We pick up the car, heading down Alton, Mom driving me across the great divide of Biscayne Bay, from Miami Beach to Miami proper. What the fuck is the new gateway to the Americas but a goddamn illusion? It’s a ghost town; those empty stacks of apartments. Nobody wants to be here.
Mom smells my contempt. — It’s really picking up down here, she insists.
I roll doubtful eyes. The sidewalks are empty enough to make most mid-rent LA neighborhoods look like rush-hour Manhattan.
We’re driving down Bayside, to the forty-story apartment block in which Ben Lieberman has bought a big share, sinking in all their savings, and which Mom is managing. Practically empty, and not one single purchase. The structure, which her squeeze took off the hands of some shady Colombians (there must be another kind in Miami, but I’ve yet to meet them) when it seemed like a good idea, has four apartments on each of its forty floors. Only two are currently leased — both discounted — on the seventh and twelfth floors, one to a woman who takes clients there from the nearby offices for lunchtime sex, the other given to a local entertainment and cultural journalist on the basis he’ll write some fiction in his column about an emergent vibrant downtown scene. They are basically paying rent for the building maintenance and services, not that there seems to be much of those.
— It will happen, Mom says in breathless optimism, her crazy eyes rising toward the penthouse on the top of this stacked pile of rabbit hutches. — I mean, Bayside is two blocks away, across the street, and the American Airlines arena is practically on the doorstep.
— Yeah, right.
— Lime have opened up a branch next to the new Starbucks on Flagler, she squeals. — There’s the new Marlins baseball stadium, and a new museum square planned—
— South Florida will always be about the beaches, Mom, it doesn’t need a vibrant downtown. The city won’t spend a municipal buck on jack—
— We got the lowest taxes—
— And that’s our choice, I cede, — but the cost of that choice is a ghost town in the sun.
Mom’s hand tightens white on the wheel. — You will help me out, pickle? she begs, as we leave the car on the empty sidewalk, not even bothering with the building’s off-street parking at the rear. She opens the glass-fronted door of the block with one key. — All you need to do is come in once a week, check everything’s okay, pick up the mail from the boxes downstairs and dump it back at the office. Only for a month, honey, well, six weeks. .
— You and Lieb will be on this cruise together for six whole weeks and you barely talk to each other now?
Mom’s voice goes so high it almost breaks. — It’s a big risk, and both Lieb and I are aware of that, and she takes a deep breath, dropping several octaves. — I guess it really is the last-chance saloon; it could be the end, or maybe a new dawn. Her eyes mist up. — Whatever, we owe ourselves that shot. Also. . we need to explore real-estate possibilities in the Caribbean, she says defiantly.
— Oh, Mom. . I hug her, wincing at the scent of the garlic-heavy dressing on her breath. Mine will be the same. I need to pick up some Listerine from CVS.
— Baby, baby, my darling pickle. She pats me on the back, as a boing announces the impending presence of the elevator, thankfully breaking our grip. We step inside and feel our legs tingle as it accelerates impressively to the fortieth floor.
The apartments all have two bedrooms and great views out over Miami, parceled off into its blocks and streets, all the way across to the bay. But the design in this show apartment, which Mom calls “neoloft,” just totally sucks. I bite my tongue, but a separate galley kitchen, situated off a hallway, is just lame. If it’s “loft,” it should be open-plan, flowing into the spacious living room, utilizing the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. The only thing “loft” about it is the fake exposed brickwork on one wall and the thick steel beam running along the ceiling, held up by three pillars, one at each end, and one in the middle of the room. The only rad thing about that is you could hang a heavy bag there. It has a big stone fireplace, and a polished, dark, hardwood floor. Mom explains that the industrial “neoloft” style was designed to appeal to northern transplants. I’m sure it seemed a good idea at time, and the architect and developer had a lot of fun when they did all that coke together, but down here in the tropics, it feels like an incongruous mess. There will be no rush to buy or rent these places.
Mom fusses, rubbing Canute-style, at some mark on the window with her sleeve. I’m looking out across to Miami Beach and civilization. That’s where I’ll have my new crib when the money from that TV deal comes in, one of those killer blocks at South Pointe. Kick fucking ass! Succumbing to the burn of excitement, I call Valerie, nodding curtly to Mom in apology, but there’s no need — she welcomes the attempt to get straight into her own iPhone.
Valerie picks up in three rings. — Lucy, glad you phoned, she says, her tone making something inside me slide south. I’m braced for what comes next. — Thelma and Waleena at VH1, and there’s no other way of putting this, have basically crapped out on us. The heat from Quist has got the channel nervous. They are trying to go with somebody else for Shape Up or Ship Out. I wish now we’d signed those fucking contracts, but I never anticipated this. . I’m doing all I can to get them to reconsider. . Lucy? Are you there?
— Yes, I tell her curtly. Botoxed fuckers! Those vagina flaps as stiff as rubber doors in a fucking abattoir. I force down my rage. — See what you can do, and keep in touch.
— For sure. Remember, they ain’t the only show in town!
— Thanks, I say, clicking off the phone.
Mom’s real-estate agent nose can smell a Florida disaster a mile away. — Everything good, pickle?
No. On the contrary, everything is going to fucking shit, but I’m not going to tell her that. — You know, I sing, looking around, — I’m thinking what a great place this would be to work out!
— There’s a gym right here, on this floor. Mom points through the wall. — It has some cardio equipment. I don’t suppose anybody would mind if you made use of it.
— Well, there’s nobody here to mind, I tell her, watching her face fall again as we head next door to check it out. This is an open-plan space (as the apartments should be), containing two pristine treadmills, standing criminally idle. They are both still partially wrapped in polyethylene sheeting, the packing around them discarded. There’s also a set of dumbbells on a rack. My head starts to buzz with the possibilities.
— There are plans to get a full set of gym equipment eventually, Mom nods.
— Once you get a few units rented and bring in some revenue, I suppose.
— Yes. . Mom winces as if I’ve just kidney-punched her. She hands me the keys, then drops me off back over on the Beach.
In my cramped apartment, I stretch out and lift some hand weights for an hour, then flop onto the small two-seater couch which practically fills this crappy space. The asshole downstairs is pounding out some butt-fucking techno, forcing me to switch on the TV and drown it out with an infomercial for a faddy home gym, like the one they are supposedly going to send me, which, in any case, is just designed to gather dust in a lardass closet.
I’m thinking about that great space Mom has. Some folks have everything and appreciate nothing. I can feel my own new apartment and car slipping away. I look outside. No paparazzi, except that creep whose camera I trashed. It was a mistake to make it personal; now that soiled fuck will never let go. I feel a steady rage burning inside me. I call Thelma at the TV channel and it goes to voicemail. — I know why you’re avoiding me. Well, I’ve dealt with fake assholes before. Fake, frightened assholes. They never stood in my way. They won’t this time. Show some fucking balls!