pointing to a grocery cart filled with, among other items, a car tire and a chair, "if you give a daah-mn!" Deb did.

She snapped pictures like mad as he balanced it all between his teeth.

"I just love this!" she said, laughing with demented delight. "I'm a dental hygienist."

And then there's the soulful, disarming reality. Someone pining for a missing friend attached a missive to a telephone pole: "Lost: Small green iguana. $20 reward."

Alas, there were no helpful hints on how to capture the lost lizard if one came across it and wished to reunite it with its owner. Details are not important here. Better simply to leave things to providence, or karma, or Madeline.