Government Centre. Many of the tower blocks ahead are under construction. They stand like a silent army of zombies, emerging from the earth in varying degrees of composition but unsure of what to do next. Giant skeletal cranes seem to be feeding off them like monstrous birds of prey.
— Cheaper to get a cab from over here, Starry explains as they swagger with the purpose of the intoxicated across to a taxi rank, adjacent to the bus disembarkation point. The earlier stops at the Port of Miami, Omni Station, the American Airways Arena and the down-at-heel district of small jewellery stores, have been the points of egress for most passengers. Now only one lone drunk staggers ahead of them, his look of open-mouthed bemusement as the bus pulls away indicating that he’s alighted here by accident. Lennox looks up at the support pillars and overhead tracks of the Metromover as it snakes around and through the city buildings; Miami reminds him more of Bangkok than of any American or European city he’s previously encountered. The only older building he’s seen has been the grand, multi-tiered Dade County courtroom, impressive and beautiful with its steps and pillars, a stately home surrounded by tasteless imitations.
They get into one of the three waiting taxis and Robyn coughs on her cigarette, rasping out an address to a suspicious-looking driver, an address which seems all numbers to Lennox sitting in the front passenger seat. A pendant flag hangs from the cabbie’s mirror, which Lennox takes to be Puerto Rico. The cop in him has quickly deduced that Miami’s most dangerous profession wouldn’t be police work or firefighting. Murder would be an occupational hazard for taxi drivers, most of them poor immigrants. The all-night gas stations would now be mainly self-service while convenience-store clerks would invariably be locked in bulletproof booths, the stores probably fitted with drop safes. But working these deserted streets with cold-callers, in cash transactions, seems a particularly risky enterprise.
They continue through what is a barren section of the town; there are no homes down here, everything seems to be cheap and tacky retail. Grubby steel-shuttered shops are in abundance, but Lennox has yet to see a bar or anywhere indicating the possibility of social life. Growing concerned, as he feels he’s come far enough, he senses the taxi driver’s edginess from behind the Perspex screen. By the shrillness in their voices, he’s aware that Robyn and Starry are arguing in the back seat. There is a mention of a dead child. Starry’s son. It burns him. He tunes it out in favour of the city surrounding him. Miami proper seems a very different beast to Miami Beach; the city comprising flyovers like the one they sweep on to, and for a while it appears as if they are going to the airport. Then they suddenly veer from the concrete artery, down a steep slip road and into a neighbourhood off 17th Street. It’s like falling from the edge of one world and landing in another. — Welcome to Little Havana, Starry says, raising a single curved brow, recovering the effervescence Lennox feels has deserted her since the incident with the strange guy earlier.
— This ain’t really far enough south for Little Havana, Robyn says, a little stridently. — It’s more like Riverside.
— Bullshit; you jus don want people to know you live in a Cuban neighbourhood, Starry challenges her, only half joking, her accent changing into Rosie Perez Latina.
— Newsflash, Robyn says. — This is Miami. Every neighbourhood here is Cuban.
Lennox cringes at Robyn’s bland epithet ‘Riverside’. The planners back home had attempted to redesignate Leith and the other river communites as ‘Edinburgh’s Waterfront’. As Leith was associated with Hibernian Football Club and he was a Hearts fan, he’d enjoyed referring to his new flat as being ‘in the Waterfront district’.
— See that, Starry says, looking to Lennox, — you gringos can’t see the difference between the Latino neighbourhoods!
Lennox has to concede that his eyes detect little divergence in the dimly lit streets they drive through, all of which are cut into uniform blocks. This area doesn’t seem hugely affluent, but it isn’t a ghetto either. Most of the homes on these blocks are low-rise dwellings of one storey. When they drive through the backstreets, interior and porch lights illuminate some houses showing him, on closer examination, that no two domiciles are alike. Some fronts and gardens are well kept, to the point of obsession. Others are dumping grounds. Lennox guesses a mix of owner occupancy and rented accommodation. Robyn’s place is different; it’s in a gated apartment block, the stucco-fronted building painted a pastel orange illuminated by uplit wall lamps with a driveway for parking. An aluminium panel of intercom buzzers announces twelve dwellings, confirmed by the number of mailboxes in a chaste, functional hallway navigated by low-level night lights.
He’s used to mounting steep Edinburgh tenement stairs, but chemical impatience and the slight gradient on these tiled platforms compel him to take two at once in long, loping strides. Robyn’s place is on the top floor, two up from ground level. Prospecting a key from the chaos in her bag, she whispers, — Shhh, as she opens the door. Lennox feels Starry’s hand nestling on his arse. He lets it hang for a bit, then moves off down the hallway, passing a table with a phone on it, above which sits a large whiteboard full of numbers and messages. Stung, Lennox quickly turns away, moving into a front room whose chattels suggest a furnished tenancy; the black leather sofa, with fawn-coloured throw and matching chairs belong to some ubiquitous 1980s warehouse that seems to supply rentals in every city he’s visited. These sit on oak hardwood floors, with a rug in the middle that looks more expensive than it probably is. A smoked-glass coffee table is stacked with magazines; the garish glint from the light above reflecting on to that cocaine accessory seems to be issuing a challenge to him. An alcove, fringed by Christmas fairy lights, leads through to a small terracotta-tiled kitchen.
— Nice place, Lennox observes.
Robyn tells him that she’s been here for a year. She’d come from south Alabama and moved over to Jacksonville with her daughter (it sounds like ‘daw-rah’ to his ears) in search of work. After that dried up she’d headed further south, first to Surfside where she’d briefly worked in a residential home, and then down here. She explains that the rent’s cheap and it was convenient for her job in a daycare centre. — But I had to stop working there, she says guiltily, — to spend more time with my daughter.
— How old is she?
— Ten. She flushes with pride, then departs to check on the kid.
Lennox catches Starry regarding her exiting friend with a primal malevolence so poisonous she’s briefly flustered that he’s noticed. Defensively, she tips back her head, pushing out her mouth with its lipstick gleam.
Robyn returns, closing the lounge door behind her. — Fast asleep, she announces with relief. She tells him there have been problems at the school with the daughter. Most of the kids talked Spanish at home and in the schoolyard, so Tianna, that’s the girl’s name, feels isolated. — She’s gotten so withdrawn lately, Robyn says sadly, then catches Starry’s disapproving scowl and quickly switches into breezy mode, — but hey, this is a party. Right?
— Right, Lennox acknowledges, slumping on to the couch, his eye falling on a dark stain on the hardwood floor spilling out from under the rug. About to comment, he hastily corrects himself. It
Starry shoots another contemptuous glance towards Robyn, who turns from Lennox to the CD player. He tracks her to avoid Starry’s rapacious gaze, but the thin, distressed back of Robyn’s neck perversely reminds him of his father’s on their last meeting. She inserts a disc and as cheesy pop sounds fill the air, stands up and pulls him to his feet. The music is bland, drenching the room in spineless reworkings of rock ’n’ roll classics, forcing Lennox to think of his old mate Robbo, a soft-rock aficionado, supermarkets, and what Americans call elevators.
Robyn steps into him, and as they dance close, he feels the sewer ebbing from her mind; him suffocating under the confining cloak of sleaze she’s draped around them. In an automated manner he responds to her tight mouth as it bites on his numb lips, the cocaine rendering the tobacco smoke from her breath just about bearable. Her eyes are as glassy and dead as Marjorie’s, his big sister Jackie’s favourite doll. Lennox recalls ‘loving’ and ‘wanting to marry’ Marjorie as a small child, coveting the toy at least as much as his bossy sibling did.
He’d told Trudi this story once. — You like women to be passive toys, she’d snorted uncharitably, before climbing on top of him and riding him raw.
Trudi. He can’t allow himself to be stupefied by Robyn’s kisses. Catching Starry’s eye and a nod to the coffee table, he breaks away and moves over to where some lines are racked up. She has set down the copy of
