Birds of Paradise: A Novel (12 page)

“. . .
Ven,
Avis, you ignoring me?
Contesta el telefono!
I know you’re there. Ay, you know what—you’re totally impossible to work for . . .”

Avis starts pounding again. Her assistants never last more than a year or two before something like this happens. They go stale, she thinks: everything needs to be turned over. Composted.

She feels invigorated, punitive and steely as she moves through the steps of the recipe. It was from one of her mother’s relatives, perhaps even Avis’s grandmother—black bittersweets—a kind of cookie requiring slow melting in a double boiler, then baking, layering, and torching, hours of work simply to result in nine dark squares of chocolate and
gianduja
tucked within pieces of
p
â
te sucr
é
e
. The chocolate is a hard, intense flavor against the rich hazelnut and the wisps of sweet crust—a startling cookie. Geraldine theorized that the cookie must have been invented to give to enemies: something exquisitely delicious with a tiny yield. The irony, from Avis’s professional perspective was that while one might torment enemies with too little, it also exacted an enormous labor for such a small revenge.

The luxuriously laborious process takes Avis into late afternoon: ignoring the flicker of pain in her lower back, intent on her anger (she imagines going next door, offering cookies, making a gentle complaint, and all the ways her neighbor will be mortified). Eventually Avis arranges the bittersweets on a footed silver tray delicately limned in tarnish, stretches plastic wrap over this, then walks out her front door.

Their neighbor’s back door is perhaps sixty feet away on a diagonal line across the backyard. But Avis climbs in the car, tray of cookies beside her, makes a left on Viscaya, a left on Salzedo, a left on Camillo, pulls up in front of 378, and parks.

The bird cry pierces the closed windows of the car: it seems to have assumed a higher, shrieking, Dopplerized frequency, sawing into the very bones of her cranium. Avis holds the tray aloft on one back-bent hand—the way they whisked out the pastry trays at the Demitasse. On the tray, propped beside the cookies, is a handwritten note on one of her catering cards bordered by vines and blossoms:
Welcome to the neighborhood!
The shriek heightens vertiginously, migrainously, as she walks up the red-bricked driveway. The house itself is a canary-yellow stucco with old flat white roof tiles; royal blue awnings extend over the windows and blue Moorish tiles line the concrete step. There’s no car in the neighbors’ driveway, not even a battered Tercel or Quattro for domestic help. Avis decides to leave her plate and card on the front step and flee: she feels a rush of adrenaline, an impish sense of trespassing. Geckos skitter like sprites across the walkway as she approaches. She hesitates, imagines this neighbor coming home to a plate of nibbled cookies, chocolate webbed footprints. There’s no protected place to leave the cookies on the wide stone hip of the front entry. She stands before the front door, agonizing. Finally she grasps the brass circle on the door and gives it three raps.

No answer. She waits, squinting into the dark mantle of trees on this block. Two more raps. She turns to go when the front door hisses open. Startled, Avis turns back. The parrot noise ceases, and stillness, an unearthly afternoon silence, rises from the earth. A slight woman with dark brown skin stands in the doorway. She’s wearing an old-fashioned cotton garment with rickrack around the neck and hem—the sort of thing that used to be called a housedress. Her face is neutral, open, almost drowsy—as if she had just awakened from a nap—but her mouth is firm. She doesn’t speak or smile: she stands there waiting, her eyes two glimmering black dashes.

“I . . . made . . . these . . .” Avis hazards. “Hello.”

The woman doesn’t look at the plate. She stares at Avis. Avis senses a rising, palm-dampening fever. Half of Miami doesn’t speak English. She tries a word or two of her humiliating Spanish,
“Yo . . . estoy . . . una . . . vecino . . .
um,
vecina . . .”
Nothing.

Now the woman seems impatient, eager to return to her nap. She steps back, the door narrows a fraction of an inch, and Avis notes that she doesn’t feel the vapor of air-conditioning that exudes from most homes in the Gables. Her gaze flits up: the louvered windows of the house are tilted open. In late August, no less. Open invitation to mold. She holds up the plate again. “This is for you.
Para usted?
To say welcome to the neighborhood.
Saludad
. Also, I want to tell you that in the morning? When you leave it outside—your parrot—
su . . .
um
 . . . pajaro? es . . . un poco . . .
” She makes circular, feathery gestures with her hands. “Your bird is too loud.”

The woman’s faint right eyebrow appears to lift.

“So. Well.” Now Avis feels impossibly foolish, certain the woman doesn’t speak English. She must be the housekeeper after all—sleeping on the job. Probably an illegal. “These cookies . . . for the people who live here,” she says slowly, lifting the plate practically into the woman’s chest. But she does not take them. Finally Avis relents and places the tray on the entryway at the woman’s feet. Let the lizards have them! She dusts off her skirt as she straightens up. The woman’s eyes are wider now, though her lower face remains immobile. “Whoever it belongs to—that goddamn bird,” Avis says, “is driving me out of my mind.” She gives the woman a brisk wave and walks off the step.

Brian

T
HE BACK OF GAVIN HENNIGAN’S BENZ IS DUSKY
with late-afternoon light, a miraculously dry August day. The near-evening could have been plucked from any number of near-evenings from Brian’s college life—riding around with friends, a beer held beneath the dash. He feels good—it’s been a while since he’s felt pressure at the center of his chest or had to sweat his way awake through the lonely middle-of-the-night.

Still, concerns flitter over him, embedded in the light racing through the car windows: a tricky application for a variance, half-written contracts, permeable wording. They used to be judicious, PI&B—especially compared with other developers—they were strategic and deliberate in the way they picked sites and new projects, but over the past five years (he gazes over the bay at a creamy 38-foot Hinckley): poor workmanship, substandard materials. Lately, PI&B has focused on tear-downs—on the Beach, in the Grove, the Gables, and downtown—throwing up buildings one after another. Parkhurst and his clients rush into board meetings clutching MLS printouts, sweating through the armpits of their jackets. ’05’s been the wildest yet—even now in the thick of hurricane season. Exciting if you can stand the exposure. After Hurricane Andrew, and last year, an iron lashing from Hurricane Charley, he’d thought investors would cool off on South Florida. Increasingly Brian feels that living in Florida is an act of both rebellion and willful perversity—like rebuilding a house on the train tracks. The city blocks that PI&B develops acquire such exorbitant price tags that Brian feels, at times, there is no connection between work and reality.

When Brian was in law school (those solemn, solitary days, illuminated only by the glow of future hopes), he was serious and earnest in his pursuit of principles, and he embraced the contractual ideal of
ad idem
—meeting of minds. He had classmates who claimed to be already jaded—who knew, they said, that law—especially corporate law—had virtually nothing to do with “justice.” Some rolled their eyes when they said the word. “Only a moron,” his then roommate Dennis Litton had stated, “believes in justice anymore. It’s like believing in the Easter Rabbit.”

Now Brian rubs his fingers over the ridge of his brow. His eyes rest on the mooring field, boats like white stars on blue waves. Javier, next to Brian in the back, shifts his body uncomfortably. “Hey, man,” he says, “what’s going on this weekend?”

This will segue into a dissection of all things Miami Dolphins: the prospect is slightly unbearable. Brian’s felt distracted lately, prone to staring out the window after his phone calls have ended. He glances at the billowing sky over the causeway. “
Nada
. How about you? What’s on with you and Odalis?”

Javier doesn’t look at Brian as he says, “Same old, same old, same old, same old . . .” He exhales heavily, as if a layer of cigarette smoke drifted on his breath. (Brian’s noticed the scent of spearmint and tobacco in the restroom stalls—Odalis made Javier quit last year.) He pricks up a smile then, a bright slice of teeth, saying, “What about that genius of yours? Make his first million yet?”

“Owes it more like.”

“I miss that boy—do I have to make an appointment to see him now?”

“Get in line. His mother and I do.”

A thin whistle through his teeth. “Ya. Working too hard. It’s not good for him. Tell him to come see me—I’ll hook him up. Got a great little unit coming open on mid-beach. He could turn it around in a few weeks, double his money.”

“What’re you men talking about back there?” Conrad Strauss calls over the seat back. “No making money till we get to lunch.”

Light flashes at Brian between the dark slots of palm trees along Government Cut. He eases thumb and forefinger over his eyes. “Got to get him to pick up the phone first.”

“I still say we should get out fishing again,” Javier says moodily, as if it’s a point of contention. “Why not? Javito’s about to head upstate for school. Let’s hit Pine Island.”

“Again . . .” Brian watches the big derricks lined up like soldiers along the cruise ship channel; beyond them, boats adrift on white ruffles. “I’d settle for a lousy call back from that kid. Time to time.” He doesn’t mention the earlier call from the strange girl.

“So we go to Homestead and grab him.” Javier turns to his own window.

They drive on to Miami Beach, past an array of towering edifices and scaffoldings flanking the bayside—two of them new PI&B constructions. Once past the massive projects, the beach scale returns—squat, geometric, funky Art Deco hotels, chalk-white office buildings with orange-tiled roofs, homes with Mediterranean archways and columns, all slide by. The men turn right on Washington toward the bottom of South Beach—an area that used to be the worst of the worst—slums and junkies and thieves. Now, all is beautifully revitalized: gleaming buildings, wooden walkways through plumes of beach grass, and the ocean just beyond. Brian surveys it with satisfaction; at the back of his mind, there is simultaneously a glade, verdant, arboreal, and filled with tilting butterflies, and, beyond this, one thin, nearly invisible, thread of despair.

SECOND WEDNESDAY LUNCH
happens at a padded bar booth at Joe’s Stone Crab. There’s the usual jockeying for places. No one orders the crab. Gavin sips a highball, listlessly watching the neckline of their server’s blouse. Chantelle, one of the few female servers, lowers herself upright, from the knees. She’s waited on their table for two years while the executives parsed new project sites. When the men get bored with each other and start bantering with her, Chantelle banters back in her soft, grave voice. Brian knows she wants to become a pediatric nurse, that she lives with her family in the South Bay Estates neighborhood. More than he knows about his own daughter.

The restaurant is packed: Swedish tourists laden with shopping bags throng the bar, heels ringing on the terracotta. The men stare at the tall blondes, their skirts like bits of fluff, tasseled purses sag from their elbows. Conrad points at some sort of photocopied schematic unfolded on the table, already butter-stained. “Four
thousand
units. Is that beautiful? Breaking ground spring ’06.”

“This spring? That’s insane,” Gavin says, voice reverberating with admiration. “Instant City.”

Fred Wales, City of Miami Zoning Board, shakes hands with Brian, drags over one of the heavy wooden chairs and sits on it backwards, his arms resting on top of the chair back. “So, Prevlin Group?”

Chantelle arrives with a tray of thick-bottomed glasses. Conrad holds a sprig of mint to one side with the backs of his fingers and takes a gulp. “Oh, thank God,” he says.

“Ambitious—those Prevlin boys,” Brian allows, staring at the upside-down schematic. “The scope of this thing.” The men watch him: along with his vaunted powers of analysis, he has a reputation as a bit of an industry seer—Parkhurst asks him to weigh in on all his big projects—particularly what communities look promising for gentrification. Brian had predicted the revitalization of Hollywood, and drawn his attention to the early rustle of activity in Wynwood; at conferences, other developers corner him by the buffet table and throw out the names of neighborhoods. “They might just pull this off.”

Conrad lifts his cool, Presbyterian eyes, grins at Brian. He experiences a prickling uneasiness, like being dragged lightly against a brick wall. “Those boys are only getting started.” Conrad folds up the photocopy.

“What’s the point?” Javier tugs at his collar. “Redlands’re a bunch of farms. Downtown, we’re gonna outsell them within the quarter—no question. People are lining up for preconstruction prices—half-mil for studios. Who’s gonna move to Homestead?”

“Ha,” Conrad says, stirring his drink with his finger. “That’s where everyone’s gonna go. People can’t afford Miami, but they can afford the swamp.” He licks his finger.

“With a jumbo mortgage.”

“We have a wise old saying in South Florida,” Brian intones. There’s a murmur of laughter around the table. “Show me the money.”

Waiters in black tuxes and bow ties mill around the table ferrying trays of glasses, bamboo and sugarcane stirrers, a swirl of Spanish under the strands of Sinatra. The mayor’s chief of staff comes to greet Brian en route to the grand dining room, and Javier glimpses the tubby governor and entourage on their way out. A couple of the Lennar people stop by the table, one thumps Brian on the back so he can hear hollow thuds. “Whadya call a group of lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” Sydney Eckles, a site contractor, grabs Brian’s arm.

Brian gives a patient half-smile to the wrought iron chandelier. “Really? You just heard that one, Sydney?”

“A good start!” Sydney hoots with laughter.

“Really, Eckles—long as you been around? Best you can do?”

He stops and straightens as Chantelle appears; two waiters place the trays on folding stands. Brian admires her queenly profile, the way she lowers each plate, giving it a slight turn to center their steaks.

BRIAN FORBIDS HIMSELF
certain memories. Like the times Felice waited up past her bedtime for him to come home from work—three, four, and five years old. Her face seemed to go pale with joy when he opened the door,
Daddy
. He’d loved her profoundly: there were times he worried he loved her more than even Stanley (it wasn’t true). He’d taken her to her first day of kindergarten and he’d stayed at the curb, watching, long after she’d gone in. He’d loitered outside on a bench, kicked at the grass, stared at the doors of the school until one of the teachers came out and told him—gently chiding—that Felice was playing happily. For years, he’d read her bedtime stories, her small, warm head resting against the cove of his chest: once, he’d read to her from a library book that had turned out to be more sophisticated than he’d expected. He worried she was bored—especially after a long meditation on children playing in a field—but his six-year-old daughter had looked up from her pillow, saying, “That’s you, Daddy. You catch us.”
No
. He couldn’t think of that without feeling his throat tighten. The children were small and Brian and Avis still young, holding each other inside shining nets, in equipoise. Early spring nights where they sat together on the hood of the car eating ice cream, watching for the red pulse of a passing space station. Is that what a happy family looks like? He would have sworn it was. A family like any happy family. He wanted only to keep them whole and entire: to provide. But perhaps that’s where the problem was? The drive to pour oneself out, into the providing?

Chantelle nods at Brian as she returns to clear some platters. She bears away Gavin’s nearly unmarred steak with an air of mournful dignity. Brian hopes that she will take it home later for dinner. At one time the lunches had seemed useful—instead of chewing over the same old cases with other lawyers at La Loggia, these get-togethers gave him a chance to collect intelligence from a cross section of architects, bankers, elected officials. But Brian became impatient—it was all developer gossip, analysis of their next car and boat purchases, rubbing elbows with, frankly, subordinates and the semi-educated—agents, appraisers, and engineers. The indigenous population, as Javier puts it. One day Chantelle appeared, a trainee server for their table:
Affirmative action hire,
he thought. Her face a young, frightened translucence. Brian spoke to her while she studied the older server. She was the same age as Felice. He learned that Chantelle was on summer staff, still a student at Gables High: she’d been in some of Felice’s classes in middle school. When he said Felice’s name, her eyes ticked to his face “Everyone knew Felice, sure.” She stopped. “Are you her dad?”

Brian closed his eyes and a white star of light bloomed behind his eyelids. He smiled as Chantelle asked, “Did she become a model? That’s what I heard.”

It doesn’t matter that much to Brian if they talk to each other—simply catching sight of her is enough. These moments of contact with Chantelle are small indulgences. They rarely mentioned Felice after that first meeting, but suddenly he had a marker, a buoy in darkness. He never misses summertime lunches at Joe’s. If Chantelle is out sick, he feels bereft. When she moves to his side of the table, he says, “How you doing today, sweetheart?”

“Just fine, Mr. Muir.” She doesn’t pause in her clearing.

“I guess you’ll be heading back to school soon.”

A faint smile. “I just started fall semester. But I’ve got morning and evening classes, so I can stay on lunch service.”

“Fall semester?”

“I started at Miami-Dade.”

“Ohh, yes . . .” She’s eighteen now. Beginning college.

Brian catches Conrad saying to Harold Wisen, relationship manager at First Trust, “Hear we’re cracking Little Haiti?”

Chantelle hands her tray to a busboy and turns.

Harold, in the visitor’s seat, leans across Gavin—who now seems to be napping with his eyes open. “No shit? It’s going through? Who’s doing the financing? You guys must be getting that property for nothing.”

“It’s part of the
Design District,
friends,” Javier interjects, simultaneously joking and serious, eyeing Brian, “Remember? Making the downtown bloom?”

Brian glances at Chantelle’s impassive profile as she clears Conrad’s plate. He should help Javier shut Conrad down before he blabs too much. Chantelle picks up the last piece of cutlery, her back straight as a carpenter’s level, her expression formal.

Conrad laughs and closes his eyes to drink. “Right, right—we’re saying the block’s in the
Design District
—neat, huh? Northeast Fifty-sixth Street!”

Gavin says mournfully, “Aguardiente Group never got that zoning nailed down. They don’t like talking to the neighbors. But our man bagged it.” He nods at Brian. “High-density and mixed-use, right?”

“That zoning board.” Brian can’t resist the boast. “They were out for my blood.”

“Always,” Javier says. His wingman.

Brian gives a good dash of salt to the remains of his New York strip. “Northeast Fifty-sixth. I went to an art opening there. It looked like a combat zone. There was this weird old space, closer to the west. I think it used to be someone’s house.”