The Best American Travel Writing 2011 (38 page)

But Brett was the social nexus of our building, which was a low-rent holdout in a neighborhood at the bottom tip of South Beach that had gotten much, much fancier since Brett moved in. Our building was funny—the walls of most of the apartments had variously themed murals: underwater scenes, jungle scenes, and, my favorite, in the studio behind mine, hot-air balloons and clouds. My guess is that the landlords originally painted the murals as a sort of spell against the crack-addicted undead that were said to have ruled the neighborhood in the early nineties. The building even used to have some kind of tiki setup on the roof, but the door to the roof was padlocked when the rule of law finally arrived, sometime around the turn of the century. My apartment was painted the colors of a beach ball and included sloping wood floors, bamboo shades, and a mosaic tile counter. It was a one-room studio and a total dump, but it had beach style.

Our two-story baby-blue building was surrounded by towering new condominiums of gleaming white stucco, one of which had a helicopter landing pad. I saw a helicopter land exactly once in the two years I lived there. Rent was month-to-month, which meant I was the only person in the building with a salary.

Upstairs lived a call girl with whom Brett was good friends. She would come down sometimes in her evening finery and ask Brett if he would "do her," meaning would he please fasten her black lace bustier to maximize the lift of her fake breasts. Brett would flash his tobacco-stained teeth, hook her into her corset, pat her bum, and reassure her that he would do her anytime. They were fond of each other.

She didn't like me, with good reason. She lived above me, in a jungle-themed studio. Once, when I was sitting on my couch on a Saturday morning, a thin stream of amber-colored liquid began to patter steadily on my windowsill from somewhere upstairs. Fuck this, I thought. I went upstairs and banged on her door, asking why somebody was peeing out the window. It was that kind of building. She said that she had spilled a cup of tea. "Peeing out the window!" she yelled. "What kind of trash do you think I am?" I apologized, but the damage was done. Later she moved back home to Michigan, leaving in a sweatshirt, with no makeup on. But that was much later, when everyone was leaving.

Brett's friends were always hanging around, none of them model citizens, but I would regularly cross our foyer to chat with them, because being alone at the end of the day sometimes felt unbearable. Two months in, my friend-making campaign was going only so-so.

The night Hurricane Katrina hit Miami, Brett had a pizza defrosting in the oven—the power wasn't yet knocked out—and he dispensed Tombstone, Percocet, and beer. This combo hit me quickly, and I soon staggered home. It was raining so hard that a puddle had seeped under my door. As the streetlights flickered and the eye of the storm passed over the city, I slept.

I woke up the next morning and drove to work. I assumed that the rest of the city still had electricity, but it turned out that almost nobody did—some wouldn't get it back for two weeks. Downtown Miami was deserted. The stoplights were out. The only movement was that of a tribe of vagrants deeply concerned with the transportation of fallen palm fronds scattered across sidewalks and intersections. I arrived at the
New Times
building. Its parking lot was empty except for palm fronds. I sat there for a full minute, engine idling, before turning around and driving back down the Biscayne Corridor. Even the windows of the Latin American Café were darkened, the spy shop shuttered, the sidewalks damp and empty but for the Sisyphean struggle of man versus palm frond. You wouldn't think electricity makes that much of a difference during the day, but it makes a world of difference.

DATE: AUGUST
2005
VENUES: PAWN SHOP LOUNGE, THE REDROOM AT SHORE CLUB, BACK SEAT OF A POLICE CAR, LA CARRETA 24-HOUR TAKEOUT WINDOW, HIBISCUS ISLAND, SOMEONE'S YACHT
LIQUOR SPONSORS: VARIOUS
FOOD: EMPANADAS, ROAST SUCKLING PIG, CIGARETTES
ATTIRE: COWBOY BOOTS
CELEBRITIES: KANYE WEST, CARMEN ELECTRA, JESSICA SIMPSON, BLACK EYED PEAS
GIFT BAG: ONE SLIM JIM, ONE SLIM JIM T-SHIRT

Brett was closing on a big Internet boat deal "with some Mexicans" the weekend of the MTV Video Music Awards, and the one party I'd been invited to was canceled because of storm damage. The publicity buildup for the awards had been extensive. I kept seeing press releases on the fax machine at work that said things like
HOTEL VICTOR LANDS A SPACE IN THIS YEAR'S MOST COVETED GIFT BAG.
P. Diddy had flown in to a local marina wearing a rocket pack and a white linen suit to announce the nominees. I couldn't go outside without returning with souvenirs like a free Trick Daddy Frisbee handed to me from the trunk of a Louis Vuitton–upholstered muscle car. But my lack of party invitations made me feel sorry for myself. When an event happens in Miami and you have no parties to attend you start to doubt your own self-worth, even if you're a pale myopic person with the salary of a rookie civil servant who has no business at any Miami party, let alone the fancy ones.

Then a friend called from Los Angeles to see if I would go out with his friend, who was in town for the awards. This friend was a Jewish rapper in a hip-hop group called Blood of Abraham, who also co-owned something called a "lifestyle store" in Miami's Design District. The Design District, much like the Wynwood Arts District, was more of a semiotic hypothesis than a reality. Most people still knew it as Little Haiti, and in spite of skyrocketing housing prices it was one of the poorest urban zip codes in America. Average T-shirt price at the store, which closed down within the year: $70.

This friend of a friend, whose MC name was Mazik, picked me up with a cousin or two in a shiny white Land Rover. He was wearing a pink polka-dotted shirt and a green sweater vest. He announced that Kanye West was performing downtown and that we were going to see him. I was wearing cowboy boots and a dress I'd bought at a Savers in Little Rock, but somehow Mazik and the cousins and I managed to talk our way into a pawnshop-cum-nightclub through leggy models in stilettos. Kanye West showed up for five minutes and then Carmen Electra performed a choreographed dance with four anemic-looking girls in spangled costumes. The free drinks tasted like lemon drops and when we left we were presented with a gift bag containing a Slim Jim and a Slim Jim T-shirt.

We continued on to the beach, to a hotel called Shore Club. Mazik again was on the list. Outside, under a cluster of Moroccan lanterns, I saw Jessica Simpson sitting on a bench looking lonely. She was very small—midget-size, almost, tan and tiny. In the VIP room I saw a member of the Black Eyed Peas get into a fight. My new friends got peripherally involved, in a drunken inept way, but at least they didn't take off their shirts. Somebody else did, at which point Jessica Simpson was whisked away by what looked like a bodyguard detail dressed up as county sheriffs. We left. The following night, Suge Knight would be shot in the kneecap in that very spot.

Miami is connected to the island of Miami Beach by a series of causeways. The General Douglas MacArthur Causeway, I-395, is the main artery into South Beach, the palm tree–lined promenade that Crockett and Tubbs were always driving down on
Miami Vice.
I drove back and forth across the causeway almost every day of my time in Miami, and it never lost its air of serenity. Because of Florida's flatness, the sky is bigger there; the clouds pile into endless stacks of white Persian cats and mohair bunnies. The MacArthur is bordered on one side by the port of Miami, where massive cruise ships and freighters come and go. When I was heading toward the beach, the view was of glittering white condominiums and yachts. When I was heading toward the city, it was of downtown: luminous skyscrapers growing up from a rickety forest of cranes, half-finished high-rises, and canvas-draped rebar skeletons.

At night sometimes the moon would rise large and yellow over the water and packs of scarablike motorcyclists on Yamahas would whir around my car, occasionally doing wheelies. Even when traffic was bad, the environment was glossy: the shiny surfaces of moonlight on the water, of streetlights on freshly waxed cars; the palm fronds rustling and the revving of German motors and the glow of LCD screens through tinted windows showing pornography.

At the end of the night, inside the marshmallow-white Land Rover, I clutched my Slim Jim gift bag. A row of blue lights flashed behind us. We pulled over and a group of police cars somehow screeched into formation around us, cutting us off in front, reducing traffic on the causeway to a single lane, and leaving our car with two thirds of the highway and a very wide berth on all sides. I'd lost count of how many lemon-drop cocktails I'd had, but I was drunk. We were all drunk. I can say fairly confidently that the driver was drunk, and that all the other drivers on the causeway were drunk too. It was 4:30 on a Saturday morning, and now we were going to be arrested.

The police had their weapons drawn, and emerged from their cars shielded by bulletproof car doors. They yelled into a loudspeaker and we followed their instructions. I stepped out of the car and held my hands in the air. I walked backward, a breeze rippling the palm fronds and my dress, my eyes on the asphalt where normally cars speeded and now all was quiet. I knelt, gazing up at the soft, purple sky. Then I was cuffed and put into the back of a police car next to an empty pizza box, where a lady cop began demanding information about our firearms.

I was suddenly a lot more impressed with the people I'd been hanging out with. They had weapons? I quickly confessed that there had, in fact, been a fistfight. But then it emerged that no, the police had simply confused our car with another white Land Rover. Someone in
that
Land Rover had fired shots at a police officer. We were sheepishly released, our drunkenness apparently not enough to merit attention from the law. We drove to Little Havana and ate empanadas.

There was one more party that weekend, on Hibiscus Island. We were transported by boat, and the theme was sort of luau-meets-Vegas: tiki torches, roasted suckling pig, and girls in uniform carrying around piles of loose cigarettes on silver platters. I think American Spirit sponsored the party, but maybe it was Lucky Strike. We removed our shoes and climbed onto a yacht moored against the mansion's back dock. Out in the gulf, Katrina was growing and New Orleanians were preparing to flee, but the Atlantic was quiet now. It was pretty, with the lights and the palm trees and the views of South Beach, and a little rain that would fall for a minute and stop.

DATE: SEPTEMBER
2005
VENUE: TOYOTA COROLLA
PHARMACEUTICAL SPONSOR: BRETT
GIFT BAG: A VERY SMALL ZIPLOC

Brett and a friend of his, an Australian male model named Andy, were going to Burning Man. I agreed to drive them to the airport. Their flight left early, and when I knocked on his door Brett emerged baggy-eyed and smelling like a mildewed sponge soaked in tequila. We picked up Andy at his girlfriend's. She was also a model, tawny with dark brown eyes and a minimalist figure. As they said good-bye they were orbited by what seemed like a dozen teacup Chihuahuas but might only have been two very light-footed teacup Chihuahuas.

We merged onto the highway. Brett, in the back seat, began emptying his pockets, pulling out bags of pills and empty mini-Ziplocs coated in a residue of white dust.

"Should I put those pills in a container?" asked Andy.

"I guess. I don't know. You think?"

"I guess."

Brett passed a baggie of prescription pills to the front seat and Andy put it into an orange case with a prescription on it.

"But what about the cocaine?"

"The cocaine?"

"The
cocaine?
" I shouted.

"Somebody gave me all this coke last night. I can't bring it?"

"Don't bring it on the airplane."

"
Really?
"

They decided there was only one thing to do with the cocaine. As I nervously pulled up to the airport, Brett put what remained in the well next to the gearshift. He looked at his nostrils in the rearview mirror and took a Percocet. I quickly put the baggie in the glove compartment. Off to Burning Man! We waved to each other. I drove to work feeling lonely.

DATE: OCTOBER
2005
VENUE: TED'S HIDEAWAY, SOUTH BEACH

Wilma hit Miami in the middle of the night, and by the time I woke in the morning the city was silent, void of electricity. The air felt a way that it would never feel again in Miami: crisp, dry, and cool like a New England fall day. I walked to the beach. Men with surfboards ran past me to catch the only surfable waves there would ever be on South Beach. The wind was still blowing and pelicans loitered miserably, too worn out to flap their wings even when the surfers barreled toward them. Somebody spoke up for the pelicans and ordered everyone to leave them alone while they were tame like this, docile with exhaustion.

People wandered the streets with cameras, taking photos of smashed cars under fallen trees. One parking lot between two buildings had formed a wind tunnel. The cars had piled up like leaves. This was a popular spot with the photographers. My trunk, which had been stuck shut since a British woman in a gleaming chrome SUV rear-ended me, was suddenly open and filled with the branches of a nearby ginkgo tree.

A curfew was called for nightfall and the city forbade driving after dark. My neighborhood bar was crowded and candlelit, but outside the strange autumnal chill remained. My neighbors picked their way through the darkness, stepping over fallen trees. They held flashlights and lanterns and the landscape seemed odd, like they were going to a Halloween party in Sleepy Hollow. The stars were bright over the darkened city.

Some parts of the city were without electricity for weeks, but my place regained power after three days. Miami Beach with its tourists is always a priority. For the remainder of the time I lived in Florida, skyscrapers had plywood over the places where windows had broken. In poorer neighborhoods blue tarps covered damaged roofs for years. But the significance of Wilma didn't register at the time. Now people say that was the moment when the manna curdled in Miami, when the fragility of its physical location started to affect property values, when the logic of building taller and taller high-rises in a natural disaster–prone peninsula started to seem suspect. Wilma wasn't even a real storm, it wasn't an Andrew or a Katrina–in–New Orleans, but it was enough.