South Beach, 1992

After they both were sure the shorter man had stopped bleeding (a nervous bite, as they'd walked quickly from their hotel toward the sea, had re-opened that morning's sudden wound), they reached their Ocean Drive soon enough, and settled on a cafe with straw-mat-topped tables laid out beneath a green canopy. They ordered club sandwiches and Cokes—no ice in his, the shorter man said. Even with the silence that had remained with them on the heels of the fresh blood, it would be easy enough now for them both to regard the laughing couples that fairly surrounded them—mostly youngish like themselves, all deeply tanned and all so healthy-looking, the shorter man thought—like themselves, even now. They took in the bright T-shirts and loud Hawaiian prints, the slightly askew sun hats and baseball caps, the too-large, sometimes garish sunglasses (a credible film actor known more for his recent problems with drugs and drink hid, somewhat unsuccessfully, behind a pair), and the occasionally startling beauty in the face of a woman or man astonishingly close by—one of the many models who worked locally, no doubt, who here and now, in the early lunch hour, in the company of another beauty, pointedly focused on a crisp garden salad or spritzer with lime. Had they themselves thought of it, they would have described the general atmosphere as insouciant; decidedly vibrant, caressed by an ostensible élan and well-heeledness in no way consistently part of their own regular days. Yes, well, this was here, after all, they both knew: right in the center of things, so to speak. Miami and its realities that reminded them of home far to the north—the city's ample-armed, weary-faced women, the steel-sided Metro and its busy downtown stations, the noisier streets abustle with tense bodies in fervent search of green cards, and the deep pleasures of lilting and staccato tones in languages other than English—was way over there, across the water to the west; this particular stretch of the palm-lined, sea-flanking Drive was, they knew, where dramatically sculpted beauty, though distinct from that in the more sober faces they knew best and preferred, could frequently be glimpsed, if not gawkingly admired, hungrily absorbed by the watchful eye: the municipality of well-nourished smooth cheekbones and narrow hips that spoke of First World comfort far removed from the assaults and twinges of urban anxiety. It was, they knew (and had accordingly, over months, saved their money for), the narrow land of shiny restaurants and cafes, up-market gift shops, "premier" dance clubs, smooth-thighed sailing rollerbladers and joggers not much younger than themselves, and, on the other extreme, the elderly knock-kneed, bent-backed, die-hard couples, many of whom despite (or because of) the abiding weather of years still strolled the beachfront walks holding hands, and had journeyed to these shores from places like New York, Chicago, and other winter-harsh locales for the perceived blessedness of retirement beneath prehistoric sago palms and noon-drunk butterflies. With a slight movement as if resuscitating a habit they might once have enjoyed but knew they had never, in such a way, quite shared, they gazed briefly out at the beach on the other side of the Drive before the taller man automatically returned his eyes to that place on the other man's mouth where, only twenty minutes before, the blood had bloomed. The pelting noon shower that had blown in off the sea had departed just as suddenly, leaving behind an ambivalent sky slowly stretching back to its own previous distractions. Scudding clouds made way for the certainty of azure as the sun began again to burn down through the humid air onto the scattered puddles left by the rain. They'd been lucky to get a table that fast; already the little cafe was quickly crowding up with those who had dashed in out of the rain and were still coming in droves off...