Insane City

by Dave Barry

  The man talked with the woman again.

  “She wants to find her sister,” he said. “Her sister lives here, in Miami.”

  “Where?”

  “She doesn’t know the address. She had it on a paper in her pocket, but she lost that in the sea. She was supposed to meet her sister, but the men who were supposed to bring her here did not take her to the meeting place. They just put her in that boat.”

  “Can we call the sister?”

  “She doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Then how can she find her?”

  “She told me her sister’s name. When I get off from work, I can ask some people in Miami. Maybe they will know where to find her.”

  “Can she go home with you? While she tries to find her sister.”

  “That is not possible,” said the man.

  “Why not?”

  “I live here on the hotel grounds, in worker housing.”

  “Shit.” Seth looked at the woman, crying softly, shivering, holding the baby. The boy was clinging to her dress.

  “She can’t stay here on the beach,” said Seth.

  “No,” said the man. “The police will take her if she stays here.”

  Seth stared at the woman for a few moments. He ran his hands through his hair.

  “I don’t believe this,” he said.

  The man said nothing.

  “What’s your name?” Seth asked the man.

  “Juste,” said the man. “Carl Juste.”

  “I’m Seth,” said Seth sticking out his hand. Carl shook it.

  “OK, Carl,” Seth said. “I have a room here in the hotel. A big room. Please tell her . . . what’s her name, anyway?”

  Carl spoke to the woman, then said, “Her name is Laurette.”

  “OK. Tell Laurette she can come up to my room for now. I’ll try to find somebody who can help her. Meanwhile you can find her sister. Tell her that, OK?”

  Carl spoke to Laurette. She became agitated, her voice rising again.

  “What’s the matter?” said Seth.

  “She’s afraid you will call the police,” said Carl. “She is afraid she will be sent back to Haiti.”

  “Tell her I promise I won’t call the police.”

  After more agitated conversation, Carl said, “She says, please, you must not tell anybody. Anybody. She says, please, you must wait until I find her sister, then she will be gone.”

  Seth and Laurette looked at each other for a few seconds, her eyes pleading.

  “OK,” said Seth.

  Laurette burst into tears. She leaned over and pressed her forehead against Seth’s soaking-wet left shoe, wailing. Seth reached down and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. She looked up and said something to him in a sob-racked voice.

  “She says you are an angel,” said Carl.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Seth.

  They got her to her feet. She was unsteady, shivering. The baby slipped in her hands; she was too weak to hold it and walk. Seth reached out and took the baby from her. He looked at the baby’s face, at its tiny nose and mouth, its tiny ears pierced with impossibly tiny earrings. A girl baby.

  Seth had never held a baby before and couldn’t believe how small and insubstantial she felt. He held her awkwardly in both hands, afraid of dropping her, equally afraid of squeezing her too tight. Walking very cautiously, he followed as Carl and the boy helped Laurette up the beach to the walkway. They made their way slowly across the lawn to the hotel. The sun was up but it was early, and there was nobody walking around yet.

  Carl led them to the back hotel entrance. He stopped at the doorway.

  “What is your room number?” he asked Seth.

  Seth frowned, remembered, told him.

  “OK,” said Carl. “I will call you.”

  “Soon as possible,” said Seth. “I can’t . . .” He looked down at the baby. “I mean, I’m getting married this weekend.”

  “I will call you,” said Carl. Then he was gone, leaving Seth with Laurette and the two children.

  “All right,” said Seth. “Come on.”

  He led them into the hotel, their clothes dripping seawater onto the sparkling marble floor. They walked through the corridor, turned right and approached the lobby. Seth poked his head around the corner. Seeing nobody at the front desk, he led Laurette and the boy across the main lobby and down the corridor to the elevator bank.

  Seth used his elbow to push the up button. The elevator doors slid open. Seth nodded toward the opening. Neither Laurette nor the boy moved. It occurred to Seth that they had never seen, let alone ridden in, an elevator. He stepped into the car, nodding for them to follow. They stepped hesitantly inside. Their eyes widened as the doors closed. The car started moving. Laurette clutched the boy and whimpered.

  “It’s OK,” said Seth.

  The car stopped; the doors slid open. Seth led Laurette and the boy down the hall to his room. He realized he didn’t have a key with him. He rapped on the door with his elbow, listened, rapped again, hoping Cyndi was still there, hoping LaDawne wasn’t.

  The door opened. He heard LaDawne talking before he saw her.

  “It’s about damn time you got back because I been waiting for . . .” She stopped, seeing the baby in Seth’s arms, then Laurette and the boy.

  “They were in the ocean,” said Seth.

  “Give me that child,” said LaDawne, reaching for the baby, which Seth willingly surrendered. LaDawne held her confidently in one arm, reaching toward Laurette and the boy with the other. “You come right in here,” she said.

  “They don’t speak English,” said Seth. “They’re from Haiti.”

  “You come right in,” repeated LaDawne, pulling them into the suite. Seth followed.

  Cyndi emerged from the bedroom, where she apparently had been sleeping. Seth was glad she hadn’t left. Seeing the Haitians, she hurried across the living room toward them.

  “Oh my God!” she said. “What happened?”

  “I was on the beach,” said Seth. “They were in this little boat, turned over.”

  “The poor things!” said Cyndi. “They’re soaking wet!” She ran into the bedroom, returning a few seconds later with towels and robes. As the two women fussed over the Haitians, Seth wandered into the suite. He stopped short when he spied an enormous man in an enormous workout suit reclining on the sofa, holding the remote control, which almost disappeared in his enormous hand. The man was watching SportsCenter, which was showing a series of escalatingly impossible basketball shots. He did not look at Seth.

  “Hello,” said Seth. The man did not respond.

  “That’s Wesley,” said LaDawne. “He came to get me. And the money. You got my money, right?”

  “I . . . um, no, not yet,” said Seth. “Because of . . .” He gestured toward the Haitians. “But I’ll go down and get it right now.”

  “Thousand dollars,” said Wesley, not taking his eyes off of SportsCenter. His voice sounded like what a large male bear’s voice would sound like if large male bears could talk.

  “A thousand?” said Seth. “She said two hundred!”

  “For an hour. She here overnight. Overnight is a thousand.”

  “But she never . . . I mean, she didn’t even . . .” Seth stopped because now Wesley was looking at him in a way that somehow—despite the fact that Wesley was eight feet away and not in physical contact—made Seth’s face hurt.

  “A thousand,” said Wesley.

  “I can’t get a thousand from the ATM,” said Seth.

  Wesley shifted his weight very slightly. It was all Seth could do to keep from yelping.

  “OK, OK,” he said. “Just give me time to figure something out.” Eager to escape the force field of Death Star Wesley, he walked back over to where LaDawne and Cyndi were ministering to the Haitians. LaDawne was still holding the baby; Cyndi was looking with concern at Laurette.

  “She doesn’t look too great,” she said. “I think maybe she should see a doctor.”

&n
bsp; “She doesn’t want to do that,” said Seth.

  “How you know that?” said LaDawne.

  Seth told them what Carl had told him. “They’re just hiding out here temporarily,” he concluded. “Until Carl can find her sister.”

  “All right,” said LaDawne. “But they gotta eat.”

  “I’ll order room service,” said Cyndi, heading for the phone.

  “Get pancakes,” said LaDawne. “And bacon. Lotta bacon. I’m hungry, too. So is Wesley.”

  While Cyndi called room service, LaDawne shepherded the Haitians into the master bedroom and got them situated in the king-sized bed. They looked small, almost doll-like, propped against the complex edifice of decorative pillows that, in the tradition of top-tier hotels, covered forty-five percent of the bed. The Haitians were still dazed, but seemed to be responding to the relentless 250-pound round mound of mothering that was LaDawne.

  Seth went to the opposite end of the living room from Wesley and slumped on another sofa. He was beyond exhausted but saw no hope of sleep. He longed to take a shower and change clothes. But his clothes were in his suitcase. With the ring.

  “Breakfast will be here in twenty to twenty-five minutes,” said Cyndi, hanging up the phone.

  “Any word from Duane?” Seth asked her. “About my suitcase?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m sure Duane is . . .” Her voice trailed off because they both knew she had no idea what Duane was up to.

  “I’m never gonna see that suitcase again,” said Seth.

  “You might,” said Cyndi, coming over and sitting next to him.

  Seth shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m going to have to tell Tina that I lost it. She planned this whole giant wedding, every detail, invitations, forks, bridesmaids’ favors, nineteen million things, on spreadsheets, everything perfect. Perfect. And you know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “I LOST THE FUCKING RING!”

  LaDawne’s angry face appeared in the bedroom doorway. “We got a baby sleeping in here,” she hissed.

  “Sorry,” said Seth as the face disappeared.

  “I’m sure Tina will understand about the ring,” said Cyndi. “I mean, you can get another ring, right?”

  Seth groaned and shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  Seth looked at her, inhaled, exhaled. “Do you know what a cake topper is?” he said.

  “The thing they put on top of the wedding cake. The, like, little statue of the bride and groom.”

  “Correct. So there’s lots of places that sell cake toppers on the Internet. You can buy any kind of cake topper you want—traditional cake topper, gay cake topper, Labrador retriever owner cake topper, gay Labrador retriever owner cake topper, you name it—all ready-made. You can get a really nice one for a hundred bucks.”

  “OK,” said Cyndi.

  “So guess where we got our cake topper.”

  “Where?”

  “Italy.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Tina found out that there was this supposedly master cake topper maker in Florence, so she flew there with her mom to personally supervise the making of our cake topper.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. The little bride doll is wearing a dress made from a piece of Tina’s mom’s actual wedding dress. The groom’s is made from her dad’s wedding tuxedo. The bride doll is wearing a little diamond tiara, and they are not fake diamonds. You want to know how much that cost? Including flying over there? And the hotel?”

  “How much?”

  “I have no fucking idea. A LOT, though. Thousands and thousands of dollars. For the cake topper. So imagine what she did for the ring.”

  “What?”

  “She got all this precious family jewelry, her parents’ wedding rings, her grandmother’s locket, all these other old heirloom pieces that have been in her family for, like, two hundred years. Then—and this was a huge deal because she had to talk her family into letting her do it—she had a jeweler take little teeny-tiny slivers from each piece where it wouldn’t show. And then she had the slivers made into a ring that she had specially designed by the finest ring guy in the entire world, who is in Paris, which was a whole nother trip with her mother.”

  “Wow.”

  “So to answer your question, no, we can’t get another ring. This is a very, very special, one-of-a-kind Tina-designed ring that there will never be another one of. It’s like the Lord of the Rings ring, except it probably cost more.”

  “Oh.”

  “And that was the one thing she trusted me with. Everything else, she handled. She handled it perfectly. All I had to do was bring the ring, because that’s supposed to be the groom’s job. So now I have to explain to Tina that I don’t have the ring because I couldn’t manage to get from the airport to the hotel without getting lost in Miami Beach and then getting drunk and losing my suitcase with the ring in it, because I am a FUCKING MORON.”

  LaDawne’s disapproving face reappeared in the doorway.

  “You watch your mouth. We got young ears in here.”

  “They don’t even speak English,” said Seth.

  “That’s right, and I don’t want them learning it from you.”

  The face disappeared. Seth sighed. There was a knock on the door and a voice calling, “Room service.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Cyndi, heading for the door.

  The suite phone rang. Seth answered and, fearing that it would be Tina, winced as he said hello.

  “Seth!” said the voice of Big Steve. “Thank God. I’ve been trying to call your cell.”

  “Hang on,” said Seth. He reached into his still-soaking-wet pants pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen was lifeless. “Shit,” he said. “I drowned my phone.”

  “Listen,” said Big Steve. “We need you to come get us.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re on Miami Beach.”

  “You’re still there?”

  “Yeah. We got robbed by these Russians. They got all our money.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re kind of afraid they might arrest us. We don’t look that great, Seth. We’re kind of hiding out on the beach behind a hotel. But we’re getting some looks because Marty and Kevin don’t have pants.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Kevin has his boxers. But all Marty has is my shirt, and his balls keep falling out. People are starting to notice us.”

  “You don’t have other clothes? In your suitcases?”

  “We lost those, too.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. So can you come get us? Like, right now? Please?”

  “You can’t take a taxi? I’ll pay the guy when you get here.”

  “We tried that. The taxi drivers won’t even slow down for us. Seriously, man, you gotta get over here.”

  “How? I don’t have a car.”

  “Can you borrow one? We really can’t stay here.”

  Seth sighed. “What’s the hotel?”

  “The Delano.”

  “OK. I’ll try to figure something out. I’ll call you back.”

  “Hurry up, OK?”

  Seth hung up. Across the suite, a room service waiter had wheeled a cart into the dining area and, with Cyndi’s help, was transferring platters of pancakes, bacon, eggs and sausages to the table. LaDawne was busily preparing plates for the Haitians. Wesley, drawn by the smell, had risen from the couch, which made him look even more enormous, like a vending machine with a head. He lumbered over to the table, picked up a platter of bacon, lumbered back to the couch, picked up the remote.

  “Everything OK?” Cyndi asked Seth.

  “No,” said Seth. “My friends are stuck on Miami Beach with no money. They want me to come get them, but I don’t have a car, and . . . Holy shit, that’s Marty.”

  Wesley had changed from ESPN to a channel showing the local morning news. On the
screen was a wobbly video, obviously taken with a phone, showing Big Steve, Kevin and Marty lying on the sidewalk, Marty naked but with his genitals digitally blurred.

  “Oh God,” said Seth.

  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.”