“There you are,” Maria said, rushing down the stairs into the apartment.
“This is Maria, Zophia’s friend,” Max said, introducing her to Mathilde.
Mathilde didn’t know whether to flirt with her or offer her couture advice. She was gaping again, looking Maria up and down. “Hommasse,” she muttered under her breath.
“Are you calling me a man, hon?” sharp-eared Maria retorted.
Mathilde stared. For once, she was speechless.
Ada was blowing her nose. Then she went to the tiny kitchen to wash her face in the sink. She returned sporting red puffy eyes and a ravaged face.
“Rudy is missing,” Ada told Maria. She bowed her head, heavy with grief.
“I know, hon,” Maria said.
“You know?” Ada and Max chorused.
“We were going to his apartment to see what’s what,” Max said.
“No need for that. Let’s all sit,” Maria said. She shuddered when Rudy’s gruesome image accosted her. She shook it off, sighing. Even she wasn’t immune to the horrors of such grisly handiwork.
Mathilde, having regained her voice, started to tell Maria about her infamous tightrope walking days.
Max shushed her while Ada stared in disbelief, muttering, “What chutzpah.”
Maria looked at Mathilde quizzically. The outfit, the beehive hair, the makeup, the shrill voice.
“Mathilde, maybe you should go,” Max said.
“No! I’m sitting with everyone.” She plopped her bony derriere down on the couch next to Max.
Ada sat in the green recliner.
Maria decided to pull up a chair from the kitchen. She placed it strategically facing the trio, and plopped down onto its unyielding surface.
“I have something difficult to tell you.” She paused, not quite knowing how to continue. Her impulsivity had fled out the window.
Three faces, who’d witnessed extraordinary vileness and suffered remarkable cruelty, turned to her expectantly. Six uneasy eyes stared. The room settled into prolonged silence, interrupted only by the old place’s squeaks and creaks and the ocean’s distant murmur, muffled in Max’s living room.
The silence exuded a deluded hopefulness. If only time stopped and Maria needn’t speak the unspeakable. If she didn’t say it, maybe it wasn’t true.
Before she spoke, she decided to edit her news. Why speak of the gouged out eyes and the carved bloody swastika? Why indeed?
“Rudy is dead,” Maria announced. “I found him murdered in his apartment. Someone shot him. I’m sorry.”
Ada, Mathilde, and Max all were repeating dead.
Ada, after the initial shock, the shaky intake of breath, hit with the full impact of Maria’s news, collapsed in the recliner.
Maria rose, went over to Ada, and began chafing her hands.
Max scurried into the kitchen to get the Slivovitz and four shot glasses.
Mathilde, filling her mouth with water at the kitchen sink, spritzed it out over Ada’s face, enjoying herself.
Ada came to, stared at Mathilde venomously, and accepted Max’s proffered shot of Slivovitz. She turned to Maria and asked piteously, “Where’s Zophitchka? I feel she’s dead too.”
Forty
Jack arrived in no time, pulling up to the corner of Washington and Espanola and whisking the two women away to the causeway.
“What a relief to see you,” Sophia said, as she ducked into the back seat so that Amanda could sit up front.
Jack had aptly nicknamed his Honda Civic Old Reliable.
“Old Reliable comes to the rescue again,” Sophia said, patting Jack on the shoulders from the depths of the back seat. “You know you’re Old Reliable too, Jack,” Sophia said, leaning back in her seat. All that wine had taken its toll.
“Thanks Sophia. You make me feel so sexy.”
“Come on Jack. You know I mean it in a complimentary way. And by the way, I think you’re a magnetic man. If it weren’t for Annabella and the thirteen year age difference, I’d be all over you. When I’m fifty-five, you’ll only be forty-two.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jack said, maneuvering his way down crowded Washington, with cars and pedestrians popping up in unexpected places. Driving in South Beach was ludicrous.
“When I’m seventy-five, you’ll only be sixty-two,” Sophia continued.
“Enough,” Amanda snapped. She turned around and glared at Sophia.
“I’m just trying to distract you,” Sophia said.
“Well you’re doing a piss poor job of it,” Amanda shot back, before turning around, sitting ramrod straight, and glaring glassily out the windshield, where junkies, trannies, pretty party girls, whores, gawking tourists, and dating couples all vied for sidewalk space.
“What happened Amanda?” Jack asked.
“Keith ran away. Last night. I’ve been searching night and day. I’m beside myself.”
“Do you know why?” Jack asked.
The kid couldn’t stand her anymore, Sophia thought.
“I have no idea why he would run from our wonderful home. I’ve made it perfect for him. It’s just the two of us and he’s devoted to me. All I can think of is I made an appointment with a child psychologist and that scared him off. I told him I’d go in with him.”
That scared him off, Sophia thought. Mommy going in with him and perpetuating his anxiety.
“Why did you make an appointment for a shrink?” Jack asked as they turned the final corner to the causeway, where, instead of sweeping over that spectacular vista, they snaked underneath and parked by a pylon.
“He was peeing the bed and Sophia suggested it,” Amanda said, visibly shaken by the scene spread out before them when they emerged from Old Reliable.
“Okay, before we go any further, what are we doing here?” Jack asked Sophia.
Amanda answered, “Sophia brought up pedophiles and scared the shit out of me.”
“Amanda, trust my intuition. These people are homeless sometimes. No one wants them in their neighborhood. They end up in places like this.”
“But why do you think pedophiles?” Amanda whined.
“Because I’m a realist,” Sophia said, turning Amanda around to face her, holding her firmly by the shoulders, hoping to convey a bit of strength through her reassuring grip.
“And because she’s psychic,” Jack said. “Enough dilly dallying. Let’s get down there. Stick by me and let me do all the talking. We come down here periodically for one law enforcement reason or another.”
“Why are you dressed in fatigues?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t exactly know. I think it makes me fit in more. I can’t even explain it,” Jack said.
They approached an elaborate encampment. Mostly men and a few women, barely recognizable as such, bundled up in layers of frayed, filthy clothes, despite the heat, sat around a rusted metal barrel. There were tents, torn and dirty, here and there. No one was socializing. Everyone was lost in an individual orbit.
A roaring barrel fire, which one old withered gent, wearing shiny pants at least two sizes too big and held up by colorless suspenders, propping himself up on a flimsy walker, was stoking, lent the place a deceptive cheer. Several bundled up figures were using sticks to grab potatoes from the fire. A few were toasting marshmallows speared on long sticks.
The sight of a homeless family, a mother, father, and two small girls, brought Sophia to her knees. She was overcome.
The stench was overpowering. Baked in urine, maybe decades old and freshly released pee, pervaded the air. There were undertones of shit, vomit, semen, mouth wash, shoe polish, Thunderbird, but urine held center stage. Piles of empty Listerine bottles and unscrewed shoe polish tins sat near the burning barrel. Cheap deadly highs. Biscayne Bay, its waters gently lapping the nearby pebbled sandy shore, smelled foul. Julia Tuttle, the founder of Miami, after whom the causeway was named, was turning over in her grave.
Nobody approached the trio. They were inured to visitors. Or, they were too apathetic to c
are.
“I didn’t think a homeless encampment down here in this heat and humidity would look like one I’d picture up North,” Sophia said.
“When you’re living rough, you have to put up with the elements. Hot or cold, it’s punishing,” Jack said.
“I know there may be pedophiles among them, and I have no pity for that proclivity, but I can’t help it. I feel so bad for these people. We live in a rich country with so much excess and here they are. It breaks my heart,” Sophia said. She began to cry silently, burning tears streaming down her face.
“There are no leaders here. No one is about to come over and ask us what we’re doing here,” Jack said, putting his arm around Sophia’s quaking shoulders.
An eerie caterwauling pierced the air, getting a few people’s attention. Sophia realized it was coming from Amanda, who dropped her handbag and took off, racing towards a shadowy spot under a large gumbo limbo tree, its substantial trunk gleaming in the moonlight.
Sophia’s gaze followed Amanda’s sprinting figure. Three children sat under the magnificent tree, two boys and one girl, their faces smeared with what looked like chocolate. Keith was one of the boys, his blond corkscrew curls, a dead giveaway. A bundled up figure with the blackened marshmallows was approaching them, oblivious to the spindly woman, still wailing like a cat in heat, running headlong for Keith. She knocked the unwary marshmallow man to the ground on her way to her baby.
“Mummy, you ruined the marshmallows,” Keith said, calmly as if he were sitting securely in his living room.
“Marshmallows? You idiot child, I was worried sick,” she said, slapping him so hard across his tender cheek, his teeth rattled. Then she wrapped him in her arms and held on for dear life. They each had their own reasons for sobbing.
The marshmallow man was getting up slowly, still holding on to the mangled marshmallow on a stick.
“Are you okay? How did you get here? Who are these children? Did anyone hurt you?” Amanda reeled off the questions, stopping only when Marshmallow Man stood before them, his bushy eyebrows dominating his face, square-jawed and slack, framed by long tangled dirty brown hair. Despite his weathered shabby appearance, his eyes were a tender blue, emitting a vulnerable kindness.
“I’m Mike,” he said, his resonant voice matched the caring eyes. He transformed into a welcoming presence, despite the smelly grime. He held out a calloused hand, darkened by layers of dirt topped with blackened finger nails.
Sophia, pulling roughly at her left ear, paused to shake. “I’m Sophia and this is Jack. That’s Amanda. We were looking for her little boy Keith, who ran away from home last night.
Jack shook hands and produced his badge. “I’m here as a friend and an officer of the law.
Amanda swirled around, releasing her steely embrace, and asked, “Did anyone do anything to my son?”
“I can’t be sure, ma’am. No one did anything here, but there’s this psycho clown with screaming yellow curls and a tiny female sidekick who finds these stray children, rounds them up, parks them here for a time, and then takes off with them. “These three,” he said, pointing to the kids, were tossed here last night. They took off, tires screeching.
“What kind of car?” Jack asked.
“An old beaten up black Caddie. Really old, if you know what I mean. With fins.”
“These are my friends, Mummy. Helga and Tommy. We were the only kids on the big street and we walked around and then we saw this fun clown with yellow hair and a nice lady with Hershey’s and silver balloons. Hershey’s with almonds. My favorite kind with the nice shiny paper. They said we could have the candy and drinks too if we went in the big black car with them.” Keith was winding down.
“Did anyone hurt you?” Sophia asked, still worrying her ear until Jack noticed and knocked her hand away. She was squatting down to Keith’s level. Keith looked as if the only person he was worried about was Amanda.
“No.” He shook his head, his curls bouncing merrily. “It was fun.” He was rubbing his eyes. “I’m sleepy.”
“Of course you are little man,” Jack said. “You had a big adventure.”
Jack walked over to Tommy and Helga. They were both bedraggled and subdued. “Are you okay kids? I’m a policeman, here to help you.” Jack said, leaning down and briefly squeezing each child on the shoulder.
They nodded in unison. “We want marshmallows,” Helga piped up in a reedy voice.
“You can have all the marshmallows in the world later. Now we have to take you away from here, find your parents, and make sure you’re okay. All right?” Jack asked.
Helga nodded again, wispy blond stragglers escaped from her braids, forming a nimbus, surrounding her small round head.
“We’re going to make sure you’re fine,” Jack said, tugging gently on one of the deconstructing plaits.
“I want to be a police when I grow up,” Helga said, animated by her discovery.
“That’s wonderful, Helga,” Jack said.
She was basking in the glow of his approval.
“You don’t look like a police,” she said, eying his fatigues.
“I left my uniform at the station,” he said, smiling at the naïve grace of the very young.
He turned to Tommy. “Okay, chief?” he asked.
“I want s’mores,” Tommy said.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Jack said, herding them all towards the car.
“Thanks for keeping an eye on them, Mike. Maybe I’ll come back and you’ll tell me your story,” she said, looking for an okay.
“It would be an honor, ma’am,” Mike said, bowing in her direction.
“Are you crazy?” Amanda asked, while Jack continued to hustle the group towards Old Reliable.
“Have you no empathy? What kind of a shrink are you?” Sophia hurled back at her.
“Girls, girls. This is not the time or place for squabbles. Let’s get going.”
Forty One
Once they were ensconced in the car, Amanda hugging Keith on her lap in the front, and Sophia in back with Tommy on one side of her and Helga on the other, Jack maneuvered back onto the causeway, looking for a spot to turn around and head to the police station on Washington.
“If you don’t need me, drop me off at the Playwright. On second thought, Finnegan’s on Lincoln would be better. I just like Lincoln much more,” Sophia said. “I need a down home place to clear my head before going home.”
“And drink and …,” Amanda trailed off.
“Think of the kids you two. I don’t want another word out of either one of you. Unless it’s kind,” Jack said before Sophia’s comeback. “I feel like I have five kids in the car.”
What a fucking ingrate, Sophia thought. She glared atthe back of Amanda’s head.
No one spoke the rest of the way. Tommy and Helga fell asleep, their heads lolling, slumped into Sophia. They didn’t even wake when Sophia extricated herself from the back seat at their arrival at Finnegan’s. They gently slid together, heads touching, fast asleep.
It was two in the morning and the place was teeming with drinkers. Inside and out. She searched in vain for a semi-secluded corner. She settled for the end of the bar, the end deep inside the place.
The bartender, a husky middle-aged guy with glossy black hair and startling blue eyes, his nose, a veteran of a fight or two, and his skin-tight tee shirt bursting with his bulging biceps and overdeveloped pecs, spoke with a faint hint of an Irish lilt. A whisper of the old country.
Not wanting either whiskey or wine, Sophia ordered a pint of Guinness, the only beer-like drink she enjoyed. The stout always tasted like prunes and malt. It was pleasant, but too filling.
Unaware of the chatter and music, Sophia sipped the potent brew, admiring the creamy white head on the thick black liquid. She wiped away her Guinness mustache with the back of her hand.
Amanda and Keith, the homeless village under the causeway, and the specter of some nefarious yellow-bewigged clown with a female sidekick, kidnapping stray ch
ildren, occupied her mind. There was so much evil and desperation in the world. So much misery and poverty.
She reached for her phone and found an astonishing number of calls and messages from her mother and Maria. She was working up the energy to listen to their messages, when a vaguely familiar voice whispered in her ear, “Strawberry Creams. We meet again.” His moist malty breath telegraphed a lusty visceral response, travelling from her ravaged left ear directly to her groin. She turned around, Ada and Maria forgotten. The great sex with him at Maria’s dominating her mind.
“Dreams,” he said, widely grinning and exposing British unwhitened and unstraightened teeth.
“Dreams?” she asked, puzzled.
“Rhymes with creams. You know we’re a rhyming lot.” He was staring unashamedly at those dreams.
“Oh. I’m a little slow on the uptake. I’ve had a crazy day. Fancy meeting you. I’d say it’s just what the doctor ordered. You want to come to my place?”
“Delighted.” He downed his whiskey.
She downed half her Guinness.
“You know what they say about Guinness in the UK?”
“No. What do they say about Guinness?” She was brightening up like a shiny penny.
“Guinness is good for you,” he pronounced, delighted with himself.
“Guinness is certainly lucky for me. I rarely touch the stuff. And when I do, here you are as if the Guinness conjured you up. A rabbit out of a hat and a…? What’s your name again?”
“Jonathan.”
“And a Jonathan out of a Guinness.”
He helped her off the bar stool, grinning when her bosom ground into his chest as she tipped off the stool, threw some bills on the shiny bar, and led her through the noisy crowd.
They found a cab on Pennsylvania and in no time she was fumbling for her keys before unlocking the inviting forest green gate leading to the equally welcoming forest green door.
She led the way into the living room. “Make yourself comfortable. Drink? This is my prize cat, Titi. I think you met her and Maria’s cat at Maria’s.” They both watched the striking cat make her sinuous way across the room, deigning to let Jonathan stroke her velvety head briefly before settling down on the couch.
Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire Page 16