“It was bought by an emir for his bride. You ever hear of the Emir of Oman?” He looks at Felice.
“So why doesn’t she have it?”
“The bride failed to uphold her end of the transaction.” Marren grins and nudges J.T. “And, like I said, I’d rather give it to you.”
“Are you the Emir of Oman?” Berry asks.
Marren laughs into his drink and even J.T. turns around to look at her. “No, beautiful,” Marren says. “He’s just one of my clients.”
THE CHAIN HANGS from her neck, the silvery pear between her breasts. Felice senses some sort of old ownership about it, which makes her like it even more. She touches the necklace again, then her hands move to the backseat upholstery of Marren’s convertible. He drives with one hand slung over the tops of the seats, alternately watching the road and shouting into the rush of wind roaring over them.
Berry hadn’t wanted Felice to go with them: at the last second, she’d come out of the club and watched with Felice as the valet pulled up in the forest-green Maserati, top down.” Where you going again?” she’d murmured to Felice, eyeing Marren and J.T.
“I don’t know — just one of the dumb places on Lincoln Road, I guess.” Felice fingered her silver pear. She hadn’t really wanted to go, but somehow it seemed like it would be worse not to do it. Letting the old terrors back in. Besides, she’d accepted the gift: she owed Marren another club, at least. “He doesn’t even dance,” she’d said.
“Just stands there and looks gross.”
Felice hugged herself, one-armed. “Please come.”
Berry’s face flattened with distaste.
When Felice climbed into the car (J.T. took the front passenger’s seat), Berry reached over the door of the convertible and gripped Felice’s fingers, as if she were about to slide off a building. “Okay, look. You know what — don’t go with these guys.”
“I want to.” Felice’s voice was tiny. A late breeze was picking up and she barely heard herself.
“It was a stupid joke, what I said about hooking up with this asshole. Give him back the crappy necklace. Really — don’t go. I don’t want you to.” Berry looked nearly frantic, her fingers clutching the window.
“It’s no big deal,” Felice said. “I’ll see you later — at the Cove.”
Marren pulled away, breaking their connection. Berry trotted after them, past the valet station, her silk wrapper shining.
Now Felice shivers a little with the ocean wind in the car. The motor hums as they turn the corner too quickly, whipping Felice back against the seat. From the sidewalk, young men look up, admiring the car. She finds a hair band in the backseat and scrapes her hair into a ponytail. Leaning forward, she shouts into the wind, “You guys — you don’t ever dance?”
Marren smiles in the rearview mirror; the hollows under his eyes deep and gray. She feels something like the presence of ghosts, a breathing pressure on her skin.
“So what do you guys do, anyway?”
J.T. turns and says something. “What?” she shouts.
“He says…” Marren turns, streetlamps streaming past them, “that you talk a lot.”
“What?” She leans forward, her shoulders tensing.
J.T. says something more and Marren barks with laughter. “He says he’s feeling bad. Maybe we should let you go.”
Felice takes a breath through her mouth.
“What do you think? I should just let you go now?”
He turns back, and as they drive several more blocks in silence, Felice realizes she’s made a mistake. A torpor comes over her — the old feeling — icy and leaden, covering her, as she grasps that the situation has changed. No, she corrects herself. The situation has stayed the same: her thoughts have simply gotten clearer. Her limbs feel sluggish with a kind of dissolved terror. She sits back. They fly past the clubs.
They stop at a light and Marren twists around in his seat. “Now you’re not talking at all. Can’t you make up your mind?”
She blinks slowly, anesthetized by fear.
“Speak.”
“Where are we really going?”
He flicks a look at her, sighs. “Downtown. That’s where we’re going. Now you happy?”
Downtown Miami: warren of back alleys, bodegas, hidden offices. She’s heard the stories from the beach rats — how it’s a place for the deeply crazy and dangerous, drop points for drug cartels, vanished children, human trafficking. The outdoor kids avoid downtown. She thinks about a yacht party she attended where guests whispered about the beautiful boys and girls with the deadened zombie faces. They didn’t mingle or even seem to speak English, but they were willing to follow the older guests into chambers adjoining the staterooms.
“Maybe we should,” J.T. says without turning. “I mean, let this one go.”
“Fuck no — we’re going to have fun.” The light changes to green but Marren doesn’t turn back or move the car. “That okay with you?” he asks Felice.
The car behind them gives a jarring blast. J.T. clicks open the glove compartment but Marren shuts it delicately, with his fingertips. “Don’t.” He returns to staring at Felice: under the layered ocean night, his eyes are wetly black. She could not have put herself in a worse place. For years she’d assumed that the worst possible thing had already happened; she tricked herself into thinking she would stay safe. There is no safe. Her mind, like her body, feels muffled and faraway.
Another car blasts behind them, and J.T. opens the car door and gets out. Felice lets her head fall back against the seat. The stars look close and bright. “Like soldiers,” Hannah used to say. Felice wondered how stars could look like soldiers. Stanley told her that they turned pink before a hurricane. She stares hard at a cluster of stars.
“What’re you doing now, crazy girl?” Marren is grinning at her over the seat.
Some old energy stirs in Felice, an impetus — half anger — and she sits forward, closer to the man. “Hey, can we stop somewhere first? Can we go to the beach? I know a cool place.”
The man’s eyes flit over her head. He turns around to face front, settling back against the seat. In a dizzying, reckless moment, Felice twists in her seat to face the car behind her. She waves at them quickly, silently mouthing, Help, help me, but she can see nothing beyond the glare of their headlights. She faces front again, quickly. Marren twists back, his hazy eyes gazing over the headrest. “Maybe. For a little while. What the hell?”
A knot forms in her throat, making it more difficult to breathe. “Cool, thanks.”
J.T. gets back in and slams the door shut, shaking the car. “I told them to stop honking.”
In her peripheral vision, Felice notes the other cars silently gliding around them as they remain parked at the light.
“Hey,” Marren says. “Princess girl wants to go to the beach.”
J.T. turns away to gaze silently out the passenger window.
“Hey asshole,” Marren says to him, “when’s the last time you been to the actual fucking beach? The fucking actual water and sand and shit.”
“I know what the fucking beach is,” J.T. mutters.
Marren turns and smiles. He looks uglier when he smiles — his face covered with a crosshatching of lines. His eyes rest on Felice’s face. “The fucking beach. You never know what they’re gonna say, do you?”
The light switches to green again. A car pulls up behind them and honks twice.
J.T. doesn’t lift his head. “Fuck you, Marren, will you just turn around and drive?”
Brian
BRIAN SITS IN HIS HOME OFFICE LISTENING TO Avis’s movements in the kitchen. His gaze skims over the computer out the side-yard window, to rest on a fat avocado, a bleb of green light hanging from a branch. Their tree is full this year, the fruit thud on the roof all night, but he doesn’t like this varietal; they taste like old butter.