‘LA TRISTEZA DE MIAMI,’ said Pala, commenced in the year of the Mariel exodus, with the flood of demented people into the city. An old and murderously tense mood persisted. There were too many strange people, too much strange money in too few hands.
On a hot afternoon she heard on the car radio that the four white police accused of beating Arthur McDuffie to death had been acquitted up in Tampa. In minutes the city vomited blood.
She always drove home herself. Liked driving, liked the new business, the travel bureau, the people in a hurry. Dub was tired of it all but she still had the Cuban energy, the push and drive to make things work. She had to work. Couldn’t retire. Didn’t want to retire. Dub and his orchids.
She steered through the heated early evening, listening to the excited announcer. The sun struck her eyes and she hesitated at the top of the ramp feeding the highway. A swarm of men flailing bats sprang down on the car, heavy little chunks of windshield glass cascaded into her skirted lap, a stone smashed the fingers of her right hand clenched on the steering wheel and through the denting and shattering the voice of the announcer went on excitedly as though he were there watching, leaning into the car to notice how much blood there was, or if, perhaps, the tongue was cut out and a red rose jammed into the seeping orifice.
But the pirate tramped on the gas and scraped onto the howling throughway, accelerating, the wind plastering glass dust across her chest. She twisted the car, throwing off the men, except one who clung to the ragged edge of the windshield opening, his body stretched along the hood.
She steered the battered car through the commuter traffic, pounding on the horn. What else could she do? But the other drivers, transfixed by the same announcer’s voice, slowed in the flooding red of brake lights, cut into adjacent lanes for a few feet of progress, sped forward, and none seemed aware of her hood ornament. A black man. She could see his black fingers and the nails squeezed white. Still he hung on. In the center lane she accelerated, eyes slitted against the blast of air. When there was a clear patch behind her she stood on the brakes, saw the man vault ahead onto the roadway. She accelerated again, jolting over his legs. She stopped then, in midlane, turned the engine off and waited in the stalled traffic until the police came in a cacophony of horns and tape decks and the black man’s hoarse crying.
She did not want to drive alone in Miami again. Did not want to be in Miami. Thousands of people did not want to be in Miami. The glossy city emptied, the money-men and investors fleeing with condos unsold, office towers unleased, undeveloped properties foreclosed. Pala picked Houston. The travel agency was a natural for Houston she told Dub.
‘I would like to get out of real estate. All of it. We don’t need the money. You play with the orchids. This is my hobby. The travel business is fun for me.’
They left the month Christo began to fit the pink plastic around the bay islands. Pala had a bathrobe the same color of pink, thought Dub. Flamingo pink. There would be nothing like it in Houston.