Before leaving the apartment, I picked up the grocery list and the car keys. My sister had an old Mazda Miata convertible. I was looking forward to putting the top down. In the lobby, I opened her mailbox with the tiny key she’d given me. It was empty.
Outside, the car I’d been warned about was the first thing I saw: a beige Lincoln Town Car parked next to the Mazda. As I passed, I saw a woman with shoulder-length hair and sunglasses staring through the windshield. I started the Mazda and rolled down the top. I was a little drowsy from the pill and the sun hurt my eyes. I found rhinestone-studded sunglasses in the glove compartment and put them on. I headed to the grocery on Creston Avenue. The beige Lincoln followed.
At the grocery, I parked and rolled up the convertible top. I pushed a cart toward the entrance. The woman trailed behind me, picking up a small basket inside. She kept her sunglasses on. She followed me up and down the aisles, never more than twenty or thirty feet away. In the frozen foods section, I kept an eye on her by looking at the reflections in freezer cases, like I once saw a character do in a detective movie. Her basket stayed empty. She dragged one of her ankles slightly. I went about my business and by the time I’d checked out, she was nowhere to be found.
After the grocery, I stopped at Coco’s, a café on Miami Avenue. I wanted to keep practicing being Sylvia in public. The café had blue walls and a dusty black floor. A window was covered with plywood and a sign that read COCO VS. FLORA was taped to the sheets. I peered into a glass pastry case, trying to decide between a cupcake and a muffin. I went with the cupcake and a coffee because I thought that was what Sylvia would want.
“So the hurricane was named Flora?” I asked the woman behind the register. She had drawn-on eyebrows and cropped hair.
“That’s what they call it on the news,” she said. “I call it something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Magdalena. After my mother.”
I took a table facing the entrance. I scraped the icing off the cupcake with a plastic knife and ate it, just like Sylvia did when we were kids. The ceiling fan moved in lazy circles. I was finishing my coffee when the woman who had been trailing me came in and sat down. When I first saw her, I almost let the mug slip from my hands. In the grocery, she’d kept her distance. I expected her to wait on the sidewalk or in her car. I didn’t think she’d come so close.
She took the booth by the covered window, facing me. She didn’t order anything; her sunglasses were still in place. She folded her hands on top of the table. I took my time finishing my coffee. The last few sips were bitter and thick.
After the coffee was gone, I put my own sunglasses back on. I was worried the woman might detect a difference in my eyes. Then I went and sat across from her. Her brown hair was streaked with blond, her skin freckled and tan. She smelled like coconut oil. She wore a white T-shirt and jeans and a thick gold watch. I wondered if my sister had even gotten this close to the woman before. I liked the idea of being braver than Sylvia.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“My husband never told you?”
“Never.”
“I’ve been following you for a month and you’ve never said a word to me.” She crossed her arms, holding on to her elbows. “Why today?”
“I want to know why you’re following me.”
“You know plenty.”
“I want to know when you’ll stop.”
“I could hurt you. Right now. I really could.” She pressed her fingers against her forehead.
“I’m going to the video store next, just to give you a heads-up,” I said. “It feels like a Hitchcock kind of night.”
I left her sitting in the booth. I wasn’t sure she’d followed until I walked out of the video store, where I’d used my sister’s card to rent Vertigo, and saw the Lincoln in the parking lot. I waved to the woman before driving off.
That evening, as I watched the movie on Sylvia’s TV, the phone rang. I ignored it, as I imagined Sylvia would. When I heard her voice on the machine, I paused the film. She was calling to give me the number of her hotel on the Isle of Youth. She said the island was split into two sections, the north and the south, and that a large swamp ran through the center. She said it was even hotter than Miami. There were green iguanas on the rocks and black coral in the ocean and if you dove at Los Barcos Hundidos, you could see the skeletons of sunken ships. She said it felt good to be seeing different things. Thank you. Sylvia paused. I heard bells in the background. I owe you big.
* * *
For my first night at the Bortaga, I put on the outfit Sylvia had given me and prepared my hair and makeup with extra care. At dusk, I drank a vodka on the balcony. The Miami skyline was a wall of pink light. Before leaving, I took a pill. In the car, I practiced saying my name was Sylvia.
On the road, it was too dark to see if the Lincoln was following. I put the top down and let the wind roar through my hair. The bridge that led to Miami Beach was lit gold. I saw dark water below, heard music coming from party boats. My husband always said Sylvia was more fun, more freewheeling. I wondered what he would think if he was riding beside me, if he would be frightened when I hit the gas and screamed around a corner, if he would be surprised, if he would know who I was.
I took a wrong turn near Española Way and got to the club late. I touched up my lipstick in the rearview, then gave the valet my car. I walked past the line outside and the black-shirted bouncers, trying not to wobble in my heels. When I entered the club, I was hit with cold air. A stainless steel bar stretched down one side of the room; on the other, a staircase spiraled into the darkness upstairs. In the back, DJs stood on a stage and people danced beneath streams of flashing light. The lights made the dancing bodies look fragmented and strange.
I walked up to the woman sitting on a black stool and stamping the hands of people entering. She was pixieish and scowling. Her silver dress showed the dragon tattooed on the tops of her breasts. Her name was Lydia, according to my sister’s notes.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
“You’re always late.” She jammed the inkpad and stamp into my hands, then drifted over to the bar, where she sat for a minute before disappearing into the mass on the dance floor.
My sister was right about one thing. Her job was easy. The people knew to stick out their hands, palms down; all I had to do was press on the phosphorescent stamp. I listened to the music. I thought about Sylvia on the Isle of Youth, with the black coral and the iguanas. I imagined my husband watching the news in our living room. He liked to turn all the lights off when he watched TV. He felt so far from me, now that I had slipped into this other dimension, this crack in the earth. All the questions that had plagued me on the flight to Miami — Does he want me to stay? To go? — felt remote, like background noise.
I’d been stamping hands for an hour when I spotted the woman who had been following me. She wore a dress with a scoop neck and long sleeves, which looked out of place in the sea of naked bellies and shoulders and thighs. In the line, she looked straight ahead and held out her hand. I rolled on the stamp.
“Won’t your husband wonder where you are?” I whispered.
“He could care less.”
She went to the bar. The bartender brought her a drink without being asked. She didn’t seem to be watching me very closely, which I took to mean she’d been to the Bortaga enough times to know what my sister did.