Insane City (11 page)

The video ended, replaced by a pair of concerned-looking TV anchorwomen. Superimposed on the

screen below them were the words SOUTH BEACH DRUG EPIDEMIC.

“Oh God,” said Seth again.

“Those your friends?” said Wesley.

Seth nodded. “They’re supposed to be in my wedding. Tomorrow.”

Wesley chuckled. Even his chuckles were scary.

LaDawne’s face appeared in the doorway. “This baby needs some Huggies,” she announced.

“Wesley, you go get this baby some Huggies.”

Wesley shook his enormous head. “I ain’t going to get no Huggies.” He was not a Huggie-getting

man.

LaDawne immediately turned to Seth. “I need you to go get the baby some Huggies.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You can take Wesley’s car.”

Seth looked at Wesley, who was very still. “Is that, um, OK with Wesley?”

“Wesley don’t make the payments on that car.
I
make the payments on that car. Wesley, give him the

ticket.”

Without taking his eyes off the screen, Wesley pulled a valet parking ticket from a pocket and held it

out to Seth, who, as he took it, suddenly understood who wore the enormous pants in this relationship.

“Huggies and formula,” she said.

“What kind of . . . I mean, are there, like, sizes?” Seth said.

LaDawne rolled her eyes and looked at Cyndi. “Can you go with this man?”

“Sure.”

“Listen,” said Seth. “Do you think it’d be OK if I picked my friends up while we’re out? They need a

ride.”

From the couch, Wesley chuckled.

LaDawne frowned. “All right,” she said. “But make it fast. I got that baby’s little butt wrapped in a

towel.”

While Seth and Cyndi pondered that image, the phone rang again. Seth answered. “Hello?”

“Seth?”

“Mom? Oh God, Mom! You’re here!”

“We’re at the airport. We landed an hour ago. We tried to call your cell phone but we got a

message.”

“Mom, I am SO sorry. My phone is broken, and it got a little crazy here, and I . . . uh . . . I just . . .”

“You forgot you were going to meet us at the airport.”

“No! Not at all!”

“It’s fine, you’re too busy, we’ll just get a taxi. Although your father, with his hip, if he falls again

Dr. Gersten says he might never walk again. But it’s fine, you’re too busy for us. We’ll just get a . . .”

“No! Stay there! I have a car! I can pick you up.” He looked pleadingly at LaDawne, who rolled her

eyes but nodded
OK
. “I’m on my way right now. Stay right there. Bye, Mom.” He hung up. “I’ll be right

back, I swear.”

“You
better
be right back,” said LaDawne. “With Huggies and formula.”

“And two thousand dollars,” said Wesley.

“Wait a minute,” said Seth. “You said
one
thousand.”

“We now in a overtime situation.”

Seth looked at LaDawne, who made an
It’s out of my hands
gesture and headed back into the

bedroom. The phone rang again. Seth picked it up.

“Hello?”

“You got to get over here,” said Big Steve. “There’s a lot of people on the beach and we’re

attracting attention.”

“All right, all right, I’m coming.” Seth hung up, beckoned to Cyndi and headed for the door. As he

passed the bedroom, he looked inside. The three Haitians were still in the bed, surrounded by half-

finished room service plates. The boy was asleep, as was the baby, wrapped in towels and nestled in her

mother’s arms. Laurette’s eyes were open, barely; they widened when Seth came into view. She said

something, too softly for him to hear.

“What’d she say?” said Seth.

“She says
Mêci
,” said LaDawne. “It’s Creole. It means thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Seth.

Laurette smiled a weary smile, then closed her eyes.

“Don’t take long,” said LaDawne. “These people counting on you.”

10

Seth and Cyndi stood in the driveway of the Ritz as Wesley’s car, a black Cadillac Escalade

with gleaming twenty-two-inch chrome rims that, by themselves, cost more than a midrange Kia, glided to

a stop. As the parking valet held the door for Seth, he said, “I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.”

Seth climbed in and saw what the valet was talking about: There was a high-definition video screen

—one of six in the vehicle—mounted on the dashboard directly in the driver’s field of vision, a location

of dubious legality. The monitor was showing a porn movie involving a male actor, portraying a cable

installer, who was at the moment installing his cable in a female actor while simultaneously using his

tongue, which was inhumanly long, like some kind of exotic mouth-dwelling, legless purplish tropical

lizard, to probe a second female actor, who was emitting the kinds of rhythmic, high-decibel moans

associated with either sexual ecstasy or severe gastrointestinal distress.

Seth studied the dashboard control panel, a complex of buttons, knobs, indicator lights and touch

screens that looked more suitable for the cockpit of a 747. Trying to turn off the video, he stabbed a series

of screens and buttons, but he succeeded only in turning on the Escalade’s custom audio system, which

featured four 2,000-watt subwoofers capable of pulverizing concrete at seventy-five yards. It began

blasting a bass-intensive song titled “Butt Sweat,” which as it happened was a composition by none other

than D.J. Booga Wooga.

“I can’t turn it off,” said Seth, stabbing more screens and buttons.

“WHAT?” said Cyndi.

“SEE IF YOU CAN TURN IT OFF!” said Seth. He put the Escalade in gear and pulled out of the

driveway. He lowered his windows, hoping the breeze would help dry his clothes. Cyndi managed, by

trial and error, to lower the sound system’s volume, but she had no luck with the video playing directly in

front of Seth. The plot was thickening: A third woman had entered the scene and was urinating on the

cable installer, who appeared to welcome this development.

A glorious South Florida morning was unfurling as they drove across the bridge to the mainland,

Biscayne Bay glittering on both sides, a line of massive white cruise ships being serviced at the port off

to the right, the city skyline ahead, jutting into a cloudless blue sky.

“It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, too,” Cyndi said over the yips and moans of the video. “You’re

gonna have a nice wedding day.”

“If I have a wedding,” said Seth.

“Oh, you will,” said Cyndi. “You love her, right?”

“Right.”

“You want to be with her?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what matters. Your life together. The wedding isn’t important. A wedding is just a party.

Believe me. I’ve been there.”

“You’re married?”

“I was. For, like, three months.”

“Oh.”

“He cheated on me. I mean, right from the start.
Before
the start he was cheating on me.”

Seth looked over at her. The breeze from the open windows was blowing her long dark brown hair

around. Her skin was glowing bronze in the early-morning sun. He noticed, for the first time, that she had

green eyes.

“He was an idiot,” said Seth.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling a wan smile and touching his arm just for a second. “But the point is, I

had a big wedding. A Cuban wedding, the
abuelos
and
abuelas
and all the
tios
and the
tias . . .”

“You’re Cuban?”

“Yes. Why?”

“No, nothing, I just didn’t get the impression, I mean . . .”

“Because I sound American?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like . . . Well, yeah.”

She laughed. “My parents came on a boat,
Marielitos
. But I was born here, grew up here.”

“You speak Spanish?”

“Of course. I speak Spanish, English, Spanglish. I’m American
and
Cuban, like everybody in Miami.

If you meet somebody here with blond hair and blue eyes, maybe he looks like he’s a
gringo
, but you

better not say something bad about Cubans because suddenly he could be cursing you out, talking bad

about your mother, in Spanish. You never know who’s a Cuban here or who’s married to one.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. So, anyway, you had a big wedding . . .”

“Yeah, it’s the happiest day of my life, right? Everybody’s telling me how beautiful and happy I look

in my beautiful white wedding dress that cost seven hundred and forty-eight dollars from Nordstrom and

that I saved up for for
six months
. And meanwhile my maid of honor, my best friend, she’s sitting there at

the same table drinking champagne with me and my brand-new husband, who I later found out she slept

with
two nights before
the wedding.”

“Wow. Your best friend?”

“I thought she was. She ended up getting pregnant and marrying that asshole, and guess what?”

“What?”

“Now he’s cheating on her. And guess what else?”

“What?”

“He tried to cheat on her with
me
.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He calls me up, this is, like, two months ago, and he’s, like, ‘Oh, Cyndi, I made a big mistake, I

still love you, I want to get back with you.’ And I’m, like, ‘Aren’t you married to Lizette now and she’s

pregnant?’ And he’s, like, ‘Yeah, but it was a mistake, she’s not right for me, you’re what I want, baby,

we got to get back together.’ He’s, like, crying on the phone.”

“So what’d you say?”

“I said OK.”

“
What?
Really?”

“Really. I said, ‘Friday night, eleven, meet me at Liv.’ That’s a nightclub at the Fontainebleau, real

expensive, way too expensive for my ex, but I told him my friend Paulo works the door there, he’s gonna

take care of it. So my ex goes there, and Paulo lets him in, takes him to this table, the same table Diddy

sits at, A-Rod, those kind of people. It costs, like, five thousand dollars just to sit there. Paulo tells him he

can order whatever he wants. So he orders Belvedere, which they charge you, like, four hundred fifty

dollars a bottle.”

“Wow.”

“So I let him sit there an hour, drinking his Belvedere, then I show up wearing the shortest dress I

have, shorter than this one, very low-cut, and I am looking
hot
.”

“I bet,” said Seth, taking what he hoped was a subtle gander at her dress, wondering how she could

wear a shorter one and still sit down.

“So he sees me and he’s, like, ‘Cyndi, baby, you look so good, I love you, blah blah.’ So I go,

‘Really? You really love me?’ And he’s, like, ‘Yeah, baby, I want you back so bad.’ And I say, ‘What

about Lizette?’ And he goes, ‘I told you, baby, that was a mistake, I’m leaving her.’ And I say, ‘What

about the baby?’ And he says, ‘I don’t care about the baby.’ And I go, ‘Anything else you got to say before

I put this on YouTube?’ That’s when he sees I’m holding my iPhone next to my purse, recording him.

Which he didn’t notice before because he’s staring at my boobs.”

“You didn’t!” said Seth, taking care not to look at her boobs.

“Yes I did.”

“So what’d he do?”

“He jumps up, he’s yelling, ‘You fucking bitch, give me the phone,’ but Paulo was watching, and he

comes right over, and he’s a big guy, so my ex sits right back down. Paulo asks him how he plans to settle

the bill and my ex says, ‘Wait a minute, you said it was comped.’ And Paulo says, ‘I said you could order

whatever you want, I didn’t say it was comped.’ Next thing, there’s two bouncers standing over him, ex-

Dolphins, telling him he has to go with them to sign some papers so they can take the bill out of his

paycheck. He’s begging them to let him go, crying like a baby. I walked away nice and slow, let him get a

good look at what he had and threw away.”

“Wow. Did you post the video on YouTube?”

“Of course. You do not mess with a Cuban woman.”

“I’ll keep that in mind also.”

For a few seconds the car was quiet, except for the frenzied bleatings of the video cast, who had

been joined by a woman wearing a strap-on appliance the size of a pool noodle. They were on the

mainland now, Seth taking the ramp to I-95 toward the airport.

“My point,” said Cyndi, breaking the silence, “is the wedding doesn’t matter. I had a great wedding.

I looked great, he looked great, everybody had a great time. It didn’t mean shit. When I get married the

next time, it’s gonna be just me and him, and if we’re still happy ten years later,
then
I’ll buy another

seven-hundred-and-forty-eight-dollar dress from Nordstrom and we’ll have a big party.”