Insane City Page 8

  “No! Not at all!”

  “It’s fine, you’re too busy, we’ll just get a taxi. Although your father, with his hip, if he falls again Dr. Gersten says he might never walk again. But it’s fine, you’re too busy for us. We’ll just get a . . .”

  “No! Stay there! I have a car! I can pick you up.” He looked pleadingly at LaDawne, who rolled her eyes but nodded OK. “I’m on my way right now. Stay right there. Bye, Mom.” He hung up. “I’ll be right back, I swear.”

  “You better be right back,” said LaDawne. “With Huggies and formula.”

  “And two thousand dollars,” said Wesley.

  “Wait a minute,” said Seth. “You said one thousand.”

  “We now in a overtime situation.”

  Seth looked at LaDawne, who made an It’s out of my hands gesture and headed back into the bedroom. The phone rang again. Seth picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “You got to get over here,” said Big Steve. “There’s a lot of people on the beach and we’re attracting attention.”

  “All right, all right, I’m coming.” Seth hung up, beckoned to Cyndi and headed for the door. As he passed the bedroom, he looked inside. The three Haitians were still in the bed, surrounded by half-finished room service plates. The boy was asleep, as was the baby, wrapped in towels and nestled in her mother’s arms. Laurette’s eyes were open, barely; they widened when Seth came into view. She said something, too softly for him to hear.

  “What’d she say?” said Seth.

  “She says Mêci,” said LaDawne. “It’s Creole. It means thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Seth.

  Laurette smiled a weary smile, then closed her eyes.

  “Don’t take long,” said LaDawne. “These people counting on you.”

  10

  Seth and Cyndi stood in the driveway of the Ritz as Wesley’s car, a black Cadillac Escalade with gleaming twenty-two-inch chrome rims that, by themselves, cost more than a midrange Kia, glided to a stop. As the parking valet held the door for Seth, he said, “I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.”

  Seth climbed in and saw what the valet was talking about: There was a high-definition video screen—one of six in the vehicle—mounted on the dashboard directly in the driver’s field of vision, a location of dubious legality. The monitor was showing a porn movie involving a male actor, portraying a cable installer, who was at the moment installing his cable in a female actor while simultaneously using his tongue, which was inhumanly long, like some kind of exotic mouth-dwelling, legless purplish tropical lizard, to probe a second female actor, who was emitting the kinds of rhythmic, high-decibel moans associated with either sexual ecstasy or severe gastrointestinal distress.

  Seth studied the dashboard control panel, a complex of buttons, knobs, indicator lights and touch screens that looked more suitable for the cockpit of a 747. Trying to turn off the video, he stabbed a series of screens and buttons, but he succeeded only in turning on the Escalade’s custom audio system, which featured four 2,000-watt subwoofers capable of pulverizing concrete at seventy-five yards. It began blasting a bass-intensive song titled “Butt Sweat,” which as it happened was a composition by none other than D.J. Booga Wooga.

  “I can’t turn it off,” said Seth, stabbing more screens and buttons.

  “WHAT?” said Cyndi.

  “SEE IF YOU CAN TURN IT OFF!” said Seth. He put the Escalade in gear and pulled out of the driveway. He lowered his windows, hoping the breeze would help dry his clothes. Cyndi managed, by trial and error, to lower the sound system’s volume, but she had no luck with the video playing directly in front of Seth. The plot was thickening: A third woman had entered the scene and was urinating on the cable installer, who appeared to welcome this development.

  A glorious South Florida morning was unfurling as they drove across the bridge to the mainland, Biscayne Bay glittering on both sides, a line of massive white cruise ships being serviced at the port off to the right, the city skyline ahead, jutting into a cloudless blue sky.

  “It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, too,” Cyndi said over the yips and moans of the video. “You’re gonna have a nice wedding day.”

  “If I have a wedding,” said Seth.

  “Oh, you will,” said Cyndi. “You love her, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You want to be with her?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s what matters. Your life together. The wedding isn’t important. A wedding is just a party. Believe me. I’ve been there.”

  “You’re married?”

  “I was. For, like, three months.”

  “Oh.”

  “He cheated on me. I mean, right from the start. Before the start he was cheating on me.”

  Seth looked over at her. The breeze from the open windows was blowing her long dark brown hair around. Her skin was glowing bronze in the early-morning sun. He noticed, for the first time, that she had green eyes.

  “He was an idiot,” said Seth.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling a wan smile and touching his arm just for a second. “But the point is, I had a big wedding. A Cuban wedding, the abuelos and abuelas and all the tios and the tias . . .”

  “You’re Cuban?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No, nothing, I just didn’t get the impression, I mean . . .”

  “Because I sound American?”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like . . . Well, yeah.”

  She laughed. “My parents came on a boat, Marielitos. But I was born here, grew up here.”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “Of course. I speak Spanish, English, Spanglish. I’m American and Cuban, like everybody in Miami. If you meet somebody here with blond hair and blue eyes, maybe he looks like he’s a gringo, but you better not say something bad about Cubans because suddenly he could be cursing you out, talking bad about your mother, in Spanish. You never know who’s a Cuban here or who’s married to one.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. So, anyway, you had a big wedding . . .”

  “Yeah, it’s the happiest day of my life, right? Everybody’s telling me how beautiful and happy I look in my beautiful white wedding dress that cost seven hundred and forty-eight dollars from Nordstrom and that I saved up for for six months. And meanwhile my maid of honor, my best friend, she’s sitting there at the same table drinking champagne with me and my brand-new husband, who I later found out she slept with two nights before the wedding.”

  “Wow. Your best friend?”

  “I thought she was. She ended up getting pregnant and marrying that asshole, and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Now he’s cheating on her. And guess what else?”

  “What?”

  “He tried to cheat on her with me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. He calls me up, this is, like, two months ago, and he’s, like, ‘Oh, Cyndi, I made a big mistake, I still love you, I want to get back with you.’ And I’m, like, ‘Aren’t you married to Lizette now and she’s pregnant?’ And he’s, like, ‘Yeah, but it was a mistake, she’s not right for me, you’re what I want, baby, we got to get back together.’ He’s, like, crying on the phone.”

  “So what’d you say?”

  “I said OK.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Really. I said, ‘Friday night, eleven, meet me at Liv.’ That’s a nightclub at the Fontainebleau, real expensive, way too expensive for my ex, but I told him my friend Paulo works the door there, he’s gonna take care of it. So my ex goes there, and Paulo lets him in, takes him to this table, the same table Diddy sits at, A-Rod, those kind of people. It costs, like, five thousand dollars just to sit there. Paulo tells him he can order whatever he wants. So he orders Belvedere, which they charge you, like, four hundred fifty dollars a bottle.”

  “Wow.”

  “So I let him sit there an hour, drinking his Belvedere, then I show up wearing the shortest dress I have, s
horter than this one, very low-cut, and I am looking hot.”

  “I bet,” said Seth, taking what he hoped was a subtle gander at her dress, wondering how she could wear a shorter one and still sit down.

  “So he sees me and he’s, like, ‘Cyndi, baby, you look so good, I love you, blah blah.’ So I go, ‘Really? You really love me?’ And he’s, like, ‘Yeah, baby, I want you back so bad.’ And I say, ‘What about Lizette?’ And he goes, ‘I told you, baby, that was a mistake, I’m leaving her.’ And I say, ‘What about the baby?’ And he says, ‘I don’t care about the baby.’ And I go, ‘Anything else you got to say before I put this on YouTube?’ That’s when he sees I’m holding my iPhone next to my purse, recording him. Which he didn’t notice before because he’s staring at my boobs.”

  “You didn’t!” said Seth, taking care not to look at her boobs.

  “Yes I did.”

  “So what’d he do?”

  “He jumps up, he’s yelling, ‘You fucking bitch, give me the phone,’ but Paulo was watching, and he comes right over, and he’s a big guy, so my ex sits right back down. Paulo asks him how he plans to settle the bill and my ex says, ‘Wait a minute, you said it was comped.’ And Paulo says, ‘I said you could order whatever you want, I didn’t say it was comped.’ Next thing, there’s two bouncers standing over him, ex-Dolphins, telling him he has to go with them to sign some papers so they can take the bill out of his paycheck. He’s begging them to let him go, crying like a baby. I walked away nice and slow, let him get a good look at what he had and threw away.”

  “Wow. Did you post the video on YouTube?”

  “Of course. You do not mess with a Cuban woman.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind also.”

  For a few seconds the car was quiet, except for the frenzied bleatings of the video cast, who had been joined by a woman wearing a strap-on appliance the size of a pool noodle. They were on the mainland now, Seth taking the ramp to I-95 toward the airport.

  “My point,” said Cyndi, breaking the silence, “is the wedding doesn’t matter. I had a great wedding. I looked great, he looked great, everybody had a great time. It didn’t mean shit. When I get married the next time, it’s gonna be just me and him, and if we’re still happy ten years later, then I’ll buy another seven-hundred-and-forty-eight-dollar dress from Nordstrom and we’ll have a big party.”

  Seth nodded, thinking about Tina’s dress, which cost $137,000, plus a trip to London, and featured pearls that had once been worn by Elizabeth Taylor, and those were not even the most important pearls it featured. “I get what you’re saying,” he said. “But can’t you have both things? A really nice wedding and you’re really in love?”

  “Of course you can. I’m sure you will. I’m just saying, I know it’s a nice ring, but she’s marrying you, not the ring, right?”

  “Right,” said Seth, “but . . . Jesus.” He swerved to avoid a motorist, who, having missed his exit, was backing up on the interstate. “Did you see that?”

  “Welcome to Miami,” said Cyndi.

  “OK, but what I’m saying, about the ring,” said Seth. “She put a lot of time and effort into that ring. Into this whole wedding. It’s very important to her. She’s the kind of person who, whatever she does, she wants to do it perfectly. That’s what makes her happy. I want her to be happy.”

  “Right, and because you care so much if she’s happy, that will make her happy. Not the ring. The caring. She’s a smart lady. She’ll see that. She’ll see she’s lucky to have a man like you who really cares. That’s more important than the dress, the ring, the wedding.”

  “So let me ask you something,” said Seth. “The day you got married, let’s say your groom—this is when you were still in love with him before you knew he was cheating on you—let’s say that right before the wedding, you’re about to go down the aisle, let’s say he spilled ketchup all over your seven-hundred-thirty-eight-dollar wedding dress.”

  “First of all, it was seven hundred and forty-eight dollars, and, second of all, why would he have ketchup when we’re about to walk down the aisle?”

  “Don’t try to wiggle out of this. You know what I mean. If your groom did something stupid that messed up your wedding, would you be, like, hey, I don’t care, I’m not marrying the dress, I’m just happy to be with this man I truly love? Or would you be pissed off? The truth.”

  She thought about it a few seconds, then said, “I would have killed him.”

  “Exactly. So I appreciate the pep talk. But I gotta get the ring. Can you maybe call whatshisname . . .”

  “Duane.”

  “Duane, right, can you call him and see if he had any luck at all?”

  “Sure,” said Cyndi, pulling her phone from her purse.

  They had reached Miami International Airport. Seth pulled up to the curb in front of Arrivals and left Cyndi with the Escalade while he ran into Baggage Claim to find his parents.

  He spotted their luggage first. In his youth it had embarrassed him on many a family trip: plastic suitcases from the pre-wheels era in a violently pink hue, like large radioactive wads of bubble gum, purchased from Sears on sale during the Carter administration. Sitting statue-still on a bench next to the suitcases were Seth’s parents, Sid and Rose, wearing their standard travel attire: matching purple velour tracksuits, also obtained at a steep discount, and pristine white sneakers. It was unclear to Seth why two people who could take as long as ten minutes to walk across their own living room needed to dress as though at any moment they were going to strip down and compete in the 100-meter high hurdles. But he was long past questioning such things.

  He put a smile on his face and strode forward, arms wide. “Mom! Dad!”

  His mother turned and registered his presence, her face adopting the expression she had shown him as long as he could remember—love tempered by the disappointment of a woman who had had just the one child, relatively late in life, and had decided that motherhood was not all that it had been cracked up to be.

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  “I’m really sorry, like I told you, I just got all hung up with wedding stuff and I . . .”

  “No, I mean, you look terrible. You look like you were in an accident. Were you in an accident?”

  Seth looked down at his wrinkled, still-damp clothes, rubbed his stubbled face, attempted to straighten his salt-encrusted hair. “No, no accident, I just . . . I’ve been running around since we . . .”

  “Was he in an accident?” said Sid.

  “He says he wasn’t,” said Rose. “But he looks like he was. He’s a mess.”

  “What kind of accident?” said Sid. Sid, though nearing eighty, could see and hear reasonably well if he had to. But he preferred to perceive the world through the ever-present interface of Rose so that his impressions and opinions would always be completely in sync with hers; this, Sid had learned over the years, was the key to a peaceful marriage, if not necessarily a happy one.

  “I didn’t say he was in an accident,” said Rose. “I said he looks like he was in an accident, but he says he wasn’t in an accident.”

  “Does he need to see a doctor?”

  “Why would he need to see a doctor if he didn’t have an accident? What he needs is a bath, unless he wants to get married looking like a homeless person.”

  “I know, Mom. As soon as we get back to the hotel I’m gonna clean up. It’s just been . . .”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Sid.

  “No you don’t,” said Rose. “You just went.”

  “OK,” said Sid.

  “All right, then!” said Seth. “The car’s outside. I’ll get these.”

  His parents rose. He hefted the suitcases, which, to judge from their weight, contained railroad ties. He took a few steps toward the exit, then glanced back to make sure his parents were following. He continued to the door, then looked back again; his parents did not appear to have made any progress. They had the mysterious ability that some older people have
to walk without making any visible progress. Sometimes, even though they clearly intended to go forward, they seemed to be going very, very slowly backward.

  Seth put down the suitcases and sighed.

  “Well, look who’s here,” said a voice. “The lovely groom.”

  Seth turned and saw Customs Agent Roberto Alvarez and his partner, Vincent Peppers, who was holding the leash of Sienna the drug dog.

  “Nice luggage,” said Alvarez, smirking at the pink blobs.

  “It’s my parents’,” said Seth, nodding toward Rose and Sid.

  Alvarez looked over and said, “They potheads, too?”

  “Easy,” said Agent Peppers.

  “This is what you do?” Seth said to Alvarez. “Hang around the airport hassling people?”

  “Just doing my job,” said Alvarez. “Some of us have to work, you know. Can’t all marry rich girls and have their daddies take care of us.”

  “Easy,” repeated Peppers, edging between Alvarez and Seth.

  Sid and Rose were finally getting close to the exit. Rose noticed the presence of the police officers and, following procedure, relayed this information to Sid.

  “Seth is talking with two police,” she said.

  “Is he in trouble?” said Sid.

  “Are you in trouble with the police?” said Rose.

  “No, Mom,” said Seth. “It’s fine.”

  “He says he’s not in trouble,” Rose informed Sid. “But I wouldn’t be surprised. You go around looking like a homeless person, you get in trouble with the police.”

  “What kind of trouble is he in?” said Sid.

  Before Rose could update Sid, Sienna started whimpering, her nose pressed against one of the pink suitcases.

  “Well, well, well,” said Alvarez.

  Seth stared at the dog. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said, more to Sienna than anybody else. He looked at the Customs agents and pointed to his parents. “I mean, seriously. Do you see these two people?”

  “What I see,” said Alvarez, “is a highly trained U.S. Customs Service drug detection dog alerting on a suitcase. Which is what is known as probable cause.”